legacies & lessons
May 13, 2015 § 4 Comments
It seems impossible that in motherhood I have found guidance in lessons taught by a woman with whom I shared mostly poorly concealed contempt. Discontent strangers trapped in an expectation of family, there was no warmth in my stepmother’s care; each kindness felt forced and every displeasure an unavoidable inevitability. I wonder, looking back, if she felt the same unhappy impossibility in my company. Two people bound by chance without choice.
Over the years I have forgiven so much unhappiness, it seems irrelevant in the scope of my contentment. Instead the beautiful fragments of old lessons remain as evidence of a time shared. Wisdom sticks to my choices even as I forget the shape of daily grievances.
I may never see this woman again, but if I were to speak my gratitude into the wind it would be this:
Thank you for teaching me to be humble in acts of generosity. You taught me monetary donations and acts of service were private kindnesses whose good was tarnished by the garishness of bragging. To this day I am uncomfortable with attention relative to charity. I donate my time outside the spotlight without expectation of acknowledgment. I do not play martyr to my commitments, but give freely and privately what I can. My children have similarly learned to give with an intrinsic sense of joy outside an expectation of recognition.
Thank you, too, for alerting me to the vastness of my irrelevance. I once thought it cruel that you would undervalue my worth and ability, but over time I have come to appreciate the blessings of inadequacies and the thief of comparisons. I find myself centered in a place of humility for imperfections and pride in tasks well done. My success is scaled against myself rather than others. In this same way I have come to mother my children to grow into their potential with a self-awareness for their abilities and selfless appreciation of others; they are not mired in hollow trophies of false accomplishment or burdened beneath unrealistic expectations of perfection. My children move in a world of strangers whose gifts and challenges unite them in diversity.
It is a funny thing these legacies that linger, lessons we sometimes learn too late. I wish you could know that there was some good in our time together, that after the teenage angst there was grace.
translating silence
May 13, 2015 § 2 Comments
A snippet of a thought, a piece torn from the work that was lost last month. A forgotten scrap that I had absently extracted.
What words do we speak when we have nothing to say, but an urgent need to fill the silence between goodbyes?
To be remembered and to forget.
How do we begin from an ending?
to my son
May 13, 2015 § Leave a comment
Tomorrow is your fifteenth birthday and today I am confessing wishes and worries as I celebrate the shape of your experiences with my own uncertainties. Remorse or reminiscing my mind is caught on the places I might have mothered you differently.
I wish I could go back to the beginning of your young life and change little ripples in the future with different words of encouragement and support. So often I worked to challenge you to reach your potential within the suffocating context of generic social assumptions when I might have worked more diligently to inspire others to reach further outside their comfort zone to fully appreciate the simple joys and acute disappointments of your experiences.
We’ve come to live in the margins of misinformation. The news is quick to capitalize on personal narratives of Autism that either demonize or celebrate the extremities of your diagnosis without the shades of gray that speak to your individuality. In the discourse of your days we expect an assumption that you do not understand the hierarchy of privilege that dictates your conformity over others’ compassion. I wish others would seek to understand your differences with the same diligence you aspire to understand others’ assimilation.
Just once I wish you were allowed to be exceptionally average without a premeditated gesture of inclusion to dictate your place. When did we cease to assume equality when teaching children the value of community that we must extol what should be an expectation rather than the exception?
Some days I wish your spectrum of needs were noisier that other’s might lean more attentively into gestures of care. Other times I wish I could guard your from the sharp edges of ignorance for which you are not calloused enough to disregard. My grief tastes like contempt for discontent; my greed selfish in light of my good fortune. For every complicated worry I harbor, there is a hidden blessing I wish others knew.
The challenges are outweighed by my joy. I laugh a little louder, love a little gentler, fight a little harder, and try a little more each day to become a better version of myself by your example. Quick to befriend and to play, to speak honestly and embrace curiosity recklessly. For all the ways I might change our past, I wouldn’t change who you are.
Love, Mom
{I am tossing this rather raw draft into publication. I wrote this in a moment of vulnerable unrest when my emotions dictated the shape of my words. I was tempted to press delete and forgive myself the negativity, but I think there is a greater sense of self in owning the uncomfortable pieces of my truth.}
to my daughter
April 29, 2015 § 4 Comments
I’ve been missing a little lately among my words, shuffling between spaces even as my mind seems stuck to Monday.
