Marla's Alphabet Soup

There are seasons in every life. Some seasons are easy, others are interesting, some are boring, some are painful, and some seem to never end.

When I was a young mom, I thought the diapers and sleepless nights and painfully repetitive answers to my toddlers’ questions would never end.

Then what I call the “ballfield years” arrived. Summers were long and hot and sticky and long. Saturday mornings on a field or in a gym watching my child was sweet for about ten minutes and then it was exhausting.

All of a sudden my life transitioned into the long, slow goodbye.

Parenting adolescents is the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. Harder than moving out on my own. Harder than adjusting to marriage. Harder than moving to my husband’s hometown and starting my life over—again. Adolescents are still egocentric. The transition from egocentric to self-sufficient is tricky and confusing for them. They are sitting at the grown-ups table without a kid’s menu. The rules they always thought were black and white are suddenly gray and elastic. Teaching a child to solve his own problems and deal with his own emotions is terrifying. Overnight I went from the one person who could make it all better, to the one person who cannot fix anything under any circumstance.

The scariest part about raising an adolescent child is the discovery of whether or not you and your spouse actually made it out of adolescence yourselves! Thankfully we did, but it is so easy to fall into the old habits that used to plague your own growing phase. The well worn, “Who’s the 12 year old here?” still echoes in these walls.

This long goodbye—as I have renamed adolescence—is for me, a joyful sorrow. It is like living in a perpetual state of the oxymoronic: seriously funny and ridiculouly serious. I have existed in this state of joyful sorrow, training our sons to leave us, for over a decade. The last bird is going to launch in less than a year. I am so happy for him and so sad for me all at the same exact moment.

The season is going to change again and I have no idea what to do next. What windows will open when all the doors are closed? I still have half a century of living to do and I refuse to live a half life. I am however, completely frozen in place just now. I practiced letting go well for years: going to school, riding the bus, sleepovers, summer camp, driving a car, moving away to college. I learned to let go so well that I have forgotten how to start again.

Maybe what I want is an epilogue to our story, but in real life there is only the afterword.

Thanks for loving me through these next seasons dear ones. I am boldly asking for help. I am genuinely living through humor. And I always hold onto hope.

Love y’all, Marla

Dearest,

You are 18 today. Time went so fast. We’ve had a time of it over the last several years. Adolescence hit hard and mean and so completely differently from your early years that it felt like whiplash. But with prayer, a throwback music playlist, and Chick-fil-a, we made it. As we move into this new phase of adulting, it will be hard for me to take my hands off of the wheel. It is your ship not mine. As you said when you were two years old, “I fick its [fix it] my own self.”

You were always my sweet snuggle bunny. From the start, you just hung out tucked under my chin on my right arm as I did everything—chased your brother, made dinner, did laundry, talked on the phone, all of it. When not in my arms, you lived in your baby swing in the kitchen of our old house keeping me company. You never protested the stroller when I put you there with cheerios while I chased your brother. You were such an easy going, sweet tempered toddler. I always said if you had come first I would have had six children.

You have so many talents and gifts and unique proclivities. One of your early ones (that you still have today) is the ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, in any situation. You slept on a moving seadoo, a moving float/tube behind a boat, in a 4×4 side-by-side, in a golf cart, on the bleachers, on the floor, and my personal favorite, on a ski slope waiting for pickup from ski school. I’m just a weird enough mom to have picture proof of it all, because it was so precious to me. It became a family tradition to see where you would sleep next!

I have never known a child with as much emotional intelligence as you. From the start you always cared more deeply than any other child about anything. Be it a sick friend, a hurt pet, a disagreement between friends, a playground injustice, an exasperated teacher moment, a broken rule, being passed over, overshadowed, or dismissed, you were always ready to defend, extend love, forgiveness, patience, or just use plain good sense. To this day, I am not sure you realize how incredibly unique and brave this gift of emotional intelligence is. You see people differently. If the world loved like you, it would be a far happier more generous loving place. You make us all better humans.

