Shine Time & School Blessings

maleah warner

Ep. 34 Five Reasons a Shine Time Strengthens Your Family

Can you tell the people in the image are spelling SHINE? It’s subtle.

One thing we do to replace the constant hunger for screens in our house is to have a family Shine Time. These are periodic showcases of what we are learning, practicing, working on, creating. When I ask children if their practicing is done, they know that we value developing talents, improving skills, and learning new things. This helps them to leave the screens and get homework and practice done.

What Is Shine Time?

What is Shine Time?

Shine Time for the Warners basically means everyone flops onto their favorite place ont eh couch or floor and takes turns sharing something they’ve practiced, learned, discovered, memorized, created. It’s very informal. We usually don’t plan Shine Time in advance. We don’t do it consistently. It’s most often on Sunday or when Grandparents stop by, but it can happen any time

5 Ways Shine Times Benefits Families

Self Esteem

Kids love to be seen (we all love to be seen). You hear your kids say, “Mom, watch this trick. Mom, look what I can do!” Having a designated Shine Time when you give your kids your full attention sends the message that who they are and what they do matters. It says: I see you. I know you exist. You matter to me.

Group esteem

We talk a lot about self esteem, but group esteem is a real thing. We have a human need to be part of a group. We long for connection. Shine Time allows you all to be performer and audience. When you cheer for other family members, you develop a sense of pride and value for each other and for your group. Every family has a personality. As you share and are cheered on, you feel that you are an essential contributor to your group. 

Watch how good Shine Time is for the youngest who are so often overlooked. See what it does for their sense of worth when they get to be a star for a moment.

Reason for Learning

How often do you hear kids say, “Why do I have to learn this?” One benefit from Shine Time is it gives a reason for learning, practicing, discovering new things. For example, I struggle justifying taking time to practice the piano, but knowing I will perform for our family Shine Time gives me a reason to take the time away from cleaning and household chores to practice. 

Motivation

Finding motivation to get through the drudgery of daily practice can be a challenge. Knowing that someone will be listening helps give a burst of motivation to get through the hours of practice. As a child, violinist Jenny Oaks Baker, didn’t love to practice, but she like to perform. Her mother would bake chocolate chip cookies and invite neighborhood friends to come over and eat cookies while Jenny practiced.

Low Pressure Performance

Presenting a book report in front of a school class can be nerve-racking if you’ve never stood in front of a crowd. Family Shine Time provides a lower pressure opportunity to perform and practice dealing with nerves in a safe setting.

Listen to the full episode HERE. 

Listen to: Ep. 20 Screen Time: Set It & Forget It

Listen to:  Ep.19 Why Not to Limit Summer Screen Time

Ch 11 Lies of the Magpie

This is the REAL Chapter 11. Thanks for waiting. 

Ch 11 The Hairpiece

The road rolls under me, mile after mile passing beneath my tires without seeming to get me any closer to Tucson. I think of the miles I’ve covered in the past eleven months. Have they brought me closer to being enough?

Now that I’m in this car driving, choking down contractions, I wonder why the Maleah of ten months ago was so bent-out-of-shape about being left at the table. She was so consumed with being left out, with not being noticed, with not having something more significant to contribute with her life. Ha! What I would give right now to be left alone sitting at a table with no where I had to go, no deadlines, no appointments, no last-minute crisis calls needing my attention, no all-nighters proof reading to make print deadline. If I could I would march right back through the chaos of the past ten months and tell that version of Maleah, sitting alone at the banquet table, to just stay put. “Honey, if you knew everything you’re going to do in the next ten months, you would sit right here, soak in the stillness, and not move one muscle more than you have to.” I would bask in being left alone. I would bask in sitting at a table. I would bask in sitting. Period.

If I had had a fraction of an inkling that starting January I would be selling advertising for my own magazine,  and that I would be doing it pregnant, I would have never said YES to all the other things that came first.

But I didn’t know. I didn’t have a clue.

That version of me, poised lady-like in the black cocktail dress, was only concerned that her life was too unremarkable. She wanted something bigger, something more noticeable. Something more noteworthy. She wanted a change, and Honey, change was coming.

