scribblechic

The first day of school comes with a predictable abruptness. We fall asleep, our minds’ restless with curious questions about the day to come, only to wake still snuggled beneath summer’s contentment. There is little conversation in the time before this new beginning, it as if we are afraid to alert the day of our arrival.

While you shuffle through preparations, my mind runs through practicalities looking for forgotten reminders to distract me from sentiment, still uncertain of my own emotions. There is a tenderness, more than sadness, for the passage of time; a mindfulness that the minute hand moves against my wishes.

Returning home after goodbye the house feels unfamiliar without the sounds of your company; the day too long without the disruptions of shared busyness. Soon I will fill these minutes with commitments that leave little time for loneliness, but this first day it feels necessary to acknowledge the quiet as I nestle into my thoughts.

This fickle gauge of past and present with promises of days to come is not linear in experience. Anticipation circles memory even as we fight the tide of time to stretch one moment into many.

Today gray skies have draped the sun, hours running like raindrops on windowpanes and blurring the progress of time; one minute indiscernible from the next. Unfinished projects purposefully forgotten for sentimental indulgences of homemade sweetbread and play.

It is a sleepy day, one in which our dreams are comfortable companions of wakefulness and time circles in lazy, directionless loops to the calming rhythm of an inconvenient leak; an accidental metronome to the harmony of home.

Yesterday we visited my husband’s high school, now our son’s. Forward steps were met with backward glances; old memories intertwined with new experiences.

My husband identified familiar faces in framed photographs and structural differences around old corners as our son greeted friends and peers shuffling through the monotonous maze of required materials, photographs, and instruction. I visited with a close friend sharing this milestone while absorbing my daughter’s restless observations.

It was a day I will remember by sound. The staccato of footsteps echoing against painted brick hallways of uniform lockers, tapping out a morse code of stolen moments and  friendship; memories of congested stairwells and rushed passing periods, the smell of lettermen jackets and the crinkle of letters folded into intricate envelopes.

As we left the air-conditioned hallways for the sun drenched remains of our summer day, I could hear the answering squeak of new gym shoes across decades of days long past; a borrowed memory of another time and place marking a new beginning.

I am my father’s daughter, my son’s mother; these titles entangle creating uncomfortable places of exaggerated awareness. In my son’s discomfort and my father’s discontent there are images of self I cannot disclaim.

I wear my father’s disappointment for my imperfections with the same uncertainty I worry over my son’s otherness; I offer both empathy and anxiety with mixed messages of acceptance and expectation. I measure success against a standard that suffocates bravery and avoid failure at the cost of success.

I push against the confinement of inadequacy with words of encouragement for unique qualities that define individuality while marking opportunities to evolve into an ideal expression of self. Despite the careful balance of words, I hear the caution of counsel that contradicts the spirit of celebration.

These thoughts, unfinished and untidy, have sat here unattended in a draft that seems to dangle uncertainly demanding attention. Wading into discomfort I am untangling my doubts least I mistake my faults with my son’s needs or my father’s fears.

Visiting an old friend’s new home yesterday I heard the rushed tread of children’s feet carving a path between floors and giggles bubbling beneath bedroom doors. The snap of latches as young explorers invaded a new territory and the amused groans of sleepy corners settling into a response.

Pristine walls, newly painted and uninterrupted by adornment, reflected ribbons of daylight through windows bare of tapestry; washing old rooms in new colors. Underfoot, patchwork rugs punctuated the length of warm wooden floors, the contrast of textures shaping each room’s personality and inviting expectations of holiday gatherings and lazy weekend mornings to come.

Weighted furniture and a sprinkling of old keepsakes anchor memories against the canvas of something new while cardboard boxes stand sentry, a stubborn reminder of the work of making a home. It is a happy contradiction the comforts of resting places and the riddle of sorting possessions, conjuring an expectation of casual convenience with deceptively well choreographed placement.

Like the frame of the house stretched protectively beneath its inhabitants, settling a home is a labor of love; a gentle yielding to accommodate change. A threshold for possibility.

Personalities flit through my days, larger than life, pressing against my attention and distracting me with the fullness of their presence. I watch them, enamored by their casual confidence and easy humor, innocent brazenness and conspiratorial certainty. They move within skins that cradle strength beneath emotions poorly hidden, tender in spirit and reckless with entitlement. Generous and eager, impatient and steadfast, they are bold in word and deed. I feel weightless in comparison; the whim of my thoughts and uncertainty of self an internal taunting. Old muscles and new thoughts dare me to step inside discomfort, moving outside the security of invisibility; inside the weight of self.