and kisses for your mom

Each day that I spend with my children on this great Earth there are a hundred different ways that I tell them I love them. Speaking the words out loud comes very naturally to me. “Good morning, my love,” is usually whispered softly in their ears each morning as I rub my hand gently across their foreheads and down their cheeks.

Almost daily I tell them I love them through song. Now, I'm a pathetic singer. In fact, I'm the person that hums the happy birthday song at parties and silently mouths our hymns at church for fear of scaring people. My mother-in-law, however, assured me when my first babies came into this world that, “You are ridiculous. They do not care if you sing well. Mothers sing to their babies.” Point taken.

Little love taps as I walk by them in their classroom, ruffling their hair while they relax on the sofa, squeezing next to them on the chaise lounge while gathering them onto my lap are all tactile expressions of my love. Thankfully my kids are all young enough to enjoy these moments still. I'm nervously awaiting the first time I get The Look though, and I am already careful to rein in this demonstration of love when their friends are around.

If you have ever read the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, you know that everyone feels loved in different ways. http://www.5lovelanguages.com/resources/books/

Acts of Service is one of my love languages, meaning that if my husband busts his backside cleaning up the house he is feeling especially loving that day. I respond accordingly, usually fulfilling his primarily love language of Physical Touch. Yes, ladies. Sex is an actual love language. If it happens to be one of your man's top love languages they will feel unloved without regular entertainment in the bedroom. Or shower. Maybe in the hammock, or car...whatever floats your boat.

Until recently I was not aware that there is an offshoot of the book entitled The Five Love Languages of Children. Essentially the same categories of love are discussed, with importance given to implementing them for small children. For example, my daughter does not consider my sitting around the breakfast table with her each morning as Quality Time, even though I categorize it as such. I'm oftentimes thinking that I could really, really use a shower right now if I'm going to get out the door on time and not wear pajamas through the car drop-off line at school. She is thinking that of course every other mother on the planet sits at the table with their daughter to chit chat each morning.

Quite simply, my children think it is my duty to feed, clothe, wash and take them places rather than an Act of Service which deserves appreciation. And in many ways those things are my duty. The above and beyond is my love. The extra time I spend preparing healthy food, clothes washed without harmful chemicals, or the special trip to the Herb Shop for toothpaste without fluoride is of limited importance in their mind. The love note I tuck inside their lunchbox, the special t-shirt I wash and have ready for Monday morning however, does get picked up on their radar. These are called Words of Affirmation and Gifts. Pure love to most children.

Gifts, gifts, gifts... it kills my husband that each of my children has a primary love language of Gifts. (Never mind how much I sometimes wish that his love language was Gifts instead of regular hanky panky...) Blame Santa, the Easter Bunny, and their gift-happy mother but these munchkins of mine do very much appreciate an unsolicited present from time to time. A prize for having learned the Star Wars Theme Song on your guitar? Sure! Here is a Star Wars toy! A dollar tucked into their pocket for a run to The Dollar Tree simply because I love you and it is raining out today? Why not!

Does it have to be your birthday to get a new box of markers, a packet of Bella Sara collector cards or a new stuffed animal from the local thrift shop? Hell no. Not in the Hellenbrand house. Have I created monsters? Maybe. On some days I would argue yes. On others I would say that I have some of the most happy and secure children on the block. They know they are loved. Without a doubt. On good days and bad. When they are right, and even when they are wrong, they know that I have their back. That has to be powerful.

Last night after homework and dinner hour I drove to our local library and participated in a writer's circle. Somewhat similar to a book club, there were a dozen writers gathered around tables set up in a large circle. Books, essays, manuscripts sat open before us. We had all come prepared to critique each others work.

One of the pieces we were reviewing was written by a woman originally from India. Her piece was a fictional story about a young lady who had reached the age where her father wanted to purchase a couple of pieces of beautiful pottery to commemorate her maturity. It is a cultural custom to do this, apparently, much in the same way that Catholic eight year olds are bought rosaries for their First Communion. Or American children are given a car when they turn sixteen.

