Month: April 2016

In First Things, bride-to-be Leah Libresco notices that all the wedding planning guides have something rather dreary in common: They don’t leave room for the wedding night.  One book, she says, reminds the happy pair:

“There’s not just the one (huge) celebration to think about—kick off your engagement with a cocktail party; throw a rehearsal dinner to remember; extend the wedding-night celebrations with an after-party; and send your guests off with a post-wedding brunch.”

She says:

It can’t be that the book’s authors didn’t notice that they’d squeezed the wedding night down to nothing (this is a book that reminds you that if you’re only booking one hairstylist for you and your bridesmaids, someone will need to volunteer for the early morning slot).

It’s simply that this is a plan that assumes there will be nothing particularly special about the first night that a couple spends together. It’s a to-do list for engaged couples who have already been sexually intimate before marriage and don’t need to reserve any time or energy for consummation. In all the hustle and bustle of a wedding weekend, there’s no time for non-essentials, and one more night together doesn’t manage make the schedule.

Libresco gives the kindest possible interpretation to this arrangement, saying that, likely, couples who are already used to living together want to be generous toward their friends, whom they may not see very often, or who may not get the chance to live it up. So it makes sense to host an event so lavish and long that there just isn’t any room on the schedule for sex.

She proposes:

Instead of recommending wedding schedules that erase the bride and groom’s obligation to (and delight in) each other, the Knot and other wedding guides might do well to carve more time out of the reception for the couple to spend together. They could borrow the tradition of the Yichud Roomfrom Jewish weddings. After they are wed, a Jewish bride and groom head into a separate, locked room for a private interlude. It may be brief (eight minutes is the minimum required) but it allows them to not be hosts, but simply to be two people, a little awed by what they’ve offered to each other.

Eight minute minimum, eh? I can just hear the scoffers scoffing. Eight minutes is more than enough, if it’s your first time! Har har. 

If the idea of abstaining before marriage is foreign to you, you might enjoy bursting the bubbles of your straight-laced friends’ wedding night fantasies, informing them that two virgins having their first sex is going to be awkward and disappointing. There is some truth to this: the best sex happens between two people who not only love each other but who know each other very well; and virginal young newlyweds, by definition, do not know each other very well.

But the wedding night isn’t a big deal because of the fabulouso sex you’re guaranteed to have. It’s a big deal because it marks a turning point. It’s not supposed to be a pinnacle or culmination of anything; it’s supposed to be a beginning. It’s okay if the sex is not great, because the whole point is that now you can begin to learn how to do this amazing thing. The point is that you’re not only eager to have sex with each other, but you’re eager to start something new together. It’s not about leaving virginity behind; it’s about marking the beginning of a union, which includes but is not limited to married sex.

It’s sad that sex is no longer considered something special that husband and wife share together, something reserved for a special state in life. In a way, it’s equally sad that all the other aspects of married life are no longer considered something special that husband and wife share together, something reserved for a special state in life.

At least in Putative Trend Land, some couples are so busy, burdened, and stressed out by wedding planning that they are taking a “minimoon,” a short “honeymoon” vacation together before the wedding.

The Huffington Post breezily explains:

What are honeymoons made of? It’s really all about just being with each other, away from the daily grind. It’s about embarking on an unknown adventure, eating good food, sightseeing, and exploring any number of fun, new experiences. In short, it’s a vacation, one that just happens to be in celebration of a marriage. But there’s no law that says such celebratory vacations can’t happen before the “I Dos.”

But then what are they celebrating? If their life together is already a “daily grind” that makes them feel like escaping, what could a marriage ceremony possibly signify? What could marriage possibly be for?

Listen to me now. I’m an old married broad. I know all about the daily grind, and I know a lot about the joy of marriage, too; and I can tell you that what couples need is not white sand beaches or mai tais.  Happy couples are couples who know how to find their happiness in being together, wherever and whenever that happens to be. Happy couples are couples who understand that the marriage they’re in is something real, something that sets them apart from everyone and everything else in their lives, something which may demand things from them, something which may pour out blessings on them, in a way that nothing else besides marriage can do.

