Sparkly Green Earrings
Sparkly Green Earrings: Catching the Light at Every Turn
By: Melanie Shankle
[Fulfilled ‘A that might make you cry (if you did that kind of thing)’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“Every mother knows the reason Robert Frost took the road less traveled is because he wasn’t traveling with children who needed to go to the bathroom every thirty minutes.”
I was originally planning to read this for my ‘funny memoir’ reading challenge prompt— which it would 100 percent qualify for— but I decided to use it for ‘might make you cry’ because in between all the laughs, Melanie Shankle reminds me how precious it is to be a mom and that the years are indeed short and I can already feel them slipping by as my oldest is 8— the same age as Melanie’s Caroline (in this book) who, like my daughter, got her ears pierced on her 8th birthday.
This was such a fun, entertaining, and relatable book! I read it in only two days because I didn’t want to put it down. I was sad when it was over.
She has a great sense of humor and style of writing. I like the stream of consciousness and parenthetical asides way of telling stories— similar to Jenny Lawson’s book Broken (in the best possible way). I felt inspired reading this book because I’d love to write a funny memoir and Lawson and Shankle’s style is what I would want to do.
“Over the years, people began to tell me I should write a book. And I really wanted to. Except for the whole part that actually required me to sit down and write. But then I decided, how could eleven people and my dad be wrong?”
It was fun to be inspired, and I think I might be able to get the required eleven people. Time will tell.
I may not have the same perspective on alcohol as Melanie, or understand all the 80s-kid references, and for sure would never be mistaken for a fashionista, but I am also a shirt hoarder with many-a-shirts from high school still in my closet; I’ve definitely been told that my aviator sunglasses did not work with my face shape (I’m still sad about it); and I do feel many of her feelings in the marrow of my bones.
Like: dogs are not babies; baby wipe warmers are a trap; and I’ve contemplated how bad of a mother I would be if I let my baby sleep in her poop.
Melanie had first started a blog called Big Mama when her daughter, Caroline, was three years old. That was the catalyst that led to this book. She has since written a few more books (a friendship one and a marriage one among others), and her latest one is about parenting in the teenage years. She does a podcast with Sophie Hudson called Big Boo Cast. (Their blogs are Big Mama and Boo Mama). I listened to part of an episode out of curiosity and they both are very much from the South. It threw me off because I definitely didn’t read this book to myself in a southern accent but I feel like that does change the vibe of it if I had.
Here is Melanie’s perspective on motherhood:
“It will break your heart and make you laugh harder than you ever imagined. You find yourself alternating between feeling like your friends talked you into some sort of pyramid scheme so you could share in their misery and thinking this is the most fulfilling thing you’ve ever done in your life.”
She shares her heartache when she miscarried and she shares her struggles of being a working mom and wanting to stay home and how they ultimately came to that decision.
“From my perspective, I’m just thankful that if I’m going to spend my days with someone who ignores half of what I say and acts like she knows better than I do, it’s my daughter.”
I share her sentiments on epidurals. Whenever I felt pressured to do it naturally, I kept telling myself- You don’t have to be a hero!
“There are women who want to experience childbirth, but those are probably the same women who run marathons… my birth plan was a single sheet of paper with ‘EPIDURAL!!!!!’ scrawled in large letters with a Sharpie pen.”
I have googled enough symptoms to affirm her claim that “Google loves nothing more than a cancer diagnosis.”
I, too, have caught my daughter’s throw up. In my bare hands. Granted, I indirectly (or directly) caused the incident by forcing her to swallow the chicken nugget she’d been chewing for the last three hours. And sitting on the floor while pregnant does not offer a lot of escape options.
I truly understand what it’s like to have two weeks that “were filled with more meltdowns and drama than an episode of The Bachelor.”
Caroline told people at church, “I get so bored. I ask my mom to play with me, but all she does is sit on the couch. She’s real lazy.” I’ve also had to deal with that insecurity when my daughter asked me why I’m a “sitting down mom.”
And I would not put it past me to spend time on a soapbox that I would live to regret (because someone’s gotta do it): “I made a point about the whole thing just seeming like a ridiculous waste of time and money since I like to climb on the occasional soapbox concerning topics I think won’t ever apply to me.”
One thing I love about this book is that it’s not just funny stories and it’s not over-spiritualizing everything so that it’s a ‘Christian’ book. It’s an honest and sarcastic look at the ups and downs of motherhood while at times recognizing that God designed our lives to require caring for others because it grows us and teaches us things about him and about ourselves.
Melanie draws some good connections that are important reminders when we’re bogged down in the mess and the schedules and the meltdowns, that just as we are sacrificing for these little humans, Christ sacrificed for us. And this pure, impossible love we are filled with when we look at our babies is nothing compared to the Father’s love for us. He enables us to be the mothers we are and just as we prepare our children for the world and can picture who they will grow to be, so does God when we are in the exhausting trenches of motherhood. He is refining us and redeeming us.
“He sees us— really sees us— not just for who we are at any given moment, but for what we could be one day.”
“I realized this whole process was such a striking picture of how Christ works in us. He takes our disappointments, rejections, and hard times, and he makes something beautiful. He creates life and shows us what beauty looks like in places where we look and see nothing.”
“It’s those moments when I realize I have to extend grace to Caroline as she figures these things out by trial and error in the same way God lavishes me with mercy, even as I make the same mistakes over and over again.”
“I believe motherhood gives us the first true glimpse of how God loves us. The kind of love that’s irrevocable, unrelenting, unconditional. I think it’s the closest humans get to living out 1 Corinthians 13. Motherhood is a Holy Communion with Goldfish crackers and juice boxes.”
So I loved the stories and the humor, but I also loved how she brought me back to the wonder of being a mom. Her prayer for Caroline is what I desire for my kids. I’ll have to think of some sort of boy thing that’s bright and shiny instead of sparkly earrings, but yes, that they would reflect the light of Christ.
“Daniel 12:3 says that those who are wise will ‘shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.’”
Recommendation
I definitely recommend this book. It’s really funny and relatable— at least for moms or those who desire to be.
It’s an uplifting read that makes you both laugh make you cry those ‘they’re growing up too fast’ kind of tears.
And it will remind you of the gravity and meaning of your role as a mom in the daily battles of lunches and clothes, bodily fluids, and wondering when birthday parties stop being the most important thing they ever do.
I’ll probably read another one of her books. I’m not sure my heart can handle the teenage years one yet, but maybe the marriage one would be okay for my life stage at the moment.
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