So apparently my post on “What Makes You Think That” struck a nerve or funny bone or whatever overused cliche you want to add there. This is good since I end up saying these things pretty much around the clock. So here is round #2. But this time around you may find me a bit more introspective. It’s almost midnight. It is supposed to storm like crazy tonight. I am moody and tired. It is Sunday and while I had a great little day with my kids and even took them to the pool, I am acutely aware that today, not everyone got to have the same fun in the sun.

Sometimes yucky things happen to people. I heard today about everything from statistics on the numbers of people who die every 6 seconds to the numbers of people waiting in line for antiretroviral HIV/AIDS medication in Africa, to a few details on our current CO2 output, to a student I once knew who passed away suddenly this weekend. So I’m a bit pouty. But I suppose this is what the blogosphere is about. And since it is Sunday night, many of you will read this on Monday and that is in general a pouty day anyway. So here goes:

What makes you think that you can have gum drops at 8:15 AM?

What makes you think that you should wipe the icing from your chocolate church donut on your white shirt instead of a napkin?

What makes you think that the church should put chocolate, iced donuts eye-level with my kids?

What makes you think that life will always serve up a chocolate donut?

What makes you think that you can take all this for granted, that the smiles and the giggles on a Sunday afternoon are somehow ordinary?

What makes you think that you can be in such a hurry that you hug them quickly and then dash out the door? What makes you think that there should even be such a thing as a quick hug?

What makes you think that they will wear Nemo water wings forever? And that they will always want to hold your hand when they jump into the pool, in the 2 foot deep section?

What makes you think that your daughter will wear a swimsuit with a ruffled bottom and a pink seahorse on it forever? What makes you think that she won’t grow up and go to middle school and roll her eyes and want to wear a bikini? 

What makes you think that you won’t be the one who gets sick or sad or lonely or who faces loss or heartbreak or fear or pain or death? What makes you think that you are immune even when you know that you are not?

And what makes you think that you can somehow capture how significant life felt today in a blog at midnight? How is it possible to sum up the simple joys of life so that you just won’t ever forget them. Things like chocolate chip pancakes, the fact that I ran out of shampoo today, the smell of wet sand in our sandbox or the pizza box that won’t fit in the fridge. These things make me laugh. My children make me laugh. My son thinks lasers are called “lazards” (like lizards I suppose). My daughter pointed at the pool and said “wa wa” today. My other son told me to buckle him up in his seat to the police man does not get us. 

What makes me think that I will live forever in these moments? 

What makes me think that I am a blogging downer at the moment? Perhaps I am not. Perhaps I need to go to bed. What makes me think that my kids won’t be up at 6:00 am?

Life is short. God is long. I am somewhere in between.

Last weekend the City of Chicago hosted its Green Fest. A big event downtown. Lots of green people running around talking about everything from wind energy to composting. The brochure to advertise the event was the size of most news stand magazines. It was a big day for hippie green folks and all the wanna-bes like me. 

I did not go.

I was not opposed to going. I actually desperately wanted to go. Two of my favorite friends were going. It would have been an outstanding day for sure. I was hooked by the brochure alone. I flipped the pages and stared longingly at the seminars on solar panels and the advertisements for earth-friendly soaps. I threw an inner tantrum over the fact that I was not going. 

With three kids, one husband, and 20 years worth of yard work in front of us, it did not make sense to go. Sometimes, as great as the opportunity to hit an event like that may seem, you just gotta sit one out. So I pouted over my coffee for about 20 minutes and then got over it. There was much to do. My husband, as I pouted, was down in the basement making little garden stakes for me out of scrap wood. My memory was quickly fading over what I had planted where, and since I cannot tell the difference between sugar snap peas and green beans, I needed little signs before I started yanking beans and expecting carrots.

