ABC Post 11--Parenting: What I've Learned About Raising Teenaged Boys

This one is by request. A mom wrote to me and said, "Pretty please write about parenting teenage sons." I’m writing it because I want parents of teen boys to feel like they have what it takes.

I can offer empathy and experience for free. I can't offer guarantees and lifetime warranties, though. Boys are not L.L.Bean boots.

Teenage boys are a species unto themselves.  They need lots of food, activity, and adventure, an easygoing mom, and a steady dad. They need a careful and constantly-changing balance of freedom and protection, as all children do, but somehow with boys it’s extra hard to get it right.

My boys were active, wild, and risk-taking. I have no idea how to raise boys who are naturally timid, sensible, or fastidious, so you’ll have to ask someone else about that, like my friend Jane's mom, who had at least six boys, and Jane was the only one of the children who ever broke a bone.

Here’s my advice, having survived the raising of three boys who lived to become adults.  

Note: I think they’re all amazing, but they’re not faultless. You’re allowed to blame the imperfections on our parenting, and as always pour all our advice through the filter of your own good sense and personal realities.

1. Provide lots of food.  Cook real food as much as possible—huge simmering vats of spaghetti and meatballs, vast haunches of beef, buckets of monster cookies, cases of eggs, barrels of milk, endless wheels of pizza.  Providing actual food will offset many of your mistakes and will steer them from living on Mountain Dew and corn dogs and Snickers bars just to quiet the ravenous beast within.

Also, if they’re of reasonable weight, trust their appetites to some degree. When Matt was sacking seed, one time he took the burritos I had designated for the whole family’s lunch and ate them all by himself at his lunch break at the warehouse.  Steven used to cook up five or six eggs for breakfast or a little snack to hold his stomach over until supper. They needed the calories and protein.  I should have quit fussing.

But I cooked from scratch. Points for me.

Grocery shopping looked like this the summers I was feeding three teen-boy seed-sackers.

2. Restrict things like driving privileges when they're newly licensed, Internet use, screen time, video games, and staying out late with friends you can’t trust. Put as few restrictions as possible on things like climbing trees, camping, raising calves, fixing lawn mowers, splitting wood, inventing hovercrafts that mow grass in ditches, going on bike rides, jumping off the porch roof, swimming with cousins, playing softball, and sailing down Muddy Creek on homemade rafts.

3. Give them work to do, both around the house and in actual employment. Or, as I repeated many times, “You live in this house, you eat the food, you need to do some work around here.” Not only will this offset some of your labor and toil as a mom, it will also make them enter the adult world with a wonderful skill set. Their future roommates and wives will be so impressed when they can clean bathrooms, load a dishwasher, do laundry, cook a meal, and mop floors.  Employment, when the time comes, gives them money, dignity, and maturity.  Win win win.

Three boys eating. Ben is on the right with his cousins Keith and Austin.

4. Don’t draw inflexible lines on music, books, movies, and so on.  Let them have tastes that are different from yours. Sit down and read/listen/watch together. Discuss the content.  What are the messages here?  Is this what you want to believe and emulate?  And remember: ultimately, you’re the mom and dad. You get to say, “This is evil. We can’t let you watch that.” But respect their tastes as much as you can, which leads us to:

5. Give them some volition over their own lives.  I think a lot of the frustration with our boys at some stages came from them wanting to be men, and going out and conquering, and figuring out their own lives, and we had the fences too tight.  Matt says he was very frustrated for a couple of summers when he first worked in the warehouse in the afternoons.  I still made him do his share of housework in the mornings, because I needed his help and also [he recalls] because the girls made such a fuss and I listened to them. He ended up having very little down time, a lot of frustration, and no real recourse for changing things.  I regret that.

6. However. They are part of a family, a community, and hopefully a brotherhood. So their choices always have to be made within that context because, un-American as this may be, it’s actually a good thing to sacrifice the wishes of the individual to the wishes of the larger community, now and then—enough to be invested in the group but not trapped and stifled, if that makes sense. Which leads us to:

7. Insist on respect. They should be able to talk to you about anything, but always respectfully. [You need to model respect toward them, first of all.] Also insist on respect toward all authority figures, girls, older people, etc. They can feel as grumpy as they want, but they’d better hold the door for Grandma and thank her for Sunday dinner.

8. Don’t clean their rooms for them. Don’t turn their t-shirts right side out to wash them. If they send their socks into the hamper in tight reeking little wads, they can do their own laundry.

9. Buying Axe body wash will give them incentive to keep clean.

10. Let them experience consequences. Real-life consequences are wonderful things.  Words and warnings may be fluff in the wind, but blue lights flashing in the rear-view mirror are a different matter entirely. 

One evening the boys were supposed to clear the table and do dishes.  Ben stood at the table and threw dishes at Steven, who caught them and put them in the dishwasher.  Then he didn’t catch one, and it hit my fancy Le Creuset skillet, knocked it to the floor, and broke the handle off.  The boys paid for a nice new stainless steel skillet.  This is how it works.

