by Heather Plett | Jan 17, 2005 | Uncategorized
I’ve been thinking about Paul & Jo’s baby – due February 12. She asked me to help plan the baby dedication. I wrote this spontaneous tribute to little Thumper…
Your baby…
I hope he’s beautiful and wise
I hope he’s got a wrinkled up nose that twitches when he’s sleeping
I hope his eyes are so deep that you want to live in them
I hope he squeaks when he wants your attention (Nikki did that and I LOVED it)
I hope his hair has a twisted little cowlick that you can’t resist touching
I hope he has his daddy’s goofy sense of humour
I hope he has his mommy’s interest in knowing truth
I hope he makes you laugh
I hope he sings, even if he can’t carry a tune
I hope he dances
I hope he finds his giftedness
I hope he makes you feel alive and youthful
I hope he finds adventure
I hope he finds joy
I’m glad he’ll find you!
by Heather Plett | Jan 13, 2005 | Uncategorized
My new biblical hero is Queen Vashti. We don’t hear much about her, but she’s the predecessor of Queen Esther. While the king was busy partying with all his drunk friends, she threw her own party for the women of the kingdom. His party lasted at least 7 days! Yikes! It doesn’t say whether hers went on that long or not. On that fateful seventh day, he sends word to her that he wants her to come and parade around in front of his drunk friends. Apparently, she’s quite a looker and he wants to show her off. Who knows, given the fact that they’d all been drinking for seven days, she might have been asked to strip down and show off ALL her beauty. Queen Vashti refused. And well she SHOULD have! What self-respecting woman would want to prance around in front of a bunch of drunk, ogling, lecherous men? You go girl!
Well, it seems the men of the kingdom didn’t take well to a woman with backbone, so they advised the king to dump her like a hot potato. And, fool that he is, he listened to them. Here she is, kicked out of the kingdom on her rump, because she had to nerve to stand up to her nincompoop of a husband. He was afraid other women would learn from her example and start standing up to their husbands just like she had. (Little did he know that his next wife would have a backbone too! Ha! It served him right!)
There’s no more word of what happened to Vashti. She leaves in disgrace and the biblical recorders just forgot about her in their haste to tell Esther’s story. Now if it had been WOMEN writing the Bible, they might have said something about where she ended up and if, perhaps, she managed to find a husband who paid her a little RESPECT. I doubt it though. Disgraced like that, she probably lived out her days in obscurity and loneliness. It makes me want to make up a new story for Vashti… that she moved away and started a kingdom where WOMEN ruled!!!
by Heather Plett | Jan 12, 2005 | Uncategorized
1. the reflection of a campfire on the rippling waves
2. the “almost too hot” feeling when I climb into a bath
3. when 2 year old Maddie says “you remember?”
4. the feeling I get when something I wrote appears in a publication
5. the taste of a wild blueberry plucked from a bush
6. a cold glass of water on a hot day
7. the sound of the water flowing over Rainbow Falls
8. the first cry of a baby
9. tulips
10. the taste of my mother’s compst borsht
11. the sound of my dad’s voice when he sings at the top of his lungs in the field
12. the cozy feeling of flannel pyjamas
13. the first time I heard each of my children read a book
14. the muscular flex of Marcel’s legs
15. rosy cheeks after playing in the snow
16. the crisp pages of a new book
17. the sound of Nikki, singing her favourite Hillary Duff song
18. stepping on an airplane on the way to a new place
19. the sweet-sour-spicy-coconutty-peanutty taste of Thai food
20. the synergy of a conversation that opens up hidden pieces of me
21. the first sight of Central Park
22. sitting at an outdoor café on Corydon sipping a glass of wine
23. words of appreciation from a truthful person
24. a fridge that’s just been cleaned out
25. the feeling of a cozy blanket wrapped around me
26. walking
27. the scent of green grass after the rain
28. the sound of “I love you Mommy.”
29. floating on my back in the water, hearing the muffled voices on the shore
30. the look of pride on Julie’s face when she conquers the waterslide alone
31. a guilt-free hour in McNally Robinson
32. answered prayer
33. snow crunching under my feet
34. the smell of Old Spice
35. laughter
36. wandering around Paris with my sister
37. an e-mail from a friend
38. clean laundry
39. Sarah McLachlan’s voice
40. a compliment
41. fresh paint
42. Marcel’s arms around me
43. a project well done
44. my family gathered around the table
45. a friend welcoming me
46. the soft skin of a baby
47. s’mores
48. sitting on a boat
49. a moment when I know God is in the room with me
50. home
by Heather Plett | Jan 10, 2005 | Uncategorized
I haven’t written about the tsunami yet, ’cause I just don’t know what to say. Or think. It’s beyond comprehension. I remember how my gut felt like it was being wrenched from my body when I saw the images of the mothers wailing over the bodies of their dead children. I remember wanting to hold all of my children close when I heard the story about the mother who had to choose which child to hold onto when the wave came. (She chose the younger, more vulnerable one, but fortunately the other one survived too so she didn’t have to live with the guilt all of her life.) I remember thinking God was evil and didn’t deserve to be in my life any more. I remember trying to imagine standing on the beach, watching the huge wave come and swallow your whole village. I remember trying to visualize and comprehend what it must have felt like to walk among the ruins and see the broken houses, the broken playgrounds, and all those bodies of people who used to be your neighbours, your classmates, your children – all the people that filled your life before this moment.