So after a few sawing sounds the hubby pops up out of the basement and hands me a pile of sticks and a permanent marker. “I’ll watch the kids, go out there and take care of your garden already.” So I did. Armed with gardening gloves and a black marker I labeled all my plants and pulled weeds and threw a few more cucumbers into the ground. It was fabulous. And as I plunged my little suburban hands into the dirt it hit me that rather than go downtown and think about all the green things that I could do, that I was at home actually doing those things. We spent the entire day this way. Doing the garden and the lawn and life rather than just talking about it.

Now this is by no means a slam on the Green Fest, but it is a moment to point out the curious phenomena that seems to have taken off with this green trend. Because it is all so hip and fashionable today, to be green and all, because celebs are into it and television networks talk about it, it has also become phenomenally easy to talk about being green rather than actually do it. 

I keep seeing reusable bags at the store but rarely see people haul goods home in them. I keep seeing fancy water bottles at the stores but I still see plastic everywhere. I keep seeing cheap t-shirts at big box stores that say “save the planet” and “respect the earth.” These shirts are printed overseas, they are not organic, and there is really nothing earth friendly about them. I keep seeing green festivals and events crowded with people who will go home with a few good ideas but may or may not put any of them into action. sigh.

Sometimes it is just better to stay home and plant things. Truth be told, if I had attended this green event I would have spent money on parking or public transit. You cannot get there for free in a city this size (unless I biked the Eisenhower, which is both illegal and suicidal). And I know myself, I am a sucker for trinkety crap so I would have purchased some random bar of soap or a fair trade pound of coffee to boast about how cool and green I am. I would have spent money and time and carbon that day. 

So looking back, I am glad I did not go. Bummed to miss it but happy to actually be green because I did green that day. My friend Megan went, she came back telling me about some random broom made with all sorts of recycled stuff and bamboo. She said it was cool. She also said that her sister Meredith made a good point. She simply said “but I already have a broom.” Yes, but isn’t that post-consumer broom totally cool? Yes. But I already have a broom, I don’t need a new green one. Sometimes the best green thing we can do is not to go, not to drive, not to buy, not to get sucked in, not to grab a new gadget or buy a new book, not to buy a new broom.

Sometimes the best green day ever is the one when we choose to stay home.

I remember going through a phase in high school when my little group of friends and I watched the Blues Brothers endlessly. It was already an old movie by then but something about it captivated us. I doubt every adolescent of the 80’s had this obsession with Jake and Elwood, but we did. We thought we were cool, dressing up like them on Halloween, quoting the movie every time we were “definitely on Lower Wacker Drive.” Who else does this at sixteen? Looking back, my hunch is that it had to do with the fact that we lived in Chicago and the Blues Brothers are, by far, one of Chi-Towns best claims to fame. 

Midwesterners that we were, we realized that we were hopelessly uncool if we dared to compare ourselves to swanky New York kids or flip flop wearing surfer types from California. We live in what the rest of the country calls “the fly-over states.” At least this is what I am told they call us. Hah I say, you don’t have the Blues Brothers. It was our attempt at getting on the map.

Now I don’t devote much of my time and thought energy thinking about John Belushi and Dan Akroyd. I’ve got too many other useless things to obsess over. But this past Saturday morning I had a chance to love my sweet home Chicago more than ever before, and I’ve been thinking about them ever since. 

You see on Saturday morning I ran a race. A 10 mile race. Along the lakefront. Downtown. On a sunny and gorgeous morning. The race happened to end inside Soldier Field on the 50 yard line. It was called the Soldier Field 10. It was awesome. Not so much the running 10 miles part, but the being downtown part was great. I’m downtown a lot but something about that morning was fabulously different. 

It started actually with a lot of green pride. I woke up at 5:00 am and then hit snooze and took my time getting ready. I needed to be down there by 6:30 so of course I panicked and set my alarm early. Then the fact that I live so close to the city kicked in. No need to rush. I did not leave until 6:00. I was parked by 6:23. awesome. Live close to what you do. Save on time and gas. It’s green and ridiculously convenient. We spend way too much time in our cars. The average person spends 50 minutes a day (total) commuting to and from work. That’s a lot of time guzzling gas and listening to talk radio.

