Family: the basic building block of our civilization

By Dale Ahlquist

“Ideals,” says G.K. Chesterton, “are the most practical thing in the world.” This is why we still defend the family. This is why we insist on the ideal of marriage as a permanent union between one man and one woman, which creates the only proper setting for bringing new souls into the world, and that this purely natural act should not be interfered with.

The social trends have steadily moved in the opposite direction from this ideal in the last century. It is no longer a matter of a few loud critics getting a little testy at our quaint ideas of morality; we have gone past being attacked to being brazenly ignored. But if the society at large does not understand the moral arguments for the family, perhaps it will gain some appreciation for the practical arguments. And the recent bad news has been good news in this regard. Our arguments have been given a huge boost with the collapse of the world financial markets and the continuing economic fallout.

An economy built on massive lending and spending cannot be sustained. But the reason it cannot be sustained is not merely economic, it is moral. It regards material wealth as the ultimate goal, and people as merely a commodity to achieve that goal. It is selfish and therefore self-destructive.

An economy based on the family is self-sustaining. Its focus is on the nurturing and training of children and not on the mere acquisition of goods. The family ideal as defended by Chesterton is something quite different than the industrialized consumer family, where the family members leave the house each morning by the clock and on a strict schedule to pursue work and recreation and the majority of life outside the home. Chesterton’s ideal was the productive home with its creative kitchen, its busy workshop, its fruitful garden, and its central role in entertainment, education, and livelihood. Unlike the industrial home, life in a productive household is not amenable to scheduling and anything but predictable.

The only thing surprising about this ideal is that it was once shared by almost everyone. Children used to be considered an asset; at some point they began to be seen as a liability.

Chesterton saw the beginning of this problem when he noticed people preferring to buy amusements for themselves rather than to have children. He pointed out prophetically that children are a far better form of entertainment than electrical gadgets. The irony today is that the retailers that sell the electronic amusements are going out of business because there are not enough people to buy this merchandise.

But there is another worse problem why children are now considered a liability. They don’t merely make other material desires cost-prohibitive, they are cost-prohibitive themselves. They must be educated. The cost of educating them is obscene. A college education is the most overpriced product on the planet, and over-rated as well. Parents have the privilege of sacrificing nearly everything to send their children to college, only to have them get their heads filled with doubts and destructive ideas, undermining everything their parents have taught them.

But there are fewer parents because there are fewer children.

When social security was instituted, each retiree was supported by 15 workers. Now each retiree is supported by only three workers. Those of us who are still working spend 15% of our income to support those who aren’t working.

Our lack of domestic life is reflected in the fact that we don’t have a domestic economy. We don’t produce anything. We are suddenly watching massive layoffs, but the people being laying off (no offense to them) were not producing anything. They were either selling things, or sitting at desks and computer terminals, being paid with borrowed money, so that they could also go into debt. Now the financial center of the country has moved from New York to Washington, DC, as Gudge has passed the baton to Hudge, who has promised that all the problems that were caused by too much borrowing will all be solved by even more borrowing.

But the younger generation cannot pay the older generation because we have committed demographic suicide. We are paying a high price not only for slaughtering our unborn children but for contracepting them. In fact, we have demonstrated that we cannot afford the high price.

We have seen the natural consequences of unnatural acts. We have witnessed a monumental economic disaster that is not the result of inflation or recession but of the devaluation of children.

Chesterton says that every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. The obvious things are the ordinary things, and we have forgotten them. The modern world that we have created has brought with it great strain and stress so that even the things that normal men have normally desired are no longer desirable: “marriage and fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man.” Those are the normal and ordinary things. Those are the things we have lost, and we need to recover them.

“The disintegration of rational society,” says Chesterton, “started in the drift from the hearth and the family; the solution must be a drift back.”

from The Distrbutionist Review

Big Family Squabbles? Parents here's the solutions you've been waiting for...

from National Catholic Register

New parents will often ask me questions about how to raise children because I have five children, none of whom are (currently) in jail.

