Marriage – Katie Curtis

Media & Motherhood

31 January, 2020/2 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting/by Katie

Maybe because it’s winter and I’ve been watching too much TV, maybe because Michelle Williams shouted about how she needed to kill her baby to win her last award, or maybe because trying to watch a show with my 12-year-old daughter has ads for every kind of female empowerment message EXCEPT being a mother, I am just over what the TV has to tell me about motherhood.

It’s not a new problem. On the first Monday morning after I dropped out of my PhD program in Philosophy to stay home with my then six-month-old oldest son, I was jumping into the shower as the women on the morning news talk program was spouting her book, The Feminine Mistake, and said that the worst thing a woman could do was to stay home with her children and stop being able to earn an income. Because men leave, they die, they get fired, she said.

Sure they do. And women have this working apparatus in their head that is capable of overcoming fear, problem solving, and has an uncanny capacity for knowing exactly what her family needs the most at that moment. I already knew why I was making the decision to stay home: our family would have no family time if I continued. But for someone who wasn’t sure of their decision, her fear mongering tactics equated staying home with your kids as being one step away from the homeless shelter.

The cultural waters we swim in talk about all the things a girl can be except a mother. If someone already made the choice to be a mother then there are two avenues to talk about it. Either a) complain about how unfair it is that women have to do all the work (re: every podcast calling for daycare like Denmark) or b) parade your kids as a lifestyle accessory (see every celebrity mother in People magazine).

But when they aren’t doing these things, the only discussion of motherhood is based on fear.

I’m just wondering when the narrative we are being sold is going to get old for everyone. When I think about the characters on Sex and the City, Girls, Fleabag, and the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel the outcomes for these characters are so…depressing. That scene in the hotel where the only other woman who traveled with the band told Mrs. Maisel how to have one-night stands with dirty men “if you really need it”, to carry a gun, and not to worry about your kids never seeing you for months a time because you can at least say you led an ‘interesting’ life? That one’s such a heartwarming tale. I have two year old twins trashing my house as we speak and I would rather have that then what poor Mrs. Maisel is facing. Or how about Fleabag when she looks down at her ex-boyfriend (literally the only human she wouldn’t have sex with was the white male she was in a relationship with) for having a child? The take away is she is SO much more superior than him, but in the span of 3 television hours she’ll feel the need to make out with a woman and have sex with a blind date and the next night right after the blind date came to her door after her bidding she has sex with a priest. #empowered

From magazines to movies to shows there is this maxim that if you own your circumstances, no matter how horrible they are, if they are ALL YOURS and you’re not beholden to anyone who might hold you back, then that is all that matters.

I can’t help but think that this is why motherhood is so hard for someone like Meghan Markle. Sure it’s a shift for every mother to realize just HOW much you have to give, but if you have been told to live for your own advancement, for pleasure, for power, for hustling to get ahead, then all that sacrifice and set back comes as a pretty big shock. We have been conditioned to enter into marriage and motherhood with this playbook: I’ll do this family thing because it’s what I want at this point in my life. I own my circumstances. Once they get into it, the reality that they have to be self-giving, self-sacrificing, pour themselves out for others, in order to make it all work is totally against their code. They want to change the system, change their husbands, control all the variables because the fact that the answer might be to love hard is too hard to bear.

Why aren’t we telling girls that women who love are beautiful, and giving our lives as a gift to others is the most powerful thing we can do with them? It might be hidden, yes. It might not give you a lot of social cache, or attention, or money, but it will give you a chance to get out of yourself and that is where meaning and true beauty are found.

This is a hard sell these days. I can’t help but think it’s because all the hustling and achieving are so loud and glittery, and mothers doing this noble work do it without cameras or applause or awards. They are quietly loving and cleaning and kissing booboos, only to crash into bed and then get up again and do it the next day. But what they are pouring into their families will last generations. What could they do that is even remotely as impactful as building a family? The last powerful example of this type of gift in the media that I can remember was in Charlotte’s Web, who called her babies her magnum opus.