Close as I live, I must confess to a great traffic sin that I had to commit to be parked by that time, and nope, it was not speeding. I made it all the way down to soldier field in less than 20 minutes. Then I saw the exit sing and then the enormous line of traffic waiting to park. ugh. I needed to be at race packed pick up by 6:30. There was of course packet pick up the day before, but in my greenness I decided not to make a needless trip into the city twice. So I waited until that morning.

I sat for a few moments in line, way, way back in line. I sat and sat. Looked at my watch and started to panic. If I missed this, I would be livid. No one was moving. So I looked in my rearview mirror. Traffic to the left of me was whizzing by, heading southbound at 60+ miles an hour. Traffic in front of me was stopped. My heart rate started to bump up a notch and my palms got sweaty. I kept looking in my mirror. Cars were flying to the left of me. I looked up one more time and then jerked my wheel to the left and stepped on it. I jumped into the left lane and whizzed by all the traffic that I was just in, now to my right. I flew at least half a mile down the road until the very last moment. Yes, I was so one of those people. I looked and looked. A mini-van driver was spacing out and had let the car in front of her creep up just far enough for me to squeak in. I slammed on my brakes and nosed myself into the right lane. I had just trumped 50+ cars. 

I waved thank you endlessly at the van behind me. I was still sweating and reeling with traffic guilt. I hate people who do what I just did and if you were in that line on Saturday, I am so sorry, but I only had seven minutes left. I also grew up in this big city with a metropolitan area of 9.5 million people, so every now and again I bust out my city savvy jerky driving and consider myself entitled. Which is basically to say that I have no excuse. ugh.

But I digress (what else is new). I ran the race. I ran 5 miles south, away from the city, and then I turned around at the half way mark and saw before me the entire Chicago skyline as the next 5 miles unfolded before me. Lake Michigan was clear and gorgeous. It glistened in the morning sun. The air was crisp, the sky was blue, it was idyllic. And as I inched my way closer to Soldier Field I got all sappy and patriotic. It was Memorial Day weekend. I was at Soldier Field. My Father-in-Law is a Vet. A three purple hearts soldier in vietnam vet. So I got sappy and patriotic. 

Then I got closer to soldier field and ran through the tunnel and up and out onto the field like Walter Payton. I saw myself on the Jumbo-tron. It was ridiculous but I was swept up in it. I was wearing a Bears t-shirt. It was the best. I moved one step beyond patriotic into city-otic. Which I realize is just one step away from idiotic. 

But the moment I crossed the finish line I thought that I lived in by far the best city in the world. Sweet Home Chicago was blaring on the speakers, the skyline was captivating, I was on the 50 yard line at soldier field. Sure, I committed a few traffic sins to get there, but I was there. In the middle of my city feeling like some sort of triumphant sap. I wanted to call Mayor Daley. 

What I loved most though was the sheer clarity of the morning. The clear sky, the sparkling lake, the fresh air in a heavily urban area. It was smogless. Which is great considering us Chicagoans get most of our energy from coal plants. But it reminded me of how marvelous even the inside of the city can be. And Chicago, as far as cities go, is one of the greenest. Mayor Daley just landed on a list of the top 10 green mayors. Sometimes, all this eco-stuff, it works out. And sure, we are an ecological disaster just like the rest of the world, but sometimes you get a chance to see what is possible. And if it is possible to get swept up in something as trivial as crossing the 50 yard line at Soldier Field, then I have hope that we can someday get swept up in something as significant as saving God’s planet. This would make me forever giddy.

But for now I will take a simple morning when the wind is just right and the traffic is light and my lungs can actually breathe and pump and move my legs and my heart into action And when a few green dreams like this come true along the Chicago Lakefront, you get to say “sweet home Chicago,” and mean it.

