Every day, Mirabella prays variations of the same prayer.  “Please help Aunt Nae see her mommy again,” she says.  

Last night, as I knelt by her bed, I said, “Honey, Aunt Nae’s mommy is in heaven.  She is not going to see her any time soon.”

Not surprisingly, I wasn’t ready for what followed.  Her bottom lip stuck out and her eyes welled up.  I explained that Aunt Nae’s mommy is not sad; her body is perfect now, not broken like it was before.  She is with her husband and friends, she can see and dance and sing; she is happy.

“But how come the person who goes to heaven isn’t sad, but the other people, the people who are missing them, are sad?”  She said.  It was a great question.  That I couldn’t answer.

“I’m going to die one day, right Mommy?”  She asked, clear-eyed.  I cringed and told her she would, hopefully many, many years from now.  I take pride in being honest with my children, but there are times when I question that choice.

“When we get to heaven, will we see God?” She asked, wanting to know what he might look like.

“What do you think, honey?”  I asked. 

“I think He might be sort of a girl.  And I think He has brown skin.  And white or black clothes.  And He is bigger than a giant.  Does God ever sleep?”  She asked.

“No.  He never does,” I said.

“But then doesn’t He get tired?”  She asked.  She cried for her loved one who lost a mommy.  She cried for questions with hard answers, or no answers at all.

I sang to her and rocked her and hid my own tears.  It was among the first times she cried because she was sad and scared. And all I could do was hold her.

“How can I think of anything else, Mommy?” She asked.  I sang “My favorite things” and asked her to think of some of her favorite things.

“Well, my favorite things are flowers and lots of snow hills…and YOU!  My family!” She burst into tears.  And, I’m not going to lie, so did I.

It is so heartbreaking, mothering a child.  It’s beautiful, and sacred, maddening, hilarious and sad.  All at the very same time.

Sunday night, while I was laying the girls' Halloween-themed shirts out for the next day, Mirabella sighed, "Mommy, you can't go to work tomorrow; it's Halloween!"  I cringed.  They are no longer in day care, so there would be no party, but I longed for a day spent baking cookies and making crafts.  Her disappointment was doing nothing to relieve my guilt.
 
I got in early Monday, set up the cupcake tower recycled from Saturday's "carvinal" in the break room for my overworked colleagues, and received a call back from our pediatrician that they wanted to see Emerie to check out her eye.  I had left them a message before they opened explaining that my daughter had poked herself with a wand (it took a lot of restraint not to call it a "magic" wand on the voicemail).  So an hour after I arrived, I raced home to retrieve Emerie who was, by all accounts, perfectly fine.  We got her checked out anyway, and by the time I got home I just couldn't go back in.  I put a few hours of work in during nap time and took the rest of the day to bake whole wheat sugar cookies and color--  to be, as Daniel reprimands me for calling it, a real mom.

It was our first year in a neighborhood and with children old enough to warrant trick-or-treating.  I am not sure who was most excited.  I bundled the girls in so many layers of cotton and polyester fleece under their costumes that Daniel called Emerie The Christmas Story.  I safety pinned Emerie's unicorn hood to her so tightly that she complained it was "stuuuuck" all night, but she kept it on.  I snapped photos on our way out the door, on the porch, in the driveway, and Mirabella sighed.  I could see into the future for a moment; I would be the annoying mom trying to capture every memory.  I can't be sure whether it was aloud, but I might have said, "my heart is bursting."  Emerie started spontaneously clapping.  "I happy!" she said.  I almost couldn't take it.

We thought we would be able to leave Emerie in the stroller, but she would not have it.  Several houses in she pleaded to go up to the door.  She doesn't really eat candy, but she understood this was an enterprise she wanted to be a part of.

We stayed out for about an hour and a half before winding back through the neighborhood heavy laden with candy and now two children on the stroller.  At the last house, our neighbors declared, "We should have had a costume contest.  You girls would have won."

"Mommy!" Mirabella cried, "Did you hear that?  We winned!" 

I said, "Mirabella, did you have a good time trick-or-treating?"

"Yes!" she said, "And we winned!"

I didn't realize until later that night, while compiling photos into an online album for the grandparents, that I might have tried to pack too much specialness into one night.  After trick-or-treating, we made "mummies" (pigs in a blanket), decorated our festive cookies, then had a bonfire in our backyard.  It was a lot.  And though Mirabella did deem it her "most favoritest night of all," I can't say I did it only to make memories for her and Emerie. Of course I want their childhood to be happy and warm and full of homemade fun; I want them to associate Daniel and me with a feeling of home.  But nights like that remind me that I would do almost anything to slow it all down; to keep them small and hold them just a little longer.

From a strictly consumer perspective, until a few weeks ago, I might have referred to IKEA as the Happiest Place on Earth. I love it there.  Why? Because, for the last six years, I have had the challenge of making a home out of small spaces for a growing population with an ever increasing inventory of stuff, the smallest inhabitants bringing the most and biggest of the stuff, of course. IKEA, with its endlessly creative and useful and frugal contraptions, feels like home to me. So many items that perform multiple functions. Vertical storage! Thoughtful design! What's not to love?

Having kids has only increased my appreciation for the Swedish shrine. They have step stools at their bathroom sinks and emergency diaper changing kits. They have a place for mothers to nurse. In their restaurant, they have bottle warmers, baby food, healthy kids’ meal options and kid-sized furniture. The whole place smells like cinnamon rolls, and they even have free childcare that, in my pre-parenthood days, made me scratch my head.  Who would leave their kids with strangers at IKEA? I thought.  Then last year, to my family’s discomfort, I said excitedly, “When the kids are a little older, I could see us going to IKEA for a date.  The kids could play, we could eat meatballs; it would be awesome.” I remember my sister saying, “Wow, that’s sad,” and I think my mom offered to babysit for us.

