Fuzzy Memories and Chinchilla Earmuffs

Today I took the road less traveled and got a speeding ticket. I was driving along Frontage road near the highway; in the middle of a sleepy daydream I was jolted awake by the bleeping siren and neon blue lights of a shiny Dodge Charger and a Ray-Ban-wearing patrolman. I was not in a hurry and I was not driving fast, but I was not paying attention and I was suddenly searching for registration and proof of insurance instead of enjoying a quiet car and a cloudless blue sky. My moment went from insignificant to fateful in a matter of seconds.

I have a horrible memory. Even with the siren and the lights and the accelerated heart rate I experienced today, I will quickly forget the details of what happened if I don't have it in writing (or in court records). Now that my kids are getting older, I have been thinking about what their first memories will be and wondering how much they will retain inside their tiny personal vaults forever. What things will make first impressions in their little minds and what moments will they choose to tuck away in boxes deep in their small souls? They are constantly watching and absorbing; it is exciting and terrifying.

I am in awe of people with brilliant memories. To be a great writer, I think you must either have the discipline to journal constantly or the ability to retain and recall events from the past as though they happened yesterday. I love the writing of Annie Dillard and am amazed and jealous of her ability to retell a childhood story down to the the tiniest details. If you haven't read “An American Childhood,” I recommend it. It is one of the few books I have read more than once; Annie Dillard is the queen of recalling detail and my all-time essay heroin.

All writers and artists are somewhat dependant on memories to prompt new projects and creative ideas. I have always wished I could recall childhood stories like many of my friends, siblings and even my grandparents. My grandma's 70 year old memories are more vivid and clear than many events that happened to me last week. She has a gift for verbally telling a tale, and the art of repeating stories hundreds of times has burned vivid details deeply into her mind. At any rate, my memory is poor and I sometimes rely on my older brother Chad's spongy wizard brain to fill in the blanks of childhood for me.

I was skyping with Chad a few weeks ago and we both agreed there is one memory that will always be our ace in the hole, our trump, our pièce de résistance. It's funny because the details of our experience are murky and scarce for both of us. I'm honestly not sure if there is a story jumbled in the mess of it at all, and I decided to leave it vague—like our memories, rather than ask Mom and Dad to fill in the blanks.

My fondest memory isn't the story of the French foreign exchange student who lived with us but didn't shower for two weeks, although I did discover that my sense of smell truly does heighten and enhance my memories. It isn't the story of having my front tooth knocked out on Christmas Eve in high school or the time my friends and I were detained in police cars after we were caught toilet papering.

Our most precious memories revolve around one little animal with velvety dense fur, beady little eyes and a long poofy tail. In our family there will always be one word that causes our ears to perk up. A word that might sound foreign to some, but is familiar to us. A word that scurries in gently like a fuzzy whisper or the sound of tiny paws running across fresh wood chip shavings. Chinchilla.

If “every man's memory is his private literature” as Aldous Huxley believed, then our chinchilla chapter is full of rising action and conflict. It all started when I was 14 and my entrepreneurial dad was flipping through the LaRue journal. There was an ad for chinchilla farming and I honestly don't know how it all began, but while other kids our age were lazily sleeping in or playing nintendo, Chad and I found ourselves knee deep in filthy wood chips with a barn full of fuzzy chinchillas.

I won't waste time explaining what a beautiful chinchilla “ground squirrel” is. I will leave that to Chinchilla planet.  I will only say that chinchillas are rodents in every sense of the word with the exception of their lush velvety fur. And unfortunately we did not give them little names and keep them for pets in our barn and hold them and teach them circus tricks. Against our teenage wills, we fed and watered and became part of the chinchilla breeder world. Disgruntled, we switched out the wood shavings on Saturday mornings and mumbled things under our breath. Bellyaching, we dumped dirty chips over a ravine on our property and kept track of new chinchilla babies. Sulky and vexed, we complained about the smell and were embarrassed to have 100 things caged in our barn that made us completely different from everyone else we knew.

