July 14, 2001

• Weeds -

  
  

  Do you know the difference between a weed and regular grass?  In my yard the difference is about twelve inches.  The same grass that I nurture, water, feed, and trim becomes a week the second it crosses the line into my flowerbed.

  
  

  As I was pulling the weeds yesterday, I stopped and looked at the tender blades of grass.  They are the same sweet grasses that give me such pleasure when I walk barefoot across them in the evening.  But, once they move into my flowerbed, these beautiful stalks become a menace.  They choke the life from my flowers and drain the soil of the nutrients that give beauty to the blooms.

  
  

  I wonder if there aren't other weeds in my life.  Activities, and priorities that are good in their place but which become a menace if they are allowed out of their proper sphere.  It's good that I enjoy a clean house.  When the need to keep a nice home outweighs the need to attend to my children's need for attention, it become a weed.  It's good that I enjoy writing.  If I'm busy writing and my kids are spending an inordinate amount of time playing Nintendo, none of us may realize it at the time, but we are letting weeds into our relationship.  Oh, man do I love to quilt.  (Expecially the piecing part.)  it's calming to me to solve the math and arrange the patterns.  But do you know how much time it takes to put together a quilt block?

  
  

  I wonder if some of the people in my life are weeds.  Now bear with me here.  I love people.  I love my friends.  When a friend calls with a need, I generally drop what I'm doing and go to help in any way I can.  But some of those "needs" are really just "wants."  I'm not very good at setting limits with my friends, "This isn't a good time, the kids and I have something planned, can I do it tomorrow?"

  
  

  It's a spiritual principle that what goes around comes around.  In Christian theology it's called the  "Law of the Harvest."  Whatever a man plants, he reaps.  The corollary of that is that you reap 1) What you plant, 2) Later than you plant and 3) more than you plant.  I had a moment this past week of reaping some of what I had planted in the lives of my children.

  
  

  I thought I was paying attention to them.  They were playing their new Nintendo game.  I was in and out of the living room.  I stood at the couch and folded laundry.  I ran the vacuum.  I walked through between my room and the dining room a dozen times.  I reset the timer ever 15 minutes to regulate whose turn it was to have the controller.  (Yes, they could have played it as a two player game, but if you have kids, you understand why they need the timer.)

  
  

  One of the things I did while they were playing was check my email.  I didn't think I was on the computer very long, and between reading and answering, I went in to make sure they were still doing what they "sounded" like they were doing.  However, when I was finished and went back into the living room to sit with them, I realized that 1) someone had taken a pencil and decorated extensively on the white walls.  And 2) a chair from the dining room was dragged over to the cabinet where I keep the candy.  The chocolate stains around Tucker's mouth were a giveaway that he'd scored a major coup.

  
  

  Doesn't sound like a big deal does it?  But you see, only two weeks ago we had an incident while I was gone and the boys were in the care of a sitter.  Tucker helped himself to some antihistamine medication from the top shelf of the cabinet in my bathroom.  He thought that it looked like candy.  When I came home, the packages were lying around empty on the counter.  Our best guess is that he ate 11 tablets.  He's a small 4-yr.-old.  The sitter hadn't realized that he was spending too long in the bathroom.  Since he's a little boy who has recently developed a need for privacy in the bathroom, she was trying to be sensitive.  He spent the night in the intensive care unit hooked up to heart monitors.  He didn't appear to suffer any harm from the episode.  (I figure that the fact that he took a 12 hour release form of the medication saved him from getting the full effect all at once, which would have been much more serious.)

  
  

  So when I saw the evidence - pencil marks and candy wrappers - that Tucker had capitalized on a moment of less than 100% attention from Mommy - - - I had a full blown panic attack.  For the rest of the week, I've had my children no more than an arm's length from me.  And I've learned something.  We've developed some bad habits.

  
  

  You may have guessed from my writing that I wander around in a fog sometimes while I work out an idea in my mind.  Well, the fog cleared for me on Tuesday morning.  And what I've seen in the clear light is disturbing.  Thinking is a good thing, but out of the boundaries of the necessary attention I must focus on my kids, thinking can be a weed.   While I'm distracted by my thoughts, my children have learned to take advantage of my inattention.

  
  

  In the past three days, I'm amazed at how much they've tried to "get away" with.  I thought I had pretty good kids - and they are really - pretty good kids.  But, my, oh, my, they are sneaky.  So it seems that sneakiness is the fruit I'm seeing from the habits I've planted in their lives.  They bide their time assured that I'll be distracted sooner or later.  So I have to pull the weeds out.  I'm on my hands and knees ripping up grasses and habits by the roots. 

  
  

  I may not be able to post daily weblogs to my Xanga site, and I may get behind reading my favorites.  But, I'll catch up evenings and weekends when my husband can be in charge of the kids for a few minutes.  I'm not going crazy and killing ALL the grass just because a few blades are coming up in places they don't belong.    I'll still be writing and quilting, gardening and thinking.  After all, the whole family enjoys a nice looking lawn of soft grass. 

  • 12:01 pm
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