So enthralled with my new scars, I hardly noticed that the Awards Banquet also left it’s mark on Aaron. In the months following the table incident, while I was ruminating about how I could squeeze more impressive endeavors into my life, Aaron was looking for an exit strategy to leave Goodwin all together. 

As long as I’d known him, Aaron was always on the hunt for new business opportunities. Usually I listened to his latest brainstorm, nodded at the right places, and anticipated a different new idea the next day. So I didn’t pay much attention to how Aaron was becoming increasingly restless with work. He made passing comments about how moving people’s money from CDs to  Mutual Funds, from bonds to Insurance annuities, wasn’t stimulating. “I’m not challenged. I get paid a ridiculous amount of money for the little work that I do.”

At heart Aaron is a builder. He’d built this business, started from scratch, labored to get the flywheel turning. Now that the machine was rolling, he didn’t feel motivated by the day to day repetition of making dollar upon dollar by rolling over IRAs. All day for eight hours he did little else than converse with gray-haired people about facing the end of their life, about death, grief, and trust funds. The job was old.

To listen to the full chapter, click the PLAY button above. 

To hear Chapter 10, Click HERE.

Screen Time Reset for School

reset screen time

Ep. 33 How to Readjust Screen Time for the School Year

Is your child struggling to readjust from summer screen time to school screen time?

The issue we’re having at my house looks like this: the kids want to be constantly on the computer after school. Like, the minute they run in the door. My older two are pretty good about getting homework done. My youngest got used to having 3 hours each day during the summer to do his Minecraft stories. And he is absolutely panicked now that he’s not going to have enough time to finish his Minecraft stuff. And I mean, he is anxious. He is seriously worried that the world of Minecraft is going to explode or disappear if he’s not on there.

Ch. 10 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner

Ep. 32 Left at the Table

Three is the hardest number of children.

We adored Tanner, but adding the third child threw us completely off balance. For several months after bringing Tanner home from the hospital, we struggled to find our groove. “I’ve got Danny,” Aaron would say taking Danny by the hand when we’d arrive at a baseball game, a neighborhood swim party, or a church barbecue.  I’d hoist Tanner’s car seat with two hands and balance the over-flowing diaper bag on my shoulder. Aaron would look at me, I would look at Aaron, and we’d both look at Kate who was poised ready to sprint away the second one of us unbuckled her safety belt. “I’ve got Danny and Kate,” Aaron would concede.

With two parents and three kids, there always seemed to be one child left unattended. It used to be that I would cut Kate’s meat and Aaron would help Danny. Now, during dinner, I sat on the couch nursing Tanner. “Kate, why aren’t you eating?” Aaron chastised. Kate looked up shyly, “Nobody cut my meat.”

The worst was the day we drove out of the neighborhood. I knew something felt off…“Go back! I left Tanner.” I unlocked the front door and came out carrying Tanner’s car seat. He’d been buckled in and was waiting on the living room floor to be carried to the car.

We carried on like this, completely off-kilter until a miraculous thing happened in July. Annice and Calvin went to Hawaii and left their three kids with us. We became parents to six kids under the age of nine. Annice showed up one week later with a gorgeous tan. I hadn’t brushed my own teeth in seven days. Going from six kids back to three seemed to reboot our system, and Aaron and I found a good rhythm balancing our own Danny, Kate, and Tanner.

Tanner was an easy baby an once again I began to wonder if being a mother was enough.  Should I be doing more? 

In the fall, Danny started preschool, Aaron went back to night school to become a Certified Financial Planner, and I started a part-time job selling advertising and writing articles for a local magazine. I thought it would be the perfect outlet for me—a way to keep my intellect sharpened and get out of the house a few hours a day. After two weeks, it was obvious the job situation wasn’t working. By the time I buckled the three kids into my car, dropped them off to three different locations, and drove twenty minutes to my sales area, I had forty minutes to contact business clients before it was time to pick up Danny from preschool.

“You’re always the last mom here,” Danny would say, the sweat dripping down his face from waiting outside for me.

