Instructions to a First-Time Mom

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Instructions to a First-Time Mom

My mother tells me that when I was born and she held me in her arms for the first time, the weight of the responsibility of raising and caring for me suddenly filled her with great fear. She was so afraid she’d mess it all up somehow.

She looked up at the doctor and shared her fears with him. The doctor smiled at her sweet face and said, “Love her. Just love her.”

This was something my mom knew how to do – and do really well.

My brothers and I may not have had the most conventional up-bringing – but none of us could have asked for a mother with more love in her heart. We grew up witnesses to how she expressed love to others – seeing her voice her protest for those who were being treated unfairly, watching her take in stray animals and make them part of the family, seeing how a room would light up as soon as she entered it and smiled her love on everyone. And the love she expressed wasn’t some feigned thing, either. It came from deep inside her – true and pure. She truly loved mankind and all God’s creatures – and we saw this, and incorporated her example into our own sense of how to live a decent and moral life.

As I think back on my younger years, there’s one moment that stands out for me. I think I must have been in my early twenties, and there was some sadness about a break-up with a boyfriend or something – dashed hopes of some kind – I can’t remember the specifics now – but I was feeling lost and alone – not sure what direction I was supposed to take in my life. I was home visiting Mom and Dad, and had gone out into the backyard to look up at the stars and pray. Mom must have known I was out there, and came and stood beside me. I shared my sadness with her then – I think I shared how I was feeling like a “surplus” person – like there seemed to be no place for me. My mom reached over to one of her rose bushes and gently plucked a rose from it and handed it to me. She looked into my eyes and said, “This is you. I see you unfolding into a most beautiful rose.” And then she went back into the house.

Wow. Those simple words, spoken with perfect love, totally reversed my thoughts about myself and my circumstances. Mom loved me. Mom thought I was unfolding like a beautiful rose. How cool is that?!

Moz knew me the longest of anyone – she knew me before I was born! – and nobody loved me like Moz loved me. I’m so glad I got to have her on earth with me for 60 years before she passed on. I was truly blessed to have her for my mother.

“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings…”
– Deuteronomy 32: 11

“A mother’s affection cannot be weaned from her child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal. Therefore maternal affection lives on under whatever difficulties.”
– from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

Here’s Moz pregnant with me…

Mom pregnant with me.

The Ties That Bind

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Mother’s Day Story #2. (Originally published in 2005.)

THE TIES THAT BIND

“Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” – Mary Baker Eddy

In 1953 my dad was on a mountaineering expedition on K2, the second highest mountain in the world, and considered by many climbers the hardest in the world to climb. A member of his climbing team fell, ropes got tangled, and five men found themselves careening down a steep and icy slope, out of control, with no hope of being able to stop themselves.

Fortunately for them, Pete Schoening was a member of their team. Pete kept the five falling men from certain doom with a belay that has come to be known as “The Belay” in the annals of mountain-climbing history. Because of Pete’s courage, quick-thinking, and strength, my dad and his comrades survived that fall and made it back to civilization where they took up their lives and proceeded to reproduce.

I’ve often thought of the children born to these men at least nine months after this expedition as the “Children of the Belay” and, although I’ve never met all the other spawn of these adventurers, I feel a certain connection to them.

One of the Children of the Belay is Pete’s daughter, Kim. Besides the fact that our dads were both on the expedition to K-2, Kim and I have many things in common. We both were raised in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest by our dads, raised in Christian Science by our moms, and married men from the east coast. When Kim married she moved to upstate New York with her husband, Rich. When my husband’s parents retired they moved to a place about forty miles away from Kim and Rich, and so our trips to the east coast have often included visits with them.

Another thing Scott and I had in common with Rich and Kim was the desire to have children.

You know how when something good happens to you, you want it to happen to your friends, too? When Scott and I became parents for the first time with the birth of our eldest son, it felt like a miracle. I so wanted my friends, Kim and Rich, to experience that miracle, too. So every morning when I woke up I would talk with God about Kim and Rich, and how it seemed such a pure and right and natural thing for them to have a child. I knew they would be great parents.

Two months after my son was born a former Sunday School student of mine asked to speak with me after church. Coincidentally, my former pupil was named Kim. Although no one would have been able to guess by looking at her, Kim was seven months pregnant. With tears in her eyes she told me that she loved the baby she was carrying, but she’d come to feel that the baby didn’t belong to her. She asked me to pray with her to know that the baby would be brought to his rightful home.

So – picture this if you will – every morning I woke up and talked with God about Kim Schoening and her husband and what great parents they’d be, and in the next breath I was praying for Sunday School Kim’s baby to be brought to his right home.