In the end, which was shortly after the beginning, when it turned out not to be the best time to enter the fur industry, I can't even recall how long we raised chinchillas in our barn.  In fact, I don't know what happened to our chinchilla farm at all, and it's probably better that way.  When I asked Chad where the chinchillas went he said he had always imagined dad in the garage making chinchilla earmuffs. Out of curiosity I googled chinchilla earmuffs and found this: Natural Chinchilla earmuffs for $139. 

For us, the chinchilla story has turned into folklore. It is our ballad and I'm not sure I want to know all the details of why we had them and where they went. The chinchillas brought Chad and I together in a mess of caged ground squirrels and wood chips, shovels and wheelbarrows, brooms and the absence of a Saturday morning in bed. A sound or word will still trigger memories from our bizarre barn business, and the funny thing is, what was once a time of annoyance, disgust, and teenage uprising is now one of our fondest memories and biggest laughs.

There are days when I worry that my kids will experience something traumatic or I will mess up and they will be scarred for life, and I am comforted by the now soft memory of chinchillas. Not only are kids ultra resilient, but if my entrepreneurial spirit takes them on a few crazy rides here and there, it might give them good story fodder down the road. I am also learning that a poor memory is sometimes a blessing; if there is only room for a few memories in the treasury, I can choose the constructive and learn from the lousy.

My kids are losing teeth, learning to pump on a swing set, and growing out of their clothes faster than I can tie a pair of shoes. I'm hopeful that they will be reflective, and I'm anxious to see what childhood memories they will safely preserve. For me, once the chinchilla chapter ended, my memories soon grew fuzzy and funny and perhaps slightly elaborated until eventually it was just nice to have a uniquely eccentric story. New chapters have quickly come, I'm sure there will be a few more sirens and tickets before it's all said and done, and the infinite memories break down into compost in a wood chip ravine.  

Shadowless Groundhogs and the Mary Poppins Syndrome

Like most of you, I was glued to the TV last week waiting to see if Punxsutawney Phil, America's favorite groundhog, would predict an early spring. As the fortunate people at Gobblers Knob celebrated, I attempted to embrace a few more weeks of wintery kid boredom, season colds and flu remnants, branchless trees and colorless grass.

Thankfully I live in the South where the sun is shining and the sky is blue. It is especially hard to complain on a day when it is 50 degrees and we are playing outside. Nevertheless, the winter is long and we are relieved by a shadowless groundhog and hopeful for an early spring.  And if you think you have S.A.D. (Season Affects Disorder) you might want to read this.

We tend to watch more movies in the winter because of the long evenings and the endless, winter afternoons. Last week we watched Mary Poppins, and although I grew up watching Mary Poppins, I've probably seen it over fifty times, this time I watched it with a fresh set of mommy eyes, and I wound up taking away a few things I never noticed as a kid. 

When I was little, I daydreamed about having Mary Poppins for my Nanny. She was amazing: her magical ability to clean the nursery, riding a cartoon carousel, tea parties on the ceiling, etc. She was marvelous. I somehow overlooked all her quirky and mysterious qualities. And I never realized one of her defining characteristics is vanity even though she spells it out in one of her earliest scenes: “Mary Poppins: Practically Perfect in Every Way.”

This vanity really started bothering me in a roundabout way until I eventually began wondering how my own kids perceive me. Do I constantly correct their shortcomings while pointing out my own rightness and “perfection” with a magical measuring tape?

It forces me to really think about vanity, and humility, as a mother. If you ask a mother if her job is glamorous, she will laugh at you. Most people would look at a sleepy, make-up-less mother and say she is generally fulfilling a very humbling and self-less role. I used to think that just by being a mother, by changing diapers and cleaning up puke and scrubbing toilets and wiping noses and being sleep deprived and not killing my kids I was somehow ranked higher in the trophy case of life with a little plaque that said “humble” in super inconspicuous letters.

I'm starting to think that humility has little to do with cleaning up after people or filthy jobs or sleepless nights. I can act like a humble mother all day long, but true humility is a choice, and I believe my kids will be the first to know the difference between the two.