When you went to kindergarten I was inconsolable. I teared up for weeks. When you went to middle school I was so very proud. Bless it, you spent a large majority of your middle school years as a COVID kiddo online or in a mask, but you seemed to thrive anyway. When you started driving, I was torn between the elation of freedom from carpool and feeling distraught over the loss of my forever buddy. You were my ride or die warrior for 16 years.

Now you are a high school senior and I don’t even know how I feel. You seem nonchalant about it. I am a hot mess.

Parenting a second born is just as unique as parenting a first born. There is the sense that I’ve done this before and I know what’s coming. Yet, in many ways it’s like parenting for the first time all over again. I was in a different stage of life when you came. We were no longer in residency. We made a home in TN. We had a three year old and a mortgage. You were the cherry on top of a life full of blessings.

Oh my darling, you have been the absolute joy of my universe and I am so proud and happy and scared and already a little bit lonely. I cannot wait to see where you will go and what you will do with this last year of high school and beyond. The next chapter awaits. I’m ready for that new journey too—but not yet.

Enjoy being 18 and all of its privileges. Respect the responsibilities that come with being 18 and own them. I am forever in your corner. You’ve got this.

Go with God my baby boy. There is no one like you in the whole world.

Love you so big,

Mom

It’s July 7th already? So far, it feels like the summer that wasn’t. I haven’t had much to post, because, well, I’m reeling from family medical issues, the intractable nature of our country, and the recent tragedy in Texas that isn’t over yet. A friend of mine lost her battle with cancer leaving four teenagers. I feel like I’m living in a movie with a doomsday script where the writer cannot decide on which problem to focus.

In the midst of all these plot lines, I know with certainty that life is just life. We have to live it, make peace with it, and find the goodness in it. While I don’t have to remind myself to be grateful every day, I do have to remind myself that my response to difficulty is my choice.

I have so many reasons to keep going and ride this bumpy ride of life. I have my health. I have the best of friends who recently fed us for a whole month. Check-ins, calls, texts, and visits buoyed us daily. Medical recoveries are going well for all parties—even minor victories are victories!

The country feels like it is going to hell, but honestly, has anyone ever not felt that way at least once in the last 50 years? As precarious as democracy feels right now, we’re still America. I’m going to keep showing up for my neighbor in the best ways that I can and vote every chance I get.

I don’t even have words for the families in Texas. After the total annihilation of Western NC from flooding last fall, I can’t even imagine how Texas is coping with such a dramatic flood. What if that had been Quaker Lake Camp when I was 8 and my sister and I and all of our friends had been washed away? Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer, for everyone.

Hoping for some clarity in the last half of summer. Thanks for wading through the crazy with me dear readers. I’m grateful for you and happy to be on the earth with you.

Holding you in love and healing light. Love ya’ll so big,

Marla

Maycember was quite a challenge this year, hence the late post. Love Y’all, M

Time for my yearly Mother’s Day post where I bask in the triumph of my boys turning into good humans. I thank the friends who help me along the way every day. I give a nod of gratitude to my mother-in-law. And I make allowances for my own mother. I’m certain that one day my sons will chagrin as they talk about my shortcomings and those crazytown moments of their youth with me.

I can think of no other choice in the world more frightening, dangerous, or world-changing than motherhood. Truly, no other change to one’s life and body is more significant. For those who cannot or choose not to become mothers, there is no other position in the world that can causes more personal strife than not being a mother. As women, sometimes it seems like we just can’t win. No situation, no place, and no person in the world receives more judgment, more opinions, more negativity, or more blame than a woman of childbearing age. It’s almost as if the whole unique proposition of motherhood is somehow taken out of our hands and given to other people who think they know better in all stages of our lives from 12 to 52. And I want to know why.

First of all, it’s nobody’s business. However, as humans we have somehow allowed it to become everybody’s business. When are you going to start a family (um, highly personal with a multitude of answers)? When are you going to have another one? OR, don’t they know how that happens (when there are say four or five children)?