I’m embarrassed to admit that it took a week for me to see the obvious.

Sunday School Kim went through an hour of labor and after two pushes (no, I’m not kidding) gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. She told me it was as if she’d never been touched by the pregnancy or the birth. Because the baby was born early, Kim agreed to nurse him for a few weeks. But even as she nursed him, she knew he didn’t belong to her. When it came time to put him in the arms of Kim Schoening she was able to do so with nothing but joy.

Kim Schoening’s family gave a baby shower for the new baby. When I visited them later I asked Rich to show me the gifts they’d received at the shower. Rich held up a little shirt in awe and said, “We got this.” Then he carefully laid it down and picked up a little sweater, “And this,” he said, handing me the sweater. He continued, reverently showing me each pint-sized t-shirt and each pair of booties and overalls. There was something very touching about seeing this grown, bearded man tenderly handling each of his son’s gifts.

It’s been almost thirteen years now since the adoption. Today Sunday School Kim is happily married with two healthy young sons of her own. Kim Schoening and Rich were blest with the birth of a second son two years after they adopted their eldest. And Scott and I were blest with our second son not long after they had theirs.

Pete Schoening passed away last year. I miss his energy, and his positive approach to life. And I will always be grateful to him for keeping my dad alive on K2. I once pointed out to Pete that if he hadn’t saved my dad’s life on K2 he wouldn’t have been blest with his grandson. The idea made him smile. Pete’s wife says, “These are the ties that bind.” I like that thought – that we’re all bound together with love. And how awesome that the good Kim’s father did for my father came back to him thirty-eight years later in the form of a grandson. You just never know how the good you do today will affect your future, do you?

-Karen Molenaar Terrell, from Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist

(Among the people in this photo of the “Children of the Belay” are Scott and me and our sons, and Rich and Kim and their sons.)

The Children of the Belay

One of the Two Best Days of My Life

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I thought this Mother’s Day weekend might be a good time to share, again, one of the two best days of my life (the other best day being the birth of my eldest son) :

“O gentle presence, peace and joy and power;
O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour,
Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight!
Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight.”
From the Christian Science Hymnal, words by Mary Baker Eddy

I’d hoped that with the birth of my second child I would have a full night’s sleep before going into labor (having experienced a sleepless night in the birth of my first son) and that, unlike my first birthing experience, this time the process would be quick and easy. Having taken no pain medication in the birth of my first son, I’d also decided that I would ask for an epidural with this one, reasoning that even Christian Scientists usually get Novocain before letting dentists drill their teeth.

It all began as I’d hoped it would. I got my full night’s sleep, started feeling labor pains at nine in the morning, and, according to the midwife who met my husband and I at the hospital, was proceeding very smoothly and quickly through the birth. I asked for the epidural and was given one. Life was looking pretty good. Even the nurse attending me commented on how great it was to have a nice, normal couple to work with and to have a nice, normal birth to witness.

But not long after I was given the epidural, something started to go wrong. Apparently the baby’s cord was wrapped around his neck and he was in distress. It was decided to give me a caesarean section to get the baby out quickly.

As they wheeled me down to the operating room (my rear sticking up in the air in a very undignified position), I called back to my mom, who was following behind the gurney, to phone the Christian Science practitioner at the Christian Science Reading Room and ask her to pray for us.

Once they got me down to the O.R. I was attached to machines to monitor the baby’s heart rate and blood pressure, the staff took Scott away to don him in surgical garb, and the surgical team prepared to slice me open. Everything was happening very quickly, and there was a lot of bustling activity surrounding me, but, strangely, I felt very calm. I knew that no matter what happened, God was in control and the baby was moving at Her direction and guidance.

Now I was surrounded by a team of medical staffers whom, aside from my midwife, I’d never before met. Their eyes flicked from the monitor to my belly and back to the monitor again. I saw they were all puzzled by something. There was a moment of quiet. Then suddenly they all began yelling, “Push! Push!” – like they were spectators at a sporting event. I felt surrounded in Love – love from the medical staff who only wanted the best for my baby, love from my husband, and love from God. In a matter of moments our son entered the world in the old-fashioned way and the medical staff whooped like their favorite team had just won the championship. One of the nurses was crying. When I asked her why, she said that as an operating room nurse she’d never before been able to witness a baby being born naturally, and she felt she’d just witnessed a rare and special thing.

When I asked my midwife what had happened that had enabled my son to be born without a caesarean section, she said, “We don’t know.”