Asking me for parenting advice is a bad idea but I understand what it’s like to have many children and not know what you’re doing. The Bible tells us to be fruitful and multiply but after that the Bible kinda’ hangs us out to dry. Well, that’s where I step in, I guess. I decided I’d like to help other parents by offering the beginnings of a database of fracas’ they’ll eventually encounter after they’ve been fruitful.

Most Common Fracases:

“You’re in my spot!”- There’s going to be a spot on the couch that becomes THE most coveted spot by children in the house. And children, once in that spot, will not eat for days and will allow their bladder to expand to the size of Rhode Island before giving up THE SPOT. I once told my child that she was going to have to go to the hospital to have her tonsils removed and she asked whether she could have THE SPOT back when she came home from the hospital.

So when a child comes running to you complaining that they just got up from THEIR SPOT for one teeny tiny second and someone stole THEIR SPOT should a parent start inquiring how long the accused had been in the spot and what were the reasons for the accuser’s departure? You see, I tried that. It doesn’t get you anywhere. There are too many layers to this problem.

It seems to me that for bathroom breaks one shouldn’t lose title to their spot. But if one got up for a snack I believe that implies forfeiture of said spot. But what if they were also retrieving a snack for the person who took the spot? Ah. That’s where things get difficult.

Solution: You take the spot. And the snack(s). And don’t leave until you achieve bedsores.

“Hey, that’s Mine”: I don’t think I’ve gone a day in six years where I haven’t heard “Hey, that’s mine.” This is both common and complicated. It’s a bit tricky because older siblings can essentially lay claim to every toy or every piece of clothing in the house. And we can’t have an official passing down ceremony for every thing so sometimes things just pass on to younger kids. They just do. My eleven year old couldn’t fit a pair of pants past her shin but she got teary eyed when I proposed that the eight year old wear them.

The ten year old hasn’t looked at a Barbie in months but if she sees the three year old with her Barbie it’s like the three year old just reached in and took out her spleen.

Solution -  Read more...

My three son and what I've learned...

from Catholic Womanhood by Cheryl Dickow

I remember when my first son was in need of his first haircut. 
I took him to a professional stylist and, with 35mm camera in 
hand, clicked away, literally walking around and around his 
seat, so that, once developed, the pictures would immortalize
 that very special day in my life, in his life, in the world, I was
sure.

By the time my third son was in need of his first haircut, I let my mom have at it and, as it 

turned out, time did not improve her hair-cutting skills. My youngest son ended up with the 

same bangs that I had worn some 30 years earlier — a wavy line of hair jutting out 

all over the place somewhere between eyebrows and the 

hairline.

Things really do change from the first born to the second and then to the third. And as that is 
all the children we were blessed with, I can go no further with my experience but my 
assumptions would be that by the fifth or sixth child, he or she may very well be performing 
his or her own first haircut.

Now, my oldest is graduating from college, the second is mid-way through his college career, 
and my youngest has almost completed high school. All the years in between those first 
haircuts and this point in time have truly gone by in the blink of an eye.

I can’t say, for sure, what each of my son’s take on things has been; but, for me it has been 
an incredible journey. And I’ll admit that I look back and find great relief that my oldest, in 
particular, has been so forgiving towards me in all the ways I tried to shape and mold him 
into what I thought was right — and certainly in keeping with my post-feminist upbringing 
which included the need to neutralize any distinctions between the sexes along with my 
politically-correct interest in taming all things that could even appear to have a glimmer of “inappropriateness” attached to them.

I remember once when my mother was reading a book to my oldest son. I can’t quite recall 
the book but in retrospect I am positive it was as bland as everything else I allowed into his 
life. She came to some point in the story where, when my husband and I read it, we had 
always chosen to replace some word or phrase with more “proper” words, but not knowing 
better, grandma read the actual words. Well, when he heard her reading it verbatim, he was 
on the floor laughing, “Grandma! It does not say that!” So much for our attempt at politically-
correct censorship.