One night in bed I leaned up on one elbow and told Aaron, “I need to quit my job.” I hoped he would say, “I agree. I don’t know how you keep up with three kids, working in the morning and teaching piano lessons in the afternoon.”

Instead, he said, “Why?”

“It’s too much,” I rambled. “I’m always late to pick up Danny, Tanner doesn’t get a good morning nap, and the money I make barely covers Kate’s babysitter. The kids are cranky. When I started working for the magazine, Tanner stopped sleeping through the night. I don’t think he’s getting enough milk. I’m tired. I’m falling asleep during piano lessons.”

“It’s only a few hours a week,” Aaron said.

“By the time I get everyone dressed, out the door, buckled into the car, dropped off and picked up again, it takes the whole morning.”

“You’re the one who wanted something productive to do,” Aaron offered.

I called my boss and told him my decision. “I wondered how you kept it going so long,” he said.

After that, I decided to slow down. Three kids took a lot of time. I needed to make a conscious effort not to over-schedule myself.

In December, Aaron asked if we could have his Client Christmas Party at our house.

“No,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because our house has only second-hand furniture and I have no idea what to cook for retired millionaires who have dined in the best restaurants around the world.”

“It wouldn’t have to be fancy,” Aaron argued. I held my ground.

The next day, while Aaron was at work, I saw Laiah sitting on my window sill. I hadn’t heard from her in a few months. “Aaron is disappointed with you. Your house should be more nicely decorated. That is your job as a homemaker. And you should know how to cater fancy work dinners. Your husband should be able to bring his clients home any time.”

A week after I declined hosting the client party, Aaron said, “Let’s drive to Utah for Christmas this year.”

“No,” I said again. “Why?”

“Because it’s been four years since we stayed home for Christmas. I want to have our own family Christmas at our own house where we can open presents and play with toys all day and never change out of our pajamas. I want to relax and enjoy Tanner’s first Christmas.”

“You can relax in Utah,” Aaron answered. I stood my ground.

Listen to the full chapter here: Chapter 10 

Listen to past chapters here: https://maleahwarner.com/podcasts/

 

Ch. 9 Lies of the Magpie

Ep. 31 BABY #3

In the meantime, I got an epidural that nearly paralyzed me for life.

Aaron fled to the furthest corner of the room and hid his face in his hands, peeking occasionally through his fingers to see if I was dead yet. The anesthesiologist inserted, pulled out, and reinserted the epidural needle four times. “You’re so skinny, there’s no fat to stick the needle into.” I didn’t think this was a good time to comment on my boniness.

Suddenly, with a five-inch needle searching its way around my spinal nervous system, I felt my entire abdominal area expand, like someone had opened an umbrella inside my pelvic bones. At that moment, everything on the inside of me urgently wanted to get outside of me.

“Aaahhh. Never…mind…the…epidural,” I said grimacing. “This… baby…is… coming……NOW.”

Tina dropped on top of me, bracing my shoulders in the gentlest tackle ever administered. “DO NOT MOVE.” she said, “You have to hold completely still.”

“Aaahhh. Stop the epidural. I can feel the baby coming.”

“Too late to stop now.” The anesthesiologist was not going to let this bony specimen get the best of him. “I’m almost finished.”

“Aaahhh!”

“Call the doctor,” Tina shouted to the hallway. She couldn’t make the call because she was holding me in a half nelson. “Hold still. He’s almost done.”

After an eternity, the anesthesiologist removed the needle and taped the tubing against my back. Tina rolled me gently; I winced as the epidural rubbed against the sheets “Aaahh.” More opening and Ooouuuuccchhh, something hard and round trying to squeeze through a hole ten times too small. “I can feel the baby’s head!”

“Don’t push. We have to wait for the doctor,” Tina ordered.

Seriously? Not with the waiting for the doctor, again.

“Lay on your side,” Tina helped me roll back. “Be strong and keep your legs together.” She should have told me that nine months ago.

“Does no one believe me? I. Really. Have. To. Puuush.”