Andrew loving on baby Michael

Why can’t we say to girls that being a mother is noble and beautiful and can be considered a magnum opus? And like any great work it’s filled with sacrifice.

Last night at a cycling class, one of the girls said that she was too afraid to become a mom because her child might be just like her and she was also afraid that it might also be just like her husband, which equally horrified her. We can laugh and be entertained by these jokes, these shows, but even the ideas we know are ridiculous (Carrie Bradshaw, I’m looking at your whole relationship with Big) are trickling down into the water and our girls are drinking it.

I don’t want my girls to be afraid to become a mom.

There is so much anxiety, fear, need to control things, worry, and insecurity in women today. Just read the message boards. When we step back and try to trust that we’re working with God in this motherhood gig, because it turns out he loves our kids too, it gets a lot easier. And more fun and beautiful. It doesn’t stop being hard but the hard gets woven into the beauty and makes it even more beautiful.

So that’s why even though I am in one of my hardest seasons of mothering yet with a new teenager and a double dose of two year olds, I want to shout from the rooftops about how I am still struck all day long by my love for these humans. I want them to feel deeply loved. And I want them to see me loving my husband well too.

That’s my gig. That’s what I signed up for. Loving and being loved sure beats the heck out of a closet of stilettos.

p.s. Does anyone else worry about Gloria Steinem being all alone when she dies? Does anyone know if she has life alert? Oh what joys she missed.

15 Annos

25 September, 2019/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting/by Katie

Today is our 15 Year Anniversary.

This week of September holds a lot of milestones for our family – my husband turned 44, my daughter turned 10, our marriage turns 15, and the twins turn two in a few weeks. All of these are leaving me head-tiltedly bewildered. How did time go so fast?

I mean, part of it is the feeling of getting old. I’m not old enough to have teenagers, or be married for 15 years. We just threw this awesome party like a nanosecond ago.

But part of it is also the season we are in too. It speeds up time.

Having teenagers and toddlers is a bit like straddling two very tall buildings at the same time. Your legs start to feel like jello after a while and you lose your bearings for what ground level (life with no kids, or one kid, or even two) used to be like.

It’s a time of breaking down, of digging deep and learning hard lessons. There are so many things that worked when our kids were all under 10 and in bed by 8 o’clock that don’t work anymore. We eat in shifts: toddlers get hungry early, older kids eat late due to sports. (Family dinner was a hard one to let go of for me for sure). The big kids want to stay up with us watching movies, and the twins want us to get up with the birds. There is candle burning going on at both ends and also somewhere in the middle too.

Obviously this is all hard on a marriage. But immensely purifying. Any issues that we thought we could sweep under the rug have to be drawn out and dealt with because of the sheer number of logistics of our life. I remember some friends worrying the stress of too many kids would hurt our marriage, but I think the opposite might be true. It forges fox-hole loyalty.

The popular Canadian professor Dr. Jordan Peterson says, marriage is “a lifelong wrestling between two worthy adversaries who strengthen each other and help one another to sort out and improve upon their various personal struggles and weaknesses.” One of his main principles is the more responsibility you take on in your life the more meaning you will find, and when he says that I think he must know what having a large family is like. Or at least why it’s worth it.

Year 15 looks like: toddler dimples in hands, emerging personalities that are hilarious and witty, a boy so innocent his smile and hugs delight everyone, and his twin who manages to be salty and sweet at the same time. There is lots and lots of sibling love. There is probably too much screen time. A home that is more and more becoming our own, tailored to our life and not just some walls we inhabit. Days revolve around early wake ups, rides to school and sports, lots and lots of food, and walks outside. These are the core of my days, a half hour of quiet and calm in the stormy sea of chaos coordinating. They are magic every season but especially in this season, with gorgeous fall weather, when the twins are strapped down (read: safe and not trashing a room) and silently watch the wind blow leaves to the ground and autumn light glinting on the bay. I get to pray and breath, which feel like the same thing.