This is why that time locked alone in a room together is indispensable.This is why that first married sexual union matters, and why time should be set apart for it — yes, even if you’ve had sex with each other before, and yes, even if it’s not going to be the bestest sex ever. You ought to be looking forward to beginning something you cannot do with anyone else, would not do with anyone else: Sex, and all the rest of it, too.

A wedding night is the starting point of something new, something different. Marriage is supposed to make you different. If your married life isn’t changing you, then what’s it for?

***

Image: Sir Samuel Luke “The Village Wedding” 1887; via Flickr

Several months ago, I talked about what it’s like seeing a therapist. Today, I want to talk a little about taking an SSRI for anxiety.

Americans, especially American Catholics, sometimes feel that taking drugs for mental health is cheating, taking the easy way out. I felt this way, too. I wanted to get better, to get control of my emotional life, and to learn better habits by the sweat of my brow, with discipline and hard work. It was bad enough to admit that I needed the help of a therapist. The idea of taking a drug to help the therapist help me? Unthinkable.

One of my goals in therapy has been to suss out the difference between mood swings I can control, and mood swings that are out of my control because of hormonal shifts. After a few months, I was able to pinpoint which distressing times were purely due to my cycle. It felt legitimate to try drugs to help myself through PMS, possibly PMDD, because I could see that this was a true, obvious chemical problem. So I decided to try taking Sertraline (generic Zoloft) for the second half of my cycle.

Without the drug, I find myself a huddled, paralyzed clot of paranoia, panic, and despair for two or three days every month. With the drug, I’m more sensitive and irritable toward the end of my cycle. In other words, it made life possible.

It worked so well, and the things I feared were simply not happening, so I thought, “There’s really no reason not to take this drug every day.” So, with trepidation, I started off at the lowest dose, and then increased to the next lowest dose after several months.

Here is what it’s like taking an anti-anxiety drug:

What I was afraid of:

I thought it would turn me into someone else. I was afraid it would make me some kind of blissed-out zombie who didn’t care about anything, and that taking away anxiety would mean changing who I was. I wanted to still care about the things I care about, and I wanted to be able to get upset, even to get mean, when the situation called for it.

I didn’t want to have part of my personality removed, and I didn’t want to lose control of the way I respond to the world. I am melancholic, and I see good things coming out of melancholy. I didn’t want to turn into a chirpy twerp who doesn’t understand suffering or darkness.

What actually happened:

The main effect I feel is an unstickiness. It’s as if, before the drug, I was trying to go about my day with this giant, hairy, tarball following me around. Any time something unpleasant came about — a fear, a worry, a conflict, an insult — the tarball would roll up to it and stick to it. Wherever I tried to go and whatever I tried to do, or think, or say, I’d have to deal with this revolting, sticky gob first — and everything else that happened in my day got stuck to it, whether it was truly related or not, until the whole day was sticky and tarry and awful.

The drug helps me to identify the things I wanted to get rid of — the uncontrollable anger, the panic, the paranoia, the obsessiveness — as foreign things, parasites, rather than important, functional aspects of my psyche. It’s had an untangling effect on how I perceive myself.

I don’t think this drug would be helping me at all if I weren’t also in therapy. It made it possible to put into practice the things my therapist has been telling me to do, which I wanted desperately to do. What it does is give me a little bit of space, a little bit of time, so I can stop and consider, “All right, how do I want to behave now?” And then I can choose. It doesn’t take my choice away, at all. It’s still me, all the way, for better or worse. I’m not a different person. I’m just myself with a little bit more freedom.

My therapist says that another of his clients is a teacher who had a hard time keeping his temper when the kids annoyed or defied him. This fellow described the drug’s effect as a force field that protected him from incoming missiles. He said he still felt them, but they didn’t hit home in the same way. I include this information because it’s different from what I experience, and it goes to show that the drug affects different people in all sorts of ways.

