Sparkle and Zest

I feel so rich with a big jug of fresh cider in the fridge.

We went to an apple-pressing party this morning with a group of other moms and kids in our area.  The kids were running around, swinging on tires tied to trees, sidewalk chalk out, little trucks to push around and a mini-tractor to pedal.

There were potato chips and carrot sticks and apples.  Oh, the APPLES.

We brought a wagon up the grassy hill to the one tree with the most apples.  We climbed in the tree and picked fruit from the branches, shook the tree until they tumbled down like large red/green balls of hail (watch out for your head!).  We used sticks to prod apples to the ground and climbed the ladder to pick and hand them down to friends’ waiting palms.

We got apples.  A wagon full, buckets and bags full.  A good-sized harvest for little hands to manage.

We brought them down the hill, admiring furry black-and-brown striped caterpillars along the way, back down to the old cider press our hostess had rigged up.

The motor was a bit weak but we washed the apples and chopped them up and fed them in.  The teeth grinding the apples into bits, making a big pile of broken fruit in the slotted wooden barrel below.  Then we put the round lid on and screwed it down and down and down.  Pressing.

All the juice ran out the slots of the barrel and into a square wooden tray beneath it.  The tray had one round hole and all the juice ran out of that and into a bucket underneath.  The kids were running in with their paper cups, interrupting the stream, catching all that fresh pressed sunshine and drinking it down.

We pressed again and again. Kids scattered, running back up to the walnut tree cove where the swings hung.  Or colored with chalk and crayons.  Or munched on a buffet of various potato chips spread out on the picnic table.

The sun comes out.  The water in the Puget Sound is sparkling fairytale blue.

I don’t know the other families here well.  Many I met for the first time at a picnic last week.  For a moment in our apple-pressing conversation, the topic turns to wrinkles.  One woman mentions how her mom bought her wrinkle-cream recently, to help erase the lines created when her children were up sick for several consecutive nights. She laughs and says, “Don’t pass your insecurities onto me, Mom!”  We all laugh and I look at the genuinely happy and beautiful face of the woman telling this brief story.

I think about how we moms are sensitive to our own sense of declining beauty.  How all women get trapped assessing their level of beauty, tracking changes as they grow older, but mothers have their own set of additional beauty hurdles.  As if just by being a mother they have more obstructions to clear.  While Hollywood has turned baby bumps into the new sexy, headlines also rush on about how quickly a woman is able to “get her body back” post-baby.  As if the goal is to look like we never had children at all.

But as I look at these mothers pressing apples, I see something I admire, in their blue jeans and sweatshirts and tired smiling faces:  I see their commitment.  I see the softness that comes from caring for little people day after day, night after night.  The inner strength that slowly builds from dishing up snacks and wiping bottoms.  From holding a sweaty sick child all night, praying for their health.   From kissing countless scrapes and bumps and chipped teeth, praying for their healing.  From navigating sibling rivalry, trying to stretch your time and love to embrace all the people in your home, including yourself.

I see the beauty that is created when one is deeply involved in service, in forgetting yourself for the sake of another.  It is a powerful surrender that no one can prepare you for before you become a parent.  I remember when my oldest daughter, Rose, was several weeks old and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get around to trimming my toenails.  If feels silly to write that now, but at the time it was monumental.  I’d end each day and think, “Geesh, tomorrow I will cut my toenails.”  But the next day would come and go and my nails would grow that much longer, pushing against the inner edge of the slippers I wore all day long inside the house.

I remember telling a friend that, a performance artist who asked how new motherhood was going.  She laughed when I mentioned my nails and thought I could do a performance piece just on that, the strange fact explaining so much:  What is new motherhood like?  It means not cutting your own toenails.

It means no longer tending to your own needs as top priority.  It means surrendering yourself to these bright new beings, responding to their cries and hunger and physical and emotional needs over and over again in a blur of self-forgetfulness.

No one can explain ahead of time the work it is.  No one can explain how utterly erased you sometimes feel.  How you can’t remember what you personally think or feel anymore, let alone remember to find time for your own toenails.

But I have a theory, looking at these women on apple pressing day.  I have a theory that all that self-forgetfulness adds up to something.  It adds up to a beauty, a beauty of motherhood.  The tired, smiling faces, they have a quiet glow made up of all those moments of lost self.  The extra gray hairs and wrinkles we acquire when we hold sick children through sleepless nights, or try to stay steady through trips to the emergency room, they have a power that extends beyond surface appearance.

Where others may see the lack of beauty (no make-up, no salon hair dos, no fashionable outfits, unfit bodies), I see the acquisition of beauty, the beauty of service, the beauty of motherhood.  It is a strong beauty, a humble one.  It isn’t flashy or self-conscious, in fact it is completely unaware of itself.  It is the beauty of a woman who has been pushed to her limit again and again, yet somehow finds a way to grow bigger and embrace more when she didn’t think she had anything left to give.

As a kid, I remember thinking my mom was the most beautiful woman on earth.  I loved how she smelled, her soft cheeks, the funny skin at the elbow that hung loose when her arm was straightened, the wrinkles on her forehead when she raised her eyebrows–I loved running my fingers over those again and again and my dear mother let me (thank you mom!).

I wonder what my daughters will remember about my body, about my beauty, once they are grown.  But I can’t know.  The essence of this beauty is that the one who has it isn’t entirely aware of it. 

And I think of all the mothers I know, the conversations I’ve had lately with other moms—we discuss our bellies, our changed shapes, the stretch marks.  The sag.  The widening.  The fact that we pee a little when we jog or bounce on trampolines or go to Zumba, we talk about changes in beauty that are usually taboo.  We empathize with each other and smile in comradery with a knowing nod.

I think if we all looked carefully, if we all acknowledged honestly, we’d see the beauty growing in each of us.  It is a beauty born of self-forgetfulness.  It is the beauty of motherhood.

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Back at our apple day, the apples we gathered have all been processed now.  They were once blossoms on the trees.  Then, they grew into fruit, were picked, washed, chopped and pressed.  Now, I bring home a jug of cider.  And I feel so wealthy.  Rich and sweet, deep gold in color, that sweet fruit transformed from stage to stage into this:  the essence of the thing itself, beautiful as the women who worked to make it.

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What about you?  How do you feel in your beauty, in your body, in your motherhood?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.