Then there is the visible/invisible dichotomy. Women become visible when they are pregnant, or holding on to toddlers at Target, or cheering on their kids at a sporting event, graduation, weddings. Perhaps that’s why so many women start pushing for grandchildren. Their previous visibility has faded and they are ready to be back out there in the limelight.

Ah, but that limelight, however fleeting, is harsh, flourescent, and glaring. The imperfect moments of life provide a running commentary for others. Glad that’s not my kid running around like that. Did you see what her daughter was wearing (note: “her” daughter, not where’s the dad)? She’s really let herself go. What is she feeding those kids (again, “she” as if a dad can’t make a peanut butter sandie, or slip the kids some candy)? Then there is the ultimate stressor, the crying baby on an airplane is your baby. I could go on. The amount of judgment is limitless.

The comments we have allowed as a society to sink in and become part of our everyday psyche are truly terrifying. It takes years and years and years to root out those memories embedded deep in our amygdala. I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to judging mothers. In fact, I’ve said everything I wrote here. Shame on me. For someone who feels the judgment as deeply as I do, how dare I even think it? Shame on me.

I am a mother of two sons. I am an aunt to five nieces. I have given hugs, fixed booboos, called out behavior, celebrated victories, counseled, questioned, and fed more children than I can count as an educator and volunteer. I run the spectrum of feelings about being a mother every single day of my life. There is nothing I will ever do as important and impactful, while at the same time invisible and undervalued as being a mother. Motherhood is the most complicated state of being that there is. The act of mothering is always in the present tense. Motherhood cannot be quantified because love is a living, breathing, ever-expanding state of being. “Love you to the moon and back” implies without limits, but I’m sure a child has calculated the distance as some point!

So, Happy Late Mother’s Day to all women in the world in the roles of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends, church moms, teacher moms, volunteer moms, babysitters, and any other role that spreads the love.

Marla

At the end of every school year, I emailed my students’ parents Mrs. Marla’s Summer Playbook of how tos, what fors, and why nots for continued speech and language practice at home. In retrospect, it was too long, too overwhelming, and likely never read by any of them. After twenty plus years of trying to cover too much, I have boiled my summer list down to three things: rest, play, and read.

Most parents do not have the opportunity for summers off. Once school is out, many folks have to leave their children with grandmas, babysitters, nannies, older siblings, or in more formal daycare situations and go to work. Lots of families make the summer camp circuit. Regardless of what you do or have to do this summer, try to REST.

There was a time when I wanted my boys to have something to do every second—baseball, swim lessons, piano lessons, art camp, and on and on and on. We could have rested! I’m not saying these opportunities were not valuable or not worth the hefty price tag. I’m saying, rest! Take naps. Be bored. Go to bed early. Sleep late and watch cartoons on Saturday. Go to church and eat dinner with grandma on Sunday, and then nap again. Our bodies and our children’s bodies are begging for rest. Unplug. Tune out. Lay in the grass and watch the clouds; rest.

I am afraid that play is a dying art. We do not play anymore. What happened? Children need to play. They need to get messy and scrape their knees. They need to spill things and build things. Play is children’s work; it is how they learn.

I once made a one sheet for my parents of no-prep, no-prop games to play with their children. Examples include: Hide-n-seek. Freeze tag. Red Rover. Red Light Green Light. Mother May I? Simon Says. I Spy. Pass the Secret. Telephone. Most of these games are oldies-but-goodie-games we played with each other a long time ago.

I am not a crafty person, but I love scissors and glue on a rainy day. While glitter and slime are banned from my own house, I do love play dough, paint, sticks, mud, sand, water, markers, stamps, stickers, and crayons.

Never underestimate the intrigue of kitchen pots and pans and tupperware and cups—just put the knives and forks out of reach. Banging on lids and stacking cups and opening and closing drawers bring real joy to toddlers. Pretend tea parties and “playing” chef turn into real cooking practice and learning how to make simple things. Following a recipe is natural math practice and a lesson in patience.