Everyone in the room (except the anesthesiologist who’d disappeared from the room faster than a cub scout who’d broken the cookie jar), screamed in chorus, “DON’T PUSH.” This included Aaron. Whose side was he on anyway?

Telling a woman who has the burning need to push is like exploding Hoover Dam and telling the water to stay put. “We don’t need the doctor.” I pleaded. “I trust you, Tina. You deliver this baby.” I was thrashing around on the sheets.

“No, no. They don’t like us to do that.” She patted my head gently. “You can hold on. He’s on his way.” Tina put her hand over my ear and screamed, “Did anyone get through to the doctor?”

Was anybody even out in that hall? Finally, a desk clerk or maybe a janitor poked his head in the door, “He says he’s checking out at Walmart and will be here in ten minutes.”

Walmart? No one ever checks out of Walmart in ten minutes.

“Aaron, honey,” I looked up grimacing. I needed to push more than I’ve ever needed to do anything in my entire life. “One push and this baby will be here. You can catch it. I trust you.”

Aaron backed towards the corner again waving his hands in front as he retreated. “No, no. Wait for the doctor.”

Tina rubbed my back, “This will sound strange, but if you curl into a fetal position, it will help relieve the pressure.” I tucked my legs up to my big belly pretending that the lower half of my body was not attached to the upper half. “Remember to breathe,” Tina encouraged.

I inhaled and sighed as the epidural medication kicked in.

“The doctor is on the elevator,” the janitor/clerk stood in the door holding a phone. Tina opened a cupboard and grabbed a surgical gown and gloves. The janitor/clerk helped Tina stretch out the gown like a ribbon across a finish line. “He’s on the floor. Get ready, and in five…four…three…two…”

The door swung open and Dr. Juarez walked into the gown and gloves, crouched down, looked side to side and yelled, “Go.”

That was my signal to snap the ball, but I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. Did Dr. Juarez bypass the sink? What happened to official scrub-in policy? I didn’t let my own husband touch me if he didn’t wash his hands after shopping at Walmart.

If I weren’t such a lily-livered coward, intimidated by his medical degree, I would have asked him to turn back around and scrub. With soap. Instead, I stared.

“Go ahead. Push,” Dr. Juarez ordered.

I just mastered not pushing and now he wanted me to push! Having a baby can really give a girl schizophrenia. I felt strangely floaty and heavy at the same time, like a concrete cloud. I gave a wimpy push.

“No. Wait for a contraction. Push during the contractions.” Dr. Juarez rolled his eyes like I was the biggest idiot excuse of a delivering mother he had ever seen.

“I can’t feel when I’m having contractions,” I said. My abdomen was as still and peaceful as a glass lake with no wind. The epidural was working and I had found my happy place.

“I’ll tell you when you’re having a contraction.” Dr. Juarez watched the monitor. “Now. PUSH!”

“I am pushing.”

“Push harder. Come on. Put some determination into it.”

My determination skipped town about the time I realized we hadn’t brought any DVDs. Ten minutes earlier I could have sneezed the baby out. Instead, we endured fifty-five minutes of everyone yelling at me to push harder and me shouting back, “I am pushing…I think…I can’t really tell. Will I ever be able to feel my legs, again?”

A head and shoulders appeared just before five o’clock. Dr. Juarez declared the delivery time with unspoken emphasis that he had predicted exactly the time of birth. He was also gloating in the fact that he’d broken his own record for longest episiotomy. He stood up from stitching, and I imagined that I looked like a kindergarten class’s first patchwork quilt project. At this point, when one would expect a hearty “Congratulations!” Dr. Juarez said, “The nurse will give you the information for direct deposit to my bank account. Holidays are double time.” Then he looked in the mirror, wiped blue powder off his mouth, and disappeared into the hall.

The epidural had been stronger than Schwarzenegger on steroids. My legs were cinderblocks. Aaron helped to hold the baby on my chest. “Hello there little man.” I traced the shape of his nose and cheeks while he blinked his eyes. “Welcome to this big, wide world. I’m so happy you made it here.”

