to my daughter
June 22, 2015 § 2 Comments
The house is too quiet and the rooms too tidy without the parade of distracted play that so often litters your path. I miss your nest of early morning tangles and your stubborn late night tangents.
I’ve enjoyed every stolen minute with your brother in your absence; still, there is a place in my day where only you fit and without you the hours feel a little lopsided. I wonder at the whirlwind of personality that dislocates the molecules we cannot see into a feeling I cannot escape; there is an energy to your stillness that fills unexceptional moments with an intangible source of comfort.
Today I’m counting down to arms that fold neatly around my neck and stories that chase away the chores. Give Daddy a kiss for me, I’ll see you both tonight.
Love, Mom
to my son
June 21, 2015 § Leave a comment
With your father and sister out of town I woke today wanting to offer you a special day. Something dressed in my best attention without the cumbersome tug of formality. I considered all the places we used to visit, old favorites that seemed a size too small in their sentimental familiarity.
Instead I traded activity for attention. I folded up my laptop and turned the volume off on my phone. I let the household tasks for tomorrow and settled in for all the thoughts so often postponed for a minute that too often is lost between us.
There is nothing remarkable in the shape of our day, rather there was a companionable contentment threaded between each distraction. We were more patient in our attention and more generous with our time.
I don’t want this day to end for the nagging worry that tomorrow I will wake to the routine of procrastinated promises. Let this note to you serve as a reminder for me; the ease of your company is directly proportionate to the availability of my attention.
Love, Mom
sight & seen
June 18, 2015 § Leave a comment
I knew this moment was coming, it is an inevitability of our experiences. A handwritten message on a speech rubric, a casual note on eye contact. Except, for us, there is nothing simple about this encouragement; something in the words themselves strikes at a tender place. I have to remind myself that the author means no harm, but still I wonder if they understand the assumptions of effort in the critique.
To my son’s teachers,
There are years of patient practice in the art of looking up into the faces of expectation. My son does not meet this expectation lightly.
The young man who looks up, however inconsistently, has worked very diligently to do so. He does this to earn approval, knowing it is important to those he wants to please. He is emotionally invested in the effort, but the act itself is often a battle of wills.
Watch his body as he bends toward himself, the wheels turning as he debates eye contact over the internal pull to riffle through endless files of information he might extract if only you will forgive the social stumble as he navigates the cluttered cabinets that hold his thoughts. He’s looking to offer you a piece of himself, to gather his worth into something you might value.
When he remembers to look up, to please you, he’ll gauge you briefly for a hint of interest before scurrying back to his files.
If you smile, he’ll slip into comedy eager to draw more joy. If you look sad, he’ll forget his place, anxious to offer you comfort. If you look angry, he’ll shuffle into an assumption he has failed and retreat into his own disappointment. Every look means something uncertain and the weight of all those choices is sometimes insufferable. His hope is hidden in every sidelong glance, each fleeting glimpse to measure your expression for encouragement.
It is such a small thing, to be seen. Look tenderly at the young man you are asking to see and offer sight in exchange. If you smile, he won’t need a written reminder; he’ll mark his sight by your effort.
crazy talk
June 17, 2015 § Leave a comment
I speak in non-linear lines of thought, nagging worries and anxious distractions snagging my intentions with cluttered ramblings. I’m guilty of jumping into the middle of a thought or forgetting to supply essential details, swerving into a new topic between questions and answers or interrupting myself.
This morning I needed to tend to an item for my husband. A small nonessential task, a material need that required a much dreaded phone call. I heard myself, too clearly, a third party to the comedy of errors, apologies and explanations that chased after logic with dry humor. Then, setting down my phone, I heard my daughter’s laugh.
The truth is this is my voice out loud. I am a constant worrier and an inattentive micro-manager, contradictory and flighty. I am a mess of tangles that cannot keep the wrinkles out of my best intentions, and I am loved by a little girl who hears the heart and humor in my nonsense.
hello, tuesday
June 16, 2015 § Leave a comment
Today feels a little like Monday, I started my day rattled and a little hurried. Yesterday I was prepared for routine, but last night I fell asleep distracted and unconcerned by the morning’s expectations. Piled into a late night moment of silliness with my family, I was completely unconcerned with tomorrow when dreams carried my thoughts elsewhere.
It’s summer, after all, school is newly dismissed and we’ve barely had time to become restless for our enthusiasm. Rain keeps interrupting outdoor play and indoor tasks beg sidelong glances and wishful thoughts of sunshine. We haven’t made vacation plans and our commitments feel a little cumbersome without the promise of escape.
There is no assumption of privilege in these wistful hopes, just the indulgence of undisrupted exploration and restful stillness. Something new to rustle the soul and engage the senses. Some days I forget that we choose our experiences.
So, today I’m charting my own course from my front door in search of happy, mindful moments of joy; meaningful conversations and mindful consumption, play and purpose. I’m dressing the day in my best attention and looking for a muse in the mundane.
to my children
June 14, 2015 § 2 Comments
Last Wednesday we piled into the car for a short drive up the street. The weather lately has been uncooperative, wet and cool then hot and humid. I was thinking mostly of the clouds as we drove the short distance, my eyes on the blue patches of sky second guessing the decision to drive; we might have walked after all, but then I was also already planning what we might need to do later.
It was in arriving that I lost track of all the mundane thoughts that had only moments before held my attention. Time stood still as years chased old memories around a tiny bundle of hope swathed in love. I can’t recall the last time I held such a new life or when the memory of your own infancy felt so tangible against the impossibility of your adolescence.
Sometimes magic sneaks up on us in plain sight.