No matter how hard I tried, though, he was still a “boy.” And that means something. They all 

were, actually, very much “boys.” For instance, they simply weren’t able to pass each other 

in the hall without a push and a shove for good luck. Try as I might to dissuade them, they

were just so “physical” all the time! I once received a note from a teacher who, in all 

seriousness, felt it was imperative to tell me that my son, while playing “Duck-Duck-Goose” 

became so mischievous that he tapped two children instead of one! I can only imagine the 

pandemonium that ensued and my son received from me the sternest of warning against 

such wild classroom antics! At the time I was duly mortified that I would have birthed the 

child who wreaked havoc with “Duck-Duck-Goose” rules.

Of course, despite such notes and other miscellaneous offenses along the way, my boys 
were, in fact, quite good kids — in the grand scheme of things. Sure there were times that 
I was forced to walk away from parent-teacher conferences with a piece of paper held in 
front of my face in hopes of obscuring my identity as I made a beeline towards the door; 
but, all in all they were really fine young boys on their way growing into fine young men.

It’s just that I didn’t have brothers and couldn’t figure out why these boys of mine wouldn’t
sit down and play quietly with one another or do their puzzles in an orderly fashion. I could 
fondly recall how my sisters and I would play school for hours on end. Not a peep out of us 
as we wrote on the chalkboard and assigned one another “homework.”

The closest my boys came to that sort of quiet, structured, group play was when they were 
building Legos; but, for the most part, even that time was spent constructing weapons or
 creating scenarios in which caves, hideouts and counter-attack strategies were necessary.
This, after having been exposed to the dullest of television choices — which were extremely 
time-limited anyhow — and don’t forget censorship galore on all books!

One dinner, when the boys were around 2, 4, and 6 I remember one of them eating a 
piece of bread into the shape of a gun and being completely convinced that I had failed 
as a mother.

“How,” I moaned to my husband, “could they even know about such things?!”
Boys will be boys.

Now that’s a phrase I’m none too fond of but there is some truth to the fact that, well, boys 
will be boys. However, if we understand it not as an excuse for bad behavior but, rather, 
being a plausible testament to some basic genetic truths, we are able to more sufficiently 
appreciate how God created male and female and the path on which each will proceed 
towards developing virtuous behaviors and moral choices. Denying the genetic and natural 
differences between male and female will not make them go away.

And as a mother of all boys — and never having had any brothers — I have grown to love 
the way in which God has made male and female. Raising boys has given me a new 
appreciation of my husband and how, if we are called to the vocation of marriage, we grow 
in beautiful ways when we embrace the unique gifts and talents and personalities of male 
and female.

I am fully convinced that God knew what he was doing when, in His immense wisdom, He 
gave me all sons. I have learned so much about our Creator through my life as a mother 
of boys. So many of the ill-conceived notions about gender-neutrality, which was part and 
parcel of my life as a teenager in the post-radical-feminist-movement that pervaded the 70s, 
have been washed away in the Truth about male and female, their inherent differences, 
their shared dignity, their beauty as having been created, equally but diverse, in His image, 
His likeness.

As my own sons grow into men, I am grateful for the gifts they have received from their 
Creator and feel blessed that I discovered, sooner rather than later, how important their 
unique “maleness” is and how it has been a gift to participate in helping them grow into 
all that God has called them to be as they venture out into the world as men.

Empty nest Christmas...will it ever be the same?

from Catholic Womanhood by Marge Fenelon

This Christmas was a foretaste of what it will be like when the kids all are on their own and Mark and I end up spending the holidays alone together – just the two of us. Our older children had work and other commitments so we were only together as the Fenelon Clan for a short while on Christmas Day. It felt strange to be split up and there were moments I caught myself in teary-eyed moping. However, I know it’s a good thing because it’s a sign that the children we’ve worked so hard to raise are growing into their adulthood and forming lives separate from ours. That’s what’s supposed to happen.

But it doesn’t make it any easier.

