My family, probably like yours, has silly traditions and inside jokes.
Many years ago, Steve and I developed a word that means “I love you” and “I’m thinking of you” and “you’re the best” all rolled into just four letters: blub. We’d sign notes and e-mails with “blub.” Send a text with the word alone. End phone calls with it.
When I’m especially missing my late husband, I search for the word blub in my e-mail inbox and randomly open an old note from Steve. Our children have co-opted the word and have assigned it their own reverence.
Blub is not to be used haphazardly. It’s a family word, used just in our little circle of three on Earth and one in heaven.
When Cooper was a baby, I introduced tickle bugs to our play routine. There are 10 tickle bugs — five on each hand — and they speak collectively in a squeaky voice. They, of course, tickle and also skitter, slide and pounce, depending on their energy level.
When Cooper was a baby, I introduced tickle bugs to our play routine. There are 10 tickle bugs — five on each hand — and they speak collectively in a squeaky voice. They, of course, tickle and also skitter, slide and pounce, depending on their energy level.
They’re not always in town. The tickle bugs require extended sabbaticals to learn new jokes and restore their energy. They like to vacation in the tropics, on a beach, under an umbrella, with a fruity drink nearby. They give no notice of when they’re returning. They just reappear.
When Cooper was in preschool, we started asking him for “energy hugs.” Steve and I would ask him to transfer some of his seemingly endless supply of energy to us with one of his trademark squeeze-the-stuffing-out-of-you hugs.
After years of these hugs, Cooper confided a secret to my aunt.
“Mommy and Daddy think I’m giving them energy,” he told her. “But really I’m taking energy from them.”
Since his secret was revealed, I like to think of the energy hugs as symbiotic. I’m working on applying that concept to Sunday mornings.
Almost every Sunday morning, during our church’s 8:30 worship service, you’ll find Cooper on one side of me and Katie on the other. And when I write “on,” I literally mean it.
Each child wants to hold a hand, wrap an arm around my shoulder, investigate the silver bangles on my right wrist and the wedding band on my left ring finger. Midway through, Katie climbs onto my lap, taking up even more of my space.
For months, I’ve thought of the experience as draining. I imagine my children — my sweet, darling children whom I love and adore beyond all others — as sapping my energy, stealing my get-up-and-go. And, to be honest, I don’t have all that much to spare.
Unlike the tickle bugs, parents don’t take sabbatical whenever we please. I rely on sleep (never enough) and a cup of coffee in the morning and sometimes chocolate in the afternoon. I steal moments of silence and peace when I can, deliberately soaking them in by closing my eyes, coaxing my shoulders to relax and taking deep breaths.
Last Sunday, when my exceptionally long-limbed children were draped all about me, I told myself to stop thinking of them as parasitic energy stealers. Instead, I imagined our shared energy power.
They don’t have to drain me; I can gain strength from them. All our shared love and wit and curiosity and concern for one another — the essence of our blub — flows in multiple directions. We sustain one another.
That simple shift in my attitude, though a long time in coming, left me a little less stressed, a little more refreshed this week. I even hear whispers that the tickle bugs are coming home soon.
Tyra Damm is a Briefing columnist. E-mail her at tyradamm@gmail.com.
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