11. Parents need a balance of healthy fear and letting go.  Honestly, this one is tough. Today’s parents often hover and helicopter in ridiculous quantities. But where do you draw the line—that’s the tough part.  If they are going to be world-changing men, you need to let them take risks. But they can also die quite easily, or—worse—kill someone else. Or just really ruin their lives. They shouldn’t handle a gun without safety training, for instance.  When they’re old enough to drive to the mountains and go camping alone, they should at least tell you where they’re going and when they plan to be back, not only for your peace of mind, but because other people have to sacrifice their safety and time to go look for them if they disappear.

Fires in the upstairs bedroom are not worth the risk either.

12. Don’t freak out. Or at least save the freaking out for the really big things.  The more boys you have, the higher the bar will be set for what’s worth freaking out about.  Usually, things will go better if you pretend to be calm. Breathe: In. Out. Don’t scream. 

When stuff spills, don't freak out. Take pictures instead.

13. You’re the mom. You’re allowed to make rules and draw boundaries. No snakes in the house, for instance. I told them if they ever bring a snake in the house I will spank them black and blue. “Even if we’re 35?” “If you’re stupid enough to bring a snake in the house at age 35, you deserve to be spanked black and blue.”

And of course you already know that, unless they bring snakes inside, you never spank teenagers.

14. Pray for your boys—not only for the things you see and know, but for all the things you don’t know and see. Trust that you will find out what you need to know when the time is right. When one son was 16, he drove a few girls to his aunt’s house with his left foot out the car window. Some time later, one girl told her mom who told me. 

Conversations were had, consequences were meted, things were learned.

 Another time we were on a trip and one son lost the SD card for his camera.  We looked everywhere we could think of but didn't find it. Probably nine months later I was unpacking my suitcase after a trip to Minnesota and there in the suitcase, on my socks, lay a camera card. I popped it in the computer and beheld photo evidence of the son doing ridiculous unwise things on the other trip, months before. When I told him that God has ways of letting moms find out stuff when they need to know, he believed me.

15. Talk about stuff. Their relationship with God. How their behavior affects others. The dangers of porn, drugs, addictions. Girls girls girls. Why we do what we do. The future. Sports. Statistics. Career goals. Ryegrass. Politics. Tell them you believe in them and think they’re amazing. If they want to talk, drop everything and listen.

16. Give them responsibility. Let them fail. Talk about it. Give them more responsibility.

17. Remember that there is a bit of teenage guy in every man, and they might like to take a few stupid risks even as adults. I don’t know if this means you failed as a parent or that you were never expected to work miracles, so it’s ok. The best thing to do is warn them, if you must, and then sit back, pray hard, and let the consequences happen. Consequences are good things. Horrible, at times, but ultimately good.

A bunch of teen and younger boys.
I'm sure you can imagine how it sounded and smelled.

18. Give yourself grace. This is a tough assignment and you figure it out as you go. If you make a mistake, admit it, try a different tack, and move on. Grace is good.

19. Keep the relationship. Let go of control.

20. Remember that you’re the mom. The mom gets to talk at the open mic at weddings and to tell the grandchildren stories about their parents. 


I asked my sons for input. Matt said:
QUOTE OF THE DAY:

• Things you did right: 
•
• 1. be completely unflappable and stick to your guns (mostly Dad) 
• 2. cook up huge batches of good, calorie-laden food (mostly you). 
• 3. control your tempers when we drove you up the wall
• 4. outwardly, you never seemed to feel a need to be in control
• 5. apologize when necessary
• 6. let us explore, climb trees, get chased by the cows, shoot guns, do all the things that would give a helicopter parent an aneurysm
• 7. I'm sure you worried a ton, but you did an admirable job of concealing it

ABC Post 8: Book Review--Accidental Addict: A True Story of Pain and Healing

The series: Books by Siblings of Friends.

The friend: Bob Welch, Register-Guard columnist and author of many books including My Oregon, and American Nightingale.

The sibling: Bob’s sister, Linda Crew.

The book: Accidental Addict: A True Story of Pain and Healing…also Marriage, Real Estate, and Cowboy Dancing

As you have also, I’ve heard a lot about the new wave of opioid addiction.  Our pastor friend, Gary Quequish, told us of the devastation it caused among his First Nations people in the northern communities. I’ve read about so many young and middle-aged people in middle America dying, often of a heroin use that followed a painkiller addiction.

Last September, I had gallbladder surgery. Some people are all chatty coming out from anesthesia, I’m told, but I just wanted to sleep and sleep.

I had a prescription for a painkiller, which Paul went and filled for me.  I believe he had to have a written prescription and show his ID.

Having surgery hurts like crazy.  I mean, every move and cough and change of position is awful. So for the first day, I took the Oxycodone as prescribed.  Or rather, I took them whenever Emily handed them to me, and then I fell asleep again.

