a day off
January 20, 2015 § Leave a comment
It isn’t unusual that I wake to a Tuesday that feels ominously like Monday, the week’s routine unfolding with the grinding resistance of denial. Likewise, I have misconstrued a Thursday for Friday as I race enthusiastically toward the weekend’s leisure. It is, however, rare that I overlook a day entirely.
This morning I woke my son with Monday’s apologies for Tuesday’s early morning beginning. I chased him through breakfast with reminders and hurried him towards school with empty gestures of routine; making it half way home before my sleepy teenager called to remind me of the day, a well documented day off from school.
It was a fully conscious, bright-eyed conspirator that dismissed my error, sneaking back into his room until his younger sister left for elementary school so that she wouldn’t feel excluded from his good fortune. Suddenly, today feels a little like a misplaced Saturday torn from a day long past, when it was only the two of us exploring nothing in particular with all the time in the world.
to my daughter
January 19, 2015 § Leave a comment
This morning you stood tall in a determined conviction, the surety of your responsibility pulling the frame of your form to consume the periphery of my attention. Your voice was quiet, but the cadence of your words was persistent. I heard the emotions beneath your interruption before I could make out the shape of your confession.
Your brother had been punished for your actions. The injustice and judgment warred in your conscience and I felt the sincerity of your remorse beneath the tremble in your voice.
The actual error was insignificant, not even worth the details it would take to elaborate. By tomorrow we will have forgotten the cause of the consequence, but there is a memory I hope you recall for all the days to come: standing inside the fear of judgement when you recognized an injustice and speaking for someone else, even when your own voice tremored with the weight of your burden.
Brave girl, the individual who can stand so firmly for another, has the power of flight for herself.
Love you, Mom
found
January 18, 2015 § 9 Comments
Some days I drift through bookshelves, my hand trailing the closeted promises with a lover’s touch. Each story is a possibility, exquisite for the impossible uncertainty. It is a returning to; the first blush of an old love. Some pages turn with a hollow din, but others create a void of sound that consumes each minute, exaggerating the senses to an almost unkind generosity. In these stories I taste the words carefully, letting the shape of the ideas melt against my tongue with a childish delight for the impossibility of their composition. It is a genius of ability that manipulates the common into the exceptional and I am lost to the ritual of companionable loneliness that drives me toward a voice I cannot hear, until the ending brings a silence too loud to bear.
patient care
January 16, 2015 § 2 Comments
This morning an appointment for a routine exam resulted in an unexpected measure of care. Clothed in a paper gown that served only to exaggerate the naked vulnerability of my discomfort, I moved with empty submission against a stubborn acquiescence for a procrastinated commitment to care. Normally on these occasions I disappear into the cool unpleasantness of unwanted attention with shrouds of silence or sterile banter; drowning out my discomfort by disconnecting myself from the experience. Today I found myself sitting unconscious of discomfort, absorbed in a genuine conversation with a woman who was eloquently transparent in her humanity; a stranger with whom I was immediately familiar.
It has become the most predictable anomaly of my life experience that I find kindred spirits in unexpected corners of my day at the most urgent hour. In each instance I am reminded that for all the ways we might divide our identities, we are beautifully made to share.
sandcastles & schedules
January 13, 2015 § 2 Comments
This past week we began the process of choosing classes for our son’s coming academic year, stacking the prerequisites and sifting through electives. The dialogue that accompanies this effort is staggering, assumptions and expectations distorting perspective.
To my son,
As you arrange your goals for the future into choices, remember that building dreams around an academic schedule is a little like building a sandcastle near the surf; change will sweep across the landscape of your building blocks undermining the most architecturally sound design and demanding you draft new plans.
Adults, educators and parents, speak in heady hypotheticals and hypocritical certainties; what ifs and statements of if this, then that. We portray academic performance as a precursor for success and happiness, but I have known too many people for whom this was not sustainable to promote false promises.
You may do well academically and that performance may help you to attend a school which may afford you a career you enjoy and a generous income. You may not.
As we look to the choices for the coming year, I want you to hold tightly to the language we use to discuss opportunities over certainties. No matter your intelligence or accomplishments, success is a matter of effort and opportunity; one is not exclusive of the other and neither guarantees certainty.
Instead, I’m gathering hopes for the character of a life you are shaping.
I hope you pursue academic interests that spark passion, but I also hope you try something unexpected; sometimes we have to venture past the familiar to recognize certainty. Begin now. Choose experiences that will challenge your knowledge and stretch your comfort zone.
I hope one day you will find work that sustains your dreams, but I also hope you find work that will sustain the expense of your reality. It is hard to dream when your head is congested with worries. Save well and spend wisely.
I hope your days have a purpose that feeds your sense of worth and connects you to your community with meaningful contributions. Divide your time and attention in a manner that creates balance.
I hope you surround yourself with individuals who measure wealth without monetary markers; things cannot fill the spaces of our heart or mind. Guard those relationships that are founded on mutual respect and void of materialism.
Whatever you study or aspire to become, cultivate the person you want to be first and allow that certainty to inform your choices.
Love, Mom
gut truths
January 13, 2015 § Leave a comment
My daughter is a notoriously poor speller. Tender to failure and hesitant in hope, practice is as much an act of self-confidence as it is a pledge to improve.
Last week when school was canceled due to low temperatures, she voluntarily set up a spelling station. Practicing the week’s word list and developing a strategy for success she played at mastery and claimed ownership of her list with creativity. On a tiny index card she outlined the number of letters per word and prompted this guide at the top of her improvised desk. Gone was the hesitation or insecurity, resistance to practice or resignation of inability. Test after test she churned out perfectly placed letters in much the same way she once verbalized letters by dissecting them into steps up and down our hallway. In these non-traditional contexts her instincts are true and her efforts attentive, creating a new equation for individual success.
Returning to school at week’s end I hugged my daughter tightly and reminded her that in practice her gut was true, confident and capable. At day’s end it was an out of place voice of frustration in a moment of happiness that interrupted my thoughts with a discouraged: My gut lied.
Sweet Girl, The truest measure of success is not where you succeed, but how you determine failure. Trying in the face of fear and doubt is a greater gauge of ability than excelling in an area of strength. Each effort is an active exercise in learning, each error an opportunity to do better. Your truest instinct was to try. Love, Mom
consciously cordless
January 12, 2015 § Leave a comment
This week I am taking a self-imposed vacation from the temptations of those distractions that keep me tethered to lost time. I’m logging off social media and pushing the seductivity of on-line convenience a little further from my reach. I’m filling my hands with laundry and hardback books, pencils and puppy play. I’m turning up the volume on my phone to keep myself open to emergencies, but stowing my device out of sight so that I stop reaching to fill moments of restlessness with an virtual wandering among inspirational quotes and glimmers of artful