Worst Mother of the Day

I thought I'd just - for the heck of it - throw my hat in the ring for this one. After all, I let my kids play in the street water after it rains and in the hail (but it was small hail, fun to eat and I didn't know there was a tornado warning yet). Today started out quite good. Asher didn't get up until 6:30, but then he self entertained. And Harper was happy in her crib until around 7:30. But shortly after, Asher decided it was THE day to be bandito Asher, aka big, bad brother. So for a good two hours, I attempted to do a little bit of clean up, breakfast making and feeding, and dressing while Asher was a bandito, perching on the living room chair and darting out to steal Harper's baby and blanket ("gengki" as she screeched it) while also serving a good dose of hits, kicks and whips with Mardi Gras beads. I lost count of how many time outs Asher had and how many toys he lost the privelege of using (don't even ask me about the foam swords he can't use for a few days).

I decided it was finally time to take the two bags of bread heels I'd been saving to the duck pond and feed the birds there, something new and exciting, and the weather was beautiful. Oh, yes, I was thinking, mother of the day, right here. Innocently enough, I made two phone calls on the way and found out that I had a slight emergency with the youth conference I'm working on - a surprise extra 10 attendees!

We unloaded at the duck pond and had a good time chasing geese, not worrying about all the goose poop on the walkway, throwing bread willy-nilly, watching the stork float around the pond, eating bread willy-nilly, watching for more geese and ducks to feed. Shortly after we arrived, the geese started to migrate to another part of the pond, so we started a nice walk around the pond.

We stopped at an inlet where Asher wanted to walk down and see if he could find any more birds to feed. "Careful," I told the kids, urging them to step back from the water. I snapped some good pictures of the kids, the pond and the Rocky Mountains to our west. It was gorgeous! My phone rang, a call back about the surprise emergency, and I answered it. As I was hanging up, I saw Harper f a l l i n t o the water - threw my phone down, tried to reach her from the shore as she started to sink face first, yelled s*%! several times, water closing over her back, stepped in, grabbed the back of her overalls and hoisted her up, wondered if I could remember CPR, checked her face to see that she was surprised, soaking wet but perfectly fine. THANK GOD. I was shaking, and a woman asked if she was okay. No thanks to me, yes. Harper burped, and I wondered how much of the filthy pond water she had taken in. Sweet Asher looked at me and said, "Harper almost floated away." Again, thank God.

We enjoyed the rest of our walk, my shoes squishing and my clothes almost completely wet and Harper drying slowly in the sun, and almost two more hours together at the pond. I was so shaken at one point that I wanted to verify with someone that Harper was indeed okay - was I imagining her walking beside me? Thank God I wasn't. Needless to say, I didn't let either Asher or Harper get closer than three feet from the edge of the bank, and I learned a valuable lesson about multi-tasking.

My New Favorite Personality Test

The Myers-Briggs typology will probably always be a favorite personality test of mine - as an INTJ, I love systems! and gaining more knowledge about myself and my friends - but recently one of my co-workers introduced me to True Colors, a personality test with four categories that are color based. We spent one of our staff meetings learning what our colors are, what each others' colors are, and the strengths, weaknesses and ways to communicate with each other. We all had fun during the meeting.

I am green and feel so at home with systems, knowledge, deep thinking, efficiency, analyzing and not following rules that don't make any sense (this may have been the biggest ahha for me - I am typically a rule follower but how irritated I get by nonsense rules!). It's always fun for me to understand more why I act the way I act and how to communicate better with other people. As a green, I tend towards information and shy away from emotional, people interaction (so don't ever be shy about calling or e-mailing me for purely informational reasons); although, life has taught me the importance of friends and taking the time for emotions and sharing emotions with others. You can join the fun by taking a free test at www.truecolorscareer.com/quiz.asp.

Maybe I'll Just Pitch a Hammock

Even though I am often thinking about the future and future plans, I still don't have much patience waiting for things to happen in the future. Take previously described new garden bed - I know it will get better and better each year, but I want an instantly beautiful garden with big wonderful hollyhocks, spreading Russian sage and phlox that has multiplied all over the place. I can envision it so why isn't it THERE already! Patience, patience.

I am improving in my sense of things happening in the future. Owning a home has helped. While I will gratify my urgent desires by making lists of projects, I can also see how over time the projects will unfold through the years, how I can space the projects out and still be quite happy in my home (perhaps happiest in the spring when I can get out, ride around the gorgeous old town neighborhood under the spreading trees and past blossoming plants, getting out of rooms I obsessed about during cold weather). Patience, patience.

