A stay-at-home mom's response to Obama’s “Remarks on Women and the Economy”

The work of SAHMs frequently goes unnoticed 

Obama is being blamed for insulting stay-at-home moms (SAHMs), and critics are being blamed for taking his speech out of context.

First of all, let’s clarify the context. The official White House press release calls the speech given at Rhode Island College (RIC), “Remarks by the President on Women and the Economy.” Therefore, the context is clearly a political speech about the economy (money), so don’t mistake this for a speech about families or motherhood. Note that he says repeatedly he was there “to ensure that women are full and equal participants in the economy.” In other words, the president’s end goal is to keep women working because, in his words, “having more women in the workforce…[is] good for business.”

Time traveling

Smells can instantly take us back in time

A few days ago, my daughter called to get my recipe for wassail punch, a favorite family drink we love to make during both fall and winter. As a hostess, she undoubtedly wanted to have the heady smell of spices wafting throughout her home, recreating the warm, happy feelings she associates with the beverage.

Just weeks ago, summertime globetrotting photos filled Facebook profiles and pages, but now, in spite of misleading high temperatures, we are well into fall. And so begins the season of time traveling. Without boarding a plane or driving a car, we will begin traveling back in time to ordinary places and bygone events, back to old feelings that turned nostalgic yet made fresh through familiar smells.

"One nation under God": A plea for humility

"It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."  ~George Washington

On March 14, 2007, a headline in our local newspaper read, “Congressman is highest-ranking elected official to admit that he does not believe in God.”

Why, I wondered, after almost 35 years in public office, did Representative Pete Stark decide to disclose this? Was he trying to win the $1000 prize offered by the Secular Coalition for America, a group held together by the “far-ranging philosophies” appealing to him?

The article continued, “Stark gives confession,” aligning himself with 46 other prominent public leaders who considered themselves “nontheist—a group that includes atheists, agnostics and other types of secular humanists.” So, what we have here is a “Stark” contrast. For Christians, the verb “confess” connotes admitting one’s faults or repenting for having broken laws put in place by a Superior Being, even God. Christians are under further obligation to “confess God’s hand in all things.”

Some things should not come in the form of gifts

Creative wrapping is no excuse for strange gifts

When we were married, every bridal registry seemed to include two must-haves: a crockpot and the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook with its signature red-and-white plaid cover. Convinced both were kitchen essentials, I was crestfallen when we received neither as wedding gifts. Thirty years ago, gift cards were not so commonplace. Had they been, we might have been given some, and I might have felt perfectly comfortable buying myself a crockpot and cookbook. Instead, it took me years to bring myself to buy either one.

It’s not the end of the world

History can help us replace fear with perspective

My parents married on Valentine’s Day in 1942, smack dab in the middle of World War II. While fear and terror encircled the globe, Mom and Dad circled each other with young love, big dreams, and bright hope for their future. After having their first child, Dad was shipped off to Europe where he saw other men, women, and children suffer atrocities so terrible he would scarcely speak of them the rest of his days. Yet, in spite of the unfathomable barbarism wreaked by the malevolent triumvirate of Germany, Italy, and Japan, hope would not be conquered. No, the 1940s may have felt like the end of the world, but it wasn’t.

Out of alignment

Realignment is done better sooner than later

I should have taken my car in sooner. It was pulling to the right, but I ignored that. I was too busy to get it realigned, and, besides, who wants to shell out money just to have the wheels straightened out? But because I procrastinated, those wheels wore down prematurely, and I had to pay a bundle for four new tires.

"There's an app for that!"

The Mormon Church is the "Apple" of religions

It’s said that whenever a problem arises at the Silicon Valley-based company, Apple employees quip, "There's an app for that!" And they mean it. In other words, those folks really consider no challenge too daunting, no problem too complicated that it can’t be solved with a downloadable application to an Apple device.

Similarly, the Mormon Church offers solutions to everyday problems.

Learning a foreign language

Gerontologese: the language of the older crowd

They say children under age six pick up new languages most quickly, but I’m not so sure. I’ve been hanging around the older crowd lately (OK, I am the older crowd) whose foreign-language skills seem strongly correlated to their age. I’m not sure what this new language is called, exactly, but I think it’s something like “gerontologese.” Mostly Latin-based, it’s sprinkled with lots of acronyms and, mercifully, a few English words.

Going dark

Writing is my home

I've just revisited my blog, which I let go dark for more than a year. Reading old posts was like getting caught up with old friends, but making the time read them was like . . . well, getting caught up with old friends. You wonder if it might be too much hassle, if it might take too much time, if it might not feel as satisfying and important as you hoped.

I’m a Mormon, and I don’t care who knows it

Living our religion out loud

We’re in the news, we Mormons. It seems everyone is talking about Mormons these days, thanks mostly to presidential candidate Mitt Romney whose campaign has caused a journalistic avalanche of articles, editorials, television interviews, and radio talk shows discussing, if not featuring, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and turning “Mormon” into a household word.