Our neighbors have fruit trees, and the twins know when we walk by them I’ll go over and pick peaches and apples. They point and get excited as soon as we get near the trees. Yesterday I went and all the peaches were gone, a reminder that everything is a season, including this challenging time.

They still they have apples though.

I’m also reading this book, which I highly recommend if you want to find peace and awe in your interior life but I don’t recommend it if you want to write and produce a lot of on line content for consumption because it will make you not want to contribute to the noise in the world in anyway. One of the chapters has a story about St. Theresa of Calcutta, and a priest who came to see her and ask her for prayers. She said she always prays for priests, and gave him a miraculous medal. Then she asked him how much he prays. Mass, the Rosary, and the Brevery every day was his answer. “That is not enough,” she said. “I thought you were going to ask me about my works of charity,” he said. She looked at him very seriously, and said “Do you think I am able to do my works of charity without praying first?”

A reminder that we need God to love well, through our limitations and theirs. And that is probably the most important thing I’ve learned about marriage. That and there is no one I would rather do it with than Rob.

Thoughts on Mother’s Day

10 May, 2019/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting, Writing/by Katie

I just left the Kindergartener’s Mother’s Day tea with my 6 year-old son and it was as adorable as it sounds. I got to thinking a lot about being a mom on the way home and I mostly thought about what a gift my kids are to me. I am keenly aware of the relationships around me that can’t celebrate all the good that this bond should be, either through death, or brokenness, or distance. But it is also my best friend’s first Mother’s Day with her 7 month-old daughter, and I know the road that led to her and it’s paved with heartache and hope and the power of love, just like all the best stories. When I think about her experiencing such a powerful relationship for the first time, I think about what it has taught me over the last 13 years. Here’s the highlight reel.

Learn to forgive yourself. You will always fall a little or a lot short of showing them the love you want them to know. This is because it’s really, really hard to take care of a human being while you already have to take care of yourself. You will regularly have to choose between going to the bathroom or changing a diaper, feeding your growling stomache or the starving beast having a meltdown, dealing with your own fever/stomach flu/worry/hormone swings or any other discomfort a human can feel and helping them with theirs. This is the trickiest business of motherhood. And it makes us short-tempered and crabby at times. Also, you aren’t perfect and you never will be, so there is a lot of room for self-doubt and uncertainty to creep in. Every time it does, ask yourself, ‘Are you doing the best you can?’ and ‘Do they know they are deeply loved?’. If the answer to those two questions is yes, you are succeeding. Remind yourself of this often.

Hold them closely and loosely at the same time. You want to squeeze them and breath in their smell after a bath, and kiss the sweet baby cheeks when they fall asleep on your shoulder. But motherhood is at its essence being one with another person and then losing them, little by little, every moment since birth. Every step of independence is leading to them leaving you, and you have to both mourn each loss while cheering them on with every ounce of your being. It’s not for the faint of heart.

You shouldn’t be their whole world and they shouldn’t be yours. It’s tempting! I know. And there are times when they are. But every time you go out to book club or take a job or a class or go for a run, you are actually expanding their world because you will come back filled up, refreshed, or wiser. The stronger you are and the more you invest in yourself, the stronger their mother will be. All women lose themselves in motherhood at times. You get capsized by newborns and different ages and stages. But after a while, you have to find your newer, wiser, changed self again, and doing this is hard work. It’s easier not to. But your kids will be immensely better off if you do. And keep your marriage a priority, as much as it’s in your control. Showing your husband and your kids that your relationship with your husband comes first gives the family so much stability.

Keep the end in mind. This phrase is actually one of Stephen Covey’s habits in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There is a lot of wisdom for moms in this book that is usually read for succeeding in business. In it he has what he calls the ‘Maturity Continuum’, and he places all 7 of the habits on the continuum from dependence to independence to interdependence. You are a highly effective person and family if you are interdependent. (To read more about the habits, go here or better yet read the book.) But this habit helps me immensely, from disciplining, to shaping them as people, to talking about problems in the world and death and going to Heaven. And not sweating the small stuff along the way.