Ch. 8 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner Memoir

Ep. 30 Invisible

Last night when I packed my suitcase, I opened my linen closet to find my bag of travel size items which I keep in a plastic storage bin on the bottom shelf.  A wave of shame made me tremble and I retrieved the bag, closed the lid and stuffed the container back in the closet as fast as possible. I rarely think about the closet incident, but every now and then something will trigger the memory and I’m washed with humiliation. Was that really me? Did I really lock my children in their bedrooms and hide in the bottom of a closet? 

Aaron and I have grown closer over the past four years, but he doesn’t know about the closet. I don’t want to freak him out. Nor have I ever told him about driving away from home in the middle of the night planning to change my identity and start a new life in Vegas.

When Kate was about 18 months old, I heard Marie Osmond give an interview talking about her experience with postpartum depression. “One night I got in the car and started to drive,” she said. “I didn’t know where I was going or what I was going to do. All I knew was that I was unfit to be a mother and that everyone—my kids, my husband, even the Osmond family would be better off without me.”

I took in every word. I’d always felt a tiny connection to Marie Osmond. We’re both Mormon and we both have a lot of brothers. And at about the same time, we both got in our cars and drove away from our babies. She traveling north on the Pacific Coast Highway. Me traveling northwest towards towards Las Vegas.

That was the first time I’d ever heard the term “postpartum depression.”

At the end of the interview the audience applauded. She was hailed as courageous for sharing her story, for talking about a taboo subject. She’d had postpartum depression and audiences applauded her for it.

I don’t know if I had postpartum depression.

But I do know, that no one applauded.

Nobody even knew.

I was no Marie Osmond. All the attention, the demands of notoriety were a burden for her. My burden was that nobody noticed me.

Nothing I did was admirable or worthy of attention.

I was invisible.

(continued on podcast)

Click HERE to listen to the rest of Chapter 8

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Ch 7 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner

Ep. 29  The White House

When I think back about the year after Kate’s birth, my memories come with the wonder of Dr. Jeckyl and the taint of  Mr. Hyde. I was genuinely happy; I wasn’t faking happy. I wasn’t “happy on the surface and sad underneath.” I was happy to the marrow of my bones happy. I experienced joy I didn’t know possible. I had never before known how having children in my life could be so magical.

Danny thrilled me. He was smart, inquisitive, playful, and interactive. He learned quickly, could recognize alphabet letters, learned new sounds daily. He loved dogs and begged to watch Disney’s 101 Dalmatians on VHS every day. We dressed him as a spotted Dalmatian for Halloween.

Kate was the most beautiful baby, strawberry-shaped lips and rose petal cheeks. She was so pink and petite that no one ever mistook her for a boy. She was tiny and strong. She could lift and turn her head a few days after birth and she learned to roll, scoot, and crawl quickly. When she discovered her laugh, it came out hearty and full from deep in the belly, which made her, and the rest of us, laugh harder. Every day she smiled and laughed and flapped her arms the moment Aaron came in the door from work, knowing he would play with and tickle her.

In November, when Kate was six weeks old, nearly all of our family came from Utah for her baby blessing. (A baby blessing is the Mormon version of a Christening, but without the baptism and Godparents.)  Even my brother Kevin made the ten-hour drive, which was miraculous because his health seemed to be getting more fragile.

Kevin was eight years older than me, two years older than Annice. He had turned 33 days before Kate’s birth. He had Down’s Syndrome and a hole in his heart (a common complication of Down’s Syndrome which doctors repair today, but not in 1966 when Kevin was born.). His mind was sharp, but his holey heart struggled to pump enough oxygen to his extremities. After the long drive, his fingers and toes were dark purple. When he arrived at my apartment door, he enveloped me with the largeness of his hug and an exuberant Hello!

“Con-grat-u-la-tions,” he pronounced each syllable deliberately.

“Do you want to meet your niece?” I asked.

He sat on the blue loveseat, situated his body, positioned his arms into the shape of a cradle and smiled up at me, ready to receive this marvelous package. I balanced Kate in his arms steadying her head on his crooked elbow.