One day of this constant out-of-reality sleep was enough.  I quit taking the meds and took ibuprofen and Tylenol instead, and it hurt but I survived.

Good for me.

Last Christmas I signed up for the library fundraiser sale. When I hauled my books into the big, busy Atrium at the fairgrounds, Bill Sullivan directed me to a table and said, “Have you met Linda Crew?”

I had met her once before, I think, with a high level of awe, because she is a successful author of children’s books and won the Oregon Book Award for A Heart for Any Fate.

We started talking.  Her latest book, she said, is Accidental Addict: A True Story About Pain and Healing, about her experience of getting addicted to prescription medicine after knee surgery.

I said, flippantly, that I guess I was lucky because I couldn’t stand how the Oxycodone made me sleep, so I quit right away.

Her response was gracious, but after I read her book I realized that the luck was in having a manageable level of pain and no strange interactions with other medicines.

We were both at the book sale for hours, so we had lots of time to talk.  Linda is, out of necessity, unusually self-educated on the subjects of chronic pain, addiction, depression, and trauma. The medical community is quick to prescribe medication for symptoms, she said, but so utterly ignorant about the complicated interplay of pain, mental health, different medicines, recovery, and so on.

She also mentioned that if young people have a traumatic event, they will often follow a pattern of trauma-chronic illness-depression, and it’s terribly hard to recognize and diagnose for what it is.

I had a sudden thought.  Emily’s chronic illness and depression at age 17 were preceded by her cousin’s suicide.  Did Linda think there was a connection?

“Oh of course.”

That possibility had never occurred to any of us.

I went home and read Linda’s book over a number of weeks.  It’s a long story, and it is powerful for many reasons but especially this: she is not the sort of person whom we expect to get addicted. She was a middle-class wife and mom in a college town, a successful author, a hard worker, and, as she says, a rule-follower.

I’ve met my share of authors who try hard to project an artsy-writer aura, but Linda is not one of them, despite her success.  Her writing seems to be one thing among many that she does, such as taking care of her grandson, decorating her house, and whacking back blackberry vines on their property.  But the writing skills show through in this book. Although it’s different in subject and tone from her historical fiction, the sentences are artfully crafted and flow smoothly.

Her story shows that medical conditions and solutions are not in isolated boxes but intertwined with all of life, with husbands and hobbies and the weather and raising families and the rain and friendships and so much more.

Accidental Addict is difficult to summarize in a few paragraphs, but here are some things I learned:

--Addiction can happen to anyone.  None of us is immune to the combination of medical emergencies, severe pain, lack of knowledge, and doctors missing important information.

--Good medicines, prescribed for valid reasons, can interplay in really bizarre ways. Linda had also been on Xanax--I believe for migraines, initially. Now she says, in a recent email, “Ultimately I think those were my bottom line worst problem.  Everybody's got their surgery story like yours, and most people do get off without being hooked. The opioids are getting a lot of media attention. The  problem with benzodiazepines is much more insidious.  A lot of people are taking benzos and not even realizing they might ultimately have a problem.  I've had people say to me, without reading my book, ‘Oh, but see, I just take Xanax for anxiety.’  Or, ‘I just take it to help me sleep.’  They think because this doesn't seem like addict behavior, they don't have to worry.  My hope is that people might quietly see something they recognize in my book and take it to heart.”

--You have to educate yourself.  Medical people often know shockingly little about long-term use of medications, how medicines interact, and what can go wrong when you quit using them.

--Your body makes all kinds of chemicals that regulate your mental and physical health and welfare. If you take the same chemical in a medicine, your body no longer has any incentive to produce it. So when you taper off the medicine, your body might have a hard time getting that kettle of chemicals cooking again.  You can be really miserable in the meanwhile, and that’s when you’ll have serious temptation to pop a pill for a quick fix, just to relieve the misery.

--Recovery is not a matter of slowly tapering off and going back to normal life.  Linda had to deal with the most bizarre and debilitating mental, emotional, and physical effects, and they went on and on and ON.  Over and over, just when she thought she was finally making progress, she would again turn into this desperate, needy, fragile person who was in physical pain and falling apart on the inside and couldn’t find a way to communicate to her loved ones what she really needed from them. So there was this cycle of hurting others, being hurt, distance between people, more hurting, and no one including herself really understanding what was going on.

--Her story has a good ending, I am happy to say, but it came out of a shockingly long, tough, hard journey. It's interesting that she writes stories about the Oregon Trail, because in many ways her journey was equally hazardous and daunting.  But she reached the Willamette Valley, so to speak, and I have great respect for her and anyone else who has fought their way out of addiction.

And—today is her birthday! I didn’t know that when I planned to post this today. Happy birthday, Linda! May your day be full of joy and may you be blessed in advance for the comfort and hope that your story will bring to others.

Here's the book on Amazon.

Here's Linda's website.

And here's her blog.

