changing expectations
February 3, 2017 § 2 Comments
When we moved, our family began creating new expectations for one another and ourselves. The speed of change left us all a little bewildered and we settled into the discomfort of not knowing the otherwise predictable parts of our days with curiosity.
My children were used to me knowing what comes next. My routine circled my children’s in a way that kept me distractedly tethered to their needs with an invisible thread of communication between home and school. It was a once necessary open-ended energy that had been left running like a forgotten switch to a burned out bulb.
In our new space we had to trust one another to move through the murky unknowns, alone; to lean on strangers and navigate new challenges outside the familiar relationships of old experiences.
There were times it was tempting to exercise old habits, for myself especially. To draft messages that lent insight and history to our new community of teachers, but it was the occasions my children spoke for themselves or muscled through the difficult frustrations independent of my support that we fell into true appreciation and greater pride, humor and humility.
Some were substantial, like the morning the school called and my phone volume was muted because we no longer carry our phones like life lines. There were simpler occasions, too, of classroom confusion or forgotten materials. Then, there came the novelty of my decision to return to work and the subsequent patience and independence that guided my children to look further within when they might have previously reached out.
Yesterday as the hour of our daughter’s band solo neared, I marked the minutes with borrowed nerves; internalizing my daughter’s worries and dancing around a temptation to interrupt her attention with words of encouragement. Only, it occurred to me I was hijacking her experience with my eagerness to help.
Instead I waited for the impossibly long end of day to collect my daughter’s story in the lines of her posture and the angle of her smile. I listened as she talked about running late and loosing her place, the judge’s critique and the unexpected kindness in a stranger’s encouragements. Each moment was a gift I watched my daughter unwrap in her telling, something of her own to share.
It is perhaps an overdue epiphany, one I procrastinated passively out of a sense of purposeful self-importance. What felt like a kindness, protecting our children from emotional struggles, was quite possibly an error of affection. I’ve begun listening more than I speak, leaning quietly into a posture of faith that informs an expectation of strength.
Changing my expectations of self.
scribblechic 
Wisdom comes in all walks of life, but nothing as precious as the love of a mother and her children.
You are both growing Marie, and sometimes from some unexpected quarters. And from your writing you have shown how interwoven our many parts in life can become, and the truth of those discoveries that bind that love a little more in each other.
Enjoy the ride, even though sometimes it gets a little bumpy. Thank you for sharing 😀
I firmly believe there are breadcrumbs enough to find our way, if only we pay attention. 🙂