At one point, I half-jokingly ribbed Mark that before we know it, we’ll find ourselves teetering back and forth on our his-and-hers rocking chairs, sipping on our matching mugs of hot chocolate and trying to remember details about Christmases gone by. “How many kids did we have, again? What were their names? Hey! That ring you’re wearing looks just like the one I gave my husband for our 10th anniversary. Wait a minute! You ARE my husband. Oh, hi there. Merry Christmas, Honey, and Happy New Year…uh, what year is it?”

Okay, so I’m exaggerating. Still, I’m not that far off track. This past holiday season has got me contemplating what our lives are all about, and they sure aren't about us. Oh, sure. We could cling desperately to our children, begging them not to leave us. The soft-hearted ones would probably give in to our neediness and the strong-hearted ones likely would run faster in rebellion (that goes for our spiritual children, too, by the way). In the end, we’d only be dead weight working against the fulfillment of God’s will.

Isn’t this the way it’s supposed to be with everything in our lives? We’re not here for our own good; we never were nor will we ever be. We’re here for God’s greater good and to be instruments in his hands, holy stewards of all that he has created. That includes our possessions, our work, our creative endeavors, and the people in our lives. Everything we hold onto is meant to be let go. Along the way, we have the profound privilege to be his children and to benefit from his love and mercy. In the end, we get it all back again – transformed and beautiful. All that, and more.

Jesus promised us this, and St. Paul assured us of it in his Letter to the Colossians:

“Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23-24).

As bosses, leaders, co-workers, neighbors, friends, family members, spouses and, yes, even as parents, we’re called to serve the Lord. Of course we serve our children in that we give them our love, nurturing, guidance, affection, security, protection, education, material necessities, support, and prayers. However, we work heartily, as St. Paul puts it, for God’s sake – we serve him in and through the situations and people in our lives. We serve, and then let go, knowing our reward lies in heaven, not here on earth.

So when we’re old and crotchety, teetering back and forth on our rocking chairs and sipping away at our mugs of hot chocolate, we can think back on all the wonderful moments God has given us and all incredible opportunities we’ve had to be part of his plan, grateful and content in knowing that we’ve worked heartily and served the Lord.

Finding our identity on Christmas vacation

from insidecatholic.com by Danielle Bean

My husband and I were recently inspired to pack ourselves, our eight kids, and 13,000 Capri Sun juice boxes into our twelve-passenger van and drive more than 1,500 miles to spend Christmas in south Florida.

It was epic -- if by epic you mean a wildly memorable trip that was "so perfectly worth doing" but also "I am so glad it's over with" all at once. For good or bad, nothing says "togetherness" quite like a long family road trip.

Before we left for this trip, I was a bit nervous. I recalled our trek to South Carolina a few summers ago. That was the legendary drive where I carefully packed goodies, distractions, and various forms of entertainment for the tantrum-prone children but neglected to do the same for my tantrum-prone self. The kids still refer to that as the trip where "Mama threw Papa's clothes all over the hotel room." And I still thank God that's the worst they remember.

I broached the subject of potential conflicts with my husband shortly before we left. I explained my concern that the stress of travel with a gang of kids might have the power to turn our thoughts from "holiday" to "homicide" faster than you can say "traffic jam with a potty emergency in the back seat and a carsick kid in the front."

I talked to the kids about the need for greater charity and patience while on the road as well. It is true that the close quarters of the interior of a vehicle, a hotel room, and a beach cottage, multiplied by many days, tend to highlight some of our more annoying personal habits. Like humming, kicking the seat, snoring, snapping gum, obsessively counting black pick-up trucks, cheating at the Alphabet Game, and singing the Sponge Bob Campfire Song until your voice grows hoarse. And that's just one kid.

Together, we agreed that in the face of high stress levels, the best remedy would be space. We would take a break from each other's presence if we needed to. Even if iPod earbuds were the only way to get that break.

It wasn't until we had made it all the way to our tropical destination that I realized we hadn't needed much of that space during the ride. We actually had a lot of fun getting there, and having talked about the potential for conflict had helped my own perspective a bit.