Dear friends, you know my love of the written word. I need not belabor it here. Read to your children. Let them see you reading. Visit the library together. Make up funny stories and share them. Illustrate your favorite stories. Challenge your child to write down a favorite story told by a grandparent, family member, or friend. Make up alternate endings to books you read together. The power of reading is infinite.

Have the best summer friends. Enjoy your families. Enjoy your pets. I hope you get a little me time too.

Love Y’all, Marla

“Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.” – Ossie Davis*

I recently saw a video clip from Josh Groban’s speech at the 2024 Jimmy Awards on Instagram. He said, “hire a theatre kid!”

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C85SaYbvio-/?igsh=MThxdDdicnh1a2Zocg==

I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Groban. Theater kids have grit. Theater kids have endurance. And theater kids love life.

So many of the most important life lessons I have learned over the years came from from my time in musical theatre:

• Be on time.
• Be prepared.
• Be brave.
• Take direction with grace.
• Learn your notes.
• Learn your lines.
• Learn your co-actors lines.
• Know your audience.
• Connect with your audience.
• You can perform sick.
• You can perform tired.
• Performing sick and tired too often will give you mononucleosis, so learn when to stop—preferrably before you get mono, not after.
• Being a diva can and will backfire on you.
• Understudies and Swings are the most valuable cast members you have in the show.
• Help with the set, the costumes, the sound, the lights, and the marketing—you never know when you’ll need to know that stuff.
• Thank those who make the set, the costumes, the sound, the lights, and the marketing—without them you have no stage and no audience.
• You can sing and dance with the man who broke your heart.
• You can even sing and dance with the man whose heart you broke.
• Learn to Fail and then fail spectacularly—it’s a better story that way.

I think life is much like a musical. We love our favorite characters so much because they reflect back to us the human condition. Feeling seen from the seats when someone on stage sings about love, or rants about hate, or cries about loss is real and precious and divine. And our need to be heard by those sitting in the audience is just as strong. The theatre is more than just entertainment. The shared connection with each other is what makes us human.

“Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.” Martha Graham*

Go see a musical dear ones. Experience the energy of opening night. Feel that flutter in your belly as the lights go down and the curtain comes up. You will not be disappointed. If you don’t break out into song on your way home after a show, well, I’ll always love you, but we will never be kindred spirits.

Break A Leg Y’all, Marla

*Quotes sourced from https://kendavenport.com/100-quotes-every-theater-producer-playwright-director-actor-etc-must-read/

I have had the most amazing “God winks” in the last few days. Last Thursday I attended the Love Wins luncheon with guest speaker Annie F. Downs. Sunday’s sermon by Dave Graybeal reiterated what Annie said—in more biblical terms. And today I read a beautiful post by a dear friend of mine about her latest stage in life entitled Between two Kingdoms. When God speaks my friends, I try to listen.

In my opinion our lives are one long balancing act of “both and”. Perhaps this is why I have a difficult time with absolutes. Life is “both and” at the same time all the time. One can experience joy and sorrow at the same time. One can hold grief and delight at the same time. One can experience hate and love at the same time. For believers, the tension of the kingdom here and now and the kingdom yet to come is palpable and mysterious—at the same time.

Annie Downs is a fantastic speaker, podcaster, and author. I am reading her book, “That Sounds Fun” which is all about, wait for it, having fun. The whys and hows of having fun in life are essential to our wellbeing. Having fun does not mean the absence of pain, or guilt, or sadness, or grief, or sorrow, or frustration. Annie proposes that having fun fills those voids and gaps in our lives where we want “something” WITHOUT ignoring what is causing the need for filling those holes in the first place. Fun can be vulnerable, liberating, connecting, and joyous. Fun can help us hold space for the difficult things in our lives. Instead of running from difficulty, let’s embrace it with a little fun. It sounds counterintuitive, but I promise you, she’s on to something.