I think I have a bit of a gardening debacle coming up. Too soon to tell for sure but if all I have been told comes true, I am about to wrestle with the radishes. I’ve dabbled in gardening on and off over the past 5 years or so. Sort of the way I dabble in exercise or cleaning my house. Lots of good intentions but not so much in the way of follow through. I do enough to be in shape and not have crumbs stuck to my socks, but this is about as far as it goes.

So it was with gardening until this year. A few Roma tomatoes here and a basil plant there. As long as I could make one batch of bruscetta from my back yard I considered myself a success. But this year I am focusing my eco-energies on growing my own. So there’s a lot of green going on outside my kitchen window. But as a rookie with three kids there are some problems on the horizon.

It started a few weeks ago right after I dropped sugar snap pea, string bean, and radish seeds into the ground. A few days later there were little green sprigs poking through the dirt. It did not occur to me that something my hands actually planted could grow. I saw the green and mumbled about the weeds and started pulling “baby weeds” out of the ground. It wasn’t until I realized that I was pulling an orderly row of these from the ground that I discovered I was pulling up my radishes. I quickly smashed them back into the dirt. oops.

A few days later I was planting the carrots. My daughter (18 months) and middle son (3) were watching me. And by watching me I mean they followed me right into the dirt. They of course did not know that I carefully watched my steps to get where I was so they stepped right on the radishes that were still reeling from the other day. Time for a distraction, I grabbed them a container of bubbles.

This got them out of the garden and onto the lawn where they were able to blow lots of bubbles while I planted carrots. Did you know that carrot seeds are very, very small? And that they get stuck to wet, muddy garden gloves? And that they can even blow away when it is windy? Did you also know that an 18 month old with a bubble wand could care less that she is walking all over the neighbors driveway and heading for the street? And did you know that a mom panicked about her daughter running into the street will pour roughly 1/3 of a package of carrot seeds into just one little hole? And then flustered, she will drop the remaining 2/3 of the package into maybe 4 more holes?

This can happen.

Do you know what else can happen? That same 18 month old can decide to pour all her bubbles onto your radishes.

Shortly thereafter your almost 6 year old can come outside and step on the peas as he yells at you because he just realized that the bubbles that I gave the baby where his.

After shouts and whining about the injustice of the bubbles we all traipsed inside and cleaned up. I watered things later and then decided to sit back and see what would happen.

Funny thing is, it all is growing. Radishes and all. The carrots look like small patches of grass, there are lots of them in a little space. But peas, carrots, radishes, tomatoes etc., it is all coming up. Despite my disastrous, rookie efforts, the earth actually produces food! Which is just amazing to me. It should not be. But it is. It is sort of like my fascination with the human body (of which I know basically nothing), but I do know it has an amazing ability to heal and to fight disease and to transform itself into what is needed to survive.

Things grow. Which gives me great hope as a mama who wants this planet to keep growing. We can indeed overcome some of the ecological tragedies that we have brought upon ourselves. With the right effort, trails can be restored, old strip malls can be reconverted to wild spaces, landscapes can be spruced up. It can happen. If course it is never restored to its fullest beauty. Just like those radishes will have a tinge of bubbly taste to them perhaps. But with all the heartbreaking news on the environmental front, it is nice to know that radishes still grow under the foot of a baby girl. 

So this summer, grow something. Clean up something. Pick up a local trail. When you hike, grab a candy wrapper that someone else let loose and toss it out. Join a trail clean up day. Pick up trash at the park. Get rid of unwanted rocks and concrete and give something wild space to grow. Plant some radishes.

Things grow. We stop them all the time and while we have undoubtedly reached the point in history where we will have things and places that never grow again. There is a glimmer of hope to be found in the backyard on occasion. Hold on to that. As the Dixie Chicks would say (and i so cannot believe I am about to quote the Dixie Chicks) “grow something wild and unruly.”

