Mother's Day

My writing group isn't meeting tonight, because I got invited to hear Sandra Tsing Loh read at a friend's house. She has a new book out called The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones. Though I'd generally rather write with my writers than almost every other activity, I wanted to say yes to this invitation. I don't know from raging hormones (yet) and I like to be prepared for such eventualities. But what I want to write about today is Mother's Day.

I feel guilty saying this, because I know how hard Mother's Day can be for those who have lost theirs to either death or illness or painful choice; or for those who yearn to be mothers and aren't, or who were mothers and suffered the cruelest loss. But I have come to appreciate this holiday, and not just because my kids made me beautiful cards, gave me the day off and just plain exist. I hated it as a child, and in our family it was almost universally ignored until the three daughters became mothers ourselves and started getting cards, flowers (or resenting the lack thereof). Now we regularly thank our own mother. Now we get it.

In church yesterday, Steve said, "Every day should be mother's day. We owe a debt we can never pay back." And all of us had a mother, however imperfect. My life was changed when a wiser woman (not a mother herself) shared her own breakthrough: "I realized that the sometimes mean, sometimes crazy alcoholic mom I had was exactly the mother I needed to become the person I am." That statement set me free as a mother. Whenever I worried that I was wrecking my kids, I thought of this: the mother you get is the mother you need. For better or for worse, my kids got me. And mostly, it's for better. I have to trust that even when it's not so lovely--like when I ignore them for my iPhone, or yell at them for not showing up for violin practice--that somehow, someway, God can turn this to good: compost becomes flowers.

More about Sandra Tsing Loh tomorrow.

New CD, New Van, New Commitment

What have we been doing lately? Glad you asked. In addition to the usual, Nerissa has been writing a huge number (like 20) of songs; we drove our new van, Bessie Van Gogh, down to Virginia where we played at our church Immanuel Presbyterian, and also at the Ethical Community Charter School where we did our Pete Seeger Wasn't That a Time? show. Meanwhile, as we drove up and down the Jersey Turnpike, our kids made a chart of all the states represented on the license plates of the cars we passed on the way.

We visited the Mall in DC and tried to go to the East Wing of the National Gallery, but it was closed. So we visited the West Wing and gave the kids a scavenger hunt: "Find a painting with fruit in it." "Find a painting with two women," etc.

We also went to the American History museum and looked at a display on the Civil Rights era. We watched footage of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and also saw Joan Baez's guitar, which she played at the Lincoln Memorial.

We sang Pete Seeger songs and some of our new ones. We used our brand new sound system. We were grateful for every single extra inch Bessie Van Gogh afforded us. We hung around the playground while our kids gamboled, and we talked about the new CD we are going to make this summer. We talked about a CD release tour in 2015; about going to Florida for a gig, about our dream of performing in all 50 states in our lifetime (we've played all but Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Hawaii.) We showed our kids the neighborhood we'd lived in in the 70s. We saw our parents. We saw spring in Virginia, which gave us hope that spring would eventually come to Massachusetts.

Last weekend, we celebrated Elle’s 8th birthday. Katryna's kids gave her the soundtrack to Frozen, a movie she'd watched with her friends at least twice before we got to see it as a family. Jay had also seen it without us. Katryna's kids know every word of the soundtrack, and after dinner Saturday night, the four kids closed the French doors, which separate the dining room from the music room and proceeded to sing and dance along to practically the entire movie, emoting majestically with their arms, shooshing their hair back dramatically along with "Let It Go." We grown-ups snuck over to the backstage area to spy on them. They were in perfect bliss; and I realized that this was their music as much as anything has ever been my music, and for that reason, I decided to love it, even though it is the kind of aggressive pop music I have historically eschewed.

I was 8 when I discovered my first LP--the LP that I would wear out, play over and over, knew every note to: The Captain and Tennille's Love Will Keep Us Together. Katryna and I used to do the same kind of interpretive dance, belt-it-out reveries to that LP.

The joy and vulnerability is so delicious to watch, but we felt almost guilty spying on them. In fact, five year old Jay eventually spotted us, and when he did, immediately said, “Go away. This is pwivate.”