ABC--Things I've Learned As a Parent, Post 1

As we have for the past few years, two of my daughters and I plan to take turns posting in April. A few changes from previous years:
--The name: ABC (April Blogging Challenge) instead of MOP (Month of Posting) which was just a bit too soggy for some of us waterlogged folks.
--The frequency: one of us will try to post every day and not just Monday-Friday.

Emily posts at The Girl in the Red Rubber Boots. Jenny is at Here Shall the Wild-Bird Sing.

I don't know what the girls plan to write about, but I have three potential topics:
--Reviews of books by siblings of friends.
--The result of my research on the long-promised You Talk I Listen interviews.
--Parenting advice. No, wait. Not parenting advice. Things I've learned as a parent.
Comment or email [dorcassmucker@gmail.com] if you really want me to write about a particular topic.


For my first post, I chose Something I’ve Learned As a Parent:

You’re not going to do everything right.

We lived in low-income family-oriented housing during the first two years of our marriage and my first pregnancy, which gave me lots of opportunity to watch other moms and children at close range.

I don’t know that low-income moms are any more or less nasty than high-income moms, but these women were appalling. Right outside our back door was a small play area, and the stressed and angry moms would march over to the fence and scream at their children to get over here right now, followed by threats and name-calling and cussing.

I overheard two moms talking one day about what they threaten to do to get the kids to obey. One laughed and said, “I tell them I’ll poke their eyes out.”

Horrified, I went home and wrote this in my journal, that special pretty hard-bound book where I recorded all my many feelings and wrote poetry about morning sickness. 

Song Of The Sick And Cynical Pregnant Lady
September 16, 1985

A radiant maternal glow
A nicely rounded tummy
A closetful of spacious tops
A craving for foods yummy.

Idealistic pregnancy!
It sounded like such fun
while trying hard to sprout a new
young heir for me and Hon.

Alas! I have no lovely glow.
Instead I'm weak and pale.
I clutch my stomach all day long
And feel it churn and flail.

I crave no foods. I wish I did--
(particularly prunes).
I fear my man will have to cook
for many future moons.

And as to needing roomy tops
My “nicely rounded tummy”
Is quite concave. I’ve lost six pounds
Since I’ve been feeling crummy.

So things are rather different than
I thought they'd be. And maybe
I'm in for more surprises yet
Before I have this baby.


I was full of love and promises, and I was not going to be like the apartment moms.

I was going to do it right, because I loved this child.

Even at church, I saw mothering I wasn’t going to repeat, such as when a friend of mine corrected her 3-year-old by saying, “Mandy, you’re a bad girl!”

Oh my! I had read that you shouldn’t ever tell a child they’re bad! I wasn't going to do that, for sure.

Well.

What I didn’t know then is that we parent not only out of our love and ideals but also out of who we are and what is going on around us.

We parent out of, and in the middle of, insecurities, financial stress, sickness, pressure from other people, unresolved shame, addictions, stress from life events, hunger for approval, weird motivations, lack of resources, and needs in your child that you have no clue how to meet.

I didn’t know that one day I would have four children in a little house and I would finally get the baby to sleep and three-year-old Emily would stand in the hallway and screech at top decibel and wake up the baby and I would snap in utter frustration and say, “EMILY!!! WHY ARE YOU SO BAD??!!”

Then I felt terrible.

And that was far from the worst thing I did as a mom.

So, I found out, as you will also, that despite all of our love and ideals, we are human and we will do a lot of things wrong, and that is how it is.

Having said that...

You don't have to drown in despair, discouragement, and fear. There is a path through and onward.

I still stumble on that path. Sometimes I lie awake at night re-hashing the excessive punishment, the misinformed decisions, the hot anger, or the unrealistic expectations. Unhealthy as this cogitating may be, at least it's a lot better than it used to be, and it is far better than pretending and insisting that I did everything right.

So here’s my how-to for mitigating the damage and moving on, which is remarkably similar to how you learn and grow in any relationship.

1. Honestly admit what you did wrong.
2. Apologize.
3. Recognize that your past behavior might affect your child on an ongoing basis. They might need to discuss it on an ongoing basis as well. Have the humility to allow this, assuming they aren’t using it to guilt or manipulate or blame you.
4. Realize that you did what you did because of who you were and what was in your heart. So focus on growing into a better, wiser person, rather than just changing your parenting methods, your child, or your situation, but:
5. Do change your parenting methods that aren’t working. Don’t keep doing the same thing over and over, hoping one of these times you’ll have different results.
6. Ask for and accept God’s and your child’s grace and forgiveness.
7. Recognize that in God’s sovereignty, your errors can be redeemed.
8. Get help. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to get advice from mentors about dealing with your children or counseling from professionals for the issues from your own childhood that get reborn in crazy ways when you have children.

And remember: “…Love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8 NIV

It's amazing what children will forgive and even laugh about later if they know that you loved them.

Weighted Blankets and Warm Stories

"Stories happen to those who tell them," a mentor of mine once said.

I can't recall why I was listening to this podcast a while back, but what the instructor said about comedic dialogue is true for stories as well: You never cut off the conversation, the possibility, the story, with a No.