Memories tumbled unbidden of days lost to old photographs and fractured reminiscing. It seemed a trick of sentiment that I could recall days long past with the clarity of yesterday even as you leaned curiously over the tiny sleeping form who fascinated us with content irreverence for our fussing. My children bent tenderly in respectful fascination over another’s miracle.
How quickly the years have slipped from the moment beneath my feet. Time is a funny measure of life, memories changing the weight of minutes into something we cannot so easily define.
Love, Mom
growing against the grain
June 13, 2015 § 2 Comments
Tomorrow our son will attend his first high school class without support. This is an exaggeration of course, he is not walking abandoned toward change. His teacher is as aware of his needs as he is of this newfound independence. We are, rather, moving against the familiar with a new experience of change. It is the way we accommodate opportunity.
For years our son has had the company of a personal aide in the context of his academic days. He has not yet matured into self sustained independence; still he is fiercely, passionately, willfully independent in his sense of self. Our experience is ever changing, consistently inconsistent; needs and ability contorting themselves into footholds of growth.
We do not succeed independent of difficult challenges. Neither are we alone in our accomplishments.
These past nine years we have evolved into an assumption of compromise and expectation of progress as we partner with professionals who meet us with anxious questions and eager uncertainty. There have been moments of crisis and conflict born of lessons in the disparity between professional training and necessary accommodations in anticipation of the spectrum of needs that inform the many experiences of special needs in mainstream classrooms.
There have also been humbling lessons in grace as we partner with rare souls who share our responsibility to our son’s education; learning alongside one another as we go.
I have come to understand that IEPs do little to guarantee resources and that kindness is a greater predictor of success. The labels that inform need also bind us to assumptions that are sometimes limiting in their generic untruths. We modify expectations without compromising our dreams.
This new moment is an anticipated uncertainty, one that finds me holding my breath, heart on my sleeve. Hope bound a little too tightly around so many variables I cannot control. In this experience I am exceptionally average, a mother with universal worries in an intimate experience of vulnerability.
So I try to gather words and a tender posture of faith, something that looks like confidence and feels like false bravado.
friday night lights
June 13, 2015 § 2 Comments
Last night the power flickered into darkness and we moved quietly from our separate corners of distraction into the kitchen. My husband and I unshelved decorative candles, remnants from a holiday I cannot place. Personalities grated in uncoordinated togetherness like the light interrupting darkness. We had only just settled into the unexpected when the electricity started flickering, arguing with the candles for importance; our children unprepared to return to the anticipated comforts over the fleeting adventure of improvised expectation.
Suddenly something unwanted became a choice.
We turned off the power and gathered around a board game, directing questions and sharing answers that brought enthusiastic giggles. The rules were forgotten and we ceased to tally correct answers, more interested in the back and forth of curious facts volleying across the candlelight. Slowly light interrupted our play, first to guide our meal preparations and then unintentionally as outdoor lights came to life.
It was imperfect and fleeting, but a happy disruption from the expected. Chance and choice conspirators in play.
blind spot
June 12, 2015 § 4 Comments
I’ve been thinking about the ways I comfort myself with easy untruths, kind dismissals. The way I talk around my fears and hopes until I push them a little further from the edge of my day, letting myself feel safe and inviting a quieter harm in procrastinating the pursuit of undetermined potential.
They are a blind spot of my making.
It happens predictably and unexceptionally. I skip the pool to hide physical insecurities, old demons of poor self-image. I sidestep confrontation for passive aggressive disinterest. I pass on opportunities from the sidelines of uncertainty. In most cases, the avoidance does less to shelter me from discomfort than it does to feed the voices of doubt that inform remorse.
They are often so habitual, these behaviors and self-talk, that I don’t see their harm until I change the pace or direction of my attention.
It happened most recently when I was perusing social media and noting the accomplishments of so many old acquaintances. Here’s an ugly truth, I remember thinking I was destined for something bigger than them. Years later I was a voyeur to opportunities differed; places I assumed I would travel, careers unexplored, tough goals tackled and public imperfections atoned.
The biggest difference between myself and familiar strangers was a leap of faith into uncertain success at the risk of uncomfortable error. I’ve led a beautiful life, safely.
So today I’m thinking a little about where I tip toe away from the edge, the places I retreat with my dreams into invisibility. I’m shining a light and paying a little more attention to where I disappear; trying to conjure a greater presence of self.
summer lessons
June 10, 2015 § 2 Comments
Each summer dawns an uncertain but welcome reprieve from the predictable rhythm of school day routines. Some years our family escapes to adventure and other years we fall into the structure of previously orchestrated distractions. More recently our summers have evolved into an experiment in spontaneity.
In many ways the absence of plans has been freeing, our attentions are driven by whim. We rush towards casual invitations and welcome opportunity. Other days we are tasked to a burden of boredom that forces us to a simpler necessity of creativity. On these occasions I am reminded of my own carefree summer days, unstructured and filled with endless drifting; the chaffing restlessness that grates against rusty daydreams.
There is one small exception.
Over the years I’ve cornered pieces of the day for studies and responsibilities with a language that demands we validate play with work. This summer I am reframing the idea of summer learning.
To my children,
In the past I’ve bought academic books to ration time for skills, this year I want to give you a question or idea each day to wrestle for an answer. There’s something about working off the page that helps us think outside the box. (This was Dad’s idea.)
Rather than demand chores for play, I’d like you to play at helping. Work doesn’t have to be monotonous and play doesn’t have to be an enticement. I want you to manage your time and space with good humor and moderation.
Instead of handing you book titles someone else has deemed of value, I want you to find value in your love of reading. I’m worried less about titles or tracking your time between pages.
Most importantly, I don’t want to account for every minute. Summers were made for getting lost and finding time. Move with the sun and play under the stars, the days are as long as the possibilities are endless. The lessons are everywhere if you’re willing to look at the world with curiosity.
Love, Mom
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