happy new year

Holding It All Together - Happy New Year - by Amy McCollom

We got a new sofa and loveseat. Well, they’re new to us. Actually my parents got brand new ones, and passed their slightly used ones down. We love them! Well, until a rowdy movie night when I was trying to bake Christmas cookies, and Amanda yelled, "Everybody hush!! Who said 'help me!/" We looked around and saw Rudy's legs kicking, and his head buried under one of the pillows. Somehow he had managed to get his head stuck in the corner of the couch. We got him out alright, and though his face was beet red, he was more scared than anything. After the fear wore off, the humor of it settled upon us, and we had a good laugh. Rudy is our little mischievous one. Goes along with being the baby of the family, even though he's only a minute younger than his twin sister Rosa.

Sometimes being a mom is like being in a sitcom. All that’s missing is the background music and the canned laughter. There have been so many times I have thought to myself, if my life was a movie, it would be a good one. Somewhere between the Walton’s, Brady Bunch, and Cheaper By The Dozen.

The other day my tween-age son Marcus came home from school carrying a large brown grocery bag. Oh no, I thought. This can’t be good.

“Hey Mom, we had a class rummage sale, and everybody gave me a discount!”

It was one of those things you never want to hear your kid say. I could see it now; toy cars, blocks, rocks, army guys, marbles, and who knows what else strewn across my coffee table and under chairs. Dread gripped my heart in that old familiar way.

Then there was the time our kindergartner declared,

“I get to bring home the house made of straw from our Three Little Pigs play!”

Who wants a house of straw in their home, except for maybe a kindergartner? Not to mention the mud volcano the class made, or the 5lb. bucket of homemade play-goop. And then Amanda came home with a bowl full of goldfish, volunteering to care for them until the Science Fair. Um, we have a cat. Not just any cat, but Reggie the Bengal cat. A mixture of domestic cat and Asian Leopard cat, wild blood coursing through his veins. A hunter and fierce mouser, a spider lasts only minutes after entering our home. Disappointed, but understanding, she sat quietly in the front seat of the van as we drove her liquid cargo to a friends house for the weekend.

Near Christmas time once, I was driving home from church with my son Calvin, then 3 years old. It was night time and dark, and we had just heard a message of the return of Jesus. I’m sure you can understand the rush of adrenaline that hit me when Calvin pointed to the sky and said,

“Look, there’s Jesus in the sky!”

What he really was pointing at was a cross made out of Christmas lights, but still it made me nearly drive off the road.

The more kids that joined our family, the more new ways they found of giving me gray hair. Trouble is, if I dye my hair, the gray ones just pop out in my eyebrows.

“Cats really do land on their feet!”

“You can fit two people in the dryer.”

“I know how to drive now.”

“Soap doesn’t taste disgusting.”

“What takes permanent marker off of your eyelids?”

"Mom, where does dad keep the chain saw?"

"Mom, Rudy has a bongo drum stuck on his head."

"Help, someone tied me to the bed with a slinky!"

“We met a hobo today.”

“I have decided to change my name to Chrysanthemum.”

“I can scream louder than anyone else in my class!”

“Guess what, my teacher doesn’t wear underwear to bed either, Mom.”

“I caught two crickets at recess. But they’re ok, I can feel them wiggling in my pocket.”

“I’m growing my own mosquito larvae in a jar under the bathroom sink.”

“Hold out your hand, I need to Google how to care for an African Stag Beetle.”

I was standing in the kitchen doing dishes this fall when Marcus came running in.

Now, what came out of his mouth next would by far make number 1 on my top ten list of things you never want to hear your kid say:

“I was down at the creek and I found some dynamite! Can you help me get it out of my pants pocket, my hands are all muddy.”

Turns out it was only a spent firecracker. "Mom, why is your face so white?" I swear I could hear my mother laughing.

Have a happy new year. Be thankful for your family, your friends, your job, and that I’m the one with the seven kids trying to hold it all together.

pancake

Holding It All Together - Pancake - by Amy McCollom

It seemed like a good idea, as most of mine do to me. My cat was lonely. Reggie, the Bengal, moped around the house and cried loudly for attention all the do-da-day. It was driving us all nuts. Yes, it could have been that he was just a spoiled noisy cat, but Bengals aren't usually that talkative. And believe me, I know a lot about cats.

It was when I saw the ad pinned to the bulletin board at the grocery store that my wild idea became a reality. Free kittens! Of course, why didn't I think of it sooner. We could get a cat, for our cat!

We went out to the farm where the kittens were being kept. The cute little things ran playfully about the garage, and each of the kids grabbed their favorite one. I liked the pretty gray one, but we ended up taking home the ordinary black and white one that let the kids hold him upside down. One of my teenagers came home about that time and said, "Gee, that cat looks just like my friends cat Waffles." Of course it did. It looked like every other ordinary black and white cat I had ever seen. Since the name Waffles was taken, the kids chose to call our new addition Pancake.

Pancake was cute and very tolerant. Reggie took up with him right away, grooming him and generally taking care of his new friend. Pancake seemed to enjoy being dressed in doll clothes, and being put into toy baby carriers. I enjoyed Reggie not wailing for my attention constantly.

But then a strange thing happened. Pancake grew up. Quickly and with a fury, the kitten turned into a huge cat in a few short months. No longer did he cuddle up next to Reggie, but would pummel him, and knock him off his cat tree. He soon took up hissing his way to the food dish, and Reggie resigned to hiding under the bed, and quietly meowing his displeasure from there. It became evident that Pancake was bullying my kitty.

Not only that, Pancake wasn't about to become satisfied as a housecat. He would sneak out anytime someone left the door slightly ajar, which was all the time. I was constantly running here and there looking for Pancake...even going as far as dragging him out of the neighbors tree on two occasions. And then there were the fleas. Reggie never went outside, except twice by accident. For the eight years we had Reggie, he had never gotten fleas. Now our house was being overrun with the pests, thanks to Pancake.

After thinking long and hard about it, I decided that Pancake had to go. Reggie was my cat. He was almost like my child. I couldn't stand seeing him live in fear one more day. So one day when the kids were at school, I took Pancake to the humane society. It was a good thing to do, he would surely be adopted. He was friendly, and good looking. And I'm sure he reminded someone of a cat they once knew.

For three days no one noticed he was gone. Then Rosa began calling him. I didn't say a word. All the kids looked around the house, under beds, out in the yard, and came up with the idea that he must have ran away. I just let them think that. It was easier than explaining he went to the pound, then hearing them cry and blame me for their sorrow. They made up stories about where he was....with Garfield, on a trip to Mexico, visiting their aunt in Texas, and on a cruise. Soon they didn't mention him at all, so I thought I was off the hook.

Until last week. I was cooking breakfast when Rosa yelled, "Pancake!!! I saw him run by the window!!!" And suddenly all the kids were scrambling to put on their shoes, and their coats, and somebody found a leash, and someone else was digging under the lizard's aquarium for the cricket net. They were bound and determined to go after their lost cat.

Did Pancake escape from the pound? Did he find his way home? Oh, this sounded pretty ridiculous. Unless you've lived through something similar like I did when I was a kid. When I was 9, my family adopted a gray poodle from the Champaign County Humane Society. We named him Benji. He got really big, well, because he was a standard poodle, not a miniature one like we thought. Soon he was able to jump our chain-link fence, and became the problem pet everyone dreads. It didn't help that my folks didn't exactly know how to train a dog. So after about two years of living with an unruly curly monster, we took him back to the humane society.

One rainy night five years later, we got a phone call. The man on the other end said he had found our dog. It was Benji! He was lying in the road, and this man ran out in front of a bus to rescue him. Wow. We were amazed that Benji was still wearing the collar and tags that he had when we surrendered him years earlier. We knew fate had knocked on our door, and so we went to pick him up the next day. Benji ran to greet us with sloppy kisses and seemed to remember us. Benji was a good dog, even with his faults. Kind of like a lot of us.

So when the kids yelled that Pancake was back, fear and joy grabbed me by the throat. It was then I realized that the truth might have been easier than letting them make it up themselves. I hadn't told them anything, but I let them believe a lie. Absence of truth, that's the gray area. I should have taken a clue from Pancake, and just kept everything black and white. (Or at least gotten a cat that didn't look like a million other cats in the world.)

If I am going to raise my kids with total disclosure, then Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are to be exposed as well. I really wish they came with an instruction manual. Raising kids looked so easy in the movies.

birthdays

Holding It All Together - Birthdays - by Amy McCollom

I just had my birthday last week, and so did my husband. Our birthdays just happen to be on the same day, different years though. John is two years older than me, just to clear that up.

Having the same birthday was kind of cool, at first. It was unique. How many couples do you know that share a birthday? We used to go to Mr. Steak for our free birthday dinner every year when we were first married. Everybody in the place thought we were twins, until John leaned over the table and kissed me on the lips. Then the looks on their faces went from smiles, to scowls, to confusion. It was almost a game to us. Let's see when they realize we aren't brother and sister.

Then after a few years of sharing a birthday, it got to be less unique, and more of an inconvenience. No longer did I have my own special day. I had to share it with someone. And not just anyone, but a person that lived in my house. A person I loved. I felt sorry for twins. They must have felt the same way.

I'd hope that my husband would get up and fix me breakfast in bed, but he was hoping the same thing from me. So we both would lie there, and eventually get up and fix our own breakfasts. And no matter how big of a deal I made of my husband's birthday, the cake and gifts and balloons...it was all kind of a mute point since it was kind of for me too.

All my life while I was growing up, I had to share a room, clothes, shoes, hair accessories, make-up, and friends. And my birthday just happened to fall two weeks after Christmas. And one week after New Years, which was my brother's birthday. So by the time my birthday rolled around, we were all so sick of celebrating that we could barely stand the sight of cake, much less decorations. So most of my birthdays were met with very little fanfare, used birthday candles, and at least on one occasion a half-eaten blackberry cobbler labeled sadly as my birthday cake.

The first year after John and I were married, my own family forgot my birthday. They really did. All of them! I felt like that girl from the Sixteen Candles movie. Eventually I pouted enough that they realized their mistake, but by then it was seared into my memory. I did enjoy the plenteous gifts that year, though. My birthday just falls at an awkward time for everyone. But I was born three months early, I should have been a March baby. I'm still impatient. It's a flaw.

Then we got children. Actually our first child, Calvin, had a birthday on January 16th. Exactly one week after my and John's birthday. We tried to explain to him that Mommy and Daddy was having a birthday together, and he kept repeating, "and me too!" He would get all upset when we would tell him, no, his was next week. He was two years old, and found it very confusing. But most people do.

So you might say that I'm not a big fan of birthdays. Mine have never been all that great. So I've decided that I'm changing it. You can change your name, hair color, eye color, career, and possibly gender...why not a birthday. I haven't picked a date yet, but it's going to be a warm day when I can go outside and enjoy the sunshine. And it will coincide with John's vacation so he will have no excuse not to make me breakfast in bed. And there will be gifts, and balloons, and a cake with new candles and no pieces missing from last week. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. Like last year, when I turned 32 again.