We are about to record our 17th CD. We have almost all the songs. I should have been working on a song tonight, but instead I wrote this. I feel the need to connect back to the readership of this blog during the next few months. My creative entrepreneurial group (CREMA—Creative Entrepreneur Mastermind) met last week and talked about how important it is for writers to be disciplined, to write when they say they will write. To write for at least an hour a day. I want to commit to that for the next two months leading up to our time in the studio. When I am not writing and performing regularly, I forget who I am. (Which might not be a bad thing, but for the sake of argument...) It’s almost impossible for me to remember that my music matters unless I am onstage, or it’s the day after a show, or I’m singing a new song in church. By day two, post-show, I have forgotten that anyone likes my music or remembers who I am (if I have forgotten who The Nields are, which I usually do, why should anyone else remember?) We are not gigging very much this summer because this time around, we're doing the "hole up in the studio" version of recording a record (whereas with The Full Catastrophe we did the "let's try to live our whole lives while recording for an hour a week" version. Result? A record that took three years to make.) Now is a good time to remember that I am a musician and a writer and not get distracted by my child's guinea pigs (more on that later) or get consumed by a clutter-clearing initiative.

I need, once again, to commit to an hour of creative time per day. Not so much in the hopes that I will write something Outstanding That Outlives Me (OTOM=my perpetual goal), but to remind ME that I am an artist, first and foremost. Remember when I spent a whole month blogging every day? That was March 2009, after having that formative tour/vacation in Florida where I couldn't appreciate the view of the Gulf of Mexico because I was too tired. On that trip, we played a couple of shows at the Craftsman House, and while resting between, I found a book called The Mud Pie Dilemma about an artist named Tom Coleman who had struggled to raise a child and make a living while remaining an artist. It gave me a kick in the pants at the time––I was newly postpartum after my second child, Jay––and I committed to a daily blogging practice. I don't think I can do that right now, though I hope to in July and August while we're recording the new CD. But for now, I can commit to hitting the piano, guitar or laptop for some daily open-ended creative time. I want to feel some of that exuberance my kids feel when they sing along to "Let It Go."

“If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.”
― John Mayer

Ten Year Tin

This is the first in a series of posts about the songs on our new CD The Full Catastrophe which is due out on April 1 2012. Today, Dave Chalfant did what may well be the final mixes of the last song. As I write this, Katryna is making a valentine for our fans: a video for Ten Year Tin, which is a song about marriage. Here are the lyrics and video.

Ten Year Tin
Fill me up
Till I’m overflowing
Fill me up
Till I can’t take anymore
Fill me up
Everything is growing
In the garden, in the bedroom
In and out our front door
Wake me up
On our 10 year anniversary
We’ll save up
And take a trip across the sea
We’ll leave the kids with someone vaguely competent
Bon voyage, it’ll be just you and me
I want to swear like a sailor in the storm
I want to stare down the forces of the wind
I want to make love on deck and watch the moon across the sky
I want to put all our pennies in our ten-year tin.

[I see you
I see the man I married
I see you
I see the noble and the beast
And I see the way you treat the one who is serving you
With tenderness and humor, always last but not least] {we cut this verse for the CD}
Look at me
I can’t see my own face
Look at me
You see everything I am
And I’ve seen your worst, and babe, I’d have you anyway
Things do not always go according to our plans
I want to swear like a sailor in the storm
I want to stare down the forces of the wind
I want to make love on deck and watch the moon across the sky
I want to put all our pennies in our ten-year tin.

I want to storm, I want to swear
I want to make sure I get my fair share
I want peace--that's why I hide
I want to know that you're on my side.

Fight with me
I’m not afraid of fighting
Cause I see
That I am safe inside this ring
Fight with me
And I will welcome the battle
Even tell you I’m sorry when the storm is finally passing
I’ll be wrong again
I am wrong so often
Tell me when
You can’t take it any more
I’ll remind you that you took me for better
But when I am worse is what those blessed vows are for

I want to swear like a sailor in the storm
I want to stare down the forces of the wind
I want to make love on deck and watch the moon across the sky
I want to put all our pennies in our ten-year tin.


Nerissa and Katryna Nields
Feb. 2, 2010

History and Writing Process
Katryna called me up in Sept. 2009 when she and Dave were celebrating their 10th anniversary. "Kathy and Henry [Dave's parents] gave us a ten year tin!" Apparently "ten" is the tin anniversary.
"I think we should learn to play it! I think we should name our new CD Ten Year Tin! I think you should write a song called "Ten Year Tin"! And it should have this line:
"I want to swear like a sailor in the storm..." And she sang the line over the phone.