In various places within the text the author inserted a bit of Bengali terminology. I suggested that the she use a few Bengali passages within the dialogue between the father and daughter as well. I though it might be a way to “show, not tell” the love between father and daughter. (This show, not tell thing is something every writer strives for and frequently stumbles on) After hearing my idea the author paused, hummed a bit and gently shook her head. “In my culture we do not say 'I love you.' Never did my mama tell me she loves me. She is gone now, but I know she loved me without her ever saying it. This is the way in India. “

I feel conflicted hearing this. I wonder if I tell my children too often how much I love them. I wonder if deep inside this woman wishes her mother had said those three little words “I love you”. Even just once? But then I remember as a young mother reading about the importance of teaching children to give and receive love. Marie Hartwell-Walker has written a beautiful article about this very topic. http://psychcentral.com/library/id445.html

She writes, “One of the most important things we can teach our children, perhaps the most important thing, is how to be loved and loving. We can't protect them from the many difficulties, even tragedies, of life. But we can teach them how to surround themselves with support and love. People who are loved have people around them to celebrate the good times, to share life's triumphs, and to manage the rough spots. People who have solid relationships are seldom lonely and seldom lost -- no matter how challenging or painful their life's course. People who are loved have a security deep inside that makes it possible to take risks and to accept defeats. People who are loved during life die satisfied.”

So... in the name of growing three satisfied and happy children who feel strength when they are right and support when they are wrong I am going to continue flooding my children with love. I will blow them kisses across the house and wink at them when no one else is looking. I will bake them cookies on any ole' weekday even if their Daddy thinks it is silly and should be saved for special occasions. I will hug them after a temper tantrum and tell them I love them anyway.

Each morning on our way to school there is a little song I sing as we pull into the school driveway. It is grossly simple, yet instructive. And it is wrapped with love. “Seat belts off, backpacks on, and kisses for your mom.” They haven't missed a day yet.

loved and lost: our duck hell

When we moved to our small farm, I expected to learn a few things. I expected to figure out how an underground well works, how to sow a garden, install and utilize an outside laundry line, stock a pond and shoot a BB gun. I knew there would be pasture fence to repair, piles of leaves to rake, and a lot of lawn to cut. We spoke about the possibility of having a horse or a goat out in our pasture, but ruled it out as an endeavor that was simply too much for a family with three young children to manage.

Two years later, we have two horses out to pasture, twelve chickens in the barn, one pregnant cat, and our two dogs Tyson and Copper. Oh, and did I forget to mention the four ducklings that my husband begged me for? Apparently Tractor Supply Co. did some pretty effective marketing when he was there buying animal feed, and the tiny, yellow, fluffy ducklings were too cute to pass up. The picturesque image of our very own ducks paddling on our pond, eating Cheerios from our children's outstretched hands was just too much for Brandon to resist.

Ming-ming was the first yellow duckling to join our family and warm our hearts. His sister Daffodil, named by our little five-year-old daughter Brooklynn, was next. Then came a tiny brown one that did not live to see two consecutive days in our home, as our dog Copper decided that a bird for breakfast sounded nice. We never got to name that one. The last duck we named Lucky since he was the last duckling at Tractor Supply Co., stuck in a bin with a bunch of baby chicks. My boys decided that it was “just not fair for him to be stuck with all those chickens,” and so he came to be the lucky duck to come home with us.

Some might call our place a hobby farm. Except that we are not yet sixty-something retirees with a bunch of time on our hands. No, we are thirty-somethings trying to fit in baseball practices, gymnastics, boy scouts and swim meets. (In between homework, dinner and bedtime - mind you.) The kids all love their respective sports and activities, not yet feeling overwhelmed, though their mother does at times. They also love their animals. They love chasing them, feeding them, naming them, carting them around in the wagon, and generally loving on them. I am “the best mom in the world,” they have informed me, simply because “Maggie's mom won't even let her have a fish!” Sorry, Laura. No “Best Mom” award for all of those tadpoles you raised on your front porch a couple of years ago. They have already been forgotten.

So even though we did not plan on having this menagerie of sorts, the pleasure that each of us get from the various animals – all for different reasons – makes it worth it. The chicken droppings scattered throughout the lawn is tolerated due to it making excellent fertilizer, but also because we get nutritionally excellent eggs from the girls. The horses are entirely cared for by the young girl who owns them, leaving us to simply enjoy watching them, petting them and feeding them apples and sugar cubes from time to time. They whinny when we drive in, come when we call them, and fertilize our garden with their waste. We adore them.

The small, sleek black cat that graces our home is one that we rescued from under my mini-van on a brisk October afternoon. It was a tiny little thing, sick with green eye boogies and an ear infection that was so bad she could not walk without falling and rolling over. Of course we took her home. We gave her a bath, washed her eyes with saline for a week, and dropped our favorite ear remedy Wally's Ear Oil in her ears to cure the suspected ear infection. In one weeks' time she was as healthy as any kitten I have ever laid eyes on. Her disposition has been nothing but sweet and unassuming ever since, instantly earning the nickname Best Cat Ever. Given that I am not a cat person at all and allergic to boot, she is a miracle pet. It turns out that I am only minimally allergic to her, being able to hold her on my lap and getting in return the loudest purring I've ever heard. Her name is Miss Blacky and we will keep her forever.

