After years of having my husband live away from our home, it’s always a bit of a novelty when he finally walks through the front door.

And by novelty, I mean an annoyance, since he generally carries in a full duffle bag of dirty laundry and just drops it in front of the door.

After almost five years of my husband living away from us, we’ve managed to cultivate his homecoming into a bit of a science. There’s an art to readjustment, really. The first night is always filled with hugs and snuggles, the next day is where we give each other a wide berth to re-acclimate to sharing our space and our responsibilities and by the third day we are operating like a well-oiled tandem machine. And then on the fourth day he generally has to leave again.

Argh.

This time, however, Boo is home for longer than his usual three days. After several calls involving me screeching into the phone that if he doesn’t come home soon to supervise these wolves he calls his children I’d be packing them up and shipping them off to live with him he decided it was time to come home and take care of some family business. There is a deck to be built so Jumby can enjoy outdoor time with us safely and routine yard maintenance just begging to be done.

While Boo and I easily slip into marital grace together after his absences, the children aren’t readjusting so easily. This may have something to do with the fact their father is on a manual labour kick, intent on getting as much stuff done as he can while he’s home. When dad is working, that means Fric and Frac are working too.

My children, bless their cotton socks, are like me. Often useless but always pretty. My husband grew up on a farm and isn’t scared to get his hands dirty. Nor is he scared of getting his children’s hands dirty. Much to their dismay.

I keep telling my kids to stop thinking about their new tasks as work and rather, to think of it as spending quality time with their father.

They keep giving me the stink eye while muttering under their breath. I figure it’s best not to ask what it is they are mumbling about.

Boo, for the most part, just shakes his head and wonders how he managed to get yoked to a sack of such lazy potatoes for a family. It’s right about then when he starts voicing this out loud that I bring him a beer and offer to rub his shoulders. I find the art of distraction very useful in avoiding joining in on the manual labour love fest.

What’s interesting to me, besides how Fric and Frac actually manage to morph into industrious little work horses when their dad is home when I can’t elevate either of them past lazy slobs on my own, is the dynamic between my husband and my children.

Boo, having been gone for the bulk of the last five years, hasn’t quite honed the skills required in parenting teenaged children.

Fric and Frac bob between excitement and glee that their father is home to utter distain that yet another adult is bossing them around and stealing with him a smidge of their hard won independence.

I just happily ignore them all, thrilled I am not the only adult under this roof being held hostage to the whims of the badgers we call our children.

Last night, tension mounted between my daughter and my husband. Fric wanted permission to attend a party for older children this weekend and her father wanted to have a conversation with her without her rolling her eyes at him or breaking out the teenaged attitude.

Like the good wife and mom I am, I just sat back and watched the carnage unfold. Dad being home means I am OFF DUTY. I like to be helpful that way.

Like a tennis match, Frac and I stood back and watched the ping-ponging between his sister and his dad. She’d lob something at her dad and he’d volley it right back at her. I could see the two of them were growing increasingly frustrated with one another but I wasn’t going to throw myself in the line of fire for either of them. Self-preservation and all.

Apparently this apple didn’t fall far from my tree.

Boo finally had enough and growled that the discussion was over and it was time to get back to work. My daughter, not liking the final verdict nor the fact she couldn’t twist her daddy around her finger like she normally is able to, stomped her foot and made her final mistake.

She sassed him.

My husband stood there, momentarily stunned by her cheekiness. I think he was filled with disbelief that one of his children had the gall to give him some lip. It was like he hasn’t been listening to me for the past five years all those times I whined about their attitudes.

I could see the steam suddenly pour out of his ears as him and my daughter stood chest to chest, both equally puffed out like two birds ready to engage in battle.

I braced myself, figuring there would be tears as I expected him to lower the boom and discipline her by grounding her or taking away a privilege. Heck, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he sentenced her to even more manual labour than she was already doing.

What I didn’t expect was for him to suddenly put his hands on his hips and bellow:

“I’m not MARRIED to you, YOU DON”T GET TO SASS ME!”

Poor Boo. He was so flummoxed I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. My daughter was so stunned she forgot to roll her eyes at him. Again.

After everyone’s temper cooled off and the kids had gone off to do whatever kids do when their annoying parents aren’t forcing them into contributing to household duties, I sat next to Boo as he worked through his frustration by tearing apart our old, decaying back deck.

“I’m not married to you? You don’t get to sass me? Really Boo? That was the best you could do?”

“Oh be quiet. I was angry. It’s not funny. They don’t listen! They roll their eyes! They argue about everything!”

Snicker. “Yes, it’s called being a teenager. Welcome to parenting 2.0″

Boo ripped off another board, this time more savagely than the last board.

“Don’t worry big guy. You’ll find your sea legs yet. They are just pushing their boundaries with you. The same way they do with me. Consider it a badge of honor. It’s kind of nice to know they can push your buttons too, and not just mine.”

“Very funny. Quit laughing at me.”

“I can’t help it.” Chuckle.

“Stop it.”

“No. As you pointed out, you’re MARRIED to me. You have to listen to me sass,” I said as I burst out laughing.

And then I ran. Because I may be mouthy but I’m not stupid.

It’s a wonder my husband comes home at all.

For a variety of reasons as of late, I’ve been hit with the question, “Why did you adopt Jumby?”

It’s a well-intentioned question but I’d never go up to someone and ask, “So why did you crawl into the bed, have sex and decide to gestate life in your womb?”

Some questions just don’t have adequate answers.

I wanted a child and I’m broken biologically. I have three kids who resembled my husband and I so it wasn’t important to see a wee reflection of ourselves in a child. We only wanted a child.