Help them to see who they really are. When Oprah interviewed Ralph Lauren’s family, his wife Rickie said this was her main goal as a mom, and it just stuck with me. Being a mirror for them, helping them to really know themselves, seemed like such a beautiful thing. To me, this involves a lot of pointing out moments they were at their best, qualities they have that are unique to them that are wonderful like their laugh or their sense of humor. It’s playing them videos of when they were little and talking about the memories I have of them. It’s saving all of their special artwork and awards through the years in their own special file box that they can look through whenever they want. It also involves talking about actions that don’t display their best self, like fighting or being selfish or gloating. ‘You’re better than that’ is a powerful statement that validates who they really are while pointing out bad behavior.

Trust your instincts. All the great artists do. Plus Dr. Sears or Ferber or the nurse who lives next door won’t ever parent your child. Only you will.

The dishes and laundry and housework will never be done, but their childhood will. Prioritize accordingly.

Fellow moms – what would you add to this list? Leave your thoughts in the comments as I am sure my friend will love to read them. Happy Mother’s Day!

Watering Your Roots

24 July, 2018/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting, Writing/by Katie

There is this unfortunate thing that happens when you are the proprietor of a bed of lettuce and summer hands you a string of hot, sunny days.

They start to bolt.

This means they grow straight up into the air, with leaves that are tough and bitter, as opposed to growing more tender leaves around the base that are good for eating and harvesting.

The only way to protect them from bolting is to water them faithfully, particularly during hot days. Which I couldn’t do when we were traveling.

Even though this summer has had so much sweetness – babies swimming! Big kids around! Visiting family near Lake Winnepesaukee, and then splashing in the rivers near our condo in the White Mountains near North Conway, NH. Slow lazy mornings and fun evenings at the pool, with lots of fresh fruit and veggies and enough hot dogs and s’mores to make kids happy – I still had to admit that I knew how those lettuce plants felt in the heat of the summer sun. When we got home and saw that they had bolted, I mourned the loss tender romaine and butter leaves at the ready for salads and sandwiches. But I realized this phenomenon was a great way to describe how moms of kids in the summer might be feeling too. Lots of hot sunny days and not enough time to water our roots can make our leaves tough and bitter, too.

My mantra this first year of having twins is to be aware that my life has fallen into a black hole temporarily, and be gentle on yourself. But I am not good at stagnating. Like, at all. I have to be growing in some area to feel alive. Having new experiences – travel, food, writing, learning – are easy ways to grow. But not easy when you have twin babies.

I was most definitely bolting.

So I quickly took stock. My husband and I decided to cancel our upcoming trip to Pemaquid, Maine. It’s where my novel was set, where we feel very alive with the wild ocean and fresh seafood. Instead we stayed home, cleaned out our attic before our new au pair arrives in a few weeks (hallelujah). It felt so good to throw away bags of things we didn’t need, and I felt my stress falling off of me as stuff got hauled away. It wasn’t traveling and experiencing new things, but instead putting my life in order, that brought me happiness and peace.

Likewise, I trimmed back the overgrowth in our front yard when the babies napped and weeded all of our beds with my kids. When the babies woke up, we set their circles of neglect in the shade, where they watched us bend up and down with so much curiosity they barely made a peep. Somehow all that hard work made me feel…better. Calmer. Less veering out of control-y.

I made plans with my best friend from college to meet at Mass at BC with the babies while the big kids went camping with their dad (who would make an excellent professional nature guide if he wasn’t so good at his current job. If you see Rob, ask him to tell you about the bears). Being on campus connected me to my 20 year old self in unexpected ways and reminded me, even though my current life was heavy and my roots were thirsty, I had lived other lives, had been in rich soil which helped me grow. That there were seasons in life, and a growing season would come again.

I hired a sitter for a day not so I could work or entertain my older kids, but just so my best friend and I could spend the day relaxing and talking and eating, which filled me up in so many ways. I am so thankful for her friendship and her driving out here to water the roots of it.