It also helps me sleep at night. Before the drug, I might suddenly pop awake and then lie there for three hours or more, literally quivering and shaking with guilt, fear, and worry over something like, “We’ve gotten out of the habit of taking vitamins every day.” None of the self-calming measures or mental exercises I tried had any effect on this torment. Now, I still have insomnia, and I still wake up and think about things that worry me, but I can say, “Yes, that is a real problem, but I will put it aside until morning.”

How it works with my spiritual life:

There are lingering fears, in many Catholic circles, that if we turn to secular sources for healing from emotional problems, we are supplanting prayer and hoping to find peace and meaning apart from Christ.

This could happen; but I’ve made a deliberate effort to make sure that whatever I learn in therapy gets put into service to my spiritual life, and my therapist respects how important that is to me. The drug has given me the opportunity to set aside or step around many of the lies, temptations, and bad habits that were blocking my prayer life. These obstacles are still there — I still accuse myself, complain to myself, look for distractions, protest that it’s pointless, see that I’m not 100% sincere, and so on — but I’m finding that space or time to pause, and then to say, “Yes, and so what? Let’s do this thing anyway. In the name of the Father . . . ”

Having a consistent prayer life is at the heart of any kind of spiritual growth, so this is an immense step forward.

Unpleasant side effects:

For the first couple of weeks, I got very sleepy — like, first trimester, drooling-with-my-head-on-my-chest-on-the-couch sleepy. This happened mainly in the evening, so I was still able to get my work done during the day; but I did feel dopey and disconnected during the day, too, at first. This wore off.

Nausea. This wore off faster than the sleepiness did.

Dampening of libido. This takes longer to wear off, but it does gradually subside as my body adjusts to the drug. This was probably the most distressing side effect, and the one which made me question whether the good effects were worth it.

These side effects happened when I first started taking the drug, and then they wore off; and then they cropped up again when I increased the dose. The second time, I knew they were temporary, so they wasn’t as worrisome.

Am I saying that Zoloft is the answer for everything?

Of course not. It doesn’t work well for some people. It makes some people worse. Some people don’t need it, and some people need something else — a different drug, a different dose, or a different plan of action altogether. My midwife prescribed the drug to me because she knew I was checking in regularly with my therapist, and that together, we would make changes if necessary.

I’m just telling you my experience. I’ll be glad if this helps you make up your mind, if you’re trying to make a decision. Some caution is warranted, but other fears turned out to be pure prejudice, and I was glad to be proven wrong.

If you’ve come to the blog today to find great recipes, inspiration, and motivation, then here is my advice to you:

[img attachment=”99022″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”12932588_10153574818022029_4212511536381449974_n” /]

You’ll see.

***

SATURDAY
Grilled chicken; Salad; Brownies

[img attachment=”99034″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”chicken and salad” /]

My husband made this, and the kids made dessert, while I holed up in my room writing a speech. Nice meal which I wasn’t involved in making.

***

SUNDAY
Fish tacos; corn chips; ice cream cones

[img attachment=”99035″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”fish tacs” /]

My husband and kids made this while I holed up in my room writing a speech. Nice meal which I wasn’t involved in making.

***

MONDAY
English muffin pizzas; carrots and hummus

The kids made this while I holed up in my room on the radio. Perfectly decent meal which I wasn’t involved in making.

***

TUESDAY
Pork ribs; Coleslaw; Burned Rice

I made this while asleep. We already had shredded cabbage left over from the tacos, so I mixed it up with shredded carrots, mayo, a little sour cream, vinegar, sugar, and pepper. Good enough.

The pork, I just threw under the broiler with salt and pepper. I keep asking for new pork recipes, and then I keep doing it this way.

I intended to make biscuits for this meal, but when it came down to it, I thought, “Burned rice would really hit the spot right now,” so that’s what I made. Mmm, crunchy.

***

WEDNESDAY
Tacos; Tortilla chips

The kids made this while I drove around like a maniac. An okay meal, which I wasn’t involved in making. I forgot to buy envelopes of taco seasoning, so we made do with chili powder and hot sauce.

