Category Archives: Blissful Families

Help! There’s a Foreigner in My House! – Awkward Moments with Our Students

I mentioned around Christmas time that we’ve had some students living with us while they attend classes to learn English so they can enter American universities.  It’s been such a rewarding experience in so many aspects:  our family gets to learn about another culture; we get to share our faith along with our home; it’s a decent financial help; it makes our house feel more like a home in sharing it with others…..I could go on.

However….

Fairly often, there are those awkward moments that arise from 1) Living with college-age boys; 2) Dealing with another culture, their beliefs & customs; 3) Dealing with another culture’s standard of hygiene and manners; and 4) Having a talkative little girl who doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.

Since last July, we have had 3 students live with us, usually 2 at a time.  Two of them have been from Saudi Arabia, and the other from South Korea; all young men in their early twenties.  And since then, we’ve had our share of awkward moments.

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“You tell him.”  “No, YOU tell him.  YOU’RE the GUY.”  “But you’re better at confronting people than I am.”  “Still, on matters of hygiene, I think it’s best that he hears it from you.”  “Fine.”  Lukus lumbers up the stairs, dreading to tell our first Saudi student that he absolutely MUST take a shower.  The odor from his room is creeping down the stairs in an almost visible form, his presence at the dinner table makes me nauseas, and in two weeks’ time, we haven’t heard the shower run once.  And yet, Lukus goes for the subtle approach.

“Hey Houssen!  Uh, do you have any deodorant?  Like this?  I’ve got some extra if you need some.  Have you figured out how to work the shower knobs?  Oh, okay, good.  Alright, see ya.”

Two hours pass and the shower hasn’t run, and Houssen comes downstairs, walks out the kitchen door to take a smoke in the backyard.  I’m painting our pantry.  Houssen comes back inside, adding the smell of cigarettes to his personal odor, and I stop him.

“Hi Houssen.  You need to go take a shower.  Right now.  You stink.  You need to take a shower at least 3 times a week, okay?”

Houssen smiles his charming boyish smile and says, “Okay Mom.  Thank you.”

The next month, he moves out, saying that he’s moving to Houston to be near friends, but we see him a few weeks later at the school.  At least when he accepts our invitation to spend Christmas with us, it’s obvious when he shows up that he showered that morning by his huge, fuzzy Afro.

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“Taytem!  Stop that smacking right now.  You’ve got better manners than that, but you sound like a dog slurping up his food.”

“Mom, I’m not eating.”

I turn around from doing the dishes to realize that that dreadful slurping is coming from Kun, our Korean student.  I choose to believe that his noisy eating habits must be his cultural way of saying that the food is delicious – since he’s never actually verbally complimented my cooking, even after his fourth helping.

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We’re at a Cajun buffet.  I’ve looked over Rusul’s plate and only noticed chicken.  I go back for a second helping of jambalaya, and he follows me, getting his own helping of jambalaya.

“Oh Rusul, you don’t want to eat that.  It has pork in it.”  Rusul is a devout Muslim who prays 5 times a day in his room and absolutely does NOT eat pork.

“Really?  Really?!

“Yes, see?  There’s pork right there.”

“But I’ve had two helpings!”

He tries to be polite, but he immediately rushes to the bathroom and we spend the next 15 minutes at the table trying not to think about what he’s doing in there.

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In a discussion about politics, the troubles in the Middle East and Jews:

“But Hitler was an evil, evil man,” says Lukus.

Rusul shrugs.  He’s not a fan of Jews and doesn’t necessarily agree.  We have no idea what to say after this.

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It’s Monday.  Lukus is at work and has taken Kun and Rusul to school as usual.  So I’m walking around downstairs in my underwear to get some water, singing my tribute to Whitney Houston in my silliest American Idol audition style.  I go upstairs to put on some pajama pants and get the girls up.  I come downstairs, and almost pee my pants because a shadowy figure is standing in the kitchen and I’m trying to estimate how quickly I can get to the shotgun upstairs.  A moment later, I realize it’s Rusul, who stayed home that day.  He’s probably heard my Whitney Houston impression, and fortunately, barely missed seeing me in my underwear.

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“Kun!  We’re ready to go to the restaurant!”  Taytem yells through Kun’s door.

“Okay.  I’ll be five minutes,” says Kun.

“Taytem Bjorn!”  I whisper/yell frantically.  “We were just going as a family!  That’s why we ordered pizza for the guys!”

“Oh.  Sorry.”

Rusul and Kun are ready to go.  The pizza arrives, goes straight into the fridge and we have to shell out an extra $30 at the restaurant.