I started a 30 Day Health Program with Isagenix. It’s worked for me in the past, and I was waiting to stop nursing to start. For the last two weeks, I’ve worked out with my oldest son who is getting ready for football conditioning in a few weeks. Turns out he is the best workout buddy as he motivates me on the days I am not feeling it and vice versa. It feels like next-level parenting to multi-task excercise with him. Our jumping around also elicits much wide-eyed starting from the babies as they sit on the rug next to us.

After my PMDD came roaring back a few months ago, I knew I had to do something, since it made me jittery and snappy with my husband and kids. It is like having depression and anxiety for the ten days before your period, and it made me so sympathetic to those that have it all the time. Stress tends to exacerbate it. I researched the nutrition I needed to battle these hormone issues (read: I watched a lot of YouTube videos made by women who have it). This 5-HTP supplement is ahh-mazing for PMS/PMDD, especially with 1 gram of melatonin during the last two weeks of your cycle, since together they increase your brain’s serotonin levels naturally. And so is this one since it helps to break down the excessive amount of Estrogen that triggers most of the symptoms. If you think you fit the profile for having PMDD or other hormone related issues, these have helped me so much I wanted to share in case they can help someone else. Please research their use if they sound like they could help you. One thing to know is that it is really important to just use the 5-HTP + melatonin for just the last two weeks of your cycle so your body still produces them on its own, and don’t use it if you are on any SSRI’s. I am only one month in, but so thankful for the results. It’s eliminated my PMDD symptoms by almost 90%. In other words, while I used to feel like the Dementors in Harry Pottery were sucking my face, now I feel like myself. (Please be kind to judging this info as it feels very hard to share but I am doing it in case anyone else has those dementors in their life. It sucks.)

I finally mapped out the novel that was knocking on my brain and started to research it. Now it gets chewed on all day while I am rocking babies and folding laundry, and I dive in writing when I have a sitter. I’m thrilled and excited to be writing fiction again. And I picked up Kristin Lavransdatter again on our trip and can’t put it down. I feel lost and adrift if I am not reading a good book, and consequently feel solid and found when I am. Writing and reading aren’t just watering my roots, they’re adding nourishment to my soil. (Side note/mildly funny story: Last week I was in front of the row of books at Target with the twins in my 2 (!) carts. A group of older ladies walked by and one of them said, ‘Oh dear, you don’t have time to read with those babies do you?’ I just stared wide-eyed and said, ‘the babies make me need to read more’! I love when people refer to reading as self-care, because its true.)

I tried hard to reach out to others and avoid getting isolated. I texted friends and made plans. Blueberry picking with the kids. Dinner at the pool. Dinner without kids at the new restaurant that just opened. Date nights with Rob. I brought my sister with special needs her favorite dinner at my mom’s house. My other sister met us at the fair with her kids while Rob stayed with the babies for the first time solo. (Now that I think about it, our babies have really rolled with our schedule and done so well with most of our fun outings. So thankful for their flexible natures.) Next up: taking them all to an outdoor concert with friends.

Of course, the quickest way to water our roots is to pray. A few lovely novenas felt like they dumped extra water on my roots and perked my spiritual life right up. This one to St. Anne whose feast day is tomorrow has been beautiful, and I swear it feels like taking mom vitamins since as the mother to Blessed Mother, I think she has a soft spot for mothers. (I’ve also heard great things about this book and am looking forward to reading it.)

These efforts have paid off. Little by little, I feel more like myself. Like my new leaves are more tender and soft. I know it’s a function of the babies getting older and sleeping more, and of seeking help for my health issues, but I also know that trying to proactively carve out ways to do the things that nourish my roots is essential. (Lest you read this and think any part of it says I have my act together – I had to binge a late-to-the-party Game of Thrones addiction to the very last episode just to get it out of my life.)

My time-wasting journey into GOT aside, I know that self-discipline, when you can dig down and find it, is always the best path to growth. And yours no doubt looks different then mine. Maybe it’s Weight Watchers and knitting or Work out classes at the gym and your side business that get you closer to your best self. To water your roots. Either way, finding a way to tend to each part of you – your mind, your soul, and your heart – always pays dividends. Like lettuce gardens and unruly attics and front yards, it’s often about pruning and weeding to get to order and goodness.

