parenting hacks of faith: what are your tips for church?

We were gathered around the table in our parish’s fellowship hall, and the boys were ready to tear into their donuts: the long-awaited, long-promised bribery for behaving themselves decently at Mass.

When it hit me: we could do something more here. Everyone finally quiet and happy? Ready to feed our rumbling tummies? Together at last after another morning of trading off the toddler?

It was a perfect moment to seize.

“Hey,” I began, my own mouth full of cinnamon sugar. “While we’re eating our donuts, let’s each say one thing we liked about church today.”

My husband’s eyebrows went up. I shrugged and mouthed why not?

To my surprise, our oldest jumped in immediately. “I liked the drumming. And I REALLY liked when that baby got dunked!”

I laughed. Me, too.

We went around the circle. The youngest declared he liked donut. (Big surprise.) The adults agreed they liked the music, since they both missed the homily. (Big surprise.)

Instead of scarfing down our treats and hustling to the car, we lingered for a change. And thanks to the beauty of baked goods, I actually got my family to participate in one of the forced “what did you do today?” conversations I futilely try to inflict over dinner.

It made me realize that the simplest changes are often the best. Take what works and try it in a new light. The brilliance of parenting hacks.

. . .

We all have hints and helps we learn along the way to make life easier. Even now when I have no time to read a cereal box, let alone an entire magazine, I still tear open Parents to read the monthly “It Worked For Me!” round-up of clever tips from crafty parents. I love these handy hacks, and I’d love to hear yours.

What “hacks of faith” do you use with little ones at church? Not only to keep kids quiet, but to keep them engaged.

A hack is by definition an inelegant yet creative solution, and I can think of a handful I’ve learned from friends along the years to make our faith life infinitely easier with the under-5 crowd:

1. Sit in the front. If you slip in the back, it’s all too tempting to slip out. Kids can’t see a thing if they’re staring at adult backsides. But in the front pews, there’s always action to grab their attention. It doesn’t work all the time, and we often end up walking the youngest out anyway. But it works enough to make me muster confidence to walk all the way down the aisle even when we’re rolling in at the Alleluia. Kids love to be front and center to see what’s going on.
2. Stack the deck. My youngest boy’s godmother made the coolest holy-cards-on-a-key-ring toy for her son, and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to copy it. I am not crafty in the least, but this clever project took me about 5 minutes and cost about $5. Perfect. I get tired of trying to listen to the Gospel and whisper-read books about farm animals, so I figure if the church toys offer at least a couple connections to what’s going on around us, it’s better for all of us.
3. Make your own. The best busy book I’ve come up with for church is one I made myself. (I repeat, folks: if my un-Pinterest-worthy self can hack it, so can you.) I took a bunch of pictures around our parish one Sunday after Mass and stuck them in a small photo album. (A top ten Target purchase of my life, for all it’s bought me in return.) It’s a great tool to help toddlers point and name what they see. And a picture of a statue, a stained glass window, or a station of the cross offers plenty of possibilities for going deeper with preschoolers. Over the years I’ve added photos from both boys’ baptisms so we could remember them whenever a baby gets baptized at Mass. I’ve also slowly taken pictures of how the church looks in each liturgical season so that we can talk about the colors and environment change. Easy as pie. (Or church donuts.)

They’re hacks, not perfect solutions to be sure. (Ain’t much elegant about wrangling squirmy boys in the front pew, I’ll tell you that much.) But more often than not, they work.

And I am all about helping things work.

What clever tricks are hiding up your sleeves? Let’s share some ideas for sanity next Sunday!

the magic of cousins

Their eyes light up the instant the door opens. Maybe a moment’s hesitation of shyness for the youngest, but once they recognize who’s here, the grins burst forth: cousins!

In their bright eyes and squealing smiles I see flashes of family parties from my own childhood, noses pressed up against cold winter windows waiting for a pack of cousins to tumble into the house.