I wrote this song late in the game, relatively. We started recording the new CD in December 2009 and this song came in February 2010. By that time, we'd already done the basic tracks for many of the other songs, and we thought we were done, though in retrospect, we still hadn't written "Creek's Gonna Rise," "The Number One Reason That Parents Are Cranky Is Because They Didn't Get Enough Sleep," or "Your House Is Strong." But we were so giddy about having come up with this one that for a while we really did think we'd name the CD Ten Year Tin.

At first, it was missing its bridge. Dave said, "I think the song needs something. Some progression." Usually, I need to hide away to write something; I remember reading about how Dylan would compose whole sets of lyrics on the spot in the studio. I never thought I'd be able to do that, but for this song, I ducked into the recording booth, sat down with the guitar and wrote the middle eight, which is now my favorite part of the song. We performed "Ten Year Tin" at Falcon Ridge 2010 and then got our rhythm section (Lorne Entress on drums and Paul Kochanski on bass) to record live in Sackamusic studio a couple weeks later while the arrangement was fresh. As I recall, Lorne, who is a wonderful producer himself, helped us figure out the feel.

While this song is for Katryna and Dave in celebration of their amazing, inspiring marriage, I feel funny writing about Dave and Katryna--not being either of them--I will write about myself. I have been married twice. If you add up my married years, I have been married for over a third of my life. And once I celebrated a ten year tin, though we didn't know it, and it was tinnish in a not-good way. But this I know about marriage: it doesn't work to try not to have conflicts. Just as in skiing it's essential to learn to fall properly, in a committed relationship, it's essential to learn to fight fairly. Or if you don't like the word "fighting" then try "exercise ego dominance until you remember that doesn't work for the long term." In my first marriage, I was an excellent jouster. He and I would go at it, and I would best him with my court room logic. That did me no good whatsoever when the marriage fell apart and I was left sputtering at his back. You can win every battle and lose the war.

So I wanted to get at the idea that in a passionate relationship, there are going to be big waves. And in a healthy relationship, there is growth, sometimes an abundance of growth. And what I learned from my first marriage is this: if I wanted a relationship to last forever, I would have to invest in it every single day. This time around, I take nothing for granted.

Jesus

This morning the sky was striped, horizontally, gray and blue outside our new windows overlooking the back yard. I held a sleepy Jay, still nursing at 3, and balanced the feelings of this early, too early, thaw. Like everything in our culture, it is too easy to go jacketless in January.

For one of my new year's intentions, I foolishly told God I wanted the courage to share my faith more openly. Also that I wanted someone to come into my life to teach me with a bit more structure than what I've been getting. But first to the faith sharing.

1. I don't really want to share my faith. Believing in God is mostly not cool, unless you are Bono or Anne Lamott or Jesus. But way more to the point, believing in God can associate one with a certain kind of holy that smacks of know-it-allness. As I am a congenital know-it-all, this is really dangerous territory for me. But about God, there is one things I am sure of: I do not know it all. For example, I do not know that there is a God. But I do believe. Those are different things.

2. I don't want to argue with anyone, ever. I don't want to convince anyone else to believe. I don't think I am better than anyone. Opposite. As I have said previously, it is not the well who need a hospital but the sick. So it is with church.

3. I am not in any way shape or form allied with the Tea Party.

4. I think fundamentalism in any guise is fundamentally dangerous. OK--perhaps that is arguing. Sorry.

That said:

5. When I first heard about Jesus I fell madly in love with him. I was about four, and we were standing around my mother's piano at Christmas time. She was playing and singing "Away in the Manger" and I burst into tears because I loved the little lord Jesus and his sweet head so much; the tenderness overwhelmed me.

6. I prayed to God every night, but not on my knees. Just in my head, lying in bed. I asked God to keep everyone I knew alive, to have them not get divorced and wished that they would all be happy.

7. When John Lennon died, I imagined him on a desert island playing guitar and holding court. I would meditate and visit him there.

8. My parents attended a Presbyterian church that met in a farmhouse in Northern VA. The minister was kind, smart, full of struggles which he generously shared with us, rather than pretend to be perfect. He wore a white backwards collar and a goatee. He and his wife became my parents' best friends. When I was fourteen, he died of Hodgkins Lymphoma. A few months before he died, my father finally joined the church. During the service, my dad came off the dias to embrace the dying minister who struggled to his feet, stumbled and fell into my dad's arms. He was thin, young and heavily freckled from the chemotherapy. His hair was falling out. I thought he looked exactly like Jesus must have.