***

THURSDAY
Quesadillas; Polenta with Spicy Chorizo and Carmelized Red Onions

Gosh, it’s Thursday, and I’ve barely done any cooking this week! Well, today’s the day I’ll make up for it all. The kids love quesadillas, and we’re all kind of excited about polenta, and chorizo is very tasty.  Oh, wow, look at these magnificent onions!

[img attachment=”99038″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”red onions” /]

Ravishing. What a world. What a beautiful, delicious, beneficent world it is. This is going to be the best meal ever.

So. Who remembers that scene from The Witch of Blackbird Pond where she’s making cornmeal mush?

So, that’s how I started. Oh yes, there was writhing. Then I fixed it by dumping a bunch of greasy orange meat and slithery onions into the pot, and then I threw it in the oven to firm up and become wonderful.

Behold:

[img attachment=”99036″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”polent chorizo” /]

I’m sorry you had to see that.

I would have gotten away with it, too, if I weren’t completely incompetent. Although it takes a certain type of skill to produce a dish that looks like it’s got an infection.

***

FRIDAY
Spaghetti

Because I think maybe I can boil water.

Oh, there was one bright spot the week, foodwise. It was Benny’s shopping turn. I take one of the kids shopping with me each week, to get in a little one-on-one time. We have lunch, and the kid gets to spend his allowance, pick the weekend’s desserts, chat, and otherwise be charming. Here, Benny conquers Aldi:

[img attachment=”99037″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”Benny Aldi” /]

How did your week go? Any better than mine? Will Goodwife Cruff and her grim cadre of joyless harridans expel you from the community, or will you learn to tame your wild spirit before it’s too late? Also, what do I do with pork?

Facebook and other social media notoriously distort our sense of what is normal. The ceaselessly updating parade of unsorted images and ideas makes the world more hectic, more urgent, and at the same time more trivial and ephemeral, so that we feel the need instantly drum up a response to everything large and small — but then it all evaporates in a few hours, and the next urgent thing presents itself, demanding that you like, wow, weep, giggle, or grr.

Within five minutes, there’s an earthquake and lots of people are dead! Vote on my cute kid in a chef’s hat! I’m outraged that your senator was outrageous (or maybe it’s from a fake newspaper that’s lying and calling it “satire”)! Here’s a cartoon about the uterus! Pope Francis is a demon! Pope Francis is a genius! Pope Francis is a piece of soap; here’s where you can get yours! Only you can stop abortion and sex trafficking and fluoride and Kanye West! BABY OWLS! And abortion.

Like the man says:

For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man.

You said it, Walker.

Well, mythical monster though I may be, I have hit upon something useful and unexpected that Facebook is doing for me — something that turned out to be great for my mental health: It’s showing me my memories from previous years.

At first, I thought the “See your memories” option was a cute feature, but just another way to wallow. But after a while, I noticed a pattern. At the beginning of the year, last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and so on, I had posted a series of articles that got tons of attention. It was really good work! I was doing real writing, and expressing myself with force and originality, and opening the floor for lots of fruitful conversation among thoughtful people.

Then, I saw that sometime toward the middle of Lent, last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, I posted a bunch of articles about struggling — about feeling flat — about not feeling what everyone else was feeling. There are lots of essays about feeling lost, feeling helpless, feeling like a wanderer and a loser.

I’d have to be blind not to see it — but I couldn’t see it, when I was in the middle of it. I have a burst of creativity in the beginning of the year, and I can hardly catch up with all the wonderful ideas that spring up out of nowhere. And then it all drains away, and I start feeling about as useful, appealing and energetic as something that washed up under the boardwalk.

When I’m doing great, I think, “Yes! It’s finally coming together! This is what I’m supposed to be doing! Now I need to make sure I’m taking advantage of this special, unique time in my life and not missing any opportunities!” When I’m barely keeping my head above water, I think, “Yes. I’ve finally been found out. I’m a shallow fraud, and now everyone will know it. Whatever razzle dazzle fakery that was, the fuse has burnt down, and I better scramble for a back-up plan, because now the slow death begins.”