So these are the things that are helping me in this season. I’d love to hear about what’s helping you, since I am currently still failing at keeping my house clean and having my five year old reliably wearing matching shoes. So leave a message in the comments and let me know.

p.s. If your lettuce plants do bolt, the gardening rule is to break off the top part of the plant, and wait for cooler temperatures and they’ll start growing tender leaves again. Which as a mom sounds a lot like ‘when school starts you’ll have more time to take care of yourself and you’ll feel more balanced.’ But maybe that’s just me.

What I Learned Having Twins

25 June, 2018/0 Comments/in Marriage, Parenting, Writing/by Katie

I thought it might be fun to record what life with 8 month old twins is like for my future self to look back on, and for anyone who has this experience waiting for them in the near future. I should add that not a day goes by that I don’t think of those who have lost one or both twins. We are blessed to have them, I know, and my heart goes out to those who if things had been different would share in this experience too.

This list is actually useful to any parent of children who are close together, really – many of these applied to my life with 3 kids 3 and under as well.

1. Get Used to Humility – Last week I ran to tell my daughter’s coach something at a lacrosse jamboree, and I had two babies crawling around on a blanket. So I scooped them up and ran with one under either arm, and promptly horrified everyone watching. Whether it is getting through a day or a doorway, it will not look pretty sometimes. Any previous notions of having it all together will fall as fast as that next spray of baby spit up. People will just watch and stare as you do normal life events like walking down the street and checking out at Target (because NO cart has room for two car seats). You will need to push two carriages (or a carriage and a stroller) to shop. Which leads me to my next point…

2. Accept all offers of help – seriously. Hold a baby? Help you carry one of those two carts you have? Tie your shoes? Perhaps catch one of the myriad things you will be dropping every day? Yes please, sure. You will cut through that feeling of ‘gee I really should be able to do this on my own’ the first time you try to hold two babies at the same time. In turn, you will feel so much gratitude for the kindness of strangers. The first time I went to the grocery store with the twins, it was to buy dishwashing detergent. I realized in the checkout that I forgot to grab it. The woman behind me sensed my difficulty when I called home to make totally sure we were out (we were) and said, go grab it, I’ll watch the babies. And I let her. And I was so glad I did when I ran my dishwasher that night.

3. Know that no plan for help will be perfect – I was pretty open about the fact that we got an au pair before the twins came, especially since one of them might have Down syndrome. At first it was great to have an extra pair of hands when it took Ronan an hour to drink his bottle. He aspirated anything faster then the preemie-flow nipple, so needless to say he ate *s l o w*. But as he got faster, and didn’t need as long to eat, it became clear that there wasn’t much else she could do, and she struggled with following even the hour by hour schedule I made for her and couldn’t, say, make a meal or reliably get kids ready for sports. We went into rematch. And we waited. I pieced together some sitters, and was so thankful for neighbors on the same teams as all of our kids who were more than happy to give rides. It was much easier to have a great sitter for 10 hours then someone who hung around for 40 without really taking anything off my plate. Since my husband travels for work, and I am approaching a military wife level of solo parenting, I am hoping our next au pair is a help, and we screened her a lot more carefully. But its still a gamble. With the end of school, our needs will reshuffle and (hopefully) there will be a slower pace, but who knows what next week will bring.

4. Live in Day Tight Compartments – This is my mantra. Of course, future planning and being organized does help, but when I think about everything that needs to happen, I try to stay focused on just today. It’s all I can handle.

5. Expect to drop at least one ball a day – somewhere along the way of motherhood I felt like its a good day if I didn’t drop any major balls. With twins, I quickly realized that at least one ball was going to be dropped each day, for sure. Forgot about a birthday party? Didn’t get the memo that its red white and blue day? It made it a lot easier to not beat myself up when it happened.