9. I started to pay attention at church. When my father stood up and said that the third teacher in a row had quit trying to teach the sixth graders, and that "Any one in this room is qualified to teach them," I thought to myself, "He said 'Anyone.' But I'm in this room, and I am not qualified." The following Sunday I was their teacher. I taught those kids for the next three years until I left for college.

10. My uncle Brian gave me a book of poetry and photographs by the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen. I read it one school night when I was supposed to be writing an American history paper. In the low lamplight of my room, next to my collection of Beatles and Stones LPs I felt something land in my heart with a gentle thud. I was supposed to be a minister.

11. I told everyone. It was an unusual career choice, and I figured I'd only have to work Sundays. Perfect for raising a family, and way safer and easier than trying to be the Beatles.

12. I was in Campus Crusade for Christ for about six weeks after I broke up with the boy I had been dating for four and a half years. This was the first time I ever heard this equation: Adam sinned by disobeying God; therefore humans had to die. God had no control over this, but somehow Jesus sacrificing himself redeemed mankind, or at least those who believe in him. I could not get my mind around it, nor the idea that my best friend who was Jewish was doomed and I wasn't. So I left Campus Crusade, but not Jesus. I went to an Episcopal church and began to write songs.

13. I married right out of college, a man who called himself a secular humanist, and I visited Yale Divinity School and had an interview. Everyone there, it seemed to me, was 42 and female. "So," I said. "I am going to try to do this music thing. When I am 42 I will come back."

14. I had a music career. Deep in the bowels of that career, I got very sick with an eating disorder. I would pray to God, asking for help, but the answer always came back, "Why would God care about your ridiculous obsession with your weight and food? Just stop it!" But I couldn't stop it any more than I could change the color of my eyes. And one day someone told me I had a disease that I was powerless over. Someone suggested that God really might care that I was hurting myself. And I noticed that I was unable to sit still with myself. I could not sit and breath in and out without a surge of hammering thoughts, a kind of deafening pounding of my own heart. People suggested I meditate but that was as crazy an idea as would be telling me to fly. And I could not stop the compulsive behaviors. One night when I fell asleep in despair. I knew I had too much pride to ask for help, to admit that I was different from other people, to admit that as a thirty year old seemingly successful woman, I was incapable of caring for myself in this fundamental way. I could not feed myself. I went to bed utterly defeated. I woke up with this strange, calm willingness. There was a steady quiet voice inside that said, "I am here now. I will take care of you." And from that day forward, with a lot of help from my friends, I never hurt myself with food or lack of food again. The obsession and the compulsion were lifted. I was free.

15. I read everything I could. I had this Presence, and It did care about every aspect of my life, or at least It listened. I read Thich Nhat Hanh, more Henri Nouwen, Marcus Borg, Pema Chodron, Ram Dass, the Bhaghavad Gita, Jack Kornfield, Thomas Merton, Stephen Mitchell, Byron Katie, Eckhardt Tolle, the Bible, Elaine Pagels, and much twelve step literature. I made the twelve steps my path and slowly, a day at a time, my thinking changed. I became different. And I was the same. But in a lot less pain.

16. My marriage fell apart--too much God, he said. I was terrified, but on the first night alone in my house, I felt that Presence again. I lived well as a single woman. I followed the next breadcrumb. I met the guy I was always afraid I would meet--the one for whom I'd have to leave my first husband, or else suffer silently for the rest of my life. We found a church where the minister was a poet and a shepherd and not ordained. We pitched our tent. We got married there, baptized our daughter and then our son.

17. Being a mother proved to be the undoing of any pretense that I was holy. Every stitch of spiritual education was used until it frayed. I prayed on my knees to not yell at my kids, and by seven am I would have broken my resolution. But when I could remember to ask Jesus to show up, i became at least aware of my failings, if not able to act like the grown-up in the room. Sooner or later, I would apologize and the domestic tangles would unravel. I know how to apologize now. I can't live with my own half-turned shoulder for more than a day anymore. So I face front, heart forward. My children are my best spiritual teachers, by far. But recently I have yearned for a more orthodox teacher who can diagram sentences and answer my questions with experience rather than the koan-ic mutterings of my wee gurus.