Yes, I’m in therapy, thanks.

The crazy thing was, this was the pattern no matter what else was going on in my life. New baby, old baby, pregnant, looking for work, just about to get hired, kids doing great, kids falling apart . . . the pattern was the same.

I still don’t know what’s causing it. Is it the weather? Is it how much sunlight or sugar or iron I’m getting? Is it the liturgical year? Is it marsh gas? All of the above? Who knows? The point is, now I know that this pattern is part of what’s normal for me. Whatever stage I’m in right now, it’s just a stage, and it won’t last forever. It’s immensely liberating to realize this. If you’re stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel, it’s terrifying; but if you know it’s all going to come around again, it’s much easier to enjoy the ride. Whee!

So, there you go. If you, like me, tend to think that whatever you’re going through is the Really Real Truth About Your Life, and things never have been or never will be any different, maybe ask Facebook. Maybe Facebook knows something about you that you need to hear.

***
Image: By Troy McCullough via Flickr, CC BY 2.0, 

I’m an idiot, and will avoid prayer if I can get away with it, even though I know it will make me miserable and weak. I’m extremely resistant to change; so for me, sticking to daily prayer is all about linking it to things I can’t avoid and habits I already have. Here’s how I make sure I never have a prayerless day….

Read the rest at the Register.

Porn’s in the news. The secular, mainstream news.

TIME magazine recently featured a cover story “Porn and the Threat to Virility.” The article is behind a paywall, but it opens this way (all emphasis is mine):

A growing number of young men are convinced that their sexual responses have been sabotaged because their brains were virtually marinated in porn when they were adolescents. Their generation has consumed explicit content in quantities and varieties never before possible, on devices designed to deliver content swiftly and privately, all at an age when their brains were more plastic—more prone to permanent change—than in later life. These young men feel like unwitting guinea pigs in a largely unmonitored decade-long experiment in sexual conditioning.

The Washington Post followed up with an essay titled,  Is porn immoral? That doesn’t matter: It’s a public health crisis:

Using a wide range of methodologies, researchers from a number of disciplines have shown that viewing pornography is associated with damaging outcomes. In a study of U.S. college men, researchers found that 83 percent reported seeing mainstream pornography, and that those who did were more likely to say they would commit rape or sexual assault (if they knew they wouldn’t be caught) than men who hadn’t seen porn in the past 12 months. The same study found that porn consumers were less likely to intervene if they observed a sexual assault taking place. In a study of young teens throughout the southeastern United States, 66 percent of boys reported porn consumption in the past year; this early porn exposure was correlated with perpetration of sexual harassment two years later. A recent meta-analysis of 22 studies between 1978 and 2014 from seven different countries concluded that pornography consumption is associated with an increased likelihood of committing acts of verbal or physical sexual aggression, regardless of age. A2010 meta-analysis of several studies found “an overall significant positive association between pornography use and attitudes supporting violence against women.”

And it’s not making the men who use porn happy, either. An opinion piece in the Telegraph UK picks up one of the threads in the articles above: that porn is not only ruining relationships, it’s ruining even casual sex.  The article says:

This message – that porn isn’t enhancing real sex, but scuppering it – is much more likely to resonate with teenagers than the fire and brimstone approach of the anti-pornography feminists, internet censors or the Church, especially as kids intrinsically want to do things that they aren’t supposed to.

This sentiment caught my eye. Everyone seems to agree that the Christian warning against porn is irrelevant and ineffective, and that what we really need is an evidence-based argument for why porn damages both men and women and makes sex less enjoyable and meaningful, and even, for heavy users, less possible.

Never mind that that is the Christian message — or it should be. I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to find a preachy type who insists that porn is bad because it’s too much fun, and fun is dirty, and wimmin are evil temptresses who don’t want you to be strong and pure. There is a lot of misogynistic, puritanical, body-loathing crap masquerading as concern for purity. If you’ve encountered something like that, I’m sorry. I apologize on behalf of the numbnuts who somehow got the idea that Christ Incarnate hates the human body. And I’m here to tell you that the Christian message is supposed to be this:

Porn damages both men and women and makes sex less enjoyable and meaningful, and even, for heavy users, less possible.