Just 3 must-haves for the car

Every good driver carries tricks in the car

Water doesn’t count. Everyone knows that almost as important as keeping enough gas in the tank is carrying water in the car at all times. But beyond that, we all have things we can’t live without when we drive. Even though I’m down to just one child, I’m still driving a minivan, and the two of us have become quite attached; in fact, it has become a sort of home on wheels. So, over time I’ve personalized what I keep inside. I can get along without some things, but others are must-haves for the car. Here are just three:

Beyond glue guns and kitschy crafts

Everyone is better off with a woman in his or her life

I wanted to throw it away. It was just another failed craft project I did at a women’s church meeting, but being newly married with very few Christmas decorations, I really wanted at least one nice ornament for our tree. Besides, this project seemed so easy. Instead, I was impatient and tried to hurry along the glass etching then quickly glue-gunned the ribbon around it, with the end product resulting in a very homemade-looking ornament.

Robin Hood is back in town

Let capitalism be the hero

Sadly, even some of the best political gaffes are lost on those who don’t understand the difference between capitalism and socialism, so I keep trying to explain the economy to my children in light of the presidential candidates’ platforms. To help me, I turned to my son’s 11th-grade Social Studies textbook, whose sum total definition of socialism is “the idea that the government should own and operate industry for the community as a whole.”

Rediscovering parenting tools

One of my all-time favorite parenting books

Growing up, vacuuming was a real chore. Our industrial-strength canister vacuum looked like R2D2 minus the cool lights and funny voice, and hauling that clunky thing around was as much work as the vacuuming itself. We’d bang it against walls and furniture just moving from room to room, and going up and down stairs was out of the question. Dust mopping, in comparison, was efficient. Four times as wide as any broom we had in the house, our dust mop with its nifty little swivel device in the center made it easy to turn at the end of every pass across our hardwood floors. Good tools just make life easier.

Just three reasons I love being 50

Halfway to 100, and life looks good

When my mom turned 50, I thought she was ancient. After all, half a century sounds pretty old to an eight-year-old. (Who knew she’d almost double those years of living?) But now that I stand where she once did, I think this is a vibrant age! In fact, if I knew 50 was going to be this good, I might have looked forward to my birthday a little more. It turns out the fifties are great for lots of reasons, but here are just three:

Just give me a sign!

Should vs. Want

Yesterday I drove through the state of Idaho. After dropping Grant off at college, Ken and I followed our Google Maps directions as carefully as we could, working our way across wide-open spaces crisscrossed by highways. Considering neither of us had ever made the trip before, we did pretty well until we got a little off track in Twin Falls, where we had to ask directions from the lone worker at the Reeder Flying Service (airport). “Just go back across the canal, turn left at the first intersection,” she said flatly, “then drive about five miles, and you’ll catch 93.”

Surrounded by old friends

It's healthy to keep friends nearby

I was only half kidding when I said Mom might love her furniture more than her own children. When it came time to downsize, she was torn up for months about having to part with her precious pieces. “Some people just need their things around them,” my sister tried to explain. (She would know.) Hearing that helped me appreciate Mom’s dilemma better, and I realized, of course, that she’d invested decades collecting and refinishing her antiques, but it wasn’t until I pressed Mom a little more that I finally understood why she was so attached to her possessions.

That’s where you live!

Where we live is more than a place

Our son Grant gives wonderful bear hugs. He often pulls me in close to his over-six-foot frame and croons, “That’s where you live!”

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep, but you can also tell a lot by knowing where they live—and I don’t just mean which city or house they live in. In college, I tired quickly of the standard trio of introductory questions: “What’s your name? Where are you from? What’s your major?” I have to admit that knowing where people were from provided at least a small dot on my mental map and it did tell me something about them—if they had cold winters, if they grew up by the ocean, or if they were city people or country folks. What it did not explain, though, is what kind of home they lived in. Even a photo of their home and family couldn’t really tell me where they were from.

Timing is everything

Alex Morgan, USA Women's Soccer player

From sports to humor, from health to happiness, timing is everything.  You can throw a zinger to first base, but it doesn’t do a bit of good if the runner beats you there, and who cares if you have a killer swing if you’ve already missed the pitch? In these Summer Olympics, over and over again we’ve seen split-second timing make all the difference. Suppose the women’s water polo coach hadn’t called a timeout with one second left in the game against Australia; no nail-biting overtime would have ensued. On the other hand, what if the most recent women’s soccer game hadn’t gone into overtime? We would have missed Alex Morgan’s spectacular header, the game-winning goal over Canada that sent the U.S. team to the gold-medal round. And half the art of telling a good joke is timing, too. Even with a great punch line, you won’t get any laughs if you deliver it too early or too late.

Just one daughter

My daughter KaRynn surprises and delights me

I’m the mother of four sons and only one daughter. Growing up a tomboy surrounded mostly by brothers, I was well prepared to be a tough-and-tumble kind of mom—the kind that could play catch, rollerblade, and wrestle with boys, and my sons would probably agree that I have, indeed, been that kind of a mom. Raising boys has been mostly a “What-you-see-is-what-you-get” experience—very fun, sometimes funny, and often very physical. No big surprises there. On the other hand, being a mom of just one girl has been full of surprises.