A few moments during the ride back, however, were a different story. Despite the fact that I know all of you are dying to hear about how very wrong my husband was about the best way to get from Pennsylvania to Connecticut, and how very unfairly he interpreted the motivations behind my astute travel tips, I won't bother you with the details. Just know this: I was right and he was wrong. And if you want to hear his perspective, you'll just have to read my husband's column about our trip where he might share the story of how I lost the van keys and forced him to paw through a trash can in a 20-degree parking lot in Gettysburg. Except he hasn't written one. Thank God.

Now that I can assess our return trip from the comfort of my own home, with my children sleeping soundly in their beds and my own typhoid-free bathroom just footsteps away, I can recognize that we had some laughs along the way.

Like the time my husband asked me for some fruit juice while he was driving. I pulled a bottle from our cooler, opened it, and handed it to him. He took a sip and nearly spat it onto the windshield. Turns out it was not just fruit juice but a rum punch he had packed for our day at the beach the previous afternoon. Here we were, responsible parents of eight children, swilling rum punch as we cruised the highway at 70 miles per hour.

And then there was the time that Google Maps, my husband, and I hatched a wild plan to avoid stop-and-go traffic on Interstate 95. We followed secret directions on back roads and chuckled with delight at our own cleverness until we saw the signs.

"Stop!" they ordered, and "No Trespassing!" they barked rudely. "No unauthorized vehicles," one of them finally explained: "Airplane Runway." We backed away slowly.

One of the highlights of our return trip was discovering a small, folded piece of paper in one of our hotel rooms. On the outside, in Gabrielle's unmistakable seven-year-old handwriting, was the title "How My Family Is Weird." On the inside was a list of family members' names with varying numbers of stars next to them, presumably representative of one's level of "weirdness." The rest of us looked over the list and collectively determined that keeping a running tally of the weirdness levels of one's own family members was pretty much the weirdest thing any of us could think of.

But weird or not weird, one idea that was cemented in all our minds during our epic trip was that, for better or for worse, we are family.

On our route home, when we stopped at a small parish in South Carolina to attend Sunday Mass, the priest spotted us afterward and wanted to say hello before we left. He didn't know our names, so instead he called out, "Hey . . . family!" At that call, every one of us stopped in our tracks and turned toward him. We recognized ourselves in the word he used.

We might be weird, but we are family. And we thank God for the privilege.

Communion of Saints...a company of saints and sinners

From Inside Catholic

I was a teenager when he died. We went to visit him one last time when I was about 14 years old. Nobody said it was "one last time" -- not to me, anyway. They said we would be taking some short trips to Canada -- just a few of us kids at a time -- to see our grandfather.

It was their eyes, their tone, and their hushed late-night conversations that said "one last time."

And it was the last time. I can't remember the circumstances under which I learned that Grandpapa had finally lost his battle with cancer, but I do remember that my parents, eight siblings, and I packed some suitcases, a giant blue cooler, and ourselves into our Chevy Celebrity station wagon for an impromptu road trip to Quebec to attend his funeral.

One of my earliest memories of Grandpapa was when, on one of his visits to us at our home in New Hampshire, he brought me a gift. He always brought us gifts, but this one was particularly memorable. It was a bright red leather purse.

Despite the colorful image of Donald Duck on the front flap, I recognized immediately that this purse was no plaything. This was a lady's purse. That very afternoon, I carried it, lady-like, on a walk around the block with my Grandpapa. My bobby-socked feet in buckle shoes pounded the pavement and my lady purse swung at my side as I kept up with Grandpapa's longer strides.

I thought of that walk three days ago as I wrote my grandfather's name in the Book of Remembrance at the start of my parish's All Souls Day Mass.

When I first learned about the communion of saints in grade school CCD classes, I envisioned the souls in purgatory and heaven as largely nameless, faceless folks with whom I was somehow, inexplicably, spiritually connected. But now that I count Grandpapa and other real-life friends and family members among them, our communion has become more tangible and real.

In the communion of saints, we discover that God, like any good parent, encourages His children to work hard and to help one another. My prayers and my sacrifices on behalf of those in purgatory can bring them closer to God. Likewise, the intercessions of those in heaven can be a real help to me as I aim toward heaven. These aren't nameless faces. These are real souls with whom we share memories, history, and DNA.