Perhaps it's finally being in my thirties, but I am starting to see the unfolding of seeds I planted or didn't plant many years ago - the resulting community that I live in. I get a sense that, not to break a deeply emotional and complicated human experience down solely to economics, relationships - how we treat others - are investments. Not karma but the results of how I've been with others. More and more I value and consciously nurture my friendships because like so many things in life (my the list is long, when I consider it - education, cars, houses, kids, pets, gardens, retirement accounts, anything with a future) what I put in now will directly affect what they are like in the future. Relationships are long term projects, unfolding over and through the hills, down cliffs, up steep climbs, beside the ocean. How clearly I see the consequences of choices.

While feeling this investment immediately, and the importance of now, I also am intimidated by the consequences of my choices and the power I hold in what I do and do not do. How much effort I put into projects at work - what I choose to push forward - may make a profound change in the future. I found at St. John's that my education was what I put into it. If I didn't read, didn't participate in class, didn't engage, I lost. I can feel now that life also is what I choose to make of it. Change is now (if you have a chance to see the "Great Debators" do so - I cried when Samantha debated at the University of Texas. I get chills thinking about it).

Maybe I should have better understood investments and choices earlier - I think several people tried to get me to really understand. I suppose I fumbled along fairly well. Sometimes the power of my choices is deeply energizing and sometimes it is deeply overwhelming to the point that I want to pitch a hammock in my new garden and stay there to watch it come to life. Swing life away.

Transplant

Wow - how this month as passed me by. I suppose it's the gearing up for the annual Reformed Youth Movement conference, the garden planting, the working, the time to enjoy being outside, the watching the weather to see if my town was going to be hit by a tornado (for which, I don't have quite a category for in Colorado - so common in Alabama but not here, though common enough that we have sirens and a speaker system which tells us to take cover and when things are all clear. I felt a little like I was in a communist country with a deep male voice broadcasting all over the city), the enjoying of my fascinating children, the sorting through requests for grant writing, and the spending of wonderful time with good friends.

I got it into my head to turn the back six feet of my backyard into a new garden bed, joining it with one already there. I have a great vision of a huge garden back there, that I can look at from kitchen windows. But classic Alexa - good idea but with little consideration of the execution (though I did plant low maintenance and low water plants so I at least thougth about my energy in the future). It's actually turned out quite good so far, but the time and investment was more than I thought it would be. A lot more. Perhaps, I should also step back from my perfect view of the garden and let it unfold some on it's own. Just relax!

As a part of the big plan, I moved a Russian sage from another side garden to the back garden to give it more space and sun. I put the dear, two-year-old plant in the ground, and within minutes (and I do mean minutes) it wilted. Oh, the shock! it said to me. Why did you tear me away from my cozy home? What did you do to my roots?

I have tried not to obsess about this plant, tried so hard not to anthropromorphize the lovely thing, tried not to let it keep me up at night. The first day, I checked in the plant regularly. I talked to Michael about my worries. I check on it daily. I've even stroked it a few time and encouraged it that things will be okay. I may have even prayed for it. Well, it's still not happy about the move, but I think it's putting up a fight.

The transplant made me think of a close friend who found out last Friday that she and her family will - baring a miracle - have to move out of state for her husband's job. They don't know where yet or when, and she's brokenhearted. Her family moved to Longmont with the intention of staying and minstering in this community. After seven years and with kids now in high school, they are facing a move again. Transplanting is hard, and in plant speak, there is actual shock.

How I pray that my friend will be able to stay in Longmont. Selfishly, I've had enough of friends moving away. I am brokenhearted about being the side garden who seens dear friends lifted from their homes to far away gardens. No doubt, transplanting can be a good thing - potted plants sometimes are ready to be transplanted, needing a bigger pot, outdoor plants sometimes need new locations, and organ transplants save lives (and, as I just discovered online, random, can give a person a new face). I pray such becomes the case with my friend's transplant.

What's in a Name

I talked some in my very first blog post about the importance of words and names to me. Words can hold undue power - what they say, where they say it, how they're put together. One of my ideas of heaven is hearing the most beautiful combination of words. I love the aesthetic of words and carefully turned phrases.

