Vocal gives

Vocal gives an outlet for stories that should perhaps remain untold because people who are supposed to care don’t want to be bothered by the trivial matters of your mundane life or the shared memories that bore them. While that is too often a harsh reality, I remember a time when my children wanted to hear every detail I had to share. I remember a time when they would run to the door screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” because their father had arrived.

While I as mother never got to hear that, I did get to imagine it. I’ve spent my adult time raising 7 children and while I thought I had both selfish and noble reasons for doing my job as mother well, I feel disillusioned now that the finish line is in sight wondering if I did anything right at all. It has become a new season for pursuing a new career.

Since I’ve listened to squabbles for so long and was forced to be a judge without pay, I decided in that spirit I would begin college again as a Graduate Student taking Criminal Justice course. That was interesting and found myself switching to a Juris Masters wondering if I could learn logic puzzles well enough to pass my LSAT test sufficiently enough to get into ‘real’ law school.

Yet, that is utter foolishness, because I still cannot win the most basic arguments of doing homework, sweeping the floor, or washing the dishes. Still, I am also an online ESL teacher whose students’ families send me gifts out of appreciation for letting their children practice English with me. As the adage goes: It’s the darndest thing.

I can close my eyes and hear the children running outside in joy before a squabble would blow in. I can still hear the chickens clucking and the cow mooing as we showed them where our food comes from, and the responsibility of living life as self-sufficient as some can be in the modern world. Sometimes, I think I can even smell the barn needing to be cleaned with the fresh straw afterward.

I can feel the shadow of the gliding peacocks silently floating by from the elm tree to the ground knowing I was blessed then, and I am blessed now. And yet, my inner child is heartbroken at the end of the story unfolding in front of me during this shifting season. So it is, on more days than not, I must reach down even deeper to find the sparkle of laughter that used to rise so easily, like the day the insurance adjuster stopped by unannounced on the day that I was quickly building a shelter for the animals.

There was to be a hailstorm possibly on the next day and it was that task I was tackling when he simply showed up. The youngest daughter was swinging in the tire swing. As the man walked up to me, I put in the last screw before asking him what I could do for him. The hair that could have been a long bang caught in the drill, sucking it up ever so neatly to my forehead.

Without missing a beat, I stood up with my hand on the drill and my drill to my forehead. It must have looked like Shrek’s L on the forehead, but I simply asked what I could do for him. In reply, he explained his purpose, during which my daughter fell off the tire swing. I didn’t move or react beyond looking at her. He was not aware that I was stuck.

She was not damaged even though she did run crying for the house. Finally, he paused sensing there was an issue asking if I was ok and if I needed anything. It was then that the straight face faltered, and laughter won out. Without hesitation I stated, “How about some more insurance?” as I began to untangle the drill from my head. That hair had slurped itself around the tool like spaghetti into the mouth holding tight without forgiveness. It’s those moments when we must stop and laugh, or we will explode.

Sometimes life simply sucks. Something can cause a lot of pain without causing much damage and yet it can tangle us like we are damaged. As I look back over my almost 40-year career of raising children, I can only stand horrified at the times I should have laughed and did not or laughed when I should not have done so either. I wish I would have been a better mother, but I also wish I had been a worse mother as well. Either way, on that day, I got what I asked for: the insurance man gave me more insurance and the bill to go with it which included laughter for free. And that is medicine that is readily available tucked within the memory of a day when the children were happy, and all was almost well.