Later my mom shared what the Christian Science practitioner had told her when she reached her on the phone: “Life loves that baby!”

***

For a few hours we called our son Pieter Dee. Then we tried out the name Nicholas Piet. Finally, after a day in his company, we realized that this baby had big presence – his body was small, but something of his irrepressible identity was communicating itself to us – and we knew he needed a big name to match that identity. So we named him Alexander Raymond Dee Terrell. His name had more syllables than he had poundage, but it fit him just right all the same.

-Karen Molenaar Terrell (from Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist.)

(Below, my mom with her grandson Xander.)

Sex and Stuff

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(Originally published August 31, 2017)

Yeah. I know. That got your attention, right? 🙂

So those of you familiar with me know that I believe every citizen of this country should have the same rights as every other citizen – regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, non-religion, gender, or sexual orientation – and that includes the right to an education; the right to gainful employment; the right to serve your country; the right to live in a decent home in a decent neighborhood; and the right for consenting adults to marry and create lives together with the people they love.

I have never understood why allowing others to share in the same rights they have should be such a problem for some people.

Anyway.

So as I was reading the Christian Science Bible Lesson Sermon this morning I came upon a passage in the Christian Science textbook (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy) that I don’t remember reading before – although I’m sure I must have (I’ve read Science and Health three or four times from cover-to-cover). Get this:

Mary Baker Eddy writes: “God determines the gender of His own ideas. Gender is mental, not material… Gender means simply kind or sort, and does not necessarily refer either to masculinity or femininity. ” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 508)

Eddy writes: “Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique.” (Science and Health, p 475)

And boom. Right there. As I was reading those passages I felt like I was having a conversation with Eddy about God and the nature of man, male and female. For me, what she had to write about gender clarified, and reinforced, my own thoughts about our gender identities. “God determines… Gender is mental… does not necessarily refer either to masculinity or feminity…”

I think we need to keep things in proportion, and I think sometimes we get so focused on the “sex” part of gender that we lose sight of the bigger, more important, part of peoples’ identities and lives – men and women as the expressions of Love. Eddy writes: “The ideal man corresponds to creation, to intelligence, and to Truth. The ideal woman corresponds to Life and to Love. In divine Science, we have not as much authority for considering God masculine, as we have for considering Him feminine, for Love imparts the clearest idea of Deity. ” (Science and Health, p 517)

Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness. The masculine mind reaches a higher tone through certain elements of the feminine, while the feminine mind gains courage and strength through masculine qualities. These different elements conjoin naturally with each other, and their true harmony is in spiritual oneness. Both sexes should be loving, pure, tender, and strong.
– Mary Baker Eddy

Thoughts on Abortion (Do I post this or do I not?)

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I have never had an abortion myself. (And at my age, that’s not something I need to worry about anymore.) But I have dear friends who have had abortions – it wasn’t something any of them had ever WANTED to do – for all of them it was something they felt they needed to do, given the circumstances of their pregnancies. If you’re not a woman’s physician, her medical situation is none of your business. Her body doesn’t belong to you. Worry about making yourself a better human being and leave her alone.

Mother-Love Has Been with Me All Along

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Mother-love and Mother-strength
Mother-courage and Mother-joy
Mother-laughter and Mother-songs
and hugs have been with me all along
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

Moz singing “Mamma Mia.”

You Meet the Nicest People Waiting in Line

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(This post can be found as an audio podcast at this link.)

I stopped by Tecalitlan Restaurant to pick up some tacos to bring home to Scott, and met some really cool people while I waited there:

A lady of about my age approached the restaurant – she was covered in mud and dirt and looked like she’d just come out of battle – but she was beautiful, too – she had an open face and a beautiful smile and long silver hair. I smiled and asked her how she was doing and she laughed and said she’d just spent the day burning slash on her property and now all she wanted was dinner and a hot shower. I learned she was a gardener and we talked a bit about gardening and how healthy it is for people to work the earth and walk barefoot on the ground. She was very wise.

A young man in glasses approached the order window and we exchanged smiles. I’d already ordered so I moved aside so he could get in front of me. After a while I became aware that I was moving from side to side on my feet – putting my weight on one foot and then the other – and I realized I was making a tune in my head – that there was a rhythmn passing through my thoughts that was making me move back-and-forth. And then I became aware that the young man in front of me was moving from foot-to-foot, too, in the exact same rhythmn. I asked him if he had a song going on his head and he laughed and said no, but he just has a hard time staying still. He asked me if I had a song in my head and I told him I did, but I was not going to sing it out loud. He laughed with me and we both continued with our foot-leaning.