Fifteen years ago, when I became a mother for the first time, I realized that my children are concretely connected to all souls, too.

My first child was a colicky infant, and the months after she was born were like a parental boot camp for my husband and me. Each night, I spent the hours between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. pacing the floors of our tiny apartment with a purple-faced, screeching infant in my arms.

On one of those nights, after I had paced enough floors, run the vacuum enough times, and sung enough lullabies, she finally fell asleep. Gingerly, I placed her in her crib, tiptoed away, and collapsed with exhaustion on my own bed. Before the kinks had even begun to work their way out of my back, however, I heard her cry again.

It was just a whimper really, but it was the kind of whimper a colicky baby makes when she's about to cause a royal fuss. A mom knows these things. In my desperation and exhaustion, I could manage only a simple prayer. "God, no."

And then I fell into sleep. Sound sleep. Drooling sleep. Dreaming sleep.

In my dream, the baby was still crying. Bleary-eyed and plodding, I made my way to her, but found her crib empty and silent. I looked up and saw someone seated in a rocking chair in a dimly lit corner of the room.

It was Grandpapa, with Baby Kateri in his arms. Her pink bundled body was perched on his sturdy forearm and her tiny head rested on his shoulder. At last, she slept.

Grandpapa rocked her gently without noticing me at first, but when I drew close, he turned toward me. His eyes smiled at me with such gentle love and understanding that I felt bathed in warmth and light. I watched the two of them rock in that glowing corner of the room and basked in the peace my grandfather had brought to me in my motherhood.

My oldest daughter never knew my Grandpapa, but he surely knows her. I am confident that he knows her and loves her well.

n/t Danielle Bean

In this season...

The leaves are changing... the weather getting cooler... and Fall is in the air.

Halloween has passed, Thanksgiving is near and Christmas all just around the corner.

This is a time of great reflection. A time when we remember our loved ones who have passed and gather with the love ones we still have here.

How we look at this special part of the year drives our stress. Some of us are excited and some of us feel overwhelmed with the holiday planning and preparations. Some of us get financially stressed, and some of us get emotionally stressed and some of us get both.

What can you do to make the most out of this endearing time with family and friends and not lose site of your relationship with your loved ones?

First, focus on gratitude. Make a gratitude list and see all the abundance that you already have. Begin to say thank you. Think about your Thanksgiving list: the people you might want to call and tell them you love them and are thankful that they are in your life.

In the song, “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics, he says: “I just wish I could have told him in the living years.” So do it today and do it often: tell those close to you how you feel and what you are thankful for.



h/t Barbara Peters The Gift of a Lifetime

Is motherhood worth it???

A post from Catholic Womanhood that all Moms can relate to and all Dads should read...

Has motherhood ever been featured on Dirty Jobs? If not, my 5-year-old would argue that it should be. Not that she's ever seen the show, but she has had an up close and personal look at her mom's dirty work.

We all recently succumbed to a stomach bug, and everyone was hurling all over the place. I fear my minivan will never be the same after one of the children projectile vomited in her carseat. (If anyone has any tips on how to remove the rank smell of vomit from leather, please do share.) Later another child would throw up all over me. Even later I'd find myself shaking and bowed over the toilet. My poor husband was the last to hit puke bottom.


Before I fell prey to the virulent bug, I hugged my sweet, sick girls and then proceeded to pick off chunks of food from the floor, their clothing, my clothing, their hair, my hair, and our couch. Madeline, my 5-year-old, stood by watching me clean up the scene and shook her head. 

"Your job is disgusting," she said. 

"It can be gross," I admitted.


No sense sugarcoating it, especially when coated in vomit.

