Laura Egley Taylor

Then a miracle occurs . . .

Oh, the IRONies of life . . .

January 14th, 2012

I hate to iron. No, it’s more than that. I hate the idea of ironing—it seems all wrong. Because ironing—or a society that says ironing is a good thing—sends the message that there’s something wrong with the natural state of things. That there’s something wrong with ME if I opted, this morning, to read the paper with my son, Reeve, instead of ironing this shirt I’m wearing, which, because it’s cotton and not some crazy unnatural synthetic material, is ridiculously wrinkled.

(I know better, of course. I know that that’s silly: I’m not wrong, just . . . disheveled. Even so, when I have to go some place where I know I might be judged by my appearance, I usually will at least make the concession of hanging my wrinkled clothes next to me while I shower to give them the steam treatment—so that I won’t look like I don’t care, I guess.) (But I WON’T iron.)

Which is to say that it was a shock when, last night, as Reeve was packing to go to a voice audition at Temple University, and as I, trying to help him get ready, was pulling our 20-year-old iron out of the mudroom cabinet where we keep things like old paint buckets—things we never use—and beginning to iron his audition clothes . . . it hit me: I am the best ironer in this house!

Should be a no-brainer, since there are only four of us in the house: Reeve, my husband Tim, and our nephew Nick—and none of them were even sure we had an iron.* (We all share the same feelings about ironing.) Still, the thought took me by surprise. The best ironer in the house!

Which got me thinking about all the things I’m not so good at that I’ve needed to do as a parent, things like cooking and cleaning and bandaging boo-boos (I used to have to close my eyes while washing wounds) and things—like ironing—which I’ve maybe not even been sure needed to be done). Things I did because there wasn’t anybody else to do them. Which made me, by default, the best in the house at doing them, the expert. . . the MOM.

Kind of a heady thought. . .

*Though to be fair, Tim and Reeve have both used the iron before. Nick, however, had not. Not til last night, anyway! (He was a natural! May soon relieve me of my title.)

Above: Photo of the iron somebody left behind when Tim and I were house-parenting in the summer of 1993—the only iron we’ve ever owned—and our cat Beckett (who obviously feels the same way I do about ironing).

Tags: audition, iron, ironing, nick, reeve, wrinkles

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Best nativity scene ever!

December 24th, 2011

A drawing my son, Reeve, did in kindergarten.

I love how jubilant Mary is here. Anyone who’s given birth knows that feeling. . . WOOHOO! (And Merry Christmas, y’all!)

Tags: baby, birth, christmas=, drawing, Jesus, joy, jubilation, kindergarten, manger, Mary, nativity, reeve

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Simple pleasures

November 28th, 2011

My son, Reeve, was just home from college for the Thanksgiving holidays. He was here for the whole week—nothing else planned—and we managed to pack in a whole lot of “nothing”—leisurely time where he and Tim and I just hung out: laughed a lot, talked a lot, went on long walks, made up games to play, watched YouTube clips of Danny Kaye movies. . .

Got me to thinking how fulfilling the simplest things can be (just BEING together, for example) and remembering how simple “simple” used to be, back when the boy was little:

• M & M cookie and a glass of milk at the old Furr’s lunch counter. Twenty-five cents for a cup of coffee for me. (This was in 1992, but it felt like something out of the 1940s—a horseshoe-shaped counter with swiveling stools, tucked away on one side of a chain grocery store.) I’d put Reeve on one of those stools, and we were set for a good half hour, at least. One-on-one conversation with a contented toddler . . . one of life’s richest offerings!

• Watching construction vehicles. Especially cranes and steam shovels, but anything big and loud would do.

• Watching emergency vehicles. Especially fire engines, but, again, anything big and loud. And FAST.

• Watching (and sitting on the steps of!) (God bless the Santa Fe Southern Railway!) trains.

• Looking at pictures of people we love. (We kept photos of faraway family and friends on a bulletin board and would frequently go picture by picture and talk about the people in the shot.)

• Riding a city bus. We lived in Providence when Reeve was 3 and 4. And we just happened to live on a bus route. Believe me, during those icy Rhode Island winter days, when sidewalks were impassable and the house got way too small, I was incredibly grateful for the city buses. We’d pack a snack and a book, hop a bus and ride around and around for hours at a time.

• Drawing. Everything from emergency vehicles and trains to birds and whales and a boy eating a cookie at the Furr’s lunch counter.

• Reading in a cozy place with a snack. (See photo.)

• Crawling into bed at night with Mom or Dad and talking about the day. A mandatory nightly ritual—and a great way to process whatever had happened on any given day.