And then this man came out of the restaurant with a little gray puppy in his arms. He set the pup down on the patch of grass in front of the restaurant so the puppy could stretch his legs and pee if he needed to. The puppy’s tail was wagging and his little body was rolling over itself and he was just so cute and friendly and the urge to pet him was irresistible. So I asked the pup’s human if I could pet him, and he smiled and gave the okay. And awww….

The silver-haired lady had collapsed in a chair, by this time, as she waited for her take-out. I told her she was almost there. Soon she’d have a meal and a hot shower. She laughed and nodded her head, and just about that time her take-out order appeared at the window. We rejoiced together in the magic of a warm meal.

My own take-out came soon after. The young man in the glasses wished me a good night and I took my bag of tacos to my car – which I found was blocked in on every side. There was no way I was getting out of that parking lot as things stood. I went back to the restaurant and explained my situation to the people waiting there and very soon a young man detached himself from the crowd, grinning, and pointed to his car and told me he’d parked in the spot in front of me – he couldn’t find anywhere else to park – and he’d go move his car for me. I was so grateful to him. “Thank you so much!” I said. I found an empty parking space for him while he got in his car and asked him if I should stand in it to reserve it for him. He said that would be great.

He moved his car for me and parked it in the empty space. I thanked him again and he smiled and said “No problem.”

You meet the nicest people just waiting in line at Tecalitlan’s.

The End.

A Pup Named Blue

I Am Karen, Hear Me Roar!

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I just watched the Marilyn Monroe documentary, Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, on Netflix. I’d never really known much about her – I’d just barely entered the world when Marilyn Monroe left it. And wow. This documentary was eye-opening for me.

There were politicians in this documentary whom I’d always thought were great men – social progressives and visionaries – who, it turns out, were total sexists – men who knew they had the power to get away with whatever they did to women. I’m thinking these are not men who would have donned pink pussy hats or marched with Gloria Steinem. The documentary also included interviews with people who had been a part of the Hollywood scene in the early days and who talked about what wannabe starlets were expected to do with studio executives (who were all men, of course) to get a shot at being in a movie. It turned my stomach.

Earlier, I’d watched another documentary on Netflix, A Futile and Stupid Gesture – about Doug Kenney, who co-founded The National Lampoon and had a huge influence on the humor of the 1970s and beyond. Many of the people he worked with went on to star on Saturday Night Live – Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, et al – I loved those guys. I remember laughing out loud at their humor. But there were very few women in that men’s club – Anne Beatts was the only woman on the staff of The National Lampoon. Men decided what was funny – and what they thought was funny was often sexist.

I’m still a big fan of Bill Murray today – he’s been in some of my all-time favorite movies: Zombieland, The Royal Tannenbaums and Groundhog Day, and more recently Rock the Kasbah and Saint Vincent. But the part in his 2015 Christmas movie, A Very Murray Christmas, where a 65-year-old Murray sings “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” with a 23-year-old Miley Cyrus kind of creeps me out a little, and I’m not surprised to learn he’s gotten in some recent trouble over “inappropriate” behavior with a woman working with him on his latest movie. He comes from a time when he could get away with “inappropriate” behavior – and, in fact, got paid big bucks by Hollywood executives (another men’s club) for being inappropriate. According to CNN, Murray has said about the incident, “You know what I always thought was funny as a little kid isn’t necessarily the same as what’s funny now. Things change and the times change, so it’s important for me to figure it out.” That gives me hope for Murray, and it gives me hope for our society, too.

There were a couple of television shows when I was growing up that gave me hope, too. Thank goodness for Diana Riggs’s Emma Peel of the original The Avengers series. That’s who I wanted to be – brave and quick and smart and not to be messed with. And thank goodness for Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Anne Marie in That Girl – women with careers, making their way in the world as intelligent, independent single women.

I was raised with two younger brothers (whom I love very much) in a family of mountaineers. It was not a very feminine environment, and feminine tastes (the Little House on the Prairie TV series, for instance) were considered by my brothers inferior to masculine tastes (the Combat series, for instance). Because there were more of “them” than me, my brothers usually won the television-viewing wars. When I went off to university I made sure I got in an all-female dorm my freshman year – in large part because I didn’t want to be outnumbered anymore. I wanted some sisters.

I was attracted to men, but I didn’t necessarily want men to be attracted to ME – I didn’t want to be seen as those women portrayed in “The National Lampoon” movies. I wanted to be seen as more than a body, you know? It was an awkward time to be an intelligent woman with goals beyond being someone’s wife. It was embarrassing to sprout breasts and find myself walking around in a woman’s body – which some men seemed to think was designed just for them.