6. Know that your marriage will be challenged but you will come out stronger for forging the experience together. When I was pregnant and scouring tips for life with twins, one couple shared that they made it a rule that they couldn’t get divorced until their twins first birthday. By taking it off the table, they were able to go through the most brutal times without that option. You are both so stretched thin that extra grace and forgiveness is required. And giving each other breaks has always been important to us, but this is definitely more challenging with twins. In the end, hocking your wedding ring to pay for help or a date night now and then is the best way to weather your first year with twins.

7. Know that it will take you 30 minutes longer to do anything – this is partly because twins draw a lot of attention, so getting through a store or down the street for a walk seems to attract people. I remember leaving the school music concert and my husband was just standing at the door tapping his wrist saying ‘we have to go!’ because so many people wanted to stop and see the babies. I always say we love baby lovers, but it has lead to being a few minutes late for picking up my son at preschool or for a sitter because of people stopping me to see them. And of course there is the other end, which is packing up everyone to leave. Getting two small people in their car seats packed for the day or an outing takes a shockingly long time. I started to watch the clock and realized it always takes 30 minutes longer than I think it should.

8. Get used to your own company – it is a good thing that I am ok spending time with myself, because there is just a lot of isolation with babies. I suspect having older kids has buffered me a bit from this, because of seeing people at sports and birthday parties. But there are long weeks and even longer days where I think back and realize that there was barely 5 minutes I had to spend on myself, and with that comes little time to invest in friendships. Thankfully I have wonderful friends that are there for me through this year. But there are hours where I am rocking a baby, or entertaining two laughing faces while I shoveled food into their mouths. Music and podcasts help too when your hands are occupied. So does plotting my next novel.

9. Have a lot of grace for yourself – Another twin mom (Christy Brunk for those who know her) messaged me this sage advice right after I had the twins. I am so glad she did because I repeat this to myself almost every day. There are so many times where my writing brain hurts because I don’t have enough time to write, or things aren’t where I want them to be, and I just have to remind myself that this year is not the year for a whole lot of progress or self-improvement. Surviving is enough. There is a peace that comes with being enough right where you are, and I am thankful that this year has taught me that. Not that any of this is easy, because for some one like me who loves to grow, it is still hard. In fact the number one thing I have to have grace for is not doing enough self care. I will find my way back, but for now, granting myself this grace + living in day tight compartments helps me to not get discouraged.

10. Stay in the present moment – Like #4, the beauty of keeping your focus on the now helps in so many ways. I know it is overly talked about but staying in the now is the only tangent point to eternity we have. It is harder to have anxiety about the future or depression about the past when you are in the now. It is where we can access the grace and strength we need to get through hard things. There were so many moments in the middle of the night that I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to last until morning, or when two babies were crying and needed diaper changes, bottles and naps simultaenously. But I prayed in those moments, and here we are, months later, and we are ok. I hope to take this lesson far deeper into my life than just this year.

So there you have it, a few of the ideas that helped me survive having twins. I’ve said before, this year is one of our most intense. But these smiling faces get me through it every time.

Marriage Math

10 July, 2015/0 Comments/in Marriage, Writing/by Katie

Sorry for the radio silence on my writing blog. As this post can attest to, we had a busy June! But I am looking forward to getting back to regular writing after our travels. Good writing takes time, and I am striving for quality, so I will always choose that over quantity. But I love this little space on the internet. I hope you do too.

***

“Going once. Going twice. Sold to the gentleman in the back.”

The auctioneer pointed to my husband, Rob.

When he had put in a bid for a week long stay at a house in France moments before, I thought he was just trying to help the charity fundraiser by upping the bid*. We had four kids. A busy life. A trip abroad was not even on the radar. But when he outbid another person, I knew.

He was doing it for me.

