PKs (now with video)

January 20 marked the inauguration of our new president, of course, but on a personal level, also the end of my all-too-brief maternity leave. I spent the day glued to the television set while others--Tom, my knitting buddies, Edith--came and went. Part of me wanted to be in D.C. with that crowd of millions and felt lame for not having packed the car and headed off, as I did in 1992 with my high school yearbook staff. But when an NPR reporter mentioned that the youngest person he'd encountered so far on the Mall that morning was four years old, I felt better. Much as Tom and I try to get out with two young children, a trip to the inauguration probably would have been a family disaster. Indeed, trying to conjure a little inauguration ball at home that evening as Edith had wanted, just her and Alice and me dressing up and enjoying a special dessert, was enough nearly to do me in. So hearing from the announcer who had not come across any three year olds out on the Mall, much less six week olds, felt like official confirmation that we're in a stage of life where one's ability to participate in public activities really is restricted, meriting exemption from otherwise manageable events.

These days I'm torn about whether such exemption extends to church. I very much want to attend worship services, and I want to attend them with my daughters. Edith, because I think it is important she be part of worship from a young age and because she loves the children's sermons and Alice, because I'm not ready to hand her off to the nursery staff yet. (She'd be fine, but that's an extra round of pumping to fit into the week, and I don't see the point.) So with Tom up in the pulpit I've taken a break from choir for the time being and am sitting out in the pews with both girls.

But if there is any activity contributing to my higher blood pressure these days, it's Sunday morning worship. Edith is a handful-and-a-half on Sunday morning, and I don't know whether to put it down to her age, the continuing adjustment to big-sister status, or what I fear is a rapidly developing case of Preacher's Kid-itis. When we sit down, I feel as though I should rope off an area of ten feet in every direction around us, lest people unwittingly choose a seat in the chaos zone. If we slide into a pew that is already occupied, I feel as though the people there look at us with sinking hearts, too polite to move. The coloring, dancing, dropping of toys, sticking of name tags on inappropriate surfaces, and full-voiced whispering commence almost immediately. We add the bumping of other people, sitting on their coats, kicking, and elbowing them when things are crowded.

The saving grace used to be the children's sermon, which Edith adores. She races down the aisle and plunks herself down next to whomever is speaking to the children that day. But Edith has gotten a little too comfortable with children's sermon time, such that she now shifts her wiggling act from the pew to the steps to the altar, where everyone can see her. She schooches up and down the steps. She runs over to say hi to Tom at his seat behind the pulpit. Sometimes she lies on the carpet and won't get up to leave when the children are dismissed, waiting for Daddy to come down and carry her away. The first few times this happened people laughed. This past week, however, as the whole congregation waited for Edith to get off the steps so it could move on to the Scripture reading, I think there was distinctly less laughing.

From my perspective it doesn't help that Edith is the only kid who regularly attends the children's sermon. Others tend to be too shy to come down or they're only present in worship if they are singing with one of the children's choirs that morning. The pastoral staff has been trying to figure out how to get more kids into the worship service, but for the meantime, Edith is the one stalwart. So the children's-sermon-givers tend to single her out by name, inviting her to answer the questions. Being a double PK, both Preacher's Kid and Professor's Kid, she is only too happy to do so. During Advent she was the one who kept getting asked about waiting for a baby to arrive. And on December 14 she was the one who helped as the senior pastor came to take five-day-old Alice and show her off as a prop in the lesson. Sometimes I'm the one squirming, feeling like the service is turning into Lank Family Comedy Hour.

I'd take Edith down to the nursery directly after the children's sermon if I could. But she usually balks at this, and I spend the next ten or fifteen minutes downstairs trying to disentangle myself from a bawling kid, who says she wants to be with mom but who by this point in the service seemingly cannot keep quiet any longer. So she stays with me, but now I'm in a sweat. Stern injunctions, bribes, extra coloring supplies...nothing seems to keep a lid on the growing fractiousness. And so another Sunday worship service ends for us in a hasty exit when things have grown intolerable, going to hang out in the coffee hour room where we can't hear the scriptures, sermon, or prayers. We can tell when the final hymn is being sung, though, and I struggle to calm myself and to face others at coffee hour with a smile on my face, afraid of both remonstrances from other congregation members about my daughter's behavior and the polite small talk that I'm certain is covering up the remonstrances they'd like to issue.

I'm curious to hear from others of you raising PKs (either preacher's kids or professor's kids or both). Do your kids attend worship, and how do they do? How do you deal with the fact that your family is particularly on display in the congregation? How do you teach your kids to deal with this fact?

Sunday morning is why, of all the impressive people and impressive moments on Inauguration Day, the one who stood out to me most was Michelle Obama. Not for her striking fashion sense, her cold-defying smile, her vigor through a day of relentless events, or the calm hands with which she continued to hold Abraham Lincoln's Bible while her husband flubbed the most important line in his life. That was all small potatoes. No, it was Michelle Obama, mother, who garnered my greatest admiration. She not only brought her young children to Inauguration Day, somewhere along the line she taught them not to fidget, whisper, or whine--and did so successfully. She appeared confident in their behavior, never checking on them out of the corner of her eye or issuing frantic whispered injunctions. Without making them either irritable or terrified, she evidently managed to convey to them that they were now the world's ultimate PKs, billions of eyes on their every move, leaving absolutely no room for slip-ups.

My pulse races just thinking about it.

Our Inauguration Day dessert

Stepping out: a ball so exclusive even the Obamas weren't invited. Of course dressing up in Mama's formalwear was far preferable to wearing any dress of her own. If you're not tripping over it, it ain't fancy enough.

Showing off her bow

Right before I started filming Edith looked at the TV and exclaimed, "Wow, Barack Obama is rockin' out!" Of course she got more self-conscious when I asked her to repeat what she had just said.

Her shot of mama. Baby sister was dressed up, too, but the only photos of her show her crying. Edith also spent much of the evening crying--about her dress sagging or the baby making too much noise or not getting to eat dessert on the basement floor. Inaugural balls are evidently another thing young children and their parents normally skip.

Unlike the Obamas, our partygoers got a few hours to sleep before work and school the next day.