So when we ventured to IKEA on a recent Friday afternoon, I laughed as we entered with several families with kids of similar age, chuckled when there was a waiting list at Smaland, the kids’ place, and yet again when we saw the same families eating dinner at the restaurant shortly after 5:00 PM. Our kids were a little unruly at dinner, but it was appropriate for the venue. I still looked forward to purchasing storage solutions (something about being in IKEA makes me overuse the word “solution,” as if I am mitigating the great challenges of life) that would greatly enhance life in our new home.

Then it all unraveled.  Something I never noticed about IKEA until this visit: In the showroom (the upstairs part that is organized by room), there are large arrows on the floor directing you through the space.  Why did I notice this time?  Because Emerie, my shrieking toddler, sprinted in the opposite direction of every arrow.  I ran, bent at the waist, after her.  I never realized she had such speed or volume.  I threw her over my shoulder on several occasions and attempted a feeble smile at unamused onlookers. Mirabella, usually compliant and well-behaved in public, was a disaster.  She melted into hysterics upon learning she could not play in Smaland.  She fell apart when I would not allow her to take a nap on a bunk bed on display.  It just kept getting worse. We should have left, but just getting Daniel and I in the same place over the course of the last month has been a challenge, and we had traveled an hour to get there. I had a list of specific items and measurements.  We couldn’t just leave, though many of our openly judgmental fellow shoppers certainly wished we would.

We finally abandoned the list, tried to gather what we could so we might leave with what little dignity and partially assembled items we could muster.  In the AS-IS department, where we found exactly what we needed to rig our old and heavy flat panel TV that we can’t hang on the plaster wall of our new place, Mirabella staged a coup.  She stood on a white couch and screamed.  I can’t remember why; I think I’ve repressed the memory.  I picked her up and walked her to a patio set where I quietly scolded her and placed her in time out.  I walked away.  She continued to scream.  Daniel and I looked helplessly at each other while Emerie, smiling broadly, rushed to her sister’s aid. People were very openly staring at this point. "We just need to leave,” Daniel said, defeated. 

A family with four children aged six and under, two of them toddler twins, strolled by.  Their children were behaving beautifully.  The father said, “This could just as easily have been us.  It still could, at any minute.”  Though embarrassed, we were grateful for his graciousness. 

The girls and I left the store and Daniel completed our transaction.  A few minutes later in the car, Mirabella, with skin still splotchy from her outburst, was her sweet self.  She had no explanation for her behavior.

Emerie, nearly 18 months old now, is at what I hope is just a stage where she throws fits often.  She screeches, swats, yells “mine” and “NO” at children who merely attempt to occupy the same space as her and, in most situations where there are other children (the Science Center, Chick-fil-A) makes me wish I had just stayed home.  But she is only semi-verbal, and though she can understand a lot, she still can’t talk much.  I redirect her, I calmly correct her, I send her to timeouts (or she sends herself and sits there giggling).  I often find myself scolding her in public for the benefit of other people.  She doesn’t know what I’m talking about, and I have no belief that it’s helping.  But it looks to the other, openly condemning parents, that I am at least attempting to rectify the situation. This is not what I thought it would be.

That night in the car on the way home from IKEA, we laughed at what our life has become.  In our haste and humiliation, we ended up purchasing a few items that didn’t work out.  Though there are still solutions we need to find, we haven’t been in a hurry to go back.

I only hesitantly bring the kids to Trader Joe’s for fear they will ruin the one shopping sanctuary I have left.

On a recent dairy delivery day (have I mentioned how much I love South Mountain Creamery?), I ventured out front under our bench to discover our cooler was stolen.  I stormed inside, probably muttering to myself "who steals a frickin' cooler," or something as spiritually elevated. 

"What's wrong, Mommy?" Mirabella asked.

"Somebody took our cooler," I told her, wanting to be honest.

"Oh, no! Now we can't do SO MANY SINGS," she cried.

"It's okay, Mirabella, we have another one we can use.  We can always buy a new one.  We'll be okay."  My back-up cooler had just enough room for that week's delivery, so we set it out and ventured on to our day.

In the tunnel ten minutes later, Mirabella said, "Mommy, maybe de person who taked if fought it was deirs."

I considered how to handle this.  "No, baby," I said, "they knew it wasn't theirs. They took it from our house."

"But why did dey do dat?"  I thought about how to answer this.  It's not that it was nice-- it didn't even have handles anymore. And I realize I left it outside, so it was really a matter of time. I was annoyed that someone took what was mine. Still, I wasn't comfortable talking about "bad people."  I don't really believe that, and I don't want my kids to fear these mysterious "bad people" or think of themselves as somehow better.  I knew there was a greater lesson, I just wasn't prepared for it and didn't really feel like delivering it. 

My tone wasn't convincing, but I said, "Everyone makes bad choices sometimes.  Do you ever make bad choices, Mira?"

"Noooo, Mommy, never."

"Really, baby?  You never take toys from Emerie?  Or treat her unkindly?"

"Well...sometimes."

"See? Everyone makes bad choices sometimes.  We may feel disappointed, but we can forgive them, and we can move on."

That afternoon when I arrived at day care, Naomi said, "Christina, did someone steal your microwave? Mirabella told me someone broke into your house and took the big thing that keeps things warm."

I laughed and corrected her.  Mirabella, always listening, said, "What's it called, Mommy?  Da hotner? Da warmner?  Ohh, no, the coldner.  Somebody stealed our coldner. Dey maked a bad choice."  I'm not sure I nailed this teachable moment, but I think I'll have plenty of practice.