My husband doesn’t love France. He’s big, they’re little. He’s loud, they’re quiet. In a country of demure, he’s a mechanical bull in a china shop. But he does love me, and he was thinking that this trip could be our 10 year anniversary gift. We had talked about doing a big trip, perhaps skiing in Austria or Rome in a few years, but he knows my passion for food has some big roots in French cooking, since my mom studied there for a year and was really influenced by the food. Growing up she passed the love on to us. I had visited Paris in college with good friends when I did a semester abroad in London, fell deeply in love, and vowed to return. In the mean time, I worshipped at the knee of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and David Leibowitz’s My Paris Kitchen. Rob knew all this, and on a whim, acted on love.

And that’s how, a few weeks ago, I was packing a bag for France. The week was a doozy: I was solo parenting, the kids were on their first week of summer vacation (read: fighting). I had to bring the car to the mechanics and meet a plumber to install a new hot water heater, go to lots of tennis lessons, mine and the kids, and leave my house and fridge ready for my mother-in-law to watch my 5 and 2 year old. My plate was Thanksgiving buffet in Vegas full. I really didn’t even have the head space to consider what we should do in France. Should I brush up on my French? Research wines? Or just grab my passport and go? Wait. Where was my passport? (Commence turning house inside out. I should have done the ConMari method while I was at it if I had an ounce of time to spare. It was on my desk the whole time, where I had searched over and over. !@#$%#!) Finally, thanks to my saintly mother-in-law watching the two youngest at home, and a blessed father-in-law who came along and watched the big kids so we could go out at night, it happened. We were on the plane, Champagne in hand.

This was the longest trip we had ever taken. Even our honeymoon was a quick 5 day affair to Aruba because it had a direct flight and my husband had just started a new territory for work. Then we had four kids in succession and moved a couple of times. We also learned that since Rob has to travel a lot during the week, family trips were best taken on long weekends.

But the other truth is that we ski a lot. All of our travel eggs went into a ski condo basket, which we bought just after our third was born. It was a tough decision at the time. I wanted to figure out our main house first, and we were in the process of looking for a house in a bigger neighborhood with more kids. But my husband loves to ski the way I love to cook. He took me up to see the condo one fall weekend, at peak foliage time in the mountains, because he is a salesman and knows to do things like that. We committed – to skiing and spaghetti dinners and weekends away – before we even knew where we were going to live the rest of the time. Since then it has become our family get away. Going up there has not always been easy, especially when our fourth was a baby. There have been tears and fights. But it has been so worth it to have that family time up north, to have a familiar place with rituals and routine and relaxation.

So when he bid on the trip to France, it was a gesture. A giving back to all of the times I have packed up four kids, driven them north (often alone since he would meet us from work), returned tired but happy on Sunday night, only to dive into a busy school week. He knows the sacrifice involved, and how I made room in our lives for his passions. He was returning the favor, and I was deeply grateful.

We went into this trip knowing that we have both made concessions for the other. Sacrificed to fit in big important things – our time, our money, our sanity – for something vital to the other person. All sweet things in a marriage. But what is beautiful to see is that all this giving has made a certain alchemy happen. When we shared in each other’s passions, they took root in our own hearts and grew. And when our kids share in it too, the joy grows exponentially.

I have become passionate about skiing, excited to see the first flurry in winter, philosophical as I navigate a challenging run, and giddy when I ski with my kids next to me. And they love it even more then I do. When we are skiing, we are in the moment. Fully present, fully alive.

And Rob has grown to love new food, and possibly even France. When we got married, he hated fish. On our last night in Paris, we sought out a salmon for dinner. We all made happy memories over a cote de boef that was as big as our labrador, the intense flavor in the raspberry macarons, the trois fromage crepe that called to us every night at 5 o’clock, hungry and thirsty from exploring hot streets. We ate in the moment. Fully present, fully alive. And while there is no question that Rob would take the beaches of Saint-Malo over the hot crowded streets of Paris, he still found beaucoup de joie de vivre in France.

They say that love is when you can halve each others sorrows and double each others joys.

It is marriage math. And I am so thankful to be its student.

*I wrote before how our trip was from the charity fundraiser for the Hope For Gus foundation. Please visit their page to learn more about helping families with sons who have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.