You just keep going and see where it takes you.

For my newspaper column in January I wrote about my fabric obsession and stash.  I had a voice speaking into one ear, "Seriously, you want the world to know how crazy you are?" and another voice in the other ear, "Deadline deadline DEADLINE!"

I met the deadline.

Through that column, I've found a sisterhood--women who write or call or pull me aside at speaking events and confide that they are Just Like Me! Imagine! And we giggle together and talk about sewing and cottons and scraps and patterns and always our shocking stash.

Last week I spoke at a Rotary Club in Springfield.  Afterwards, an older woman told me that her son's wife had passed away, and her son, going through her things, was dumbfounded at the huge quantity of quilt fabric, patterns, and supplies.  Why would she collect such a pile? "I sent him a copy of your article," the woman said, "and he told me, 'Now I understand.'"

A 77-year-old woman named Edith emailed me and said she makes weighted blankets for autistic children, and she would take any fabric pieces over a yard in size that I'd want to donate.

I asked more questions.  These blankets are sewn in a 6-inch grid, and each square contains a measured amount of Fiberfill and heavy plastic beads.  There's something magic about that warmth and weight that helps special-needs children sleep better.

I said I would love to donate to her cause, and rounded up two grocery bags full of fabrics--some colorful wovens and some flannels--all appropriate for children.

Today she came to pick it up.  A friend named Carrie who's started helping her sew came along, and also the friend's sister Donna from Alaska.

Edith was delighted.  I told her not to feel obligated to take it all if some pieces won't work for her, but she was thrilled with all of them.

It was so fun to see Edith digging and admiring.

More digging.

And more digging.  I like the movement in this picture.

Then we sat down and talked.

I forget how many blankets Edith and her helpers have already made, but they have a list of 60 families waiting for one.  She hears so many testimonials, such as the mom who reported that her 5-year-old slept through the night for the first time ever when he got his blanket. And that's what keeps her going and sewing.

"I don't waste a thing," she said proudly. "If there's leftover fabric, I use it for pillowcases for kids in the hospital. If the pieces are too small for pillowcases, I use them for the--oh, what do you call that?--the edge trim on the pillowcase.  And the really small scraps I give to another group and they make quilts for veterans."

She grinned.

I had prickles on the back of my neck, because sometimes God reaches down and gives me a little touch of Mom.  "That is EXACTLY the kind of thing my mom would do," I told Edith.  "She would just love you."

[After Edith left, Emily, who had come bustling through on her way to class, said, "Did you think about how much Edith's voice sounded like Grandma Yoder?"

She was right.  Then I really had prickles on my neck.]

But we are still visiting in the living room, telling more stories.

Donna had sat quietly smiling through our conversation.  So I turned to her and asked where in Alaska she was from. "Wrangell. It's an island off the panhandle," she said. "It's 26 miles long, with about 12 miles of paved road, and it's closer to Seattle than Anchorage. We're part of the world's second largest rain forest."

It's always interesting to hear what takes people to Alaska, so I asked her.

"We grew up there. Our family's been there forever."

"Oh! You're native Alaskans!"

"Yes. Well, Alaska Natives."

So that's how you say it. Tlingit, to be exact, it turns out.

How fascinating is that.  So then the sisters talked about totems and beadwork and growing up on the island, where people worked in either logging or fishing.

See, if you keep turning life's pages, you keep getting more of the story, which circled around to another story about sewing, which was as heartwarming as a weighted blanket.

When Carrie and Donna were young, a family from Oregon had come to the island to work as commercial fishermen, but they were desperately poor--so poor that the father and two sons had only one pair of shoes between them, and whoever needed them least that day went without, in the snow and cold.  And sometimes the second-grade boy clomped around in these men's shoes with his little stick legs.

The family was also too proud to accept gifts, which was incomprehensible to the people on the island who took care of each other and had always shared what was needed.

The family had two daughters who were Donna's friends. Their mom sewed feed-sack dresses for them by hand.

One day Donna had an idea.  She had wandered around the back rooms of the Presbyterian church, much like my children in their day explored the furnace rooms and balconies of Sheridan Mennonite when we went there for special meetings, and in a closet in an upstairs Sunday school room, Donna had seen a sewing machine.

She asked her mom if she could have it. Her mom sent her to the pastor's wife.  The pastor's wife had no idea the machine even existed and finally said, Yes, she could have it.

The machine was almost too heavy to carry, but she lugged it to her friends' home on the fishing boat. Was it because the mom saw her as a personal friend that she accepted it? I don't know, but the mom ended up with a little sewing business. People would bring pants and things to mend, and she would also cut patterns from paper sacks and sew dresses. It gave her a dignified way to help support her family.

At the end of that year, the family went back to Oregon.  I don't know what became of the sewing machine or the friends.

But I loved the story.

See, that is how it works, with both fabric and stories. One thing leads to another, people connect, and windows open into faraway lives.

