Laughing at the Storms

By Dee Shihady

Does being a mother sometimes feel like you've given up everything you are as a woman for your children?

You're not alone.

Persuaded to marry a much older man at seventeen, the author gives up her dreams of college and singing to concentrate on being a wife and a mother. To quell loneliness and frustration she writes about her six children and the crazy, often humorous, and tender life they live.  Over thirty years later, when the last leaves for college, she writes the final story and dares to look back at the collection.  What she sees is a lifetime of learning and passion and the quirky attitude that somehow helped them all survive.  But is giving up on your dreams, to embrace your children's dreams, worth the sacrifice? It depends on what is left.

From teen mom to Executive Director and business owner, this story is designed to relate and inspire. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: MoreThanAMomUSA
• Release date: Sep 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540160508

Dee Shihady

Roya D. Shihady, (Dee) is a humorist author, poet, photographer, artist, and avid reader. She recently retired as the owner and Executive Director of a national adoption agency. Dee received her Associates in Business at the age of 37, with 6 children under the age of eighteen and her bachelor’s in education a few years later, as a single parent. It's hard to say which was more difficult, the degrees or doing it with children in the home.  She has a boundless passion, writing or speaking, for educating adults on how to nurture the best in children and in bringing the family closer. She has been an instructor, voice teacher, a step-parent, foster parent and now grandmother of 10.   In 2015 she and her husband Mark became official "empty-nesters" and Dee started work on two more books. Recently they moved from Atlanta to a small town in Pennsylvania and do not miss the traffic at all. Being part of the Sandwich Generation her mother is living in her garage apartment and her oldest daughter lives just down the street. She would be delighted to hear what you think of the book! Author Contact Email: [e-mail] Find more of her writing at https://medium.com/@dshihady Follow her on Twitter: @dzthingz

Book preview

PART 1

Braving the Storm

So much of the early years of family life are spent just jumping into things and adjusting as you go. You live, you learn and, as Alanis Morrissette sings, You choose you learn. You bleed you learn.

Chapter 1: The Perfect Storm

The moment they tell me I'm pregnant I am in love. My long-time romance begins with sheer awe at being able to give birth and continues indefinitely.  From birth, there is this type of courting that happens with each child. A true testimony of love, our anniversaries (called birthdays in the real world) signify the growth taking place in our long-term relationship.

Each stage of the process of life is a miracle to me. I both dread and love each anniversary as it stops and passes, and I recognize the similarities to other loves in my life.

At one the romance is on its honeymoon period. Show off the baby, oh and ah, rake in more gifts than the wedding, and stay up half the night enjoying the relationship. A few tiffs, a few misunderstandings, no valid reasons to divorce.

At two the honeymoon is officially over. Even the bottles, diapers and spit-up are minor when compared to the screaming and the tantrums. Just like a typical romance that goes from courteous excuses to burping and passing gas with abandon, the two-year mark is the realization that all you saw before this was God's way of being civil before the booby trap.

Year three and four are the see-saw years. Everything that happens, every day of these years, is an up and down motion. Go to the store, have a tantrum. Go to the library, enjoy some books together. Go to the hospital and get stitches for falling off the tricycle. Tuck them in at night and get a big hug and kiss.

At five you excitedly put them on a school bus.  Then you cry as it drives away. 

From year six to nine you decide that a wet rag and a good can of disinfectant is the only way you're ever going to keep loving this sweaty, damp and stinky child on your lap. Girls have germs, and boys have cooties and underwear really doesn't have to be changed if you tell mom you already had a bath. But it's during these years that your children notice that you put the brownie in their lunch box and that you always show up at school when you say you will.

Between ten and thirteen the girls begin to cry on a regular basis and the boys start to walk like chickens to impress the girls. At this point, everyone is required to shower daily. The girls want to be like mom when they grow-up (Can you teach me how to do my hair like that?), are more conversational and are full of questions. And this is where the boys pretend they aren't related to anyone with the same last name, and they start washing their own laundry. This is the perfect time to renew your vows. Your second honeymoon will soon be over.