Pastor Dave’s sermon grounded in Luke 19:29-44, was about the juxtaposition of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with his knowledge of the coming days and eventual destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Even in this moment of joy with his followers, Jesus is suffering in his knowledge of the future. Perhaps the Hosannas helped him bear the coming betrayals? I don’t know. The Bible is full of “both and” moments. Jesus was both divine and human. He experienced joy and sorrow at the same time over and over and over again.

My beautiful friend, blogging about her life, describes her current place in the world as being between two kingdoms. This is actually the title of a book she is reading! The title alone makes me smile. Yes! I said as I read today’s post. She was sharing about her new found love, renewed energy, and small but might everyday miracles, while also being very real about her health challenges and blended family challenges. Both And. Between Two Kingdoms. My friend is a living example of grace under trial and finding hope in the ashes. She is the strongest person I know.

As a believer, I am encouraged and strengthened by the tension of my life between trying to bring the kingdom now and looking forward to the kingdom coming. This gap isn’t a perfect place. It isn’t even a comfortable place alot of the time. But it is essential to live in that gap if we are going to be fully human, full of joy and sorrow.

Life isn’t perfect. It hasn’t been perfect since Adam and Eve and it won’t be perfect again until we are all united in the afterlife. Until then, I’m going to chase joy by having fun. I will hold space for the grief and pain of myself and others by expanding my capacity for joy. And I will continue to make connections with others to share both the burdens of life and the brightness of fun! Chasing Joy. Between two Kingdoms. Both And.

Love Y’all, Marla

Y’all. I can’t even. We roll into town (literally—train/bus/train) and then roll our rolling duffels over every cobblestone street in every town. I tried to convince Andy we should all carry backpacks instead, but no. I’m secretly glad because my shoulders would be killing me. But I am embarrassed all the same. We sound like a tank brigade entering the city. 🤦🏻‍♀️

And we eat early. Truly. 12:30 is actually latish for us for lunch. Yesterday, we ended up with hotpockets (European ones) at the Esso station across from the train station in Voss because not a single restaurant opened before 2:00 (14:00) for lunch. And as we have not yet mastered grocery stores in Norway, we hit up every snack bar on every form of transport we come across. If I eat one more ham and cheese panini— 🤷🏻‍♀️ Dinner should be around 8:00 (20:00), but hello heartburn and early train departures, so we eat between 5-6 (17-18:00). Oh so American.

And speaking of American, when all four of us try to get on the elevator in a hotel, it’s comical, or sad, depending on your opinion. Tiny elevators in Europe are not new to me, but I’m still always surprised.

Say what you want about our ridiculousness, but all the radio stations play American music in Norway. As I wrote this post, three songs in this bar included songs by Montell Jordan, Nortorious BIG and OutKast. So there. 🤣

Norway is a very chill place. While people aren’t particularly outgoing with strangers, they are polite and helpful and very punctual. Chill they may be, but everything runs exactly on time here. Everything.

More on Bergen…

Today we went to a museum that was basically a display of the local waterfront/port city as an archaeological dig. So very informative! It was truly amazing to see the layers of Bergen, Norway from 1100 AD to now. We literally have no historical frame of reference. It’s mind boggling. 🤯

We also explored Rosenkrantz Tower. It reminded Andy and I both of our visits to Ghent, Brussels and Obidos, Portugal, and Castelnaud La Chapelle, France. We learned quite a bit about the famous witchcraft trial of Anna Petersdotter as well.

And, ofcourse no day of sightseeing in Europe would be complete without visiting a St. Mary’s church. It was lovely.

Now it is naptime. Per our American time table, we had a huge lunch of pizza complete with loud debate over the Trump Presidency and are back to the hotel because we are cold and tired and full! Lucky us.

Tomorrow we leave for Kirkenes (which I have mispronounced about 500 times). Excited for a visit to the Artic Circle!

🇺🇸 ❤️ 🇳🇴

Love Y’all, Marla