I have flashbacks from my youth: My sixth grade teacher, a man in his fifties maybe, told me he would never vote for a woman president – even if she was much better than her political rival; A high school classmate I considered my friend grabbed my butt as I walked past him at lunch, and all his friends laughed; A TV Guide ad for a new show featured a picture of a woman from the neck down – just her womanly body – like the rest of her didn’t even count; my dear mother really wanted pink to be my favorite color, but I rebelled against “pink” because it was “too feminine” – which society had told me meant it was inferior and weak.

And now we’ve got this freakin’ Karen meme – another way to keep women muzzled – perpetuated by today’s late night talk show hosts who are still mostly – you guessed it – MEN!!! And if a woman named Karen speaks out against the Karen meme and tries to stand up for herself, she is told that this is exactly what a “Karen” would do. Which. What the hell…?!! I refuse to be muzzled anymore.

To paraphrase Helen Reddy’s song, “I am Karen, hear me roar!”

Karen (in the middle) with her friends, wearing her “pussy hat” at the Women’s March.

Topped Tulips

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Spring has always meant renewal for me – a time of new growth and baby things and the smell of blossoms. But I found myself feeling this deep sense of loss today as I drove the backroads to take one last look at the tulip fields.

I remembered driving around with my centenarian dad in the car just a few years ago – sharing the sights of Skagit County with him. I remembered chauffering Mom around to her appointments – and I remembered that day when she was trying to remember all the birds she’d seen so she could tell her friends about them: “Trumpeter swans and snow geese and herons.” I remembered the swans that were in that field at the beginning of April, spreading their wings for me. And I remembered the waves of snow geese that were here just weeks ago.

And now the tulips are topped, and the swans and snow geese have started their journey back north, and Moz and Dad are no longer here with me in their human bodies. And for a time today I felt this deep ache when I thought about the loss of all these beautiful forms.

Of course, the essence of all these things – the tulips and the swans and the snow geese, and Mom and Dad – is still with me. And I’m going to consciously wrap myself up in the love and joy and beauty and rejoice. But sometimes… sometimes there’s an ache.

topped tulips stand stark
trumpeter swans are gone now
April brings mourning

All That Is Gone

tulip petals in the lawn
no more trumpeter swans
my parents have moved on
spring is supposed
to be the dawn
of seasons, new growth,
lambs and fawns,
but today I’m remembering
all that is gone
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

“…our disappointments and ceaseless woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

Topped Tulips in Skagit County, Washington. Photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell.

“The Cats Would Love This Thing!”

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(The audio podcast for this post can be found at this link.)

Today’s adventure:

Tim came from the carpet/counter/tile place today to take measurements for our new counters. He brought this way cool gizmo that uses a red laser to measure the dimensions of our counters. I was transfixed by this thing. I stood there, grinning in delight, as the machine beeped and zapped and laser-tagged our kitchen. “The cats would love this thing!” I told Tim. And “Ooooh! This is kind of like that machine that they use in the Mission Impossible movies to make those face masks!” (I started singing the Mission Impossible theme song.) Scott soon came in and stood next to me, equally fascinated. We stood in happy silence for a while – just watching the red dots move around our kitchen. “Boomer entertainment!” I said to Tim and he laughed.

After Scott left for work, I stayed there with Tim, watching him enter measurements and information into his tablet, and chatting with him. He had a Seahawks cap on and I told him I was feeling concerned about next season. He agreed with me that it was going to be different without Russell Wilson. We talked about other sports teams then – the new Kracken team – and Tim brought up the loss of our Sonics. “Were you even born when we lost our Sonics?!” I asked Tim – he looked too young to know anything about the Sonics. He laughed and said he was around and he remembered.

He asked me if I’d been raised in this area and I gave him a little of my history. Then I asked him if he’d gone to school locally – he said he’d been born in Kazakhstan, actually, and had come to the United States as a boy. His grandmother had been German and his grandfather Russian – they’d met in a concentration camp during WWII and had escaped to Kazakhstan at some point. From there, his parents had come to Washington State. He shared that he was married to a woman of Ukrainian heritage. I asked him if she still had family in Ukraine and he said that she did. We talked about the trauma of the latest war and the insanity of it.

Tim finished feeding information into his tablet and packed up the cool laser gizmo. I asked him if I could get his picture and write a public post about meeting him today, and he gave me permission.

We wished each other a good day, and he left to go to his next lucky customer.

There are some really nice people in this world. There are also some really cool machines that beep and play laser-tag with kitchens.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell