to my son
February 19, 2015 § 4 Comments
Yesterday you noted the neighborhood children piling off the school bus and registered familiar faces with remorse. You shared a simple wish for a reset button, a second chance to go back in time and not make old mistakes. You thought that maybe then those children you always considered friends would invite you over and include you in their easy comradery.
For a moment the car was completely quiet. I quickly contemplated all the ways I would use such a button, the choices I would remake and the actions I might retract.
My first response was to honor the humility and self-awareness of your wish. I validated your emotions and shared my own remorse for the impossibility of time travel. Then, I reminded you that friendship is not so easily misplaced. You were looking to the gentler memories.
I didn’t share my memories; the gatherings I tolerated adults mocking your inconvenient fascination with batteries or unfortunate unauthorized appropriation of household and garage materials for play. I didn’t share the destruction their children had similarly imparted on our home or defend your impulse to create when left outside the circle of their children’s company. I thought I could pretend away the things that divided us as parents, to save you a place at their table. I still remember the sadness in your voice when you would ask for help on the routine occasions those same companions made you cry and the quick dismissal of your peers’ accountability as we dismissed ourselves prematurely from each invitation.
I cannot guide your wishes any more than I can undo what has passed, but I can inform your understanding.
Friendship doesn’t point fingers or turn its back. It doesn’t come and go to the lull of convenience; it accepts us as whole, filling in the broken places with kindness not criticism. Sometimes we miss the illusion of something familiar, forgetting with the luxury of time the uncomfortable pieces of casual harm. You haven’t lost the safety of friendship, strangers lost the privilege of your forgiveness.
This doesn’t ease the ache in your chest; you miss what was never really there with the fullness of genuine loneliness. Rather than looking behind you, look forward; your truest friends are those who stand beside you.
Love, Mom
it’s me, not you
February 18, 2015 § 2 Comments
There are days I am lonely for a misplaced friendship, acutely aware I have fallen out of the social graces of your company. Some days I whisper across the chasm between us, inviting a familiar smile or laugh; missing the sunlight of your enthusiasm and the effervescence of your chaos.
I thought I left because of you, but maybe it was me.
When we met I was outside my comfort zone and trying desperately to assume a role that did not fit. I was less myself and the surety of your confidence permitted me a place I could more easily disappear. Had I given my needs a more honest voice, we might still share conversations that don’t hint at forced politeness.
Instead I abandoned our friendship, consciously, with a passivity that was cowardly. Had I waded further into accountability and invested greater trust, I would be a better person in your life.
It must be acknowledged that our last year together was a horrible time for both of us, I offered only what I had to spare without trusting you might survive the burden of my grief. I waited for you to see my heartache, but I had stood too long in a place of silent acquiescence.
Some days the things I did not say sit against my tongue with a bitter aftertaste of remorse; I should have fought harder for the goodness between us. Instead I am carrying the sharp pieces of these lessons with greater consciousness, inviting myself in all my uncomfortable imperfection to each new relationship so that I am more present in my care.
It wasn’t you, it’s me.
to my son
February 17, 2015 § Leave a comment
There is a quiet grace in the eagerness of your vulnerability, the unabashed honesty of your emotions. I wonder if you understand the rarity of your openness, your willingness to step outside a prideful posture and stand unguarded in your tenderness.
Yesterday I watched you gather your worries and fears into a language of need; washing your smile in a flood of tears you purged the thoughts that confined your smile. In that moment the years tumbled away and you looked lost in unhappiness that hung from your frame like a child dressed up in the ill-fitting garments of problems too large for your experience.
Sweet boy, for all the language of expectations that dictate the responsibilities of a young man we must remember to honor the fleeting fragility of your childhood. Thank you for trusting me with your worries, that I might better guard your smile.
Love, Mom
second fifth, last third
February 12, 2015 § Leave a comment
Tomorrow is my youngest child’s last elementary school classroom party. It’s a funny emotional hiccup that keeps pulling at my attention today, a small acknowledgment that these otherwise unexceptional experiences are exquisitely fleeting in their inconvenience. For all the times I cursed the chaos of crafts or the responsibility of organizing restless bodies into overly enthusiastic efforts at recreation, I am suddenly unwilling to imagine this is the last time I will chase after last-minute necessities or fuss over the impossibility of reinventing traditional games into politically correct, themed celebrations.
If I am entirely honest, I should confess that I won’t miss the preparations; the uncomfortable suspicion that I have overlooked or underestimated an idea. The secret insecurity that manifests in wanting to please the partygoers and not lose face among mothers who so often seem in possession of a secret knack for the task of controlled silliness. Most often I drift to the sidelines of the synchronized madness, marveling at the mechanics of my child’s community of peers and wondering at what futures wait for them as they grow further into the personalities I have had the privilege of witnessing.
More than the festivities of the day, I am mindful of the impossible goodbye within the routine of these elementary traditions. It is my second time navigating the halls of my children’s fifth grade experience, my last third party of the school year, and a bittersweet milestone as we near a new beginning and move further from the halls that guard memories of my husband, son, and daughter’s childhoods.
menus & mealtime
February 11, 2015 § 4 Comments
Recently my husband acknowledged a desire to cook that spoke to a richer passion; restless and playful he was looking for a creative outlet outside the normal pieces of his day. This expression of want was a demonstration of need; an interest that extended beyond caring for our nutrition or assuming a new responsibility, this was a request to interrupt the expectation of sameness with something unknown.
I welcomed his enthusiasm with gratitude for a reprieve. The endless monotony of what to make and who to please, what to buy and the practicality of small details weighed on my mind weekly. The joy of creating meals that cared for my family had become overshadowed by an empty appreciation for a thankless task. There was no stubborn pride or sense of fulfillment to defend against sharing this responsibility; it was with relief that I differed our dinnertime quandary into his able hands.
It has been inspiring watching my husband search for meal ideas and gather recipes into a grocery list; endearing to watch his large frame fill the familiar corner of my space with clumsily careful attention to detail. I have done my best to refrain from interfering by projecting my experiences onto his discovering, resisting the temptation to commandeer his efforts with hijacked enthusiasm. Instead I keep to my perch on the periphery of his play, reminded how often we need to push against routine with reckless curiosity to broaden our expectations.
I have rediscovered an appreciation for a previously dreaded hour and gained a new experience of our time gathered over a meal. I am falling in love with my husband’s open-minded perspective and my children’s generous encouragement. We are dwelling longer at the table and embracing the mystery of unfamiliar foods with a sense of adventure and appreciation for the care it takes to create something new.
Dinner has once more become a service of love, an act of play, and cause for joy.
to my children
February 10, 2015 § Leave a comment
I wish you knew the fullness of the little moments when you are greater siblings for the friendship between you. Last night you tossed yourselves attentively into one another’s company; one needing guidance and the other basking in a sense of purpose. Asking for help and offering assistance, teaching and learning, you were navigating a language of appreciation.
To my son, Your little sister so often bulldozes you with a bossiness you mostly tolerate good-naturedly. She is quieter in her praise, quick in her frustration, but ever thoughtful in her admiration. Yesterday she leapt at the opportunity to study your favorite subject, eager to speak as your equal. Despite the ease of your mastery you were mindful in your manners, patient and respectful as you tempered your knowledge without undermining her ability. For a moment I imagined the father you may one day become in the brother you already are; kind and wise, patient and enthusiastic.
To my daughter, One of the greatest lessons we can offer as a family, is an ability to sound out our uncertainties and accept another’s help. Watching you delight in an opportunity to learn, framing your questions into an eagerness to grow, was a lovely demonstration of trust and respect, vulnerability and honesty. You might have struggled though your answers in a more solitary endeavor and gathered the same information independently, but inviting your brother to share a source of joy was a gift of appreciation that spoke of a gentler personal wisdom. There is no academic standard for character, it is a success measured by the health of our most valuable relationships.
To you both, There will come a time your lives will diverge as your choices lead you to new places and partnerships, may you always look to one another as sounding boards of wisdom and friendship.
Love, Mom
february
February 9, 2015 § Leave a comment
It is the shortest month, one so often swept under the exhaustive anticipation of romance. To my little family, it is the month my husband and I celebrate our anniversary with unexceptional attention and thoughtful recognition. Marriage, unlike the luster of romance, is a labor of love; the daily tending to of dreams we craft with another’s joy in mind greater than a confetti of acknowledgment that clutter a more genuine humility with colorful demonstrations of elaborate excess.
Children and pets, home and work pull at our attention with a necessity of care; a misconception of ease that undermines the value of holding hands and stealing smiles in the fervent busyness of the world’s demands. It is not the day to come that weighs us in recognition of togetherness, but all the days we chose one another in simpler acts of love; unglamorous demonstrations of friendship and passion, kindness and patience that weigh the brevity of February with the fortitude of every yesterday between us.
beloved
February 8, 2015 § 2 Comments
I write you in the space between my dreams and consciousness, just as the light crests the darkness I press my mind against memories and fight the clarity of your absence. For just a moment, I am less myself and more my own.
writing out loud
February 6, 2015 § 2 Comments
Lately I am lost between the narrative of my days and the story in my mind; words pressing against my thoughts as I work with a frantic serenity to gather them quickly into print.
All or nothing, it is a terrifying need that consumes and ignites sleepy places in my soul. I have never felt more still while the wheels of my distraction spin with reckless disregard for time.
I am both hungry and sated in my pleasure, terrified that this moment might pass and leave me in want of something I cannot fathom loosing.
Every moment is a contradiction as I disappear from familiar places in my day, more present in my own skin as my fingers transpire the secrets of my dreams.
self & sight
February 4, 2015 § 2 Comments
I have spent a lifetime navigating invisibility in plain sight; hiding behind the boisterousness of a louder companion or the deception of disinterest, the fullness of my doubts and dreams more easily masked by assigned roles tangent to more colorful personalities. I learned this first as a child shuffled between new schools in my parents’ divorce. Uncomfortable in a space of extended uncertainty, I began to lean against other’s for direction; moving through days in borrowed shadows.
There is a magic to disappearing; watching the world unfold like actors on a stage. Expectations are safely impersonal, opinions ignored as irrelevant; failure and loss are guarded from the fragility of exposing the intimacy of hidden vulnerabilities. This too is a trick of perception. Just as I have escaped the criticism of others in consciously crafted illusions of confidence, echos of unrest reverberate in the silencing of self.
I celebrate those who walk uncomfortably into unforgiving spotlights, dropping the veneer of security for a moment of brave authenticity. I champion the stranger who falls dangerously along a path of their own design, bolstered by the boldness of their courage. Each imperfect articulation of someone else’s sense of self whispers to my soul the warmth of knowing and being known.
Today I am looking inward for direction, setting my compass to new intentions and old dreams.
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