I think that I may not be cut out for motherhood. I probably should have come to this conclusion before I birthed three children. But there are days when I think that I just cannot do this mommy thing for one moment longer. It always seems to me like the other moms I see have a much longer fuse than I do. I know that most of them are probably putting on their best mommy face because they are out in public, but my public mommy face was quite ugly and today it won many ugly awards. Awards with titles like “That Mom is Nuts,” or “Wow, Don’t Make Her Mad,” or my favorite “That Mom Needs A Drink.”

All day long I found myself repeating this phrase “what make you think that . . . . . ” For example, when my almost 3 year old woke me up long before I was ready to rise, I politely mumbled to him “good morning honey, mommy loves you” which is nice. I then followed that up with “what makes you think mommy wants to wake up so early?” And from that moment on, the day began to unfold. My kids are now 18 months, almost 3 and almost 6, and this is the recap of my award winning day:

“What makes you think Laffy Taffy is for breakfast?”

“What makes you think you can go outside in just your diaper?”

“What makes you think that it was a good idea to bring a handful of sand into your bedroom?”

“What makes you think that blowing bubbles in your milk would go over well with me?”

“What makes you think that you would like a taste of my coffee?”

“What makes you think that taking your shoes off right before we pull into the parking lot was a good idea?”

“What makes you think that dumping over the brand new one gallon container of bubbles, meant to last us all summer, would make me laugh with you?”

“What makes you think that I know where to find a brownie when stuck in traffic at 4:00 in the afternoon?”

“What makes you think that my college education would be best spent picking up all the mac and cheese you threw on the floor?”

“What makes you think that my graduate education would want to pick up that stupid mac n cheese either?”

“What makes you think that jumping up and down with a whole carrot in your mouth is a good idea?

“What makes you think I know how gravity works and how long it would take to drive to the moon?”

“What makes you think that your sister wanted the stainless steel sippy cup thrown at her head?”

They are now sleeping. Which makes me think that I am somehow going to be okay. Normally I do not find myself shaking with nervous energy like this at the end of a day. Normally I can keep it together. But every now and again (like 3 days a week at least) there is a cacophony of errors in my head and in my heart, and suddenly I find myself trying to manage a career and three kids and a marriage and a t-ball game and friends who call and all that I hope and want for my kids that I seem enormously unable to do. And so I stand in the kitchen and think to myself “what makes you think that this is how I thought it would be? What makes you think that I wanted to have eternal ADD and the inability to focus on anything or even go to the bathroom without someone pounding on the door, asking me what was coming out, #1 or #2 (sorry, but its what happens, and if you have kids, you know this).”

And then I shift from angst to sadness. “What makes me think I can do this?” “What made God think I could raise these kids?” “What makes me think I have anything at all that they need?”

And then they are bathed and in their flannel pjs (still, even though it was 80 degrees today). And right before my oldest runs up to bed he dashes up to give me a hug and says this to me “Mommy, you know why I was running so fast to hug you? Because I wanted to give you the biggest hug in the world!” And this makes me think that somehow this will all work out. It makes me cry. “What makes you think I would not cry at that?”

And then of course, yes, here it comes, your eco-lesson for the day, it makes me think that I should do better because, frankly, “what makes me think I can say I love my kids and then have little to no regard for their water and food and fresh air and wild spaces?” “What makes me think I can hog all the good stuff and leave them with no rain forests and no clean water and a disaster of a future and floating piles of plastic in the ocean?”

What makes me think this is that I know I can do better, and so can you. Let’s all think about how we’ve got those good and bad days as parents or aunts or uncles or grandparents. And then let’s remember how good we really can make any day with just a little effort. One less shopping trip here, one less plastic bottle there, one tree planted, one tomato plant on the deck.

What makes me think that we can do this? We love our kids, and good or bad day, we want to give them the biggest hug in the world, and a few trees to hug along the way too.