More Lucy Than June

McKenna loves Taylor Swift.

She doesn’t know many of her songs, but the ones she does, she really digs.

So while waiting on Daddy to bring home the hot dogs to grill (see? he really does bring home the bacon—er, uhhh, pig), I decided to pull up some youtube videos of ole Taylor to watch.

I believe it was during the one about Romeo and Juliet (what is that one? Love Story?) that I caught her pulling stuffing out of a throw pillow. (And this is where I break out that great line: “See? This is why we don’t have nice things anymore!”)

At this point in my life, and with a pillow that had already seen it’s better days anyway, I just watched for a moment without interrupting because SURELY there was some good explanation for this.

When I finally decided to ask her what she was doing, her response was,

I’m throwing love. So just—-just—-deal with it.

Ohhh, ever the artist McKenna. Throwing love. Clever.

Wait. Did you just tell me to DEAL WITH IT?!

And then in my best Bill Cosby voice,

Let’s rethink what you just said before I give YOU something to deal with.

I jest.

Mostly.

Sweet little spunky McKenna has always had, what we call, a “difficult” time processing her emotions.

When she is sad, hurt, embarrassed, frightened, or any combination thereof, her response has always been anger.

It’s sort of the default emotion for her when she doesn’t know what else to “feel”.

Sad songs on the radio cause her to throw her hands over her ears and yell, “Turn it off! I CAN’T LISTEN TO THAT SONG!”

Sad parts to a movie or a TV show will make her either leave the room or, if you try to talk her through it, she’ll abruptly tell you,

“No! Don’t say that!”

When Stephen’s parents dog passed away this winter, we never told her. Instead, we waited till we were coming back this summer to break the news.

All that I think we managed to get out was,

“We need to tell you something. You see, Cookie was really old and—-”

Her response was to glare at us and to give us a firm,

STOP! I don’t want you to talk about this. And tell GiGi and PawPaw I don’t want to hear about this either.

For whatever reason, her little heart simply could not process sadness.

Until today.

And it’s funny because I think, in God’s own way, He was preparing my heart for what was about to take place this afternoon. On my way to pick her up from school, it occurred to me that, at 5 1/2 years old, she has NEVER cried over anything in sadness.

She has cried out of frustration, anger, exhaustion, and a myriad of other things. But never has she cried out of just plain ole SADNESS.

As we unpiled from the van and made our way into the house after we’d picked her up, I really felt like I should just be sitting on the floor playing with the kids this afternoon. Not hurrying to do laundry or rushing to unload the dishwasher…but to just SIT and BE with them.

And not 30 minutes after I sat on the floor to play, I knew why.

I knew EXACTLY why.

A picture of a cat she had seen on my phone made her grow very quiet and still. Now, if you know McKenna you know she loves animals. Passionately.

Our cat Maggie had disappeared shortly after we moved into this house. She did fine in exploring and coming back home the first couple of weeks, but then we took a week long trip out to San Antonio…and she never came home.

The best I can figure is that she thought we had just dumped her at this new place and then left her.

We placed cat food on the porch for weeks hoping that she would return, and although we made a few other “cat buddies”, Maggie never made her way back.

McKenna had briefly mentioned here and there that she missed Maggie, but we never let the conversation linger…simply because I didn’t know what to tell her. Had Maggie run away? Had Maggie gotten hurt? Was Maggie coming home? They were all questions that I couldn’t answer, and I had no idea how her little heart would take it. I’ve always viewed her, for better or worse, as emotionally fragile.

But this afternoon, something in her little heart changed.

She looked at me after a long, still moment and said quietly,

I really miss Maggie.

And the lip trembled. And the face crumpled up. And then she just started sobbing.

And not the whiny, tired cry of a kid who’s ready for a snack and a nap.

It was the cry of a heartbroken child who had lost her very beloved pet.

I sat for a moment, almost frozen, as the weight of what was happening hit me.

This child, who has never been able to properly emote sadness, was crying. Crying tears of grief for her pet cat.

Then I scooped her up and sat with her for a long time. I held her and rocked her and stroked her hair.

And I let her cry.

I let her cry as much as she wanted. As hard as she wanted. As loud as she wanted.

I patted her back and said the only thing I could say,

I know. I know…

Then I prayed for her. I thanked God for the wonderful memories we had with Maggie. And I asked him to give McKenna comfort…and joy.

We found a picture of Maggie in her baby book, and she asked if she could have it. Well, a part of me thought, but this is her BABY book…I don’t want to disrupt the pages of her history.

But THIS moment, this releasing of her emotions, this instance of allowing herself to FEEL sad and to let the tears flow…well, THIS was a much more important moment in her history than a picture of a cat lying atop my pregnant belly.

So I gave her all the pictures of Maggie that I had.

And she lay on the floor, staring at those pictures and cuddling up her stuffed cat named Mittens, and I just sat with her.

She didn’t see the silent tears rolling down my own cheeks, or hear my heart shatter into a million pieces as I watched my baby girl GRIEVE for the first time in her life.

It was an altogether wonderful and heartwrenching turning moment in both of our lives.

She said to me, through the tears,

I never knew missing something could be so hard.