Why did we want a broken child?

The answer to that is more complicated and as hard to articulate as it is capturing farts in a perfume bottle.

I’ve tried to answer that question honestly before we adopted Jumby as we were going through the adoption process and when we brought him home and introduced him to our lives. I’ve never been able to answer that question adequately though.

I still can’t. Suffice it to say, raising children like Jumby and Bug makes me feel whole in a way I’ve never experienced before.

Yes, the future scares me, the realities can be a burden and life is more complicated with Jumbster than without.

No, I don’t know what will happen when he grows bigger.

No, I don’t know if he will even live long enough to grow bigger.

But do you know what will happen to your children when they get bigger?

Did you get a guarantee with your children they would outlive you? Because I didn’t get that gift certificate with Fric and Frac and if they were handing those out, I was totally hosed.

The only thing I know about Jumby is that I love him. His father loves him. And his siblings love him. More than I thought possible and more than I ever could have hoped for.

And I’m not just saying that. I found proof.

So for all of you who have ever wanted to know why we adopted Jumby, watch this video. And then know I don’t know what the future will hold any more than you do. But I’m not worried about it.

And you shouldn’t be either.

(This is what happens when you run to the store for groceries and leave a video camera on the counter for your teens to find.)

One of my strongest childhood memories is falling asleep at night to the soft hum of my mother’s sewing machine. My mother is a seamstress, my grandmother was a seamstress and I’m fairly certain every dead female leaf that once grew on that branch of my family tree was also a seamstress.

I once thought my mother sewing all my clothes was the. worst. thing. to. ever. happen. to. me. All the cool kids had mothers who took them shopping for the latest fashions while my mother routinely dragged us into one fabric store after another, looking at an endless ocean of fabric bolts.

To my mother’s (and grandmother’s) dismay, I didn’t seem to inherit the sewing gene. As much as my mother encouraged both my sister and myself, I just never thought sewing (and crafting in general) to be very interesting. Or perhaps I am just not smart enough to become a sewing guru. I’m hapless at figuring out patterns, I tend to waste fabric and my fingers seem to be a magnet for straight pins to jab.

I spend more time cussing and crying when trying to sew than actually getting any thread into the fabric.

I bring shame to my family name with my inability to sew in a straight line.

After losing control of the sewing machine and sewing the shirt I was trying to make onto my index finger, I put down the seam ripper and vowed to never again darken the door of another sewing room for as long as I lived.

My mother shed a few tears for not having a daughter to share her passion with while I shed quite a few trying to remove blue paisley fabric from finger.

My mother continues to create beautiful couture in the small confines of her sewing room while I continue to twitch whenever I see a sewing machine.

I never really gave much thought to my mutation on the family tree until my daughter suddenly got this weird glint in her eye when she saw my mother working at the sewing machine. It was just my luck that my daughter inherited the gene I never did. My kid? She’s a born crafter. And the need for speed, er, sewing runs thick in her blood.

Now I’m all “Crap! Why didn’t I just listen to my mother and let her teach me how to sew??” This is one of those moments where hindsight is a total pain in my arse.

So with my daughter showing an active interest (read that as PESTERING me to death for sewing lessons) I’m suddenly wishing I had actually paid attention in those home-ec classes in school instead of using them as a free period to read X-Men comic books.

I’m just a girl, standing in front of a sewing machine, asking it to love me.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

The easiest thing would be for me to admit that perhaps my mother was right all those years ago when she insisted that perhaps one day I would actually appreciate the skill and that learning how to sew wouldn’t kill me (because sewing your fingers shut is painful but apparently not life threatening) and just ask for her help, but that would be like admitting defeat. Or that I was wrong. Either way, neither is going to happen. Mostly because I am a stubborn mule with rocks for brains.

I’d rather eat crow than admit I could use a little help with my daughter’s new passion. And while my mother happily helps my daughter as much as she can, as often as she can, Fric needs more supervision than her grandmother can provide. Unless she moved in with us.

Bwhahahaha. Don’t get any ideas Mom. (I love you, though.)

So I need to learn some basic sewing skills if only to keep up with my daughter and not look like a total dumbass.

Which is where my friend Deborah stepped in. Turns out, like my mother, she’s a bit of a wizard with a sewing machine. However, unlike my mother, she has never threatened to jab me full of straight pins when I made wise cracks about her keeping me in stitches. Also, Deborah wrote a book. Which she happily sent to me when I told her my sob story about being the seamstresses daughter who doesn’t know how to sew and how all the other seamstresses kids mocked me on the playground.

Turns out Deborah’s book is almost as good as sitting beside my mother and paying attention instead of picking my cuticles and dreaming about Johnny Depp. My daughter and I are reading it together and I’ve even dusted off the sewing machine my mother gave me when I was younger. My mom may have been onto something with using sewing as a mother-daughter activity.

35 years old and I’m finally ready to start listening to my mother. Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

Stitch by stitch, I’m on my way to finally showing my mom what I’m made of. Which, at this point is just a bunch of crooked seams and uneven hemlines, but darn it, I’m back on the branch of the family tree.

Stitch By Stitch

*Thanks so much Deborah for the book, it is FANTASTIC. And I swear, I am actually reading it and not just using it as a coaster for my coffee table. I highly recommend getting yourself a copy of her book if you want to learn about sewing. With her book she’ll have you sewing clothes, curtains and cushions in no time. Plus think of all the money you’ll save. My pocket book finally understands why my mother always insisted on hand making our wardrobe.*