I. Hate. Kale.
Earth shattering, I know but it must be said.
Even when everyone was all like, “Hail to the kale!”
I still sat in the corner munching my baby spinach and saying under my breath, “Y’all are a whole hail of crazy.”
Give me cardboard. Give me dirty socks. Give me diarrhea.
I’ll take any of it over this I’m-really-just-a-garnish business.
Speaking of diarrhea…
We’ve had a whole hoot of it this week.
And much like the kale, I am not a fan.
But I will give it this, it’s darn funny.
Kids running up and down stairs screaming, “I’ve got diarrhea in my drawers!” Me squeezing five-year-old buns into a 24 month SWIM DIAPER so that there are a few less layers of poo laundry in the middle of the night. And sweet little trips to Target that necessitate buying just-in-case Clorox wipes should a dual explosion happen all over the blessed cart.
Total. Diarrhea. Mayhem.
Which brings us back to kale and a brief moment where buns were clean, the house was alive with the smell of Oahu Coconut (okay, okay it was more like Poopy Coconut) but STILL…
Life was good and the floors were poop-free.
So imagine my horror when someone screamed, “AAAAACK!!!!! What is that????”
Oh. Poop.
Now consider my delight when it turned out it was actually a response to my gloriously gross KALE smoothie.
“This??? This is love in a cup, kid.”
Cue peals of our-mom-is-crazier-than-a-piece-of-kale laughter.
Now let me say this, although I wish for my kids memories of me where I am gentle and Mary Poppins-esque, I also hope for many to include the utter hysteria of this response…
“It IS love. I hate kale. Like HATE. But here I am drinking it so that I can say I did my part to make sure one day I can be here to see you have four kids with diarrhea!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Well. Shoot.
You might as well have called me someone-really-hilarious-whose-name-escapes-me-because-I-am-too-busy-with-poop-management. Because at this point, laughing turned into wheezing. And the boy fell to the floor at the mere mention of the word diarrhea.
I just can’t even.
Y’all, here is the kale to diarrhea to life lesson point.
Mama love is just sometimes pretty blessedly gross.
It asks us to wade into things that we’d rather just not. Things that are hard and messy and ever changing. Taking us from sanitizing our whole lives to just praying there is no poop on the floor.
And we wonder at the end of the day if we’ve even got it right.
But know this, mama friends…
It is always love.
A green kale concoction of crazy wonderful love.
And even though it may tear at all we are, make us push through things that hurt, take all we thought we knew and make us chuck it like a poopy diaper...
This kind of love changes things.
It changes us. It changes them. It changes the world because we love them.
And yes, even I in my superfood disdain will confess that like the precious kale...
It changes us all for the better.
So there you have it.
Love, kale and a whole hoot of poop.
It seems my work here is done.
Until next time, mama friends...