She was finally allowing herself to FEEL the emotions that God has given her and to process through them accordingly…

…and I was reminded in a very real and magnificent way to listen to the often still, small voice of a very present and very powerful God.

Especially when He tells us to just…stop. And be in the moment.

That moment in which memories and miracles happen.

I need to use the continuous/sports setting on my camera to try and take pictures of this gang.

Maybe then I could find at least ONE that was frame-worthy.

Watch the progression in the photos. Or maybe I should say, DEgression…

Williams and Sonoma, that is.

Well, not Williams and Sonoma the WHOLE store. I adore that place. I can’t do much more than window shop and drool and dream right now, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a sincere appreciation for all things cookery related. (Is that a word? Cookery?)

Shortly before Stephen and I were married, I had made a trip to an outlet mall in North Georgia. On their clearance table, they had cream-colored wide and shallow mugs and matching saucers. They were marked at something ridiculous like $1.00 for each piece or something…so I purchased a set of 8 mugs and 8 saucers. As a young bride-to-be, I had visions of having our friends over and serving them decadent desserts and/or ridiculously wonderful gourmet coffees in those cups and saucers.

And those cups and saucers were used frequently. At first, we reserved them for those “special” occasions, but before long we were breaking ‘em out for those nights when I hadn’t washed any other dishes (our first house had no dishwasher! ack!), and we “needed” a bowl of ice cream or Lucky Charms.

One by one those mugs and saucers met with a fate that, for whatever reason, many of my ceramic bowls meet with. A chip here, a crack there. But then, eventually, their ultimate demise: falling out a cabinet where they were placed precariously, dropped out of the dishwasher onto the hardwood floor, or…ahem…being left in the microwave too long at too high of a temperature. (And if you’ve never had a dish explode in the microwave while you’re unsuspectingly just waiting on the cheese to melt on your nachos, well…that’s just something you have to experience to really get the full effect of, I think.)

Well, today, the last remaining piece of what was once a set of 16 pieces, came to its final resting place on my kitchen floor.

Eggs. Scrambled eggs.

That was the last food to grace the final Williams and Sonoma saucer.

I had given it to Jack for his breakfast (please. don’t even ask me why I gave a toddler, a BOY toddler, a ceramic plate to eat his breakfast off of…), and then, I had to rush off to the potty room where one constipated three year old was having some…”issues”.

And that’s when I hear the crash. And from the mouth of the 19 month old little blond-headed, blue-eyed darling, “Uh oh.”

And then, from Kenni,

Moooommmm! Jack threw his plate on the floor!

Sigh.

Goodbye forever, little Williams and Sonoma saucers and mugs.

You were well-loved, well-used, but obviously not well taken care of.

EDITOR/AUTHOR/OWNER-OF-THE-ILL-FATED-CUP-AND-SAUCER-SET’S NOTE: I went to the kitchen to take a picture of what I THOUGHT was the remains of the final W&S set. Upon opening the dishwasher, I found THIS…

THAT is, in fact, the last piece of the set. One whole saucer remains, my friends.

I removed the plate, still warm from the heat of the dishwasher, took a picture, and placed it high up on the top shelf of my closet.

It’s kind of special to me. Sigh.

And I’m okay with being cheesy like that.

If you’re a mom, then you know…The Mommy Arm.

Oh, you may not KNOW you know The Mommy arm. But you do.

Let me enlighten you. Thank me later.

The Mommy Arm has the amazing ability to reach under the tightest of spaces (like say, a carseat), the highest of heights, or underneath the crumbiest of couch cushions to retrieve a child’s missing sippy cup, toy, or pair of underwear. (Why yes. That has happened.)

Once, when McKenna asked me to get some….something...(I don’t remember…I wrote a post on Mommy Brain several weeks ago), my response was,

Well, I’ll have to break out my Mommy Arm

To which she replied,

What’s a Mommy Arm?

And then I said,

Go ask your daddy what a Mommy Arm is.

So, then she asks Stephen,

What’s a Mommy Arm?

And then he was all like,

I have no idea.

And then she goes,

He said he doesn’t know.

So then I say,

It’s like….ummmm…Go-Go-Gadget-Arm!

And then she was all,

Huh?

And then I decided that it was shame that my kids didn’t know who Inspector Gadget was. So later on, I whispered a silent prayer of thanks for the invention of Hulu so that I could introduce my kids to the trench-coated, big-nosed man with stretchy arms, legs, and I think, stretchy neck.

They loved it. And Kenni finally caught on to what The Mommy Arm is.

And I know this because last night, she came running to me when Jack had wedged a doll between the guest room futon and the wall (how do they DO this stuff?!), and yelled,

I need your Mommy Arm!!!

Ah yes. Mommy Arm to the rescue.

She appreciates and sees the value of this appendage reserved for only those women who love their kids enough (or just want them to stop whining…or both…sometimes it’s tough to differentiate between the two) to shove their arm under a carseat that could contain who knows HOW MANY forgotten and discarded once-milk-filled-now-cottage-cheese-filled sippy cups to retrieve some 20cent piece of plastic that the aforementioned kid (or kids) “must” have.

One final note on the Mommy Arm: Mommy Arm is also excellent for passing out (or tossing from the front seat of the van to the very rear seat of the van) any and all various menu items from any and all selected fast food restaurants kid’s meal.