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This is the wonderfully, awkward life of living with foreign college-age guys who don’t speak English very well.  And every day, I’m thankful that this is my life.  Well, almost every day.

Posted in Blissful Families, Uncategorized |

The Instinct

I have a favorite saying that I like to use at home.  It can be said in that compassionate mom tone, or it can be said with a bit of self-congratulation, and every now and then, it can be said threateningly.

And I got to say it last night at 4 a.m., “Mama knows.  Mama always knows.”

At approximately 4 a.m., Lukus and I awoke to a strange sound Eisley was making in her room.  Lukus jumped up, looked at her from the doorway and saw that she was fast asleep, and came back to bed.  This was an unsatisfactory investigation to me.

I got up, went into the girl’s room, didn’t see, hear or smell anything unusual.  But I went over to Eisley anyway, and though she was sound asleep on her tummy and breathing normally, I risked waking a sleeping baby, and rolled her over.

She was laying in a pool of her own vomit – and lots of it.

Lukus got up to help me clean things up, and we put her back to bed only to have her go through the routine twice more before settling down for the rest of the night.  Lukus was surprised that it hadn’t smelled at all, and made a comment about my impressive intuitive skills.

To which I proudly replied while crawling back into bed, “Mama knows.  Mama always knows.”

When I was a kid, I was consistently amazed by how my mom always seemed to know everything that concerned me.  She knew what every physical ailment needed, whether upset stomach, fever or a sprained ankle.  I never once went to the doctor with the exception of when I broke my arm.

She knew that I was faking being asleep to avoid getting a spanking for acting up at church when I was four.  Despite my vigilant efforts to pretend to be asleep as they carried me to the car, laid me down in the backseat, and carried me inside, as she put me to bed, she looked right in my face at my stubbornly closed eyes, grinned and said, “I know you’re playing possum.  Goodnight.”

Sometimes at night, I would hear my mom in the living room, sitting on the floor by our couch, praying.  I never really knew what she was praying about, but I did know that if God was waking her up in the middle of the night to pray, then it wasn’t too far of a long-shot to think He might tell her that my teacher did give me homework that night, or that I had watched a rated-R movie at a friend’s house during a sleep-over.  But regardless of how she knew, Mom knew.  Mom always knew.

And somehow, she even knew the time when my best friend Rachel and I tried to run away when we were twelve.  My parents and I had driven the 1,500 mile trek from California to Texas a dozen times, and I was pretty sure Rach and I could make it on our bikes.  We were going to cut all our hair off so we’d look like boys so people wouldn’t mess with us.  We had $48 in cash, and even better, a couple pieces of gold jewelry that we could trade for tacos for the journey.  Man, we were stupid.

But we were careful to not let anything slip to our parents.  So when midnight on Saturday night came, I got up, got dressed in my “boy clothes” (I really did look like a boy when I was twelve), grabbed my stash of food, pocket knives, can opener, cigarette lighter and of course the gold jewelry, and made my way downstairs.  I made it out the front door.  I got into the apartment complex’s storage room and unlocked my bike.  I headed over to the complex’s laundry room where I’d meet up with Rachel.  I waited.

And waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Fortunately, I’d had the sense to leave the front door unlocked in case of Plan B.  Rachel never showed up, so I simply returned to bed.  The next day, there was a cop in our living room lecturing me and Rachel on the dangers of running away from home.  He simply smiled as we adamantly denied our plans of running away.  But I got the message loud and clear:  Mom knew.  Mom always knew.

Now that I’m a mom, I’m not as awestruck by my mom’s sixth sense as I used to be.  After all, kids really aren’t that complicated.  Their faces are pretty easy to read, their actions predictable, their intentions obvious.  I’d almost be inclined to simply call it “wisdom” than call it “a gift”, except that moms always seem to know other things too, like when a doctor’s diagnosis is wrong, or when that 8th jump off the diving board just doesn’t feel right, or when a child doesn’t appear to be sick, but they’re lying in their own vomit.

And thankfully, my mom knew when I was ready to stay home alone the first time.  I was eight and she needed to run some errands.  She felt like I was ready that day.  That day, as she was driving, she was hit by a car on the passenger side.  My mom was injured, but had I been in the passenger seat like I normally would have been, I would have been crushed.  Somehow, she knew I should stay home.  So yeah, I guess it is a gift.

My hope is that my kids will grow up thinking what I thought when I was a kid.  Not so that they are awestricken by my uncanny insight, but because as parents, we represent the heavenly Father to our children.  If thinking that “Mama will find out,” stops them from making a bad choice (like it did for me), that’s great.  But what it really did for me was help me to see how aware and how invested God is in me.  He knows my thoughts of running away.  He knows when I’m playing possum.  He knows when I’m lying in my own vomit.  And better than the best of moms, He knows how to make it alright – because Father knows.  Father always knows.