Just like the secular world is finally starting to figure out.

It’s an awful lot like the conversations that are happening around contraception. The Church has always taught that contraception is bad for women. The secular world has always pooh-poohed the Church, because it’s the Church. The secular world went whole hog for contraception. And now the secular world is slowly discovering, “Hey, contraception is kind of bad for women!” And Catholics sigh and tactfully point out the cheapest place to find fertility test sticks.

But wait, there’s more! The secular psychologist and researcher John Gottman (whose book on marriage I recommend) has written an open letter saying that, in the past, his institute thought porn was usually harmless, and even recommended the mutually agreed-upon use of porn as a way to “increase relationship connection and intimacy.”

Gottman now says that, after much study, he is “led to unconditionally conclude that for many reasons, pornography poses a serious threat to couple intimacy and relationship harmony.”

First, intimacy for couples is a source of connection and communication between two people.  But when one person becomes accustomed to masturbating to porn, they are actually turning away from intimate interaction. Second, when watching pornography the user is in total control of the sexual experience, in contrast to normal sex in which people are sharing control with the partner. Thus a porn user may form the unrealistic expectation that sex will be under only one person’s control. Third, the porn user may expect that their partner will always be immediately ready for intercourse … Fourth, some porn users rationalize that pornography is ok if it does not involve partnered sexual acts and instead relies only on masturbation. While this may accomplish orgasm the relationship goal of intimate connection is still confounded and ultimately lost.

Worse still, many porn sites include violence toward women, the antithesis of intimate connection.

You don’t say? YOU DON’T SAY? If only someone had given us some warning that . . .

All right, never mind. I don’t care how the word gets out. I’m just thrilled to see that people are waking up to the threat, and are, just as importantly, are putting together practical guides for how to break free of the habitual use of porn, and how to help your relationship recover when a partner or spouse has been a user.

This help is long overdue. For the last few decades, if a woman discovered that her husband was using porn, the secular world would have sneered: Get over it, toots. Porn is normal and healthy, and lots of guys and gals like to take a look because it’s fun. It relieves stress, and makes sex sexier. So stop being such a killjoy and deal with it.

Unfortunately, Catholics might respond in a way that’s just as unhelpful. A shocked and wounded wife might hear: You must instantly forgive and trust him again, because marriage is a sacrament. Ask yourself if you’re being generous enough with your body, that he feels like he needs to look elsewhere. At least he’s not beating you! Remember those lady saints married to brutal Roman governors who eventually converted after four decades of patient suffering. Just be like that. Toots.

Horrible. Both responses are horrible. They give no help to the offended party, and they give no help to the porn user, who needs it just as badly. It’s a massive mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

But, as always, there is some hope. First is that secular sources are starting to openly talk about porn as an unhealthy habit and even as a public health crisis. Second is that Catholics are now very willing to talk openly about the problem, to admit that many practicing Catholics in seemingly happy marriages are porn users, and that just hitting the confessional isn’t going to fix your brain chemistry or repair your marriage.

I’m giving away three copies of Marcel LeJeune‘s new book, Cleansed: A Catholic Guide to Freedom from Porn (Pauline Books, 2016). LeJeune is a frank and faithful evangelist who has decades of practical experience working with Catholics in the trenches. A recent review of Cleansed says it’s recommended for:

• Catholics who are ready to kick their porn addiction, or maybe right on the verge of being ready. This could be the tipping point into grace.
• Anyone who is looking for a strategy-based guide to fight porn addiction. I’m not a man or a porn addict, but it seems like this would be good for men in particular, especially those who already have good accountability groups, support systems, mentors, or role models for a personal connection.
• People looking for a resource for the addict in their lives: parents, spouses, friends, counselors, mentors, and ministers.
• Anyone interested in the theology of the body or Catholic teachings on sexuality. When you know how to fight good desire gone wrong, you have a weapon for when disorder comes after you. If the enemy gets to be too strong, you know where to run.