Coats flung off, wet boots kicked into corners, and suddenly we’re all running in a wild pack to the basement, weaving around adults and their ice-cubed drinks and their boring conversations. Off to the land of playroom sword fights and pool table battles and plotting elaborate make-believe and begging for a sleepover by the end of the night.

What’s more magical than cousins?

Already I see the same spark of recognition in my children’s eyes. Whether it’s been a week or a year since they’ve seen their kin, they click almost instantly, in a different way than they connect with friends or other children. Perhaps they see something familiar in their cousins: the same eyes or chin or hair. Perhaps they understand something they share: family, grandparents, a blood line, a last name.

Whatever the reason, children simply get cousins. A genuine no-holds-barred embrace of someone special.

Growing up, we had a gaggle of cousins on both sides of our family: older ones to emulate, peers to pal around with, little ones to adore. Some lived close and some lived far, but whenever we got together the world of cousins took on a life of its own. I have no memory of what my parents or aunts or uncles did during all those Easter brunches or Christmas parties or backyard barbeques, because our motley crew was always off causing trouble and delighting in each other’s company all to ourselves.

My kids have two cousins on each side. So while they won’t have the wild wrangle of all ages cramming into Grandma’s closet for a game of sardines, their cousins have become precious pearls all their own. My oldest son is enamored with his cousins: he talks about the four of them every day, counts down to when he gets to see them next, wears their beloved hand-me-downs as if they were royal finery.

I wish I could see the world through the eyes of a child for his cousins.

We hear so much tired talk about the proverbial human family; even the Body of Christ can become a cliché if we’re not careful. But I wonder what would happen if we could see each other as the cousins we are, sharing ancestors and blood and common stories. Maybe these metaphors – the brotherhood of man and the family of believers – would become more real, incarnate and enfleshed, if we could remember how we loved the cousins we knew as kids.

They weren’t our siblings, squabbling over petty fights and parental attention. And they weren’t our friends, whose affections sometimes faded as cliques changed and schools switched. Maybe we only saw them once a year, and for an afternoon or evening at that. But we always picked up right where we left off, the distance of time and space disappearing as we created a new adventure for that time together, that kairos set apart.

Years later, as adults scattered across the country and the globe, we may rarely cross paths except on email or Facebook, the occasional update from our parents. But when a wedding or funeral pulls us together again, there are still traces of the same connection of belonging, smiling at memories of the fun we had as kids, sharing stories of unforgettable family antics.

There’s something in the magic of cousins – the recognition of what we have in common, the unique relationship we share together – that challenges me to look at other relationships in my life differently.

What might happen if I decided to see my brothers and sisters in Christ as cousins instead?

the loveliness of laughter

I once wrote that childhood is full of tears. And it is.

But while I watch my two boys grow and see their sense of humor stretch each day like little spring seedlings sprouting out of the earth, I remember how childhood is full of laughter, too.

We laugh every day in this house. At funny faces and silly words. At goofy games of peek-a-boo and chase-to-tickle. At jumping on the bed and running down the hall and hiding in the curtains and banging on the table and singing in the bathtub.

My favorite moments as a mother are when the deep belly chuckles of boys still too young to hold back squeals of glee bounce off the walls and echo in my ears.

What a gift to have all this time and space to laugh. Childhood’s magic reminds us – we who live in the grown-up world of deadlines and to-do lists, of death and taxes – what it means to delight in life’s simple joys.

Today I’m posting over at Lydia’s lovely blog, Small Town Simplicity. Her beautiful, wise writing on motherhood is some of my favorite stuff on the Interwebs. As she and her family “babymoon” with their latest addition, I’m delighted to share a few thoughts on humility and humor at home:

Watching them take their first steps towards the art of humor not only makes me burst out laughing every day, but also teaches me about the important place of humor in our relationships.

Often it is when we relate to each other on this most delightful level that we learn what humility really means: that we are all grounded in the same “humus,” the same earthy joys and basic desires to be in right relationship with each other.