“She is beee-au . . . bee-au . . . bee-au-ti-ful.” It took three tries to get his favorite word to come out the way he wanted. He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

(Continued on the Audio. Click Play Button Above)

Listen to the rest of Ch. 7. Click Here.

Listen to Ch 6 HERE

Ch 6 Lies of the Magpie

my journey healing through postpartum depression

Ep 28 Mothering Failure

We brought Kate home and began adjusting to life as a family of four. Danny thought Kate was a toy that squeaked, moved, and cried if you poked it in the eyes. We set up a playpen in the family room—a protective perimeter to separate Danny from Kate. Aaron’s trip to St. Louis had proven profitable, he had passed his tests and was an officially licensed stock broker. His license came with a marvelous perk—a legitimate office of his own, a place to get off his feet during the day and here’s the best part, it came complete with air conditioning. With getting an office, Aaron had permission from Goodwin to hire his own personal office assistant. “I am going to spend eight hours a day with this person, and it will likely be a woman, so I want you to help me interview the candidates.”  Go back to 4 and clarify when I visit Karly that it’s in a temporary office

On the first day in his new office, Aaron came downstairs showered, freshly shaven, and dressed in a new shirt and tie. “You look like a man with important places to go and people to see.” I sat at our card table wearing wrinkled pajamas, my hair scooped up in a messy bun on top of my head, spooning oatmeal into Danny’s mouth. Kate was sleeping in the playpen next to the table, and Danny kept pointing at her with questioning eyes. “It’s Kate,” I’d say.

Aaron kissed the top of my messy bun. “You’re down here early.” He sounded so chipper. I wanted to go back to bed.

“Kate woke up at five to eat. Danny was wide awake at six. He’s been down here playing. I tried to keep him quiet.”

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Aaron poured some juice. “Did Kate wake up in the night?”

“At two thirty and then at five. Congratulations on your new office. Your first day with a real desk and air conditioning. This is a big day.”

“Yes it is. Have fun here. What are you guys going to do today?”

I didn’t know how to answer. What did he think I should do today? What did he think I could do today? In between hooking a six-pound human to my chest every three hours and stopping eleven-month-old Danny from running over his new sister with his fire truck, what did he expect from me?

Did he expect that I would read Barney books to Danny and tell him the name of every plastic alphabet letter he brought to me. Because that’s what I did.

Did he expect that I would wince and cry each time Kate started to suck on my cracked, bleeding nipples? Because that’s what I did.

Did he expect that I would lay Kate down on our bed and fall sound asleep next to her?

Because that’s what I did.

Laiah and I talked most often when I took Kate downstairs for her 2:30 am feedings. Laiah never seemed to need sleep like I did. I sat in the rocking recliner staring foggy-eyed at the bucket of Danny’s toys in the corner. In the dim, mysterious glow of the lamp light, I expected at any moment for the toys to come to life and perform a midnight matinee in the middle of the family room floor.

“I’m not winning any prizes in the mothering arena, am I?” I whispered to Laiah while I leaned my head against the recliner waiting for Kate to finish. “There’s no report card. How do I know if I’m doing this right? What tells me how I measure compared to other women?”

Laiah knew the answer. “The mothering judges aren’t as direct. You have to watch for subtle signs from people around you. They may not come straight out and tell you what they think, but watch their actions and listen for the underlying meaning of what they say, especially Aaron, and you’ll have a good idea of how you rank in your performance as a mother.”

“Nancy, a lady at church, went two weeks overdue. She said I was lucky that I only had eight month pregnancies.”

Laiah nodded, “People will rightly think that you weaseled your way out of those hardest, last weeks of pregnancy.”

“Does Aaron think that?” I asked worried.

“Aaron never fully believed you about the bed rest. He thought you were milking the situation. The bed rest and the false labor embarrassed him. It made him realize that he married a weak woman.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“You just need to open your eyes and pay attention to Aaron’s cues. What was his reaction after you gave birth to Kate? Did he say you were brave? Did he say you did a good job?”