And the fabric I bought at a garage sale in 2005 and never turned into a dress for Jenny can now help an anxious little child sleep better at night.

Isn't that amazing?

Here's me and Edith. I'm holding a weighted blanket she brought to show me.
She's holding fabric.
We are happy.

Spring Morning

Hello there, spring morning,
Sunshine and sheep,
Small blossoms borning
While I was asleep.
Hello there, hope, 
glowing and new.
In darkness and rain
You silently grew. 
Good news, Winter,
Your pregnancy's past.
Thanks for your labor.
Goodbye, at last.

Newspaper Column--Hens and Befuddled Moms

LETTER FROM HARRISBURG

A hen’s simple life provides an oasis in a complicated world

By Dorcas Smucker

For The Register-Guard

MARCH 12, 2017

I love my flock of hens for many reasons, but especially this: They dispatch spiders with one decisive peck, a refreshing demonstration when one’s head is full of ideas and tasks and choices spidering chaotically in all directions.

One hen, named Dorothy, roosts in the back corner of the carport, on a coil of rope on a shelf behind a bicycle. After dark, I put on my old coat, step around the bike, grab her left wing, pull her out and carry her to the henhouse. She is warm and fluffy, and she almost purrs in a deep rumbling cluck that I can feel in my hands.

Then I open the door of the dark henhouse and set her inside, where the other hens scold her in quiet annoyance from the roost. They sound like us, when Paul and I just have fallen asleep and the college kid who was up late, studying upstairs, decides to make a quesadilla for a snack. Every bump and slam carries into the bedroom because it is an old house, the fir beams all interconnected somehow, and creaking floors and clanked skillets reverberate everywhere.

Hoping to remedy this, we are redoing our tiny bedroom, borrowing a few square feet from the office and adding insulation on the wall next to the kitchen.

Five of our six children are in college, and the sixth tutors at a university overseas. We didn’t plan or particularly encourage this, but, as our oldest son said, “If you sack seed for nine summers you’re motivated to go to college so you never have to sack seed again.”

“The Smucker warehouse must be doing awfully well,” my neighbor lady commented.

“Trust me,” I said. “The kids pay for college themselves.” Mostly debt-free, I should have added. In the interest of saving money, three of them live at home and commute.

This means that not only are midnight snacks prepared for all to hear, but the conversations in our kitchen, over morning coffee or while washing dishes after dinner, careen from heat transfer and Roman history to Socratic methods and math instructors at Linn-Benton. “Can you calculate how long this mug will keep my tea hot if the water is boiling but it’s 44 degrees outside?” the communication major asks the smoldering combustion researcher.

Lately, the conversation often circles around to two subjects that the kids enjoy but that make me feel slow and lagging in intellect and sophistication.

First is the idea of fixed vs. growth mindset, best explained by my daughter Jenny.

“Someone with a fixed mindset believes that their qualities, such as intelligence or talents, are fixed traits, whereas a person with a growth mindset sees them as areas where they can grow.”

A growth mindset is good, I am told, which motivated me to take a basket-making class and read up on construction and colors when it would have been much easier to sit down with a cup of tea and a well-worn copy of L.M. Montgomery’s “A Tangled Web.”

I’m still confused about the second subject the kids discuss: the Myers-Briggs personality types, an evaluation method with a possibility of 16 different results, indicated by a four-letter acronym apiece.

They say I’m an INFP, which seems to mean I’m a disorganized person who is easily overwhelmed, thinks too much and needs time alone to survive. And I live among noisy, practical and logical people who, in the words of a young friend, sort of drag me along in their wake, as opposed to me steering the boat.

In their pursuit of lofty thoughts and complicated lives, the kids love and indulge me in my quest for simplicity and rest, and they think I am sweet and lovable, which nice, but it’s also how I treat my chickens.

But, like my hens who figured out how to clear the gate even after we clipped their wings, I am determined to choose a growth mindset and keep learning. The remodeling project requires narrow choices among far too many options. I’ve lived through at least six eras in home decorating. I want to be up-to-date but not a fad-follower, and I don’t want to choose the equivalent of geese with blue bows around their necks.

“You need to watch ‘Fixer Upper!’ ” my friends told me. I looked it up online. It’s a show about, naturally, fixing up older houses, and the prevailing great idea is accent walls covered in shiplap, a type of rough board with interlocking edges.

Hmmm. I inspected the doorway where Paul had cut into the wall under the stairs, and there I saw the ends of rough boards with interlocking edges.

Our bedroom was covered in 106-year-old shiplap, back behind the drywall and five layers of wallpaper!

I shared this astonishing discovery with Paul. He said, “Before we go tearing the Sheetrock off every wall in the house, we’re going to expose one wall in the bedroom. And you’re going to help, so you know how much work is involved.”

How did he know exactly what I was thinking?

So I helped pry off the accumulations of the years, and I learned about pulling out nails and how much dust a piece of broken drywall produces and how Paul’s great-grandma pasted on a thin sheet of cotton fabric to anchor the first layer of wallpaper.