This week your father and I gathered among administrators, educators, and support staff to outline your transition from elementary school to middle school. We were sitting amidst professionals in a personal moment of accomplishment and anticipation; change rattling around old memories and stirring up little motes of sentiment.
The newer members of our team only know the vibrant student quick with a smile or kindness between distracted demonstrations of ability. Your test scores and report cards don’t illuminate the place from which we began, so we piece together your progress with memories of the little girl who was lost at school to give form to the path of your growth.
Your speech therapist was witness to your preschool precociousness. In her early memories I see you stomping through adventures with loud, messy footprints as you twirled noisily into the fun of discovery. Your words were delightfully backwards and your behavior was harmlessly resistant. I ran circles around your day dreams and might have had more luck lassoing the moon than containing the enthusiasm of your mischief. Over the years you’ve settled into your skin, honoring others’ expectations, but you’ve preserved the twinkle in your eye that accompanies each well-humored smile.
Your resource teacher could chart your consistently inconsistent performance with memories of old struggles and new confidence in the same way your social worker might acknowledge your tenderness for adversity in others and your tenacity in self-sufficiency. Among these friends I remember the doubts and fears of anxious tears against the contrast of beaming revelations of ability. In these memories I recall the shape of each accomplishment by the scale of the challenge behind us.
Others in our company knew you first as your brother’s little sister, a bright smile in the shadow of your big brother’s experiences. A personal counsel in matters of social norms who leaned pridefully and competitively into shared interests; guiding and following your brother’s attention with a sister’s mastery of familiar frustrations. In this context I could hear your footsteps chasing after your brother’s as you push your way into his experiences in search of your own accomplishments.
You were there in that meeting in so many different memories. The preschool firecracker and the fifth grade safety patrol seemed to wink at us from the perimeter of our protocol, chin up acknowledging the work of progress and the play of growing up. We were there to advocate in your absence, but every decision rang clear with your presence. We placed new challenges beside old supports and aligned ourselves to uncomfortable certainties for uncertain success.
I’m excited and terrified, inspired and cautious. This new beginning feels a little like starting all over again and I’m desperate to peek ahead to the next chapter for reassurance.
Love, Mom
silver linings
April 19, 2015 § 2 Comments
In each loss the sad pieces are made bearable by beauty we cannot always see until life moves us out of our own way. Yesterday’s loss was unbearable, my mind snagged on each irretrievable image in a miserable goodbye until my daughter held my attention with kindness enough to invite perspective.
Mom, we still have each other and we can always make new memories.
The most important of my blessings cannot be measured in print. Photographs and words are poor substitutes for my children’s company.
I cannot undo what is lost, but I will be more responsible in my guardianship of technology in the future. I was lazy in my use and ignorant in my application. I will be more intentional in my care.
My truth is, I hoarded excessive images; hastily snapped photographs of fleeting importance. There were other images too structured in their effort. Moments of life interrupted for forced documentation; we were here. Among the thousands of images I lost, there are very few I can’t imagine living without.
For all my minimalist tendencies, the unseen space of my unprinted photographs and unshared words were stashed in the darkest most cluttered corners of appreciation. So much joy shuffled out of sight, marginalized in my priorities.
Sometimes we have to lose something of value to recognize the value of change and be more intentional in our actions.
a picture’s worth
April 18, 2015 § 5 Comments
It seems impossible that on the most unexceptional day, in the middle of nothing extraordinary, an assumed piece of our day can be lost in plain sight.
Today, in a technical conundrum outside my expertise, I lost months of writing and years of family photos. It was an error of ignorance and arrogance; I had never paused to consider what I might lose or the recklessness of my conceit.
It is a mysterious grief, this loss I cannot measure. Even now it seems I should wake tomorrow in time to prevent what I cannot escape.
Pictures lost to memories and words whispered against the wind. I would trade the most extravagant of my possessions for a handful of what I cannot spare.
happy excuses
April 17, 2015 § 3 Comments
This past week my husband celebrated his fortieth birthday, my son his fifteenth; one embarked on an exciting new chapter of a much anticipated career change while the other stumbled through a messy adolescent lesson in responsibility. There were highs and lows that swept through our home and rattled my bearings, but today the sun shook me from my routine and I settled into a gentler rhythm.