So a few days after January first, right on schedule, I guess, one of our town's most beloved ministers, the retired pastor of the church where I found 12 step recovery, nabbed me. "It's time for you and me to talk about you going to seminary," he said. (How did he know that every few years I order the course catalogs from Harvard and Yale? Did someone tell on me?) "Do you have time to have lunch with me and another new minister?"

Of course I did. And so we are beginning a process called Discernment, to see if and when I will go on to the ministry. I don't know if it will be ten years or twenty years. I love my life right now, and I have a lot more music to make, a lot more retreats to run, a lot more HootenNannies to teach,and most importantly, a couple of small kids who need me near and close--body and soul. But I have comrades on the journey now, and it does feel as though I am on my way back home.

The Coat

As I have written previously, I made a vow last December to make peace with money. I decided to let the ways in which I interact with the currency of currency be my spiritual teacher and to let it show me the ways in which I am still contracted and fearful and doubtful--and maybe even a little self-depriving. I wanted to do this because I was spending $1400 a month on groceries on the one hand, and on the other, unable to sleep at night because I was so worried about how my kids would go to college. Also I don't know how to balance a checkbook. And even though I am richly blessed with resources, I can't seem to control the mechanism that begins in my brain ("I need a yogurt maker") and ends with non-appropriate purchases (e.g. spending the money on pretty journals instead, which I add to the huge collection of pretty journals sitting on a stack in my office.) I have never been able to do numbers. I can remember your birthday if you tell it to me, and I will probably remember it even if I haven't seen you for 20 years, or at least I'll pin the tail a few days around your birthday. I remember the names of kids I teach and kids I taught twenty-five years ago. But if you tell me a series of numbers--the amount I have in my bank account, for instance--I will forget it ten seconds afterwards.


I started by just keeping track of every penny I spent and every penny I earned. In order to do this, I had to be present a lot, which was hard. I much prefer to zone out and kind of float about in my daily routines. I had to remember to pull out a little notebook every time I went through the grocery line, which wasn't that hard except that I forgot to do this every other trip. Even harder was tracking the quarters and dimes that go to feed the meter when I parked the car. I wrote down what we spent, and I noticed quickly that we consistently spent a little more than we earned. Not an egregious amount, but enough so that it would affect us if we wanted to save money for our kids to go to college. And I was not happy about this. It gave me the feeling of being porous; not like a sea sponge where water flows in and out with equilibrium, but like a coat with holes in the pockets whose owner is blithely dropping coins into its slippery interior. Clink, clink, clink.

As a veteran dieter, I knew that the solution would have to be more than making a budget. I knew that if I tried to adhere to something like that, I would just feel deprived and act out. I knew that I had to change the way I interacted with money. So I started by saying thank you each time I touched the stuff, even if the "touch" was digital. Thank you. I get it. You are taking care of me. Thank you. I asked for help from some friends who understand this kind of powerlessness and got some great advice. It's the same advice your grandmother probably gave you: Save up for what you want. It will taste sweeter if you do.

By the way, do you know what the interests rates on savings accounts are? Like, NOTHING. I was banking at Bank of America and when I asked to open a savings account, and inqired about compound interest (see, I knew to ask about compound interest) they said, "Point oh five." "Like, five cents on the dollar?" I asked. "Nooooooo," my rep said, shaking his head and looking at me as if I were a child. "Zero point zero five." "So," I said. "No one really wants us to save our money anymore, right? They'd prefer if we contributed to the GDP. That's cool. But I need to save my money so my kids can go to college."

So after some more good advice, I moved my money from that bad bank to Florence Savings Bank where they give you 1.25% if you cross your Ts and dot your i's on a number of items. As the months passed, I created a spending plan rather than a budget. I saved for college, and I saved for things I wanted, like a white Irish Fisherman sweater (I know, I posted about this three years ago, and I still am searching for the perfect one.) And I saved my money until one day, Saturday, I had enough to go shopping. I was sweater-bound--a dark purple cardigan might suffice if I couldn't find the fisherman sweater, and we were scheduled to have a break right down the street from Anthropologie, my favorite store. As I was leaving for my gig at Passim, the kids said, "Mama, pleeeeeease bring us back a present." Guess what? I had even saved enough for that kind of spontaneous treat for my kids.