I thought for quite some time about whether to change my name or not last year, when I first faced divorce. I talked to different people about their choice, the ramifications in their children's lives, and the reason for their choices. These ranged from the ease of keeping their married name to the need to cut that marital tie. I thought about the few friends' and family I have who kept their maiden name even into marriage, and how doable it is to have a last name different from my children. I remembered a sophomore music class with a revered St. Johns' tutor, an aged, gay man who wore thick, black rimmed glasses with one lens clouded to hide his eye, and him telling me during one class, "Alexa Van Dalsem. Such a musical name." I remembered how much I loved my maiden name, the tie to my dad whose middle name is Alexander, my name's exotic sound and reference to one-sixteenth of my family origin - a small town the Netherlands called Dalsem. I talked to my mom, and she remembered me saying that I told her I was going to change my name, "so I wouldn't hurt Michael's feelings." I have no memory of this. I do remember changing my name for him, as an act of submission.

In returning to my maiden name, I have felt more finally the end of my marriage, the regaining of my identity, a healing because for so long I haven't felt like me, like this is my life, and a strength standing on a name that meant so much to me in my family roots. I don't have a family home to return to, but my name change has felt like a homecoming. I have felt acutely in this change the life experience of "Always we begin again."

At the same time, the change has been tough, a representation of a family tie that I have lost, no longer being a daughter/sister-in-law in the Behmer family and losing a relationship I treasured and enjoyed. I have a strong memory from our first year of marriage of standing outside a large Baptist church in Huntsville with Michael, his brother and two of his sisters. It felt so good being part of a large family, having all these loving and protecting (while also lovingly crazy) siblings. I cringed recently when Asher was talking about last names while we drove in the car. From the back seat, I heard him list our last names, his being Behmer, Harper's Behmer, mine Behmer, Dad's Behmer. I slowly told him I had changed my name to Van Dalsem, explaining with the barrage of "why" as simply as I could that some people change their names when they get married or are no longer married. Thankfully, though I imagined him seeing his nuclear family crushed with this symbolic change, he did not seem phased by the information.

I am still adjusting to introducing myself and signing my name as Alexa Van Dalsem. I have started changing all the names on my accounts but put off changing my gmail display name until the summer is over and work with a youth organization conference is done for the season.

(Apparently the image gods are smiling upon me because in doing an image search on Google, I found the above image from a mushroom growing company in the Netherlands. Is that what all this is? The art of growing?)

While I'm at It . . .

If you'll indulge me once more . . . so, I also just might have a rant about the state of feminism these days. Again, to set the scene, at one time I could have also been a poster woman for a feminist liberal (though not quite raging, a little loud sometimes) I'm all about women's rights, equal representation (in life, movies, books, faith, TV), women in the workplace, equality of pay, the view of women, "herstory," etc. Sometimes my feminist side still jumps out of me. A few weeks ago, sitting at the serving bar at LeftHand Brewery, the bar tender (poor guy) asked Michael what he wanted to drink and "what can I get for your lovely lady?" To which I quickly replied with a nice smile, "I am my own lovely lady," with a thank you very much thought bubble. Carrie Bradshaw would be so proud. In a Bible study I lead, one of the women bought me a "Women of the Bible" book because I wouldn't pipe down about the lack of references to women in the study book we were reading.

I was quite happy today while flipping through a series of pictures on the Time Magazine website showing all the lovely women in British and European politics. Apparently, Spain is getting quite a bit of flack because the number of women in the Spanish Cabinet now out numbers the number of men. And the new Spanish Minister of Defense is a woman. And she's seven months pregnant. Oh, yeah. How do you like them apples?

Yet (and here we go), one of the pictures' captions read, "Sarah Brown, the wife of the Prime Minister, like her predecessor Cherie Blair, has found that women in the public eye are still judged more on what they look like than on their brains and abilities." Of course they are. Nice.

There's a commercial on TV featuring Kelly Ripa of Regis and Kelly selling appliances. She does her TV show and then rushes home to do all the mothering duties - cooking, cleaning, finding things, entertaining, raising her children, and dropping exhausted. It's amazing, all the things a woman can do. It's amazing all the things we can do to run ourselves ragged. I read a regular column recently in our newspaper by a woman who is self-titled, "Brazen Careerist." She recounted a time when she had just had one of her children, was working full-time and working on a publishing deadline. She finally got help with everything when - get this - her husband found her in the kitchen stabbing herself with a knife. Uh, yeah. And she goes on about how amazing it is to be a woman and working like she always has.