Nice to know in this fast-paced crazy world of ours that simple pleasures are still an option.. Maybe a little less simple as our kids get older—but still every bit as rich!

Photo: My five-year-old son (he’s 22 now), reading and having a snack on our front porch. He used to love to “be cozy” with a good book and a snack, whether outside in a shady spot in the summer or hidden beneath a big blanket, homemade fort-style, in the winter.

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A friendly reminder

August 28th, 2011

…to hang on to at least some of the many thousands of drawings and paintings your child will make over the next few years. Right now it might seem like the artwork is no big deal, there’s so much of it—but I’m over here in your future, telling you that these drawings will become real treasures for you down the road!

And a tip: After a drawing is finished, ask your child to tell you what’s happening in the picture and write it on the artwork itself. Then date it. And put it somewhere safe (after some time on the fridge, of course!).

Above: A drawing 5-year-old Reeve made of a chimneysweep (I’m guessing we had recently had our chimney cleaned? or had just seen Mary Poppins?) on top of Megutasaurus, a fictional Godzilla-type monster he made up based on a toy dinosaur he had gotten at the New Mexico Natural History Museum. There’s no way I would have remembered any of this if Tim hadn’t written it down.

Tags: archive, artwork, childhood, chimneysweep, drawing, history, illustration, reeve

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waaaay back to school

August 11th, 2011

Conversation today in the office-supplies aisle of a local store:

Reeve (our almost-22-year-old son who has been home from college for the summer): “I miss getting the lists of school supplies we used to get at the beginning of school each year. It was kinda festive . . . I remember I used to scan the list, looking for some new, exciting item which would indicate that this teacher was going to be interesting and this school year was going to be different.”

Me: “Interesting? Like what?”

Reeve: “Oh, you know. . . swords!”

* * * * *

Photo (above): Reeve, at age 5. He adored Pippi Longstocking and, despite all our efforts to the contrary, was completely fascinated by any kind of weaponry. At right: These days, despite our early fears that he might grow up to be a vigilante, Reeve is a gentle, compassionate, peaceable . . . opera singer. (Albeit one who still apparently has a soft spot in his heart for swords.) (That’s him with his girlfriend, Eliza, also a loving—and lovely—opera singer.)

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Tags: back to school, boys, guns, office supplies, reeve, swords, toy guns

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birthday buddies and a not-so-empty nest

May 27th, 2011

I was born one minute after Christmas, and I’ve always felt special because of it.* So when, on my birthday six months after Tim and I got married, our nephew Nick was born, I suddenly had my own birthday buddy—somebody with whom I could share this specialness—as well as ensuing birthday celebrations.

That was 24 birthdays ago, many of which Nick and I have celebrated together. The last two Decembers, though, he’s been on the other side of the planet in a tiny third-world village in Mali, and I’ve wondered when we’ll be in the same room for a birthday again.

Life, of course, is full of surprises. After finishing up with the Peace Corps and returning to the U.S., Nick has moved to Santa Fe and will be staying with us before heading off to med school next year. Kind of a rest stop between adventures.

When I was a kid, my grandparents, worried that I’d feel left out since my bro and sis both had summer birthdays, used to send me “half-birthday happies.” I’m thinking maybe it’s time to revisit that idea and do some summer celebrating. Happy Half-Birthday, Y’all!**

*Gotta chalk this one up to my mom, I realize now. The power of the positive pitch. Some people might think of a post-Christmas birthday as a pain: a day that gets lost in the holiday shuffle, a day for Christmas leftovers as birthday presents, an afterthought, etc. But not me. I grew up thinking of MY day as a reason for everybody to keep celebrating even after Christmas had passed. “The fun’s not over yet, people!”

**Yeah, yeah, I know that technically our half-birthday isn’t until next month. But with all of life’s uncertainties, why wait to celebrate?

Photos: 1) A birthday bagel shared across the miles when Nick was in Mali. (The photos were actually taken in the spring in Santa Fe, when he and I were just across the table from one another. But it was fun to send him this as a birthday greeting last year when he was far, far away from anything remotely bagel-like.) 2) Birthday buddies in 1987.

Tags: Africa, birthdays, half-birthday, mali, nick, Peace Corps

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This, too—whatever it is!—shall pass

April 28th, 2011

Another one-two punch for your parenting arsenal: perspective and gratitude.

While fretting over my 21-year-old’s announcement that he might fail a class because of all the time he missed due to rehearsals and performances (Oh, come on! How hard is it to get to class?! and if you have to miss, how hard can it be to check in with your teacher about absences?), I was hit with a completely unrelated realization that just about took off the top of my head.

He’s potty trained!