To enter the raffle, leave a comment on this post (not on Facebook, please!). (I deleted the Rafflecopter entry form because it wasn’t letting me change the start time). I’ll choose three winners and announce them on Friday, April 15.

Friends, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a jerk, but here we go: if pornography has hurt you, there are numerous online support groups for people who want to quit porn, or who are dealing with a spouse who is trying to quit. You have my prayers, but I do not have any advice for you. I humbly ask you not to write to me for advice. You have my prayers. It is not a topic I am qualified or equipped to give advice about. Thanks for understanding.

If you have lots of kids, you’re probably used to fielding criticism from perfect strangers: you’re crazy, you’re irresponsible, you’re brainwashed, you’re oppressed, you’re selfish(!), and of course you don’t have a TV.  My standard response to that last one is this: if you think TV is better than sex, you’re doing it wrong.

So yes, lots of people want to tell you how wrong you are to have had so many kids. Oddly, it can be just as unpleasant to hear from people who want to canonize you on the spot, just because you’ve managed to give birth more than they have. “You must be a saint!” they say. “You must be so patient!” “You must be so organized!” “You must be so rich!”

Yeah, no.   Take a look at my house, take a look at the inside of my van, take a listen inside the confessional, and you’ll know that none of those things are true. I am not so anything.  I’m just a regular person who happens to have ten children. Really.

All the same, in the last few decades, I have picked up a few tricks and skills to help navigate the howling wasteland — uh, I mean garden of delights that is large family life. For instance . . .

Selective smell.  Most mortals are slaves to their noses, and must smell what is before them. To the mother of a large family, though, odors are a choice.
Do I have time to realize that someone has been tucking chewed-up salami under their car seat cover for the last six months?

Do I have the mental courage to acknowledge that my toddler, at least olfactorily, resembles a deceased horse?

Will it push me over the edge to admit just how much yogurt has been incorporated in the bed spring over the winter months?  No? Then we smell nothing. Nothing, I tell you. Hey, when’s the last time someone took the dog out to pee?  Really, that long?  Huh.

Space Making. To the untrained eye, a house that has four times as many people as bedrooms is a house that is full. But it’s a different story for someone who is half delighted, half horrified, half just plain baffled (yes, that adds up to one-and-a-half.  If that sounds like a lot, you haven’t seen me when I’m pregnant) to realize that she is giving birth, again, in, like, eleven hours and she still hasn’t figured out where the new baby will go. There are spaces between spaces, if you know where to look.

What was once an ordinary closet suddenly reveals itself as a cozy Hobbit bedroom.  What appears to most folks to be a compact laundry room becomes the perfect spot to build a private little luxury loft — complete with forced air heating and white noise machine (a.k.a. a dryer). And let’s not even talk about the husband who says, “There’s nowhere to park the van.” Scoot over, sonny. Let SPACE FINDER GIRL through.

Mold Breaking  — an uncanny, if unintentional ability to run ahead of the societal curve.

Little boy shows up for his big brother’s wrestling match sporting My Little Pony rain boots? In any other family, that would be a deliberate flouting of heternormative labels society insists on pasting on our still-fluid little ones. But in a big family, it’s called, “High five for matching shoes, mister!”

Little girl says she wants to be an astrophysicist-mechanical engineer-president-oil rigger-linebacker-CEO of Everything when she grows up? Your neighbor’s kid might say that because she’s been encouraged to ignore traditional gender roles. A kid from a big family, though, probably just took a canny look at her mom’s to-do list and is hoping for an easier gig than that.

An Endlessly Elastic Definition of Prudence. Say you have something ridiculous and unreasonable that needs doing — you need someone to adopt a group of five siblings, or take care of a large dog with intestinal uncertainties, or cater a wedding which is, oopsie, tomorrow.  Who do you ask?

I want to kick my own behind for saying it, but ask the mother of a big family. She will take a prudent look at her budget, her schedule, her long-term goals, and her life in general, and will conclude that the demands of daily living have already vaulted so far beyond what is possible, that why the heck not? Tell the stinky dog to bring along that hairless rabbit he is friends with, too — he can help me shell eggs for the wedding. Why. The heck. Not.