Read the rest at Small Town Simplicity, and be sure to check out the rest of Lydia’s blog while you’re there!

courage from the tomb

What took more courage: going into the tomb or coming out?

On Good Friday the thought of going into the tomb overwhelms me. Too much blood and betrayal, too much violence and grief.

I drag my feet, wanting to stay in Holy Thursday where we break bread and wash each other’s dirt away. Yes, there’s betrayal and violence that night, too, but something feels safer in the celebration of service than in the commemoration of death.

When I’m thrust into Friday, it’s painfully dark and the Gospel makes me squirm and can’t it be Sunday already so we can get this mess behind us?

So whenever I close my eyes and try to imagine how Friday felt, the mocking and the beating and the pounding of nails into flesh, I’m awash with wonder at the courage it took Christ to die.

The courage it took to enter the tomb.

But this Easter, sitting in a dark church flickering with small candles of hope, I thought about the courage it took to leave the tomb.

Saturday must have felt so quiet and empty after Friday’s passion. Alone and safe in a cold stone cave. At last. Away.

Was he tempted to stay there? To let the hard work be behind him and the protection of death’s distance keep him safe from those who hurt him?

I used to think resurrection was a fairy tale trick, a golden glimmer from a magic wand that spun breath back into dead bones with a presto-chango burst of brilliance. But maybe resurrection is much more real, much harder.

Maybe resurrection starts with the courage to forgive.

The courage to move past pain and violence and death. The courage to move towards love and peace and life. The courage to walk out of the tomb and embrace humanity again.

I wonder if this is the reason Christ’s friends couldn’t recognize him at first, when they saw him in the garden and met him on the road. Not because he was a magical masquerader, but because he was utterly transformed by the courage that is deepest love. The courage it took to overcome humiliation and abandonment and rejection. The courage it took to forgive.

He looked different because he was different. Love won.

And the life that came from that courage – the life and the love and the hope and the faith and the Spirit that is still humming in so many of our bones – it takes my breath away with its truth.

The way everything is transformed when we live as if love wins.

. . .

So often I’m tempted by the tomb, tempted to stay in the solitude of safety and selfishness when I’ve been hurt. I’m tempted to hunker down against a world that doesn’t understand, that never understood.

But the call to live as an Easter person – to live into resurrection, to say no to despair and say yes to love – is a call that transforms. A call to have courage and let love win and leave the safe quiet and step back out into the world again.

I think of this often when I think of my children. How life will inevitably hurt them. How friends will betray and companions be cruel. How accidents will happen and mistakes be made. How their hearts (and probably bones) will be broken. How they won’t make the team or get the job they want. How people they love will die or abandon them.

Of course it’s not my job to shield them from any of it – it’s never our place to shield from life itself. We cannot hide in caves away from the world outside, content ourselves with licking our wounds from a thousand small deaths. The only thing I can hope to help them see is how to get up each time, breathe deeply, forgive and love again.

Try to let love win.

So my Easter prayer becomes one for courage. To shape a humble life that shows my children something about courage and forgiveness. To bear my own witness, my own small flickering light, to the love that wins.

gospel, interrupted

How I heard Palm Sunday:

When the hour came, Jesus took his place at table with the apostles.

Mama, I need Polar Bear. Read Polar Bear. Read. Please.

I tell you, Peter. Before the cock crows this day, you will deny three times that you know me.

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you hear? I hear a lion roaring in my ear.

Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still not my will but yours be done.

Big Trucks and Diggers! I need Big Trucks and Diggers!

They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?” He replied to them, “You say that I am.”

The wheel loader scoops and lifts and loads – oops, no, don’t pull the pages too hard or the dump truck part will break.

But they continued their shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Can you use your quiet voice in church? Shhh…no. Quiet. We use quiet voices while we’re listening.

Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Mama, do they have donuts today? Should we go check to see if there are donuts?

Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Shhh. Use your QUIET VOICE IN CHURCH. If you cannot use your quiet voice, you are going to have to leave aga – ok, that’s it. You’re leaving. Here, take him.

And when he had said this, he breathed his last.

Mama, home. Let’s go home. I’m hungry. I’m tired. Home.

. . .

A mother’s distraction? Maybe.

But aren’t all our hearings of the Gospel interrupted?

We pick up the book after making the coffee and before loading the dishwasher. We squeeze in church between breakfast and a birthday party. We listen to a sermon while plotting our to-do list and planning our errands.

We are always humans trying to hear the divine, listening with half an ear amidst all the chatter and clutter. We are never gods ourselves, with undisturbed attention, uninterrupted time, undistracted minds. We are creatures of distraction, people of interruption.

But might this be precisely the point?

Incarnation was interruption: God breaking into our world, becoming human. Resurrection was a wrench-in-the-works of reality, too: death becoming life, transformed and brand-new.

The Gospel was always meant to interrupt us. To interrupt injustice with truth. To interrupt guilt with forgiveness. To interrupt violence with peace. To interrupt ambition with humility. To interrupt selfishness with love.

No wonder it still interrupts today. Even this holiest of weeks is still full of work deadlines and school drop-offs and vacuuming and vet visits.

And the little ones can’t sit silent for the sacred mystery of holy days. They still fidget and squirm, whine and yawn. (So do adults sometimes, if we’re honest.)

Proof of all the human he came to save.

. . .

In case you missed it, I’m now a contributor at CatholicMom.com. Click here to check out my first post on how to live Lent as a busy mom. 

May you have a peaceful, prayerful Holy Week! (Amidst the chaos and craziness of daily life, of course.)

what’s the soul of a parent?

When I was a child, I got obsessed with figuring out what we all had in common.

Call it the curse of Catholic school. All those lessons on how we’re all made in God’s image. I remember riding home on the bus, swinging my skinny legs off the sticky vinyl seat, trying to figure out exactly what that meant – what magical thing we all had in common that made us reflect God.

First I decided it must be eyes. Everyone had eyes, I figured. And you learned a lot from someone by looking at their eyes. So maybe that’s what we all had, that made us in the image of God.

But then my grade school self remembered pictures from National Geographic of people with disfigured faces, people who might be born without eyes, or might have eyes that didn’t work. That didn’t seem very image-of-God-like. I scratched eyes from my list.

Next was arms. I was pretty sure everyone had – nope, then I remembered that man on TV with no arms, playing his guitar for the pope. He had to be made in God’s image. Arms were out.

Ditto legs, hands, hair, teeth, feet, ears. Any physical attribute I could think of was crossed off the list. Even as a first-grader I got frustrated: how could there not be a single thing that every human being shared? How were we all supposed to be made in God’s image if we had nothing in common?

This was my first inkling of soul. Of the spark of Spirit within each of us.

Because, I studied seriously, chewing on the end of my pigtails, if there had to be something of God about us and it wasn’t outside us, then it had to be inside us.

God had to be within.

. . .

When I became a mother, I became obsessed with figuring out what parents had in common.

One late night when my first son was a few weeks old, I stared out his bedroom window, trying to stay awake while he nursed. As became my practice, I thought of all the other parents awake at that hour – across the street, across town, across the globe – doing all the things parents do that keep them awake at wee hours: rocking babies, soothing sick kids, keeping vigil for curfew-breaking teenagers.

I remember rocking in the nursery, swinging my feet off the glider, trying to figure out exactly what made us parents.

Was it birthing a biological baby? Definitely not. Plenty of people I knew became parents through adoption.

Was it caring for a child full-time? Not necessarily. Grandparents and babysitters and daycare providers often watched a child for more daylight hours than their parents ever saw them. But that didn’t make them parents.

