remember to smile

Today, just this:It sounds like a simple thing, like frivolity scattered over a day, like something a mother says before she sends her daughter out to make a presentation of herself:

Remember to smile.

But it’s just this the Spirit whispers to me, just these three words planted in the middle of an afternoon, just as I am asking Him to make me into the mother I need to be.

I press almond flour dough into a pie plate with my fingers, smelling the rosemary, thinking that while these bake I will mix up the crusts for the breakfast quiches—always two. These days I make double of everything:  one to eat now, one to freeze.  Riley reads her science notes aloud, reviewing them for a test:  genetics (—I look up to correct her pronunciation of the word geneticist), Punnett squares, probability, pedigree.  I suggest that she gather a stack of index cards and make a study guide, knowing that she will not be able to do so without my help.

I heat coconut oil in a skillet, watching the clear lines of it spread smooth, and then I turn to chop some onions—always two: one to use now, one for later.  Adam returns to me for the third time in the last half hour, peering over my shoulder at the onion.  Pressing the knife down, I slide my fingers back along its pearl skin, appreciating the delicious sound of slicing.

“Mommy, may I have eat your supper, please,” Adam says, and I glance up to see the crinkle just above his nose, the way he glances from his watch to the digital display on the microwave.

I set down the knife. “Riley, you need to practice doing some of those Punnett squares,” I say before turning to my son.

“Mmmhmm,” she murmurs, before continuing on with another page of notes.  I wonder how much she understands, making a mental note to find out.

Behind me, the timer on the oven sounds, reminding me to remove my tart crusts.   I push the skillet with the hot oil off of the burner before I slide the pie plates out of the oven, wrapping hot mats around the sides, turning to set them down on wire racks on the counter above the sink.  If I drop one of these in soapy water, I will scream, I think.

“Mommy, may I have eat your supper, please,” Adam says again.  He has followed me from the chopping board and the onion to the oven and over to the sink.  I turn to him, touching his chin, gathering his eyes in my own.

“No.  Say, ‘May I eat supper, please.'”

His eyes brighten and he repeats, “Mommy, may I eat supper, please.”

“Yes you may.  But it’s not ready.  Soon.”

He leaves my side, but only briefly.  I lift the chopping board with the piles of diced onion, and the vapors coming from the cuts burn my eyes.  I walk over to the stove, replace the skillet, and use my knife to push the vegetables into the oil to saute.  “Mom, I need help,” Zoe says from the kitchen table, where she is bent over a math worksheet.  Her hair, darker in just the last month, hangs softly over her cheeks, hiding her eyes.

I walk over to stir the onions before heading to the table to scan the problem.  She hardly ever asks for help with homework.  Usually, it’s a story she needs to tell, something she needs to know that I’m eager to hear.

“Mommy, read,” Adam says from beside the dry erase board, where he has written Eat supper at 6:39.  I glance at the clock.  6:39.

“Adam, supper isn’t ready.  Soon.”  He erases the sentence with his hand, quickly.

“Okay,” Riley says, peering at her homework agenda, gathering it in her arms, walking over to stand beside us at the table, where I have begun to try to explain to Zoe the steps in problem solving from the opposite direction, when you have the answer but need to construct an equation to match.  “What I have to do now is,” Riley says, waiting to see if I’m listening.

“Mommy, read,” Adam says from the dry erase board.  He taps his finger in staccatto over just one word scrawled hastily in blue: until

I stop talking and listen to Riley, knowing that once she knows I know what’s next, she’ll be able to continue.  Then I look at Zoe.  “See, you just have to be patient with it.  You have to give it some thought.  Ask yourself how you can place the parentheses and brackets to give you 22.”

“Okaaay,” she says, slowly, staring at a long line of numbers and operation signs.  “I think I understand.”

In the middle of this, I have finally understood what Adam really wants to ask me but doesn’t know how.  I walk over to him at the dry erase board.  “You need to say, ‘Mom, what time will we eat supper?'”

He flaps his hands, standing on his toes, and the words tumble out with a relieved chuckle, deep.  “Mommy, what time will I eat my supper?” He says, and the word supper is almost laughed instead of spoken.

The onions.  I smell them, hear them sizzling, and walk over to find that they are just beginning to brown at the edges.  I peak into the steamer to see if the broccoli is the right shade of green.  Steam makes small “v’s” on the sides of the pot where the steamer insert fits into the saucepan of water underneath.  Adam follows me, waiting.

“7:00, Adam.  You can eat supper at 7.  But until then, I think you need a job to do.”

“Or, not job to do,” he says, following me to the opposite side of the kitchen.

“Umm, yes.  Get the napkins for the table.”