The Loaves-and-Fishes Touch. Okay, so it’s less of a miracle and more of an attitude. You know perfectly well what a decent, balanced meal looks like, and yet you have the ability to serve graham crackers, scallions, and can of Cream of Desperation Soup and call it “dinner” with a straight face.

You can take a half pound of chicken thigh meat and make it into a soup or a casserole which — okay, maybe it’s not brimming with chickeny plenitude, but there is a scientifically demonstrable presence of animal fiber in every square inch.

And of course there are the times when you say, “Okay, Lord, you gave me all these kids, now how the hell am I supposed to feed them?” and within minutes, a new neighbor knocks on the door and explains that his bakery and his salmon factory often have surpluses, and do you know anybody who might need . . . ?

Yeah. Superpowers. We got ’em.

***
A version of this essay originally ran in the Soul Gardening Journal in 2014.

Well, I didn’t read 290 pages this morning, and neither did you. Out of sheer honesty, we’ll just have to be relieved, outraged, disappointed, baffled, miffed, vindicated, smug, and deliberately misleading about the food we had this week.

SATURDAY

Lasagna with sausage, garlic bread, salad, root beer floats

Birthday! We have a nice new seven-year-old in the house, and this meal was her heart’s desire. She said, “We’ve been having a lot of meatball birthdays lately, so I think I’d like lasagna. And . . . would root beer floods be too much?” Not for you, my dear.

The lasagna was pretty tasty! I added fresh parsley and nutmeg to the cheese mixture, which gave it an extra depth of flavor.

[img attachment=”98249″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”lasagna crop” /]

I don’t remember which recipe I used — nothing unusual, something with egg in the cheese mixture.

***

SUNDAY

Chicken tortilla soup, cornbread, strawberries and ice cream

Pioneer woman’s recipe for tortilla soup. It’s good soup.

[img attachment=”98248″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”tortilla soup and corn bread” /]

I served it with cheddar cheese, sour cream, and avocados.

***

MONDAY

Pizza

My lovely assistant assisted lovelily:

[img attachment=”98247″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”benny pizza” /]

***

TUESDAY

Pork chops, polenta, pineapple

This is the meal we should have had on March 14, Pi Day. Because “pi” isn’t pronounced like “pie,” it’s pronounced like “pee.” But what do I care? Eat your pies and spit on classical languages.

I meant to make rice, but was foiled by not having any. So I went for polenta, which I’ve never made, eaten, or seen before. I used this recipe for baked polenta with garlic because you can make it ahead of time. Not bad at all! It had a firm crust with a creamy inside.

[img attachment=”98246″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”pork pineapple polenta” /]

My husband came home later, when it had been refrigerated, and he sliced it up and fried it, and he liked it. He suggested making it with chorizo at some point, which sounds good.

The pork chops . . . bleh. Pork chops always defeat me. They were really too thin to be much fun. I drowned them in some kind of all-purpose marinade called Goya Mojo Criollo and then cooked them until they were dry and fibrous.

***

WEDNESDAY

Honey mustard drum sticks, french fries, acorn squash, store-bought cupcakes

Another birthday! And a birthday kid who was a really good sport about a lackluster meal (she’s going out to eat with her friends later).

The chicken is a good make-ahead dish, which I got from the NYT’s Mark Bittman’s 101 20-Minute Dishes for Inspired Picnics: “toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and grill or roast until crisp and golden. Whisk together mustard, honey and lemon juice, and toss with warm chicken.”
***

THURSDAY

Chicken nuggets, chips, salad, carrots and hummus

Nothing to report.  12-year-old son made the chicken, 10-year-old daughter made the salad.

***

FRIDAY

Tuna noodle casserole

Robin Leach conducted a joint interview with Trump and his second wife, Marla Maples. Their daughter, Tiffany, had just turned 1 year old at the time and Leach asked Trump what attributes the baby inherited from each parent.
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