Posted in Blissful Families |

Nietsy’s Mailbox

“Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.” – Erik H. Erikson

“But I wanna give this picture to Nietsy!” Taytem cried. She was desperate. At three years old, she was very attached to my mom, whom all the grandkids called “Nietsy” (pronounced “NEET-see”) from the leftover nickname that her dad had called her growing up. Nietsy and Taytem were kindred spirits, adventurous and playful, stubborn and dramatic, both of them. Their bond was strengthened by my mom’s constant indulgence to all of Taytem’s desires as well as the constant mantra she would playfully whisper into Taytem’s ear, “Nietsy is your favorite person in the world.”

I choked on emotion as Taytem begged me to get back in the car and drive the four hours back to Texas where we had just buried my mom so that she could give Nietsy the picture she had colored. Taytem had colored the picture weeks before to send to my mom, and I just kept forgetting to put it in the mail. Now my oversight had been discovered, but it was too late.

Three days earlier, my mom’s nine-year fight with breast cancer had come to an end. It was the bitterest moment of my life. I had just lost my mom, my anchor and my friend, far too early in life. She was only 61, and I only 30, far too young to be burying my mom. But the worst part was, my girls had just lost their fun-loving, playful, spoiling, Nietsy who faithfully prayed over them every single day. I wasn’t sure which was worse: Taytem being at an age that she would miss her and not understand why she was gone, or Eisley being too young to ever know her at all.

We had done the best we could to explain death to Taytem. We told her about heaven, and how Nietsy wouldn’t have to stay in bed anymore, but could go walking and exploring the whole universe. We read Taytem a children’s book about dying and heaven. We had a special viewing of the body just for Taytem. She just smiled and said she looked like she was sleeping. It wasn’t until the hearse drove the casket away that it began to sink in for Taytem, and she wailed and cried for them not to take her Nietsy away. I was at a loss, exhausted from two full days of funeral arrangements with my brother and sister, visiting with old relatives, planning my portion of the message my mom had asked my brother, sister and me to share, and grieving alone in the dark of my aunt’s dining room at 2 a.m. I had nothing left with which to comfort my daughter.  As we sat listening to the last hymn  being sung at the graveside, Taytem seemed inconsolable, that is, until my brother began poking her and calling her “stinkerbug.”  All grief was forgotten by Taytem as she giggled on my lap.

But here we were, back at home, and the concept of “Nietsy’s never coming back” hadn’t sunk in. Taytem needed for Nietsy to have that picture, and I couldn’t let her down again. It had to have been God whispering the idea into my ear, for I was at a loss. I grabbed my keys, took Taytem’s hand and we headed to the craft store. Taytem and I picked out flower stickers, beautiful scrapbook paper and embellishments, ribbon and a white photo box. When we got home, I dumped it all out on the kitchen table and explained to Taytem, “We’re going to make a special mailbox just for Nietsy. We’re going to decorate it and put her picture on it, and whenever you want to give her something you’ve made, you just put it in this box.  Then, an angel will come down and get it and take it up to heaven to Nietsy.” I knew it was a risk; her believing me, Lukus and I getting caught taking the pictures out of the box at night as we performed “angel duty”, or her finding the pictures in my nightstand someday. But for now, she simply jumped up and down delightedly and said, “OKAY!”

My mom loved flowers, so we covered the box in flowered paper, stickers, and Taytem wrote Nietsy’s name in glitter paint. We put a photo of my mom holding Taytem and Eisley the last time she looked healthy and beautiful on the lid. There was just one last piece: my mom loved lilies, but the florist didn’t have any live lilies for her casket spray. They added a few silk ones to all the fresh cut flowers, and as we’d left the graveside, Taytem had picked one of the silk lilies from the spray to take home. I found the lilly, poked a hole in the lid and put Taytem’s special flower through.

Taytem couldn’t wait to put the drawing in the box, and was even more anxious to check it the next morning to see if the angel had come. He had, of course.

Even though the box brings me a small twinge of sadness every time we put something in it, it keeps Taytem connected with my mom and the memories they shared together. Sometimes, Taytem will whisper, “I love you, Nietsy” into the box and my throat will catch. I told a friend how I’m thankful for the idea of the mailbox to heaven, but how I wished so much that it was real, or that I could at least believe that it was as fervently as Taytem. My friend, an older woman, close to my mom’s age in fact and who had just lost her own mom, said with such wisdom and confidence that I think I might believe her, “Oh, it’s real. She’s sees and you know that she does.” Yeah, I think I do.

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