What was the core of parenthood exactly? I knew it but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought about legal definitions and cultural redefinitions and variations on a theme. And that’s when it hit me:

It was the same dilemma I puzzled over on the school bus that day, wanting to define the essence of a thing.

It was the same searching that led me back to the idea of soul.

. . .

What is a parent? Does what we do make us who we are? If we are so wildly diverse, how can we all be the same thing? What is common to this complex calling?

When Sarah at Fumbling Toward Grace first blogged about her frustrations with breastfeeding and how harshly she felt judged as a mother for feeding her baby with formula, her honesty struck a chord with many of us. So when she invited me to participate in the “No More Mommy Wars” series that sprung out of the deep resonance of her post, I started mulling over this question.

What makes us the same as mothers, even though we make such different choices for ourselves and our children? Where can we meet in the soul of parenting?

Today I’m posting at Fumbling Toward Grace about my experience of extended nursing. If you had told me a year ago I’d be writing on such a subject, I would have laughed in your face. But the winding road of this parenting journey twists in ways I never expect.

This story is one of them.

Please click over to read the rest. And check out the rest of Sarah’s wonderful blog while you’re there!

what makes me impatient

1. Slow-moving preschoolers.
2. Potty-training.
3. Packing.
4. Lost keys.
5. Ice-covered roads.
6. Morning rush hour.
7. Airport security lines.
8. Broken elevators.
9. Snail’s-pace wi-fi.
10. Winter.

My morning was full of every single one. Yours?

About the time I found myself banging on the CLOSE DOORS button, ready to holler at the non-functioning hotel elevator, I decided the day must be trying to teach me something.

I also remembered that my latest post at The Power of Moms is running today. On patience.

(Insert ironic face-palm here.)

If impatience is your daily dose of aggravation like it is mine, this might sound familiar:

When my kids’ whining is grating on my last nerve, the pasta pot is about to bubble over, the phone is ringing off the hook and the dog is dancing in circles underfoot begging to go outside, I do not want to suffer in the moment one second longer. I want to scream and stomp my feet and make it stop.

But what would happen if I were willing to rest in the discomfort for a minute? What if I were to acknowledge the aggravating annoyances and live in the suffering of imperfection? What if I could try giving into a willingness to suffer?

I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I gave it a whirl.

Click on over to The Power of Moms to read more…

What makes you impatient? How do you cope?

(And does anyone else keep punching that stupid elevator button [>|<] even though it doesn’t really work?)

for the mornings we yell

For the mornings we wake up determined to make it a better day, and then we don’t -

For the times we promise to soak up the sweetness of these fleeting years, and then we wish them away -

For the days we want to fill with laughter and song, and then they’re darkened by bad moods and cross words -

For the meals we make with love and hope that they’ll be enjoyed, and then we grit our teeth as they’re gagged while chewed -

For the playdates we plan to share the long days with good friends, and then we’re annoyed that a sick child screws up our schedule -

For the glossy parenting magazines whose advice we dog-ear with good intention, and then we shove the stack in the recycling bin instead -

For the calm, cool, collected moms we envy when we wrangle our whiny bunch into the grocery cart, and then we glower over how we’re doing worse at this job than everyone else we know -

For the naptimes when we catch up on the world’s news and resolve again to treasure the rare gift of healthy, safe, sheltered children, and then we’re screaming at them by suppertime -

For the eyes that want to look with love and capture how quickly our kids will be grown and gone, and then they narrow with frustration at messes and mistakes and missing shoes -

For the hands that hope to hold and hug and help, and then they clench into angry balls that bang on the kitchen counter when no one listens to us -

For the boiling-over moments when we try to breathe and breathe and not lose it completely, and then we do -

For the nights we try to treasure bedtime instead of tick off the minutes till we’re done, and then we’re flooded with guilt when closing the bedroom door behind us feels like the best part of the day.