Let me just put out there that the feminist movement has been amazing for women. I wouldn't trade what I now can do in the world, in my community, in the workplace, on the web, anywhere, for the world. But, I also think my generation and generations to come struggle with putting this new world into play, balancing the many parts of being a woman - in the workplace, in the home, in the community, in the world, in the bedroom, in the marketplace - along with the constant focus on our appearance. I've been struck recently with how dangerous it can be for a young woman to be pretty and attractive. Being a woman can't mean doing everything but in the same ways they've always been done. None of us should ever get to the point where we're stabbing ourselves with a knife for the sake of being a "modern woman."

Ahh, a lightbulb. Perhaps I can be more green by doing less housework - use less water, less energy, fewer chemicals - and save some of the valuable time a modern woman needs.

(Note: How great is that picture after my last blog rant?!)

My Rant about Going Green

Okay, so to set this up you have to have an idea of how crunchy I am. At times in my life, I could have been a poster child for a granola girl. In college, I had cute, wire rimmed glasses, wore my hair long, almost to my waist and didn't get out of t-shirts, jeans, flannel shirts and my Birkenstocks (with wool socks in the winter. Oh, yeah. Major cuteness factor). One of my favorite outfits was oversized overalls and a big, wool cardigan sweater. (Like I said, cute). I've been a vegetarian (more by taste than morality, I have to admit) for about 15 years. I've lived by "If it's yellow let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down," since the seven year drought in California during my childhood. When I moved to New York City, I didn't own a car, used public transportation, loved it, and hate (really, truly hate) the necessity of having to own a car. Back in 1992 when Al Gore published his first book, "Earth in the Balance," I was a big fan of his environmental policy. I used to think I could save the world, one recyclable item at a time. My garage is often half full of cardboard and hard to recycle items that I eventually take to Ecocycle and recycle, with Asher joining in because I want to teach him at a young age. Michael once bought me a "Give a hoot. Don't pollute." Woodsy Owl t-shirt because of the crap I gave him about littering, even small gum wrappers. Besides microwaves, I also heart recycling. Big time. My dream home is off the grid, made of sustainable materials, using solar power, collecting rainwater, reusing non-potable water, directing heat from the dryer into the house during the winter, low flow showers and toilets, etc. I would get rid of all the grass in my yard and plant only xeriscape plants if I had the chance. I've taken Asher to Arbor Day twice because I love trees. So you get the idea. There's a part of me that's a raging environmental liberal.

Why, then, am I just a little perturbed by all the green activity these days? It's so exciting - the development of "green collar" jobs in hubs like Seattle and in and around Boulder; Wal-mart offering organic and transitional products (our mega Mall-Wart here has a long aisle of green products from clothing to cleaning supplies and uses natural light, although they also run about 100 fans in the fan aisle all day long); big companies like Palmolive selling environmentally-friendly dish soap; car companies selling hybrids; presidential candidates promising renewable energy research and raising the MPG limits on vehicles; Conoco-Phillips opening a 400-acre office complex in Colorado to study renewable energy; more people recycling, buying local, thinking about their impact on the earth; news story after news story and business after business getting in on the movement; democrats and republicans, conservatives and liberals coming together to sit on couches and be in advertisements about how we can do this, we can reverse some of the damage. It's incredible! It's amazing! And it's about damn time.

Earth Day - both the US and UN's observances - were established in 1969 and first celebrated in 1970. That's 38 years ago. And not the first time people wanted to love on mother Earth. I remember driving through Palo Alto, CA with my mom, and her pointing out a gas station where she sat in line (in line, people) to get gas following the 1973 oil crisis. That was 25 years ago. We had another energy crisis in 1979. 19 years ago. Al Gore came out with his first book in 1992. 16 years ago. As much as I love all that is being done and the movement and the energy and everyone being on board and the big love ship of worldly green, I can't get over how long it's taken, all the reminders we've been given, all the time we could have spent doing what we are no doing and more. And some day, I hope to get an explanation as to why we can put a man on the moon, we study how a spider spins a web in space, and we can make a phone call from remote part so the planet, but the vast majority of our cars are still run on gasoline. This is an over 100 year old system! The Model T was introduced in 1908.

Okay. Phew. Deep breathes. Underlying all this is also a deep faith in the American people to step up and to create products and ways of life that have never before imagined or were imagined and can be reignited. Like the ad says, "we can solve it." This just might be one of the greatest wonders of the world that capitalism can create.