Back in the summer of 1993, this seemed as remote a possibility as a Black president in the White House. Reeve was rounding the corner toward 4 and still adamantly refused—kicked, screamed, yelled, fell into a heap on the floor, the works!—to use the toilet. Extremely well-developed verbally, able to talk to his dad and me about aircraft of World War II and which whales are carnivores, yet unable to explain to us why he was being so stubborn about not using the potty. . .

This was one area where Tim and I had felt like complete failures for years. We had begun putting him on the “big boy chair-potty” when he was 2 or so, sitting with him and talking, trying to keep it low-key and comfortable. We had a success here or there, but nothing seemed to last. I guess he must’ve been 3 when we moved to Pull-ups, thinking that they might make the transition to underwear go more smoothly. Not so.

We were so uncertain what to do. (Unfortunately, we didn’t know about Mothering magazine until much later, when we moved to Santa Fe.) By all appearances, our boy was doing great—intelligent, curious, well-adjusted, easygoing, etc.—except for this one issue which was not apparent to those around us. It was our private shame and it seemed it would never get resolved.*

I bring this up not to relive desperate days but to remind myself how easy it is to get wrapped up in the problem of the hour—and to forget that these difficulties don’t last. I also forget, as time passes, to be thankful for the solutions that eventually came along and made the problems of the day disappear.

All those worries we have while pregnant (including my own deep-seated How will this baby EVER get OUT?) . . . worries that the new baby will never get the hang of breastfeeding. . . or that she isn’t getting enough nutrients . . . or that the toddler will never learn to play nicely with others . . . or that the five-year-old will still be sleeping with us when he’s a teenager. . . All are concerns which won’t last forever—and which, once resolved, we owe it to ourselves to take time out and celebrate a little.

Gratitude is holy, I believe. And luckily, it has no expiration date.

*But it did! When Reeve turned 4, we threw away the Pull-ups and went through seven pairs of underpants in one day, a really difficult, emotional day for all of us. But by that night, the just-turned 4-year-old was proud that he was a potty-user. (And when we asked him why he had been so reluctant before, he said “I don’t know. Maybe I was just scared.”)

Photo: Reeve and me, circa 1992. Back when I was worried about all kinds of now long-resolved and forgotten things.

P.S. Oh, and by the way, the college student did indeed email his teacher about his absences—and all is well. Go figure!

Tags: gratitude, potty-training, problems, solutions, toddler

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How to be creative and other inadvertent parenting advice

April 26th, 2011

All advice is autobiographical.

This thought for the day, is appropriately enough, stolen from Austin Kleon, author of “How to Steal Like an Artist and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me,” a highly recommended smart and charmingly inspirational pictorial for creative people.

The quote is included as a kind of disclaimer, but I was struck by the wisdom of it. Whether giving or taking, it might behoove us to remember where advice comes from: we can speak with real authority only about what we have experienced, ourselves. Which may or may not apply to the situation of another.

While Kleon’s post isn’t intended to be about parenting, many of his insights can apply there nicely—as well as to writing or drawing. After all, parenting is the original creative act, right?

Some more of his gems:

“It’s in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.”

“You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, ‘We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.’”

“Step 1: Wonder at something. Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you.”

“Creativity isn’t just the things we chose to put in, it’s also the things we chose to leave out.”

Check it out.

Photo: “Well, son, when I was your age. . . ” Tim and Reeve get in some father-and-son wondering (while I lag behind, as usual, taking photos) on our early morning hike in the southern New Mexico’s Organ Mountains last weekend.

Tags: advice, Austin Kleon, creativity, desert, father, hike, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Organ Mountains, reeve, son, tim

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Say what?!

April 2nd, 2011

Has the whole world gone nuts? Yes, I’m still grieving the loss of Mothering magazine, so admittedly I’m a little touchy on all matters periodical. But. . .

In the mail at our house on Friday, addressed to me: American Baby magazine.

In the mail at our house today, addressed to me: BabyTalk.

I’ve never subscribed to a parenting magazine in my life (and am way too old to be remomming!), so how is it that I’m on these guys’ lists? Somebody’s idea of a cruel joke? Or an overly elaborate April Fool’s Day joke?

P.S. Oh, and, also in the mail this weekend, equally ridiculous? A military surplus catalog.

Tags: mail, parenting magazines

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Laura Egley Taylor

Then a miracle occurs . . .

Oh, the IRONies of life . . .

Best nativity scene ever!

Simple pleasures

A friendly reminder

waaaay back to school

birthday buddies and a not-so-empty nest

This, too—whatever it is!—shall pass

How to be creative and other inadvertent parenting advice

Say what?!

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