For remembering we’re humans raising humans,

for knowing if we teach our children nothing else, we’ll teach them how to bend down and open arms and say I’m sorry because we have to do it daily ourselves,

for the chance to keep screwing up because it means we keep going,

for forgiving ourselves,

and learning slowly how forgiveness takes the shape of a cross – pulled down in love, stretched out in embrace.

For trying again.

For today. For you.

. . .

Today was supposed to be the last in the series, my part to add to the wise women who shared their stories of how they nurture their mothering spirits, how they find peace in the midst of parenting.

But inspired by this dad’s truth spoken here, and a morning that called for this instead of that, I’m waiting till tomorrow to write about calm. Because today I needed to write about chaos.

Because I thought I might not be the only one who needs to hear it.

And maybe you can share it with another mom who needs it, too.

the perspective of puke and the tales we tell

I could tell the story of my week like this:

For the first time since I became a parent, I spent the morning cleaning vomit out of the crib.

(At which point I would pause while the Interwebs finished laughing at me. “Seriously?”)

And that would be true.

Because in some strange stroke of luck, we’ve never had a stomach bug tear through this house in the almost-four years since we’ve had kids.

Sure, we’ve had common colds and croup and thrush and other typical childhood ailments. And we’ve got at least one boy who’s prone to car-sickness, so we’ve wiped up car seats and coats aplenty. But never before had our doorstep been darkened by the Evil 24-Hour Stomach Virus, as sponsored by Lysol and the sanitizing cycle on the washing machine.

I know this sounds naive. And trust me, ever since I became a mother I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, the quintessential moment when I would wind up catching some kid’s puke in my cupped hands and realize, while choking back my own gag reflex, “So this is motherhood. Huh.”

And yes, that happened. Exactly as you’d expect, exactly as I’d always expected. One frantic knock on the office door from the nanny while I was working mid-Monday, one boy throwing up in the bathroom, one brother felled by the same bug the next day, more vomit on my sweatshirts than I care to remember, more hot water loads in the washer than I care to count.

You know the story.

Or do you?

As I pondered the wretched (wretching?) events of the past few week, I realized that I could spin the story any number of ways.

It could start like I did above, that I’d never been puked on before, so four years after first giving birth, I felt like a newbie parent all over again. And behold: a tale of maternal rite of passage.

Or it could take another twist: after my youngest had his 18 month check-up on Monday, and his doctor was closing the door to say goodbye, she called out, “Great to see you! It’s been so long – I can’t believe you’ve never had this kid in for anything but well-baby visits since he was born!” And behold: a story of sour irony.

Or it could travel down this road: at the beginning of birthday week, all I dreamed of was a weekend away with the beloved spouse who stole shares my natal day, but by week’s end I was reduced to begging divine intervention to please just keep my kids from puking today so that we can salvage some shred of the celebration slipping away before my eyes. And behold: a reminder of reversed expectations.

All of these tales are true. What matters is which one I pick.

The more I ponder the intersections between parenting and spirituality, between mothering and writing, the more I realize how the lens through which see the world matters. And how the tales we choose to tell matter, too.

Whether or not we recognize it in the moment, we choose to narrate every experience according to certain scripts or slants. Here’s my Tale of A Terrible Day; here’s my Glowing Reminder of Life’s Beauty; here’s my Gut-Punch Reminder of Fleeting Mortality. The same day spun six different ways.

In her book Composing A Life, Mary Catherine Bateson explores the various versions of our life that we create – when we introduce ourselves to a group of people at a meeting or make a new acquaintance at a party, for example. She claims that our self-introductions, our autobiographies, even the everyday stories we tell each other all have multiple versions – and this is not only good, but necessary:

What I want to say is that you can play with, compose, multiple versions of a life.

There are advantages in having access to multiple versions of your life story. I am not referring to a true version versus a false version, or to one that works in a given therapeutic context as opposed to others, or to one that will sell to People magazine as opposed to ones that won’t. I am referring to the freedom that comes not only from owning your memory and your life story but also from knowing that you make creative choices in how you look at your life….