One small hitch in that equation occurred when our cat was just a “teenager”. A large gray and white tom cat came prowling around the farm. We responded by locking Miss Blacky in the garage at night, and we kept her close to us during the day in the hopes of deterring the boy cat. Remember, we were newbies with cats. We will never make this mistake again, - she has since been spayed. But that was after we accidentally locked her in the garage with the boy cat, and found ourselves with a pregnant cat that for all intents and purposes was still a baby herself.

Nine weeks later, in addition to our perfectly wonderful Miss Blacky, we now had four itty-bitty kitties named Nala, Summer, Squirtle, and Little Blacky. Summer and Squirtle were taken to an acquaintance's farm who happened to have a mouse problem, while Nala and Little Blacky decided to stay with us. Nala has been renamed Grayson, by the way. We discovered that he is in fact a boy and a Lion's King reference to a girl lion was no longer appropriate.

So our little farm was clipping along with whinnies, barking, meowing and clucks. When Brandon's little wifey gave in and agreed to the ducklings, we also had some quacking. The ducklings spent the first week in our house in a large Rubbermaid bin, the weather outside being too cool for their tiny little bodies. The chicken feed dishes doubled as duck feed dishes and the smell in our living room was atrocious. Ducks are filthy birds, sleeping where they poop, eating where they poop, and also just plain pooping a whole bunch. They eat and poop it out about twenty minutes later, I think. Or at least it appeared that way.

The second week we moved the Rubbermaid out to the front yard. We filled up a kiddie pool with water and daily introduced them to their makeshift pond. This was when we discovered that Lucky wasn't so lucky after all. He could not stay upright in the water, leaning severely to the left when made to float. The resulting position of his neck was awful to even look at, let alone to live with. Upon inspection of him more closely, we found a neurological problem with one of his feet and a laxity in the knee on that side as well. To put it plainly, one of Lucky's webbed feet curled in and couldn't keep him upright in the water. So we tipped the pool a bit to allow for a more shallow area for him to play in, and we continued to love him.

Soon thereafter Daffodil was caught by one of the dogs. Innocently enough, she wandered into the backyard for a look around and was quickly “herded” and shook. This was the beginning of what I now refer to as Duck Hell.

I know that earlier it may seem that I made light of the first little brown duck being eaten by Copper on day one of our duck adventure. It was no small matter, however. Trying to explain to the children where the duck went, hunting in the backyard for the remains (which we never did find) was a deeply difficult thing for me. Up until living on the farm, I had had very few experiences with the loss of a pet. Our dog Oakley had been hit by a car five years prior and it took me almost two years to come to terms with the loss. Before that I had had a hamster that drowned in a sump pump when I was ten years old. That was the extent of my experience with the cruelties of mother nature. Not exactly a “seasoned” farmer. The circle of life that I had sung about with my daughter during the Lion King movie had never really felt like anything other than a movie to me. I was having to play a fast game of catch up now, however.

Daffodil was Brooklynn's duck, so I had to call Brooklynn out to the yard in order to carry her still warm dead duck to the backyard to bury it. If there had been a way of replacing the duck without her knowing, we would have done it. But Lucky had been the last one at the store, as you recall. So Brooklynn learned a hard lesson that day about loving and losing. She once had an earthworm that died in a Dixie cup she was carrying around. It was a traumatic event for her. You can imagine how burying Daffodil went.

But life moves on and we still had two ducks to care for. And care for them we did. There have never been two ducks more nurtured than Ming-ming and Lucky. We took them for strolls – or waddles – through the yard, we even introduced them to Tyson, our ailing but amazingly gentle Boxer-mix dog. I have a photograph of Ming-ming nose to nose with Tyson, both just looking at each other, somewhat indifferently. It is a favorite of mine.

The time came when the ducks were too large for the Rubbermaid container and kiddie pool, so we hauled them out to the pond in the extra-large dog kennel we found in the garage. Locking them up at night, while allowing them the freedom to swim and explore during the day seemed to be the next logical step for responsible duck ownership. A hitch in the plan surfaced, however, when we discover that the ducks could squeeze through the lower kennel rungs and escape. So the covered dog house was brought out for them, placed next to the pond for easy access in and out of the water and the realization that nature would have to take its course at this point was followed by a quick prayer to God to watch over our ducks. Mama could not take another cruel circle of life event.