In stillness I recognized the tired muscles that spoke of holding myself taut in each experience, reaching through discomfort toward my best self. I have marked milestones and the mundane, struggles and celebrations with intentional gestures of sincerity in such a way that my heart and mind feel centered in a mindset of quiet gratitude while my limbs moved with the weighted resistance of leaden steps beneath unrippled water.
This morning I hesitated to meet the pace of what must be done and indulged in small gifts of self-care. I allowed myself the fleeting rest that rejuvenated my spirit and refreshed my smile that I might have more patience with myself and those I love most. I procrastinated the maddening rush of productivity with guiltless defiance and conjured happy excuses to heal the tired places of my spirit.
Tomorrow is a new day, built on the fullness of today.
to my son
April 7, 2015 § 4 Comments
There is a moment from last week that I keep returning to; an image just askew of my periphery that pulls my eyes off task and towards a recent memory. It is a small thing, but in each remembering it offers a lingering delight.
We had just delivered your sister to a lesson and I had dragged you, to your great disappointment, on an errand. As I combed the store for the necessary items, I caught a sudden movement and turned to see you dancing. It’s the kind of performance most would leave for the privacy of their room, an exhibition I myself would probably reserve for the borrowed bravery of a rarely indulged second glass of wine. Uninhibited you snaked your way through the empty store intoxicated by the music.
I’ve spent so much of your life noting the social norms that it was second nature to entertain a lesson. The words felt bitter on my tongue, puckering my thoughts from the ease of the smile you had only just gifted me. I told you then how much I envy your reckless disregard for thoughtless rules that bind us to a hyperconsciousness for others’ opinions. If I were braver I might have danced with you.
We talk of dancing like no one is watching, but you live with a truer fearlessness. I hope you always hear the music in the mundane.
Love, Mom
off track
April 7, 2015 § Leave a comment
There is a singular line of questioning at my children’s more formal education meetings that perpetually derail my confidence. It is a whisper into an uncertainty that leaves me raking my thoughts for better answers than the truth.
What are your child’s interests?
This question of interests has the unpleasant sensation of a dream interview for which I am inexplicably naked in my choices.
At a time when so many children are committed to interests whose measure of success are weighted in structured programing, my children stumble through quieter demonstrations of creativity outside extracurricular agendas or team schedules. If you looked into the chaos of their rooms you would find hidden troves of reappropriated objects crafted into physical representations of daydreams from play interrupted.
I sometimes wonder if I have shortchanged them an undetermined future experience of success without the childhood reference of more consciously choreographed practice and play or the shared responsibility of accomplishment and failure. Today, I tried desperately to frame my daughter’s interests into an answer that felt appropriately conformed and felt shamefully tender to the realization that the very act of shaping her interests into another’s category undermined the unspecific fluidity of her meandering.
My daughter’s interests are undetermined, she’s finding her way into herself and I am trying to refrain from molding what is hers to define.
picking & choosing
April 4, 2015 § Leave a comment
Fresh flowers are an intimate indulgence; inexpensive clusters of personal favorites a simple joy. I’m grateful for the luxury of this weekly whim of sunshine on my window ledge. The colorful distraction is a smile that pulls at my attention as I sweep through daily tasks. It is a small kindness to myself, a doting attentiveness for my home, an uninhibited appreciation for a modest beauty.
I am familiar in my choices; seasonally and sentimentally. Today, in anticipation of Easter, I lingered over the colorful exuberance of perky blossoms begging a broader canvas than the tightly packaged company of their neighbors. I hesitated between favorites seeking a color and bud that whispered of childhood Easter eggs and the sweetness of forgotten traditions; little girl bonnets and the stillness of Sunday service.
Then, I remembered my daughter’s face just yesterday as she swept through the front door with two bundles of carnations, contrasting shades of pink highlighting a prideful blush as she gushed over the care with which she choose her bouquets. They weren’t my choice and I promised myself a tiny concession; planning my morning errands to facilitate this moment among quiet friends.
Mentally I gathered my bundle, already nesting them in place in my mind’s eye. Juggling vases and rearranging. My choices kept drifting to my daughter’s blooms, trying stubbornly to compliment her choice with my own. I saw her disappointment as I rearranged and suddenly my choice was more complicated.
I recognized my daughter’s unpretentious heartiness in the carnations’ blossoms. I heard the same language of care and choice, celebration and ceremony that are quiet hallmarks of our home. This Easter I am choosing my daughter’s expression of beauty and creating a new memory, honoring the care with which she made her choice and the joyful practice of picking flowers.
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