to my son
June 8, 2015 § 4 Comments
Tomorrow is the last day of your first year of high school. The last two school days have been test days, cumulative evaluations of mastery. Soon we will have a tidy snap shot of academic performance that will outline growth and highlight opportunities for improvement, but for today I want to dwell on your attention to preparation over the weight of your performance.
Whatever your marks, I’m proud of your effort. I noticed the determined bent of your brow as you drifted between subjects reviewing old material. I saw the nervous tension when you shepherded our pup outdoors into distracted play. I watched the way you returned after each reprieve to your studies without needling or nagging.
I noticed you trying your best.
I’m not sure I say that enough. Maybe its this stage of our experience, an unexceptional parenting phenomenon to offer a premonition of hindsight. Lately I hear myself cautioning potential harm without first acknowledging the brave certainty of your leap into chance. I miss the enthusiasm of your early lessons when I would stand aside uncertain consequences and celebrate your curious exploration.
Too often our conversations feel reactionary rather than reflective and I think that’s a pretty important distinction. I am going to try to be a better listener and to pay closer attention to the shape of your efforts.
I’m still figuring out how to be your mother, worrying so much about making the right choices that I sometimes forget to stand still in greater attentiveness to the reality of the present over the certain uncertainty of what may be.
I’m trying my best, too.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
June 6, 2015 § 2 Comments
Yesterday was your last day of elementary school. It was a week of long goodbyes and distracted celebrations culminating in an evening among classmates under the stars. You sang in harmony around the fire to the accompaniment of a guitar; chased noisy ghosts through an imaginary graveyard; played between doorways as we fought off sleep for stolen moments of conversation.
It was in the quietest of interruptions that I heard you whisper first for your father and later for me that I gathered the sweetest memory of the day. In the pathway that separated houses and divided the company of children and parents you guided our eyes with a steady hand, conjuring a constellation into our line of sight. In a day busy with friendship and celebrations, it was this tender discovery that guided my dreams.
Sweet girl, I hope you always navigate your time and company by a compass that is mindful and true; that you will find joy among friends and in the solitude of appreciation for quieter pursuits; that you may find magic in overlooked moments of possibility.
Love, Mom
long goodbyes
May 30, 2015 § 2 Comments
Nine years, more than half my days in motherhood have been spent in my husband’s childhood elementary school. It is the longest I have ever been a member of a single community; three preschools between two children and a kindergarten year in a different school district, my own education divided neatly between divorced parents. It has become a new normal, this space of my experience, and I cannot fathom the impossibility of goodbye.
Every day of the past nine years there has been a familiar face to welcome questions and offer guidance, hallways that lead to memories and individuals who have shared extraordinary measures of kindness as we stumbled over unfamiliar challenges toward personal success. I’ve leaned across the boundaries of parent-teacher conversations and witnessed loss and celebration with intimate expressions of grief and joy.
These men and women are my friends, but they are so much more than the sum of my memories. Despite the details we have shared over class conferences and play ground banter, these individuals are more complicated than my school year partnership permits. They have classrooms filled with families in need and years of families in friendship beyond my experiences. They are parents and children, friends and students, athletes and architects of dreams I only passingly understand.
Teachers and therapists, administrators and aides, they have chosen professions that anticipate personal investment and seasons of goodbye, but for me this moment feels impossible. I keep sounding out first sentences and last hellos not wanting to speak the inevitability of the week to come. A thank you that feels too small and a wish that feels too selfish.
misplaced memories
May 29, 2015 § 2 Comments
The neighbor woman leaned precariously over a nondescript blanket pulled across a corner of shade, the bend of her torso and angle of her head drawing me to a curious intrusion. I marveled at the balance of tension and peace, stillness and movement in the lines of her posture. As I lingered over the image tiny arms and legs batted at the sky and I remembered the shape of my own memories.
In much the same way my body sways to the distant cry of another child, I still feel the warm weight of my children against empty arms. The tired muscles and eyes heavy with sleep are ghosts of days long past; a story I tell without the ache of remembering. The phases of hopeless frustration and anxious uncertainty are only words in a hollow telling.
