The following is written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
ME: “So, what did you learn about in school this week?”
PAIGE: *shrugged* “Thomas Edison.”
ME: “What did you learn about him?”
PAIGE: “Lightbulbs. Dey took 2000 tries.”
ME: “So what kind of lesson could you learn from that in life?”
PAIGE: *thinks* “To never give up.”
ME: “That’s ri…”
PAIGE: “….unless you’re really like,
‘I CANNOT do dis anymore. Not for one more second.”
I laughed at my seven year old’s report from her day at school, and thought about how easily I could identify,
because this week I have wanted to just give up on many more occasions than one.
It’s been a rough few days for my motherhood,
filled with repeating the same old lectures,
and handing out the same old disciplines.
I’m trying so hard to make something of them, but
sometimes it feels like I’m getting nowhere at all.
I’m weary of pushing against them.
I’m weary of hitting the wall.
I have stood at the edge of my ten year old’s bed many nights lately,
just begging her to truly hear me.
I remember as I look at the back of her head just how easy she used to be…
Cherub face, and darling smile,
I wonder who it is I am looking at now.
I have fantasized about the witness protection program this week.
New ID in my hot little hands…
Big hat…White beach…Cold drink.
New name and a whole new me.
My mom has been here visiting,
and has tried to give encouragement through it, but even she, Mother now for 42 years,
has sat beside me wide-eyed on a few occasions observing the girls,
whispering,
“Never in all of my LIFE…”
We got a new kitten last Sunday.
The absolute SCENE it has been just to name him in a house full of opinionated females should have been enough to land us our own show on TLC.
There were tears, and slammed doors all over a cat name.
I’ve cried over my girls this week.
My usual strong armor showing more than a few tiny
cracks.
These middle year’s are really such grueling ones.
Ones where you hold your breath and pray that what you’re doing somehow takes.
As the time got closer for my mom to leave and go home again, I wanted to cling to her and shout,
“No! Please don’t leave me with them!
Not when they are like THIS.”
But, today was the day that she had to go back.
I always hate when she goes.
She came with me to drop them all off at school, and then we went to have coffee together before she got on the road.
We ordered our drinks and settled at a table.
I looked at her with the look she knows, and I and felt wilted inside.
As we talked, however, I had to smile as I noticed a man sitting a few tables down.
He was working on his laptop,
but what I noticed most was that cradled between his typing arms was a small,
perfect looking, medium sized pumpkin.
At first I just thought it mildly odd to see him just sitting there with that fruit.
I watched him gently wipe it off with a napkin, and go back to typing, and I joked to my mom, “Emotional Support Pumpkin?”
Beside him was also an Orange,
which I assumed was just his breakfast,
until, as I watched, he turned it to face me deliberately, and I saw that he had intricately carved a face into it.
I couldn’t believe the detail.
I watched, still, as he began to carve the pumpkin, there at the table,
sitting in that quiet Starbucks.
Not wanting to just stare anymore,
I called over to him,
“So what exactly are you doing over there?”
He looked up at me and smiled,
waving me to come over to him.
I stood, and walked, smiling, to where he was.
He explained to me that he was an artist
hired to carve various fruits for events and festivals.
He had traveled all over the world doing this.
As we talked, he pulled up his Instagram page to show me more stunning work he had done.
I had to know:
“How does one go about getting into a career of fruit carving?” I asked,
and he looked up at me with a slight smile and set his carving knife down.
Then he began telling this tale:
“Several years ago I was going through an intense period of stress.
So much stress.
I was running several restaurants and had been very successful, but life felt like it was crashing down on me.
A trip to my doctor revealed that my blood pressure was completely out of control, and he told me that I needed to find something to do to lower my stress level.
I laughed at him at that time.
What was I supposed to do? Didn’t he think I would’ve already done it if I could just make it stop just like that?
He told me to try to find a hobby.
Something that I could do with my hands.
That day after that appointment,
I sat at my desk with the world swirling all around me, thinking about what he had said.
It was in that moment that I felt something tell me to open up my desk drawer.
When I did, what was laying inside was a tiny carving knife.
I had never seen it before.
I pulled it out and looked at it more more closely, then remembered something I had seen a caterer once do at one of my restaurants, and just thought,
‘Huh. Maybe I’ll give it a try.’
I pulled a melon out of the refrigerator then, and set out to see what I could do.
All of my first attempts were no good.
I could have just given up.
If the cuts I did were too deep, the fruit would start to cave in.
If I pressed too hard, parts I had been working on so hard would completely break off of the whole.
Every try and fail was a learning experience.
I’d show, say, a flower to my family and ask them what it looked like, and they’d say,
‘an alien.”
But I just kept at it, even when it drove them all crazy.”
As he told this story, he scrolled through countless images of the most amazing carved fruit artwork.
Melons, pumpkins, oranges, and apples,
all etched with the most stunning, intricate designs.
He told me of festivals he’d been flown in for, and celebrity weddings he’d done.
What had started as a flailing attempt at some stress relief, now a career that has taken him all over the world.
I asked his Instagram handle.
“The Fruit Carver Wisdom,” he replied.
As he spoke, and scrolled the images,
I felt the lesson of that moment begin to soak into me.
This Starbucks meeting with this random fruit artist was not at all just by chance.
He had come here to help sculpt ME.
He was speaking on a different level.
He was speaking to my weary heart.
Because,
what had looked like just a person with a pumpkin was actually the beginning
of art.
Each piece unique,
starting out much the same –
Looking like nothing special,
but with work, and thoughtful shaping,
they all became a masterpiece.
Some mothering days we’re just sitting
staring at our pumpkin,
with all the ideas of what it can turn out like locked up inside our own minds.
Where do we even start?
None of us know what we are doing at first.
We learn new techniques all along the way.
We try something new.
We learn as we go.
Cut too deep and they cave in the middle.
Push too hard and they might lose a piece.
But with time, and dedication to the
Art of Becoming,
What starts out looking like not much of anything
can become something totally new.
The beauty can’t be seen much, though, in the middle, when we’re in the midst of peeled bits, and discarded rind.
Just a pumpkin.
Just an orange.
Just a kid with her back to us in the bed.
Still we work,
and learn,
and we never give up.
Even if it takes 2000 tries;
Because there is art in the carving,
and in the end,
We will have been carved too.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