So although it is humbling to wipe away a hidden Picasso-esque booger masterpiece from the wall behind the bunkbeds, I have trouble telling myself I am cleaning it out of humility when I definitely did NOT choose to clean it in the first place. I'm beginning to think humility, in motherhood, is not just about me resigning to cleaning up messes and doing it. I think humility is about my attitude towards each daily task I face as a mom and wife. It's about bringing my own rank down a few notches to serve my kids—not just as a nanny or a maid, but by occasionally choosing to set aside my own “important” daily tasks in order to submit myself to their real needs.  Sometimes I may need to lower myself to really serve them—not just by picking up or cooking, but by sitting on the floor to build a lego ship or brush barbie's tangles. 

I have been really considering the difference between keeping my kids busy and entertained with activities and outings versus the times I truly humble myself to color in a book with crayons or read or sing or play hide and seek. Thomas More reminds us: “The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.” I'm sure this is especially true when raising kids.  I'm not suggesting that we need to sit ten inches from our kids every minute so that they are completely unable to play alone or with each other, but at the same time I wonder how often we tell ourselves we are above simply playing with our kids or that we have "better things to do" than spend time interacting with them and listening to them.

Along this same line, a friend and I were talking recently about how quick we are to judge other moms in parenting skills, household upkeep, etc. I am guilty. And although my house is far from spotless and is decorated like a children's museum that often smells like stale tacos, I admit I harbor some pride in the state of my house and my ability to know where everything is.

Several months ago my pride took a hit when I lost my first library book. I was ashamed when the library sent a few notices that began to look progressively “serious.” I was especially annoyed with myself since I could not even remember checking “Sophie's Wheels” out in the first place. I looked everywhere. I paid a few fines. I scoured the house again. I paid another fine. Eventually I was too ashamed to return to the library and took a complete hiatus. 

By the time I got an official-looking final notice in the mail telling me I had to pay for the book or I would be turned over to a collection agency, I was irritated and blame-shifting. I immediately drove to the library where I paid a rather hefty chunk for “Sophie's Wheels” (which I'm sure is a great book and worth every penny....) Of course “Sophie's Wheels” showed up later that week when I parked on a steep incline and it slid out from the seat and under the gas pedal of the van. It was another humbling reminder that I don't have it altogether, I am incomplete and I am flawed, and I always will be. Am I willing to recognize it and admit it in my home in front of my family or will I blame someone else? 

**I also learned that the Greenville Library System will actually write you a check if you pay for a book and return it later.

Helen Keller said, “I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but my chief duty is to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” In motherhood, I hope I can do this. Others may look at what we are doing as moms and generically say we are humbling ourselves to serve our kids and our home. Motherhood is a noble calling, and I am thankful for the chance to serve my kids at home!  For me, I question whether each small (insignificant) task is humility if I don't purposefully choose to serve others. Do I assume that by simply doing my motherly tasks I'm somehow gaining points for myself even if my attitude is prideful?

Humility isn't accidental. It is the opposite of pride and arrogance and it isn't just about endlessly making meals and cleaning, it is about setting aside my feelings of superiority, even to my kids to serve them daily. (As a sidenote, when I talk about serving my kids, I'm not talking about meeting their every whim and spoiling them rotten. I'm talking about humbling myself to listen to their words, caring about them enough to play on their level even when I'd rather do motherly chores, resisting anger when I'm annoyed, being patient and talking nicely, not whining about the endless messes, etc.) It all boils down to humility.

In the end, while I am very anxious for spring weather and I am eager to send my kids outside into fresh air, I hope that in these remaining winter weeks I will spend my time wisely. I pray that I won't wish away this time when I am trapped inside the house like a hybernating bear with my sometimes stinky cubs. And mostly, I want to move away from my Mary Poppins frame of mind. Occassionally I want to have a tea party on the ceiling without reminding my kids of my complete perfection and superiority.  Rather than wallowing in my daily acts of “humility” and wearing them around for others to pity while my kids see me checking my practically perfect reflection, I'd rather balance my time more wisely and attempt to humbly serve my kids and my husband.  If we all did that, I have a feeling it would be pretty super-cala-fragalistic-expialadoshus.

Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace. --Phillip Yancey