Riley is reading Social Studies words and definitions, studying for a quiz.  Imperialism. Colonies. Cause. Trigger. Nationalism.  She looks up.  “Mom, I’m supposed to help with supper.  I think I’m supposed to help with supper tonight and lunches for tomorrow.  I think that’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Don’t worry.  You’re doing homework.  Homework first,” I tell her, already turning around, trying to remember what I was doing, scanning the counter for my recipe book.  I glance at the meal plan on the refrigerator.   I still need to make chicken salads for lunches tomorrow.  Did I get the grilled chicken out of the freezer? 

“Oh, Mom, guess who’s reading the same book as me?” Zoe calls from the table, and I realize Riley is pressing flash cards into my palm, and Adam has returned from the napkins for his next assignment.  I glance at the pile of dishes surrounding the sink and realize the dryer buzzed a while ago, and then my phone chimes.  An email, reminding me of three still unanswered and two texts and a bill I need to pay today because tomorrow there will be a fee.  And the thing is, I am thankful.  I am overwhelmed and often tired and never quite sure how, but I am so thankful.

I love my job.  I love these children, having them close enough to touch.  I love my friends and my family and the blessing of each soul I’m honored just to know.  I love feeling needed and the way I need those in my life for all the gifts God chooses–by grace—to pour right through their hearts.  I want to cook and help with homework and respond—I always want to respond.  I want to be mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend.  I want to teach and give and give and give, and I love that God lets me participate in just some small part of what He does.  I thank Him deeply for letting me be a part.  But in the middle of our living, I am never even a millimeter away from the truth that without Him, I cannot accomplish any of it (John 15:5)—not these temporary things, and certainly not the more lasting things. So, right in the chaos of the afternoon, with the flash cards pressing in my palm and my daughter’s voice spilling out her heart and my son waiting to be allowed—just like me—to be a part, I ask: God, help me be the mother you want me to be.  Help me…do this.

And this is what He whispers, deep in the heart of me, and His commands are never some frivilous or pretentitious show:

I twirl around to the island in the middle of the kitchen, looking for my coffee mug, the one I grabbed just in time to make a cup before carpool, and there it is, the words curling around the sides: Smiles can be catching.

Smiles can be catching.  Remember to smile.

And right then, it makes me gasp, the way I can see the seed and trace the roots of this simple wisdom with my fingers.  As a child, I watched my dad make it his mission just to make other people smile—friends, neighbors, strangers, and me.  Imagine that, that his example in even this would one day make me a better woman.  I see it clear, and the truth of it makes me smile.

I exhale, realizing that through the afternoon I’ve been holding my breath, anticipating the hurtling down from the top of life’s hill in the late sun.  I look at my coffee mug, sitting right there on the island.  Without knowing it, I’d been holding wisdom in my hands, cradling it warm, since I left home to gather my children.  Smiles can be catching.  Remember to smile. And through the afternoon, it’s the one thing I’ve forgotten to do, the one simple gift I’ve failed to give.

It stops me still long enough to breathe, and I look at Riley standing beside me.  For just a moment, I take it in, the blessing of her standing there healthy and whole, diligent and strong, speaking and breathing and calling me mom.  And I smile.  It isn’t some performance, not some tossing happy.  I don’t need to pretend.  Because even on the days when my body hurts and my throat clogs with tears and I have to fight to follow, this is the truth:

And that’s the place from which the smile must be born, not the temporary details of an afternoon or the temporary circumstances of this earthly journey.

I smile, and it is a window letting my daughter see right into my heart, right beyond the so many things I’ve yet to do for her, the so many things I’ve yet to say.  Her eyes glitter, and she smiles too, a smile that breaks open with laughter, a light.  And so I turn to Adam, smiling bigger when I think on the word beaming, and he gleams back at me, and the word oh glides out, lilting with a laugh as he tilts up on his toes.  I feel like I am pollinating flowers, as a giddy feeling temporarily replaces my focus, and I round the table to acknowledge Zoe’s comment about her book.  She catches my smile and reaches for me.  “Mom, I love you,” she says, and I realize that in the list of my afternoon giving, this smile has been the greatest gift to her.  I shake my head, wondering at the glory of a God who can take the tiny offering of a yielded heart and multiply it into more than enough.  God alone can take a smile and shape an afternoon, change a day, fill a heart full.

So in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of our mess, I ask our faithful God to make me the mother, the wife, the woman I need to be.  And He says just this:

Remember to smile.

Three whispered words, and with them, the reminder that no offering remains small in His hands.  Three whispered words, and by them He reorients my focus: For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all (2 Corinthians 4:17).  Three whispered words, and my tiny, obedient offering reshapes the afternoon.

And so, I resolve to remember this, that my smile is a testimony, a simple yet powerful gift, the choice to offer an expression born of something greater than myself.