From fifteen to nineteen we have only ourselves to blame. If we'd only loved them more, if we'd only tried harder, if we'd just been stricter or more lenient. Hang on to your heart, my friend, because in the next stage all those things we blamed ourselves at this stage for they will now use to blame us!  I should admit it though...I love this stage. I find them charming and gross and funny and moody and hilarious and sad, like a see-saw; up and down and up again; a lot like when they were three. It's a very real and heart-rending reminder that life urges us on in cycles. I had my turn. They have theirs. They were three once, and we lived. And now they are teens, and we still live.

After twenty you begin a whole new era of romance and love. These are the years that they either blame you for what they've turned out like or they admit you aren't so dumb after all. When they begin to be some of your closest friends, you realize just how much you've both evolved. Someday, they may even grudgingly remind you of the famous mother's curse (I hope you have a kid just like you) and you will probably gently (or maybe not so gently) remind them that they got what they deserved.

Every romance is filled with heartache and joy. The loves I have with my children are no different. I thoroughly enjoy the simultaneous six I have going on in my life. And really, the anniversaries come and go much too slow to take away all the pain and much too fast to ease it.

Chapter 2: Rain, Rain, Go Away!

1 Photo by Roger Wilkerson

WHEN I WAS GROWING up there was this fashionable woman on television that everyone on the block called the Kool-Aid Mom. She was gleefully standing outside with her cute little serving tray agreeably refreshing every child in the neighborhood. I wanted to be that mom when I grew up. What was I thinking?

The K-mom had infinitely more patience than I will ever have. The K-mom was cool in the face of getting sprayed by the garden hose. The K-mom was happy when the kids were having so much fun they didn't notice her toes as they ran screaming with joy. The K-mom was sunshine in a pair of pants. I, on the other hand, am full of cloudy reservations I am not even aware of until another child comes to visit. 

I'm sure it started early when a friend, I'll call Jackie (to protect her hideous offspring of course), came for a visit with her two monsters that she referred to as just boys. 

She spoke to them as if they were one entity rather than two (which felt like eight), Now boys, please don’t run in the house. Boys, do you want a snack? Boys, don’t pull up that carpet. Do you boys want to kill all of Dee’s flowers and make her crazy? 

Okay, she didn't say that last one. I'm sure she might have if she ever saw or cared about anything they were doing.

I had just had my first baby when Jackie and I became acquaintances. She dropped over that day, just as I put my little girl in her bouncy seat. Content, my little girl eyed the little boy leaning ominously over her. I also watched and quickly shuffled the baby seat to safety when I noticed a chubby little, ice-cream-laden hand, fixated on poking at her eyes. The other half of the entity was trying to put items, he deemed small enough, into visit my fish. 

Jackie ignored the whole thing and kept up a constant chatter; the kind that begs for an adult audience. I righted a few knick-knacks, cleaned up a couple of spills, moved the baby again, and saved the fishbowl all while she babbled on about her plans for an exercise class.

In mid-dialogue (hers, not mine since I hadn't been given a chance to speak yet) I suddenly saw a previously hidden beach ball flying across the living room. It was headed straight for the only thing of importance I owned at this early stage of my married life. My console stereo, still open from when I had put music on before the assault, lay exposed and vulnerable. 

I grabbed for the ball but missed it by a few inches. As it came floating down onto the arm and needle, I heard a grating scratch, the volume of an earthquake, and I melted inside. I turned and faced the demon but remained calm and firm, Joseph, please do not throw the ball in this house! 

I don't know if I've ever seen such a metamorphosis of character before. I swear I saw Jackie grow fangs and a black pointy hat before I could even finish the words. Stomping over to grab the now fleeing child she raged, Come on boys, let's leave. Obviously, Dee is not  used to having children around! 

All I managed to think amid the wash of humiliation I felt was, Holy crap!  Is that what having kids around is like? 

They left then, in a flurry of coats, runny noses, and indignant irritation. The boys went past my freshly installed bushes outside, and each grabbed a handful of leaves and threw them at each other. The message seemed to explicitly say that my property was still not off limits, even if they were leaving. 

I never forgot that message, and I never invited the family back. The K-mom would have offered them something to drink before they left. I had my drink after.

Today, I must admit that I stay ever cautious of those I let my children invite over to the house. I always ask the same questions, "Are they nice?  Do they listen when you tell them no?  Will they get upset when I tell them they