But circle it did.

It turns out that a Jurassic Park-size snapping turtle lives in our pond. With spines on its shell like a stegosaurus and a neck as thick as a softball, that damn turtle hunted our ducks. Poor Lucky didn't stand a chance.

That was it. Cue the tears. Up until losing Lucky I had done a pretty amazing job of being strong in the face of all of the death and destruction that we had witnessed on our farm. Hawks circling overhead, hunting my chickens day and night, leaving carcasses spread wide open as if they had had a two hour feast took me some time to get used to. It bothered me that the hawks only plucked out the lungs and eyes but left the meaty breasts and thighs for the bugs to devour. I couldn't help but think it was such a waste.

One of my chickens gave our dog Copper a run for his money earlier that year. Feathers were scattered all over our pool deck, and Copper was exhausted from the chase. Ultimately though, you can imagine who won. With each consecutive chicken caught, I became more resilient to losing them. Fewer, if any, tears fell. Burials became quicker, and newly purchased chickens were never allowed to be named by the children.

This duck thing was different though. Ducklings were pretty needy babies. I had spent weeks feeding them, swimming them, and cleaning up after them. Ducklings are preciously cute too. They had come to know us so well that they would follow us around the yard. They trusted us, and would eat the bits of food that we threw out for them. They would swim in the pond near to where we were sitting. None of that helped when we would lose one of them.

A decision was made. When Brandon was at work, I packed up the last duck in a cat carrier and the kids and I took Ming-ming to a public park in town. I had seen another pure white Peking duck there a few weeks prior and thought maybe it would accept Ming-ming into its flock. So straight out of a story like Charlotte's Web it seems, my kids had to say their goodbyes. I told them we would come and visit Ming-ming, to check on him. I told them he would have a friend. We lifted him out of the carrier and placed him near the water's edge, only twenty feet or so from another group of ducks. When we turned to leave, tears streaming down my children's faces, Ming-ming quacked in a very disconcerting way and tried to follow us. We had to run to escape his attempt to join us. It was a terribly sad afternoon.

We did see Ming-ming again, on several occasions. We saw him swimming around with the other Peking duck for awhile. Then we only saw one large white duck and decided it was him. Of course it was him. We could not afford to think otherwise.

We will never again have ducks. Although the realities of life and death are powerful things for children to learn, there was nothing powerful about our experience that spring. In fact, if it had gone on much longer, I'd be concerned that the kids would become desensitized to death. There is nothing to be gained from that.

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It is now full spring in 2012, a full year since having lost little Lucky and the other ducks. A few more changes have taken place on the farm. After we lost our lovely dog Tyson to what we think was cancer in his belly, we eventually warmed up to having a new pup. Her name is Savannah, she is a beautiful Labrador Retriever with hazel-colored eyes, now five months old. She is brilliantly smart, endlessly mischievous and a warm snuggle each morning as she begs me to wake up already. We also now have three horses on our pasture since Daisy Girl has joined our farm family. She is my very own horse, a stunning Palomino Tennessee Walker and I joke about how she is my mid-life crisis purchase. No big screen TV for me, thanks.

The chickens are gone, our pup had a taste for their “fertilizer” which was something we simply could not get used to. We do miss the free range eggs however and plan to build a new enclosure where my son Tristan hopes to invest in a small flock and sell the eggs. I will probably have to fight his innate desire to name the hens, his heart is always wide open when we invite new animals in.

My daughter currently has five frogs out on the porch, all with names of course. All rescued from our salt water swimming pool. She also has a tiny turtle the size of a quarter. He is a baby snapping turtle, caught in our pond, and is named Quicky. In all likelihood he is probably offspring from The Duck Eater, but we pretend to not think about that too much. He'll be released across town when the time comes.

In conclusion, we Hellenbrands love our animals. We greatly appreciate their company and the kids are learning the responsibilities of caring for them. Powerful stuff.

Other than the occasional mallard or goose that stops by for a quick dip, our pond is only home to blue gill, large mouth bass, a couple carp and probably one really fertile, ancient turtle. It is better that way. As cute as the ducklings were, as fun as it was to watch them grow, there will be no more ducks for us. There are at least five Peking ducks now residing at the lake across town. When we visit the children's park there, we watch them with fond memories. Ming-ming still lives on. Just in case though, on the off chance that my lovely husband should walk past a cute display of small water fowl, he is no longer allowed back into Tractor Supply Co. I now take care of that errand, happily.