The choice you make affects what you can do next. Often people use the choice of emphasizing either continuity or discontinuity as a way of preparing for the next step. They interpret the present in a way that helps them construct a particular future.

The art of composition and improvisation has the power to reshape our world as we reshape our point of view.

Pondering this truth mid-sick-week helped me to remember that I still held a teeny bit of control over all the situations slipping out of my hands. My perspective on the pukefest mattered, and the lens I chose to view the vomit could color the way things turned out in my mind and in my memory.

Because I could have spun this week as woe-is-me, worst-possible-timing, what-could-be-crappier. Or I could choose to see it as minor-inconvenience, mostly-manageable, much-lighter-than-burdens-others-bear.

Or maybe, just maybe, I could focus all my energy and hope and even prayers that the story of this week might end up being the one I wanted all along: the perfect prelude to a weekend without kids.

The story of the stomach bug that almost stole our birthdays.

when we all add up

31 + 31 + 3 + 1 

He’s obsessed with numbers now. All he wants to do is stand at his easel and scribble numerals in chalky pastel, then furrow his brow and punch the digits into his cash register.

Adding and subtracting have transformed his small world into an explosion of equations. He begs us to fill up the chalkboard or the paper with long strings of numbers he can add together. Then he greets the familiar ones as old friends.

70…that’s Papa’s age. 22 is my favorite song on the CD. 50 is for 50 states. 28 is the date.

This is how the world makes sense to him right now, at the still-small stage of 3.5. Neatly ordered by numbers, waiting to be added or subtracted at the touch of his fingers pounding the calculator keys.

It’s not my language – I love words and art and music – but I try to meet him there. (And try to remind myself as I struggle to scrape together interesting-enough equations to delight him dawn till dusk, that words and art and music sing with numbers all their own.)

But when he tires of adding up all the units of measurement I know and the phone numbers I can remember and the street numbers of family addresses and the birth dates of old friends, I always default to this one:

31 + 31 + 3 + 1

All the ages under this roof. Two parents, two kids. Added up together.

For a brief moment in time, our ages are caught up in a numerical anagram: they in us and we in them.

Back when my boy started this obsession with numbers, I realized for the first time that our ages would be patterned like this for a few short months. I’m no math whiz myself, so when I tried to calculate if and when this might happen again in our lifetimes, my brain got bored and slipped into pondering the grocery list. Suffice it to say, it seems a rare occurrence. (The left-brained engineer at my elbow agrees.)

But the rarity seems right for now – this slender sliver of a season when our lives are so intimately, bodily, exhaustingly bound up with each other. These months (because we still measure in months) when we’re still a clump of a family unit, not yet stretched by the sprawl of adolescents who strain to pull as far away as they can, or redefined by a Rolodex with separate entries for every adult child’s address.

Right now we’re all bound up together. 31 + 31 + 3 + 1.

Our two boys are their own selves, to be sure. But they are still so wrapped up in us, and we in them. Sometimes when these two squirmy worms are wriggling all over the couch and each other and my lap and the book we’re trying to read, I find myself wondering where each of us starts and the other ends.

Parenting brings about a strange and profound redefinition of self. You are at once the same person you always were and a new creation, birthed by the child before you. Magazines warn you not to lose yourself in the exhaustion of new motherhood, yet you can’t help but stare at the bleary-eyed stranger in the mirror and wonder what happened to the girl you once were.

And yet there is something of you in them, something of your younger self that glimmers back in their eyes or frown or laughter. You see your spouse in their smile, too, and bits of others in the shimmering hologram that is a child: the spitting image of grandma in this light, an uncle’s twin in that photo.

You catch your breath when you see it, and then it’s gone.

31 + 31 + 3 + 1. Scribbled on his dusty chalkboard, these numbers speak truth of this fleeting stage when we are so easily glimpsed in one another. When we are so closely linked to those who surround us.

When we all add up together.