Despite my need for solitude and quiet, I cook dinner every night and hope the kids all come home to eat it together. I ask about classes and classmates, I tell them to invite their friends over, and I do my best to understand the discussions on philosophy and trigonometry and music, because that is what a mom does.

Then I go visit my chickens. Among too much to ponder and process, they live in a separate little universe where life is simple and straightforward.

For one thing, their conversations are easy to understand. They discuss eggs, feed, the endless rain and the annoying Dorothy. Did I bring any vegetable scraps for them, they ask. Yes yes yes! And they race for the cabbage leaves and carrot peelings. Thank you, thank you! I laid an egg just for you, a brown one, they tell me proudly.

My hens are not terribly intelligent, I’m afraid, but it’s nice to feel like the smartest person in the room. Instead of thinking logically, they flap their wings and run off, screeching, if I rattle the feed bag too loudly. Probably they are ESFPs, totally in the moment and guided by the emotions of the group. I find this comforting.

Mostly, they are of a fixed, rather than a growth mindset. Despite learning to escape their field, they can’t figure out that to get to the feed trays, they must either fly back over the fence or enter the front door of the hen house. So they stand by the fence, clucking hungrily, but run off when I try to gently shoo them inside.

This is a problem, but it makes me feel sensible by comparison, and in the overall whirl of my life, this issue is small and manageable. In fact, the worst complication happened the other morning when I threw on a skirt and coat over my pajamas and ran out to feed them. One skinny Leghorn was outside, and I tried to corral her with a leaf rake, which did not go well. I looked up, briefly, and saw that a white pickup truck was parked on the road, and the man inside was taking photos. This troubled me on at least two levels, maybe three or four. Then he waved and drove off, the hen was eventually lured back inside, and I chose not to worry about the potential photos.

Hens don’t worry about weight or fashion or propriety. They find great joy in eating, and sometimes they follow me out to the mailbox with their plump hindquarters rocking happily back and forth. They don’t worry about Myers-Briggs tests, fixed or growth mindsets, or whether an all-white room will look out of date a year from now.

I know God had his reasons for making them chickens and for making me a sometimes-befuddled mom of a large brood of humans. At the end of the day, though, I am grateful that this is my calling, that life is all interconnected like the ribs of an old farmhouse, and that even in the dark I am held and carried home like a warm and contentedly clucking hen.

A Few Random Thoughts

Just a few things I jotted down last evening...
On my mind:
1. I have a daughter who, if she is ever preparing for a wedding, wants to register at St. Vincent de Paul or an independently-owned thrift store.
2. It's an odd thing to be 54 and finally figure out that someone lied to you when you were 8 or 9, and all your life you've acted as though this thing were true, and it isn't and never was.
3. Last night we were with the other pastor's kids. Middle names were discussed.
Paul: I'll bet you don't know my middle name!
Little kid, confidently: 'Postle!
4. We took up the carpet in our bedroom, and there was old floral linoleum, and under the linoleum was a lovely fir floor, which Paul has been sanding down to perfect levelness and consistency.
5. Yesterday morning I threw on a few garments over my pajamas and ran out to feed the chickens. One was out and I tried to corral it with a leaf rake, which did not go well. And then I looked up and a white pickup truck was parked on the road, and the man inside was taking photos. This bothers me on at least two levels, maybe three or four. [Then he waved and drove off.]
6. Today I got a handwritten fan letter from a young man going to college in Iowa. Imagine.
7. This year, the SAD hit just as the daffodils started blooming, which is a very odd way to do things.
8. I think we should all give other people permission to tell their stories even if it makes us look bad. This is an easy thing for me to say, since I am generally the storyteller. I hope I'd feel the same if my kids told a story that made me look bad [or dumb or mean or unfair], since we all know that examples of such would be easy to find. And I am all about telling one's story honestly, which is why, when Paul got ordained, I told him that I'm willing to be embarrassed for the sake of a good illustration. But Telling in any form usually involves tough choices between Honesty and Honor, Healing and Pleasing, Speaking Out and Horrifying Somebody.
9. It rains a lot in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
ETA: By special request, I came up with a tenth item:
10: It is March and so far I've kept my New Years resolution of not buying fabric. It has caused me pain and has required fierce resolve and avoidance of Certain Shops, but it has been done.

February Column--On Visiting Old Uncles

Like squares of a quilt, family members make up who we are

By Dorcas Smucker

For The Register-Guard

FEB. 12, 2017

You’ll probably come see me when I’m in a box,” Uncle Johnny told me on the phone a few years ago.

At 93 years old, he is a bit melancholy but also funny, loyal and loving, and a slightly off brand of Amish, since he calls me on a cellphone.

I said, “I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’m coming to see you before you’re in a box.”

I live in Oregon. Uncle Johnny lives in central Kansas, which is not on the route to anywhere I go.