Our gigs at Passim were so much fun. At the family show in the afternoon, we did "Aikendrum" and as we sang, Katryna drew an Aikendrum and clothed him in the foods the kids suggested. We sang "Wise Mama Witch," our new Halloween chant, and we got our publisher Jonathan Greene to play banjo with us on "Old Joan Clark."

Afterwards, in between shows, Katryna and I went off to spend my savings. Now I should say that part of my goal is to learn to be a good shopper. To buy, for instance, the yogurt maker rather than the journals if that is indeed my need. (Some days I really do need journals, and on those days, it would be better if I got one, rather than a yogurt maker. But, see, I do need to be conscious about these things.) Anyway, I'd left the house at noon when it was in the low sixties and I'd forgotten a coat. Now it was in the high forties and I was feeling it. We ducked into my favorite store and poked around. I tried on a bunch of ugly sweaters. Katryna found adorable mugs with my kids' initials on them. Each mug had a hip piece of thin twine wrapped around the handle attached to a green crayon. Perfect! And as I was sighing, giving up on my sweater search, I looked up and saw a magnificent parka complete with a leonine faux fur stole around the hood and fleecy lining. The coat said, "Nerissa, take me. I am your heart's desire. I fit and I will keep you warm."

"But I have a coat!" I protested. "In fact, I have several. I need a sweater."

"No," pronounced the coat. "You have a dorky dirty yellow parka that embarrasses your husband. You have your grandmother's boring green coat that looks like an old lady coat. I am hip and beautiful. And face it, all anyone ever sees of you in the wintertime is your coat. You never take it off because you're always freezing, even indoors. Buy me, and I will be your complete fashion statement. When you think of it that way, I am a bargain."

Indeed I had to think of it that way in order to apply the word 'bargain' to that coat, but this line of argument worked. Plus I was cold. As I left the store hurrying back to my second show of the night, I felt so warm, so taken care of, as if God were putting Her arm around my shoulder.

Presently, though I began to feel guilty. "What was I thinking?" I thought. "I don't need a coat! And this coat is expensive! And I am supposed to be living within my means! That is a coat for someone who has money to throw around! I just blew my sweater money! Now I will have to wait a whole other year for a fisherman sweater! I am supposed to be buying only what I really need! I am supposed to be patiently waiting for the perfect items that make my heart sing! I am supposed to visualize what I want and trust that it will manifest, and not to impulsively buy furry parkas!"

I wondered if I could return it. I doubted if it would even be warm enough for January winds.

The next morning, I set the bag with the wrapped mugs outside the kids' room. When Elle came shuffling down the stairs wrapped in her blanket, I scooped her up and bounded with her in my arms up the stairs, with Jay following close behind. "Come open your presents!" I shouted, grabbing the bag and running down the stairs again. The kids squealed and exclaimed and bounced after me, grabbing at the bag with the wrapped items. They each unwrapped a mug. Elle pulled at the crayon and said, "I don't like green," and started to cry. Jay said, "I don't wike gween eiddur," and started to fake cry. I frowned, swept up the mugs with great dignity and muttered something about gratitude. I felt completely deflated and even worse about my spending spree. I wondered if I could wrap up everything and ship it back to Cambridge and get my money back.


And so as I was muttering on Sunday morning about gratitude, while my kids wailed in frustrated disappointment, it hit me. We don't get to choose our gifts. That's the point of a gift. They get given to us. What if that coat really was a gift from God? What if I am never ever going to learn how to be an effective shopper who holds out and waits years for the item of my dreams? What if I never find the perfect Fisherman sweater? Maybe I really do need more pretty journals, and the yogurt maker can wait. Isn't it the truth that every single best thing/person/job/experience I've ever had has been way better and more interesting than my dream for it? Hasn't it all been a co-creation with the Divine rather than me bossing It around to match up to my vision? Don't I, too, cry with disappointment when first confronted with the "wrong" item?

I turned around from the sink. Elle said, "I really like the mug, Mama. I just don't like the crayon. Hey! What if we attach a blue crayon to the handle?" A moment later, we'd replaced the green crayons with a blue one for Elle and a purply-pink one for Jay. They spooned some marbles into their new mugs and pretended they were eating them as soup. Shyly, I showed Tom my new coat.

"Wow!" he said, nodding. "It's about time you got yourself a really nice coat. You deserve it."