Roger Kamenetz (Beliefnet) says it well: “I am trying to connect to this tragedy the best I can. The pictures help a little. I see dead children on the floor, a parent weeping. The little ones look like they are sleeping; it is unimaginable that they are dead. I see a parent holding his dead child. I feel in my body what it is like to hold… that weight. To feel the life gone, and the heaviness of a body that does not have life. It is different from holding a sleeping child, carrying a child to bed for instance. I can feel what this father feels in the photo, can reach in my imagination, and in my memory.But I can’t multiply what I feel by 10,000 or 40,000, or even by ten. We know more than we can feel. And we respond as best we can, I think. This is our situation in a time of instant global communication.”
What I like about Kamenetz piece is that he says we shouldn’t focus on whether God was in the tsunami. The tsunami was. Period. We don’t need to explain it. What we know for certain is that God is in the response. “And now another wave is spreading, and it is also vast, and it spreads through the hearts of those who let themselves feel it.”
And now, as I prepare for what I’ll see in Africa, I wonder if I can accept the questions there too. Can I accept that a loving God lets it happen without intervening? Can I “sit with the questions” and still find peace?
“The disaster is. It happened to a ‘dear one,’ someone’s ‘dear one,’ many dear ones. I open my heart and feel it. The place it touches in me, touches God.”
by Heather Plett | Jan 10, 2005 | Uncategorized
Why it’s hard being a mom:
1. Privacy. Just for a change, I’d like to be able to pee without having someone walk in.
2. Time. Some times it feels like I own none of my own time any more. It’s all been usurped by some member of my family or another. Oh how I long for a guilt-free Saturday – to sleep in late, have a leisurely bath without anyone climbing in the tub with me, go hang out in a bookstore or wander around the Village for awhile, maybe stop for a nice supper and a glass of wine at a quiet non-family oriented restaurant, go home and read a book all evening. Oh what a dream!
3. Poop. I’m sick and tired of poop. Poopy diapers, poopy panties, poop, poop, poop.
4. The arguing that never stops. “Mom, she punched me!” “Mom, she took my book!” “Mom, tell her to get out of my room!” “Mom…” Sometimes I’m sure my head will explode.
5. Laundry. Mountains and mountains of laundry. I never liked laundry to begin with, but when there are 5 people in the house, all of them needing clean socks and underwear every day, it feels like laundry rules your life!
6. Too many decisions! “Mom, can I have another piece of cake?” “Mom, can I invite someone over for a sleepover?” “Mom, can I watch TV?” Sometimes, by the end of the day, I’m sure I’ll burst a blood vessel if I have to make ONE more decision!
7. Worry. I never thought I was a worrier, until I had kids. Now there are so many things to worry about. What if they won’t make any friends at school? What if I make too many parenting mistakes and they grow into messed-up adults in need of psychotherapy? What if the bus crashes on the way to school and they get killed or hurt? What if they don’t do well at school and they’ll always feel inferior to their friends? Oh man, I’m sick of worry!
8. Vomit. When they’re sick, they never make it to the toilet or the bucket and I always end up on my hands and knees cleaning up the revolting mess.
9. Sometimes, I SWEAR there’s not an inch of kindness in them. They can be downright MEAN – to me AND to each other. Before I was a mom, I thought it was downright HORRID for a child to tell their mom or dad they hated them. Now it seems almost commonplace.
10. Whining and complaining. “Mom, do we HAVE to have Thai food for supper? I HATE Thai food.” “Mom, how come we never get to buy cocoa puffs cereal?”
11. Barney, Barbie, Mary-Kate and Ashley, Bratz, Hillary Duff – all those annoying mass market products, television shows, pop stars, and movies. They know how to make kids love them (or at least THINK they love them) and if you try to convince the kids the products they’re being sold are crap, they just assume you’re being an old fuddy-duddy.
12. Guilt. I’m sick of feeling guilty (or having my kids TRY to make me feel guilty) every time I do something for myself or go on a date with my husband, or go on a business trip and leave them at home.
13. Money. There’s never enough anymore. Everything costs money. Clothes, backpacks for school, piano lessons, soccer, birthday parties (theirs and their friends’), etc., etc. There’s no end of things that have to be paid for.
14. Baths. I want to have one ALONE sometime.
15. Stuff. There’s just SO much clutter around the house now – so many toys, books, clothes, you name it. There’s always clutter around and just when you get close to cleaning up and having it look a little respectable, they mess it up again.
16. You have to FEED them all the time. Even when you’re not hungry, you have to figure out something for them to eat a million times a day! And when you haven’t had a chance to buy groceries, and all you have available for their snacks is crackers and peanut butter, you never hear the end of it.
Ah yes, sometimes it’s hard. But just now, as I was writing this list of woes, my daughter came to kiss me goodnight, and as I reached out and touched her hair, my heart swelled with love for her. None of this stuff is really that important after all.
by Heather Plett | Jan 7, 2005 | Uncategorized
It looks like we’ll be getting our bathroom re-done. Yay! When we got the first estimate back for $6600, I thought there was no way we could afford to do it. But the second contractor is WAY cheaper (not to mention the fact that he responded alot more quickly!), and if we buy reasonably priced fixtures, we can do it for under $3000! Yippee! It’s probably a good thing we got BOTH estimates, ’cause it gives us a good sense of how much we’re saving. (And NO he’s not some fly-by-night contractor – he’s the father of our neighbour, which makes him at least somewhat trustworthy 🙂
I can hardly wait to soak in a tub that doesn’t leave little green paint flecks on my skin. Aahh! My first bath is going to be a pure delight! Now if only I could convince Maddie that she doesn’t HAVE to jump in the tub every time Mommy has a bath, and convince Nikki and Julie that I really CAN’T/WON’T help them fix their computer problems while I’m enjoying my Saturday morning soak! Why does EVERYBODY need me the moment I step into the water???
The girls came with us to Home Depot last night to look at fixtures, and this morning when Maddie walked into the bathroom, she said “Oh! We forgot to get our new bathtub!” Smile.