Then a stranger lost to an extraordinarily unexceptional moment rustles memories that scrape against the tenderness of slumbering emotions and everything past rushes into the present until this moment is not big enough for all that I remember. Today and yesterday feel jumbled in disarray and I cannot untangle grief and joy from the knot in my heart that catches in my throat.
the work of joy
May 26, 2015 § 9 Comments
I think, too often, I anticipate joy will arrive in fleeting moments of superficial pleasure; something that acts upon me or interrupts the work of living. Some days I schedule excuses for joy, a cup of coffee with a friend or distracted escape into the pages of a new story. Yesterday pleasure came in measured efforts of work, tending to my home in tasks that I more often procrastinate.
Vacuuming the traces of a week’s busyness and pulling weeds that freckle my garden beds, washing my family’s clothes and sifting through cluttered paperwork were efforts that pushed against happier interruptions. It was only at day’s end that my muscles and mind relaxed into a content peacefulness that I recognized the work of joy; the purpose within pleasure that rewards effort.
Tomorrow I will undoubtably conjure new excuses to postpone those tasks I shuffle to the perimeter of my schedule, but for today I’m inspired to lean into the lingering places of neglect and dwell in a different sense of joy.
mothering appreciation
May 24, 2015 § Leave a comment
In the earliest days of motherhood I met my husband eagerly with every fear, hope, and need. Tattered and terrified of all that I did not know, my husband held these confidences tenderly and we mapped our choices by need with love.
One such choice was to shun gifts of appreciation to model a less material gesture of celebration. I became so entrenched in the mechanics of less, that I undervalued the enthusiasm of more. My family demonstrated appreciation too quietly for my needs out of respect for what I presumably wanted. I had miscommunicated how I feel appreciated and the value of that need.
I don’t want anything is an unclear marker. It guides attention to what I dislike rather than what brings me joy. I was looking for those I love to navigate the intricacies of my silence rather than sounding out a subtext of need. Nothing was actually something; homemade cards and acts of care, words of appreciation and demonstrations of thoughtfulness.
On the eve of Mother’s Day I spiraled into a self-indulgent pity party. I had presumably changed the rules without talking through my wishes with my family and sabotaged my experience of happiness while cluttering my expression of gratitude with a need that felt shameful and greedy.
I’ve been trying to think about how to write this moment; questioning if it is important enough to take up room in my story. It feels self-serving to speak of my wants when addressing an occupation of the heart. So how do we, I, celebrate unselfishly and still my family in an expression of gratitude that validates my needs? And why is this important?
When I imagine my children one day parenting their own children or remembering my place in their childhood, I want there to be room for both joy and purpose. That requires that we know how to demonstrate appreciation and speak need.
This is where the answer required I shift my perspective. I was looking for validation and appreciation, to be seen where I might first need to guide sight.
Maybe this year my words and actions have not nurtured gratitude, perhaps my expectations of others have outspoken my words of appreciation. I am trying to recenter my actions to speak love more loudly. Remembering that to be appreciated we must first model appreciation. To be seen, we must first make ourselves visible and our needs known.
This year I am thinking of how we celebrate and honor those we love and spending a little more time consciously guiding my children’s eyes to the invisible places of care with greater awareness and appreciation.
therapy dog
May 24, 2015 § 1 Comment
There is no paper trail to validate this claim, no certification of care or qualification to our companion’s title. Instead there is only the quality of our days; the gentle, steadfast way she loves us. We are better people in her care.
Her affection is patient and kind, she nestles loyally into the perimeter of our attention when obligations distract us from play. There is no record of our errors, no anger in her posture; there is only the most innocent attentiveness to our emotions. She sits beside us in comfort and encouragement, a silent keeper of our worries and enthusiastic champion of good cheer.
She is the first face we see at the dawn of each day, a companionable shadow. The one who welcomes us home, with an unguarded pleasure. She moves cautiously between us and strangers with a purposeful sense of protection and, alternately, behind us with uncertainty.
Our children lean into her care, eager to tend to her happiness, but our service is deceptively unbalanced to her own. She draws us outside our rhythms of self into a sense of selflessness, from indoors to outdoors and from procrastination to play.
The part of me that resisted the unpredictable inconveniences, the mayhem of messes and the burden of need has found a greater dependency on her joy, a calmness in the chaos and a purpose in her need. I worried our responsibilities would consume our restfulness and freedom without knowing that she would rejuvenate us collectively with a reckless joy that jostled the expected into a curious new knowing.
sound & sentiment
May 21, 2015 § Leave a comment
Sitting on folding metal chairs stretched neatly across a familiar gym room floor, there is a sound to this memory. Children shuffling nervously and parents settling into quiet greetings, a scraping and rustling as we nestle into one another’s company. We are near the end of our days in this season of elementary school gatherings and today my heart is full of sentiment for the sweetness of this time.
It seems like only yesterday I was wrestling a wiggly toddler onto the same uncomfortable chairs, begging stillness from my daughter while my eyes sought my son’s over the chaos of children filing determinedly into position. Personalities as different as their eye color and years between their songs, both children began every performance with an anxious seeking until their gaze would relax into a reassuring smile.
This morning I marveled at the dance of time, my oldest’s teenage limbs folded uncomfortably into stillness as we settled into his sister’s school performance. Gone is the madness of restlessness, the quiet encouragements and pleas for patience. We have moved collectively into a new togetherness and I was left to note the unexceptional sounds of a too often overlooked moment.
Today my joy and sentiment push against the music of my memories, the present and the past scraping into the folding metal chairs that hold our place even as we approach goodbye.
to my daughter
May 18, 2015 § 2 Comments
It is no secret that I abhor clutter; I am notorious for fussing over forgotten items interrupting the surface of my contentment. It would seem impossible then that I occasionally seek respite from the quiet of my days in the unapologetic chaos of your corner of our home.
Today I found myself willfully stranded in the center of your room, laundry in hand, marveling at the accidental harmony of your distraction. A newly acquired tissue paper jelly fish dangling curling ribbon tentacles neatly segmented your room vertically as it twirled beside a construction paper snowflake hung from your antique chandelier; a half-inflated pool float contorted just inside your closet like a clumsy, bloated acrobat. Your bedding is still crumpled as if I might find remnants of last night’s dreams in the folds of your duvet and misshaped fragments of paper litter your night stand with evidence of sleepy origami efforts. Miniature toys converge around impromptu Lego scenes, patterning your floor with stories while your desk is accidentally structured in want of mischief, your pens and scissors loyal soldiers guarding a space for play.
Illogical and passionate, fearlessly unconventional, it is the place in our home where the colors sound like your laugh and the stubborn contempt for order feels allowed. Here your treasures and curiosities speak loudly of your thoughts and I find myself forgiving the noise in want of your company.
In this island of disorder time stands still and sweeps in messy circles; stealing me from structure in a landslide of memories.
Love, Mom
on remembering
May 17, 2015 § Leave a comment
This year a woman I barely knew, a forgotten acquaintance from years past lost her battle with a terminal illness. The news found me last fall in the complicated algorithm of a social media news feed; a familiar smile disclosing the intimate heartache of a tragic diagnosis.
In the months to come I followed this woman’s story, cautiously counting my blessings with a guilty mindfulness for the unfathomable cruelty of another’s misfortune. I let her courage and kindness guide my attention.
Then I forgot.
Consciousness comes in waves. In one moment I am lost to my own distractions, caught in the machinery of the mundane as I move among my obligations. Then I remember the blessing of this moment, the complete irrelevance of so many cluttered details, and I unravel into a simpler attentiveness.
In these moments I say yes where I might have said no, I apologize or forgive where I might have lingered in harm, and I bend the rules to steal extra minutes with those I love. I’ve let the house get messy and I’ve been more adamant in cause for celebration.
I am trying to honor another’s life while demanding purpose and presence of my own.
We meet others at tender intersections of vulnerability and we invite their story into our own. In a world congested with differences, we are bound by the minutes of possibility between us.
scribblechic 