When I was little, my 18 aunts and uncles were fun to visit except when I couldn’t use a hair dryer on my long wet hair or pawed fruitlessly for the light switch in the dark bedroom at Aunt Ennie’s before remembering she was Old Order Amish.

Back then, the relatives were mostly irrelevant, and my grandpa was only a strange old man with dementia and a white beard.

I married and moved far away. Paul and I were busy and sometimes overwhelmed with running a business, raising six children and pastoring a church. Gradually the aunts and uncles grew old and passed on, which was sad but a normal part of life.

Why do we wait until we’re 50 to ask about family history, the past, who your parents and grandparents used to be, and how this connects with you today? This is followed by the shocking truth that your aunts and uncles are the only people with access to this precious stash of information, and most of them are gone.

Why does it take us this long to understand that our forebears’ lives were much like ours — marriage, raising a family, earning a living? Love, laughter, conscience and commitment — all through almost impossible challenges.

Two years ago, I went to visit my one remaining aunt, Vina, Mom’s sister, in Iowa. I listened to her stories, took pages of notes and laughed until I was in tears. And I understood my mom a lot better.

Last month, Paul and I flew to Indiana, where I spoke at a women’s retreat, and then we flew to Wichita and drove over the flat Kansas prairie to Hutchinson and the tidy home of Johnny, my dad’s youngest brother and the only uncle I have left.

“Now you’ll be coming around the west side of the house,” he told me on the phone. “Come in the north garage door and then go in the west door and there’s a door to the basement. Your room is west of the kitchen.”

At 2 a.m. we slipped in the north door, just as he said, past the buggy in the garage, and down to our welcoming bedroom in the basement.

I grew up in Minnesota around farmers who referred to the four points of the compass rather than right and left. But Johnny was probably the most direction-oriented man I’ve ever seen.

“There’s room for that on the west side,” he said when I was putting milk in the refrigerator.

Aunt Bertha has been gone for a couple of years, and Johnny still grieves deeply for her. He was 18 when he asked Bertha for a date, he told us. She turned him down.

Her dad said, “What’d you do that for? You’re 16 now!” Her mom said, “Oh, if he really wants you, he’ll be back.”

He did, and he was.

“We had a good life together,” Johnny says. “I loved her very much.”

My dad was away in Civilian Public Service when Johnny and Bertha were dating. Johnny got the farm deferment, and he and his dad, John A. Senior (not to be confused with the family’s John T. Yoder or John E. Yoder or John C. Yoder or John Earl Yoder or Johnny Junior) did the work of three or four men.

In addition, John A. had been ordained bishop, which meant he had to travel to other churches to hold communion services. One weekend he was gone to eastern Oklahoma. “Meet me at the bus stop in Weatherford at 2 Monday morning,” he told Johnny.

Johnny and Bertha went on a date that night, and Johnny didn’t bother going to bed. He took the horse and buggy to town and waited in front of the grocery store where Bill Evans, the policeman, was parked, leaning back in his seat, with his hat over his eyes, looking sound asleep.

The bus came and it was full of Army boys. “But no Dad.” The second bus was also full of Army boys. And no Dad.

So Johnny untied the horse and went home. The next morning, he got up at 5 to do chores. There was John A. at the kitchen table. “Where were you?” Johnny said. “Where were you?” said his dad.

His dad had been on the third bus.

Bill Evans, still snoozing in his car, woke up and said, “Hop in. I’ll drive you home.”

Suddenly Bill said, “I can’t take you any further. I have just enough gas to get back to town.”

So my grandpa, who had just spend the weekend away at the thankless task of helping a church, and who faced another week of endless physical labor on the farm, gathered his things and walked the three miles home.

“He was all about peace and love,” Johnny said. “Other bishops would lay down the law, but Dad would give people a chance. And Dad let ’em go if they wanted to leave the Amish and go to the Mennonite church.”

Peace and love carried a high price. Mose Yoder, an uncle, was drafted in World War I. Since there were no provisions for conscientious objectors, he was in the camps with the “Army boys.” It was difficult — a few COs died in similar situations. “But then,” Johnny said, “the Army boys started getting sick, one after the other, and pretty soon almost all of them were down, but Mose never got sick. He would go around and take care of the others, bring them water, clean up after them, and even clean up their puke. And he won their respect. Things went much better after that, and he was put in charge of the CO boys.”

Before we caught our flight home, Johnny gave me a packet of letters my dad had sent from Paraguay in the 1940s, the careful writing on fragile, almost weightless paper.

We flew home to Oregon with the priceless letters in my purse, feeling richer and wiser. My strange old grandpa also had known a pastor’s weariness, and yet he left a legacy of kindness, dedication and peace. Surely that was why my dad had always insisted, whenever I was upset at someone, that I figure out why they might feel and act as they did.

It was possible for a marriage to stay loving and joyful for some 70 years. Posting an insightful meme about peace and love online is a very different thing from mopping up your enemies’ vomit. And when you go visit your elderly uncle, you will learn that if you know which way is north, you can always find your way back home.