I remember, when I was waiting to become a mother, imagining what it would be like. Most of my reveries were just that - sepia-toned reveries of me rocking a slumbering baby while the early morning sunlight spilled into the lovely nursery. I never considered we wouldn't have the money or the room to even have a nursery. Our firstborn's miscellany of baby gear was wedged in what couldn't really be called a room and was more of a nook in the old house we were renting while my husband was in medical school. She shared her room with stacks of books and the computer I learned to nurse at while I typed up freelance work to get us through my husband's last year of school before starting residency. It wasn't really my daughter's room at all. I changed a lot of her diapers there, but she mostly slept in my husband and my bed or on a single mattress on the floor curled into me. The 99 buck Consumer Reports best-buy crib that we shoved into the corner was nothing more than a space sucker (although I've used it more with subsequent babies).


Now that we could actually piece together a relatively nice nursery, I'm wise enough to recognize that a pretty baby room is more for the parents than the child. Furthermore, since I'd selfishly rather have a nice kitchen over a Pottery Barn-inspired (read: expensive) nursery, we have a very simple space for our youngest and diverted our decorating funds to other areas. The room is nice enough, and it's well-stocked with the most important thing - books and more books - but it's nothing fancy, which suits me (a not-so-into-interior-design-diva) just fine.


In other dreams of motherhood, I never imagined that one day I'd be immersed in so much hazardous waste removal or that I'd be peed, pooped, and thrown up on. Nor did I realize all the occupational hazards I'd face as a mother. In this past year, I have suffered a bloody nose (after a wound up child popped up while I was hovering over her); a corneal abrasion that required a trip to the ER and an eye patch after my little nursling - AKA slasher - clawed me in the middle of the night; and a large contusion on my thigh that was as big and purple as an eggplant (this trauma was inflicted upon me when I was trying to take out my massive double jogging stroller from the back of my minivan).

To my oldest daughter, I acknowledged the grossness factor as I scrubbed my puke-ridden hands with soap under a steady stream of hot water, but I also told her it's all worth it, partly because as moms, we all know that's what you're supposed to say, especially to your poor, puking progeny. And partly because the more you say it and choose to believe it, the truer it becomes that every single calamitous diaper episode, hurling mess, reeking leather couch, and gouged eye is - against all odds - very much worth it.

"Why?" my daughter asked.


"Because of you," I said. "And your sisters." She blinked, not entirely convinced, and I knew it wasn't a perfect explanation probably because there isn't one.


I sometimes I can't explain it to myself. When I was nursing my toddler at 2:30 a.m., feeling dehydrated after spending the last hour throwing up, I felt tapped out. Then there was the rough day when a toilet overflowed and water flooded our basement (again) and kids were screaming and crying and hitting, and I was exhausted having been up most of the night with the first child to suffer the malady of the stomach bug. I admit I wasn't particularly stoked about being a mom at that moment. I spent a good part of the morning barking orders and feeling sorry for myself.


Then one of my daughters plucked the tiniest white blossom from a plant in our yard and handed it to me. "I picked this flower for you."


I examined the flower, its soft petals, its smallness, and fragility. I thanked her and gently closed my hand around it - this gift of measured grace, a reminder from my child and my God why it is so very worth it.


My girls pick me flowers all of the time, and it seems they frequently hand them to me when I need a pick-me-up the most.


There will be poop. There will be puke. There will be nights when you want to scream out in agony because you're so exhausted. There may, sadly, be far worse: miscarriages, chronically sick children, lost sheep, all sorts of pain. I tell my new moms friends some of this, especially after a friend of mine once told me she wished that people would have been a little more honest about just how tough it was to have a newborn. I try to give moms who ask me what it's like - being a mother - a healthy dose of realism.


But I tell them something else, too. Just as I told my daughter when she was appalled by my job of puke removal, I remind them (and myself at times) that there will be flowers, too. Tender, budding new life entrusted to you - YOU. And if you can look past your solipsism and the endless diaper changes, sleepless nights, tantrums, and the pokes in the eyeballs, you'll see that while love hurts, sometimes very badly, it is what softens you; it is what opens the curtain to the most holy experience, a different kind of hard that never stops revealing that there will be pain that starts from the moment labor begins and sometimes sooner. But there will also be joy. And the joy will be greater than the pain.


And that is what makes it all worth it, my sweet, sweet girl.