Click to Listen to Full Chapter 6

Chapter 5 Lies of the Magpie

Maleah Warner

Ep 27 Bed Rest for an Overachiever

In August I had my first prenatal appointment with my new Arizona obstetrician.

The week leading up to the appointment I had started having contractions. I’d hoped the preterm labor I’d experienced with Danny was a fluke, a one-time thing. No such luck. It seemed my uterus was prone to contract more than a team of commissioned corporate lawyers.

“You’re twenty nine weeks and already dilated,” Dr. Magnuson said with a grim expression. “Was you last baby premature?”

“No. He was born at 37-weeks and was perfectly fine. No complications.” I didn’t like where this conversation was going. Dr. Magnuson sent me to Labor & Delivery for monitoring. After two hours they sent me home with a prescription for Brethine and instructions to limit my physical activity.

The next day I didn’t take Danny for our morning stroller walk. I didn’t push him in the playground swing. I didn’t vacuum or scrub bathrooms. We didn’t go to the library or the grocery store. We didn’t go swimming. At naptime I didn’t carry Danny up to bed, but knelt behind as he practiced crawling up the stairs on his own. 

This new routine of non-doing was okay for a solid three days before we were both stir crazy and ornery.

 

The next morning, as usual, Danny was wide awake at 6:00 a.m. Our ever predictable early bird. For convenience, and to not wake up Aaron, I did carry him downstairs where I changed his diaper, fixed him a bottle of formula, and parked him in front of the television feeling grateful that PBS started their children’s programming at 6:30 a.m. with Caillou (in my opinion the second-worst children’s show in the universe only beat out by Teletubbies) followed by an hour of Sesame Street at 7:00 a.m. I fell back asleep on the floral beast and woke to the strains of the Elmo’s World them song at 7:45 a.m. as Aaron quietly closed our front door behind him.

He left without kissing me goodbye.

Immediately I called Laiah. “I think Aaron’s mad or annoyed with me.” I told her. She hurried over and we had an extensive conversation. I couldn’t do much of anything else.

“You can hardly blame him,” she replied. “He’s outside all day every day burning his butt off making money while you sit here in this cushy apartment doing nothing.”

The broken springs on the couch poked into my back. There really was no comfortable position on that couch;  if the floral beast was anything, it wasn’t cushy. “I didn’t ask to sit in an apartment all day,” I argued my case to Laiah. “I didn’t ask to have preterm labor and to be put on limited activity. I would one hundred times rather wash dishes and run errands than be cooped up all day, doesn’t Aaron realize that?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Laiah said. “Aaron’s working hard. You have to suffer equally or your marriage won’t be equal. It’s not fair if Aaron is sweating in the sun while you’re at home relaxing.”

Chapter 4 Lies of the Magpie

Memoir story of my journey healing through postpartum depression and chronic.

Ep. 26 Stay At Home Mother

The word default has two meanings. One, it connotes a failure to meet an obligation or expectation. And this is what happened. By the time I told Aaron the news about our imminent arrival, our internet store had still not made a single sale. We had a hefty monthly business loan payment and zero business income. Default hints at a lapse of judgement, a miss, an overlook, a mistake. But it couldn’t have been Aaron’s fault for enthusiastically jumping onboard when I wanted to buy the same internet retail package that I was selling to business-minded adventurers from Idaho to Iowa. Nor how could Galaxy Mall be blamed for believing that every person with a home computer would be clicking and ordering before the year’s end? Who could have known it would take twenty years to shift the public’s habits away from brick and mortar shopping? Nobody else inside Galaxy Mall was making any sales. My company went under and I found myself pregnant, unemployed, and working assembly-line temp jobs.

But the word default can also mean a predetermined setting that the programmer has chosen the mechanism will automatically revert to when no other alternative is selected by the user. Clocks revert to midnight, calculators revert to zero, computers revert to basic programming. Mothers revert to caring for their offspring. We house, feed, and grow them within our bodies for 9 months, naturally we provide for their sleep, shelter, and food. This is mother’s instinct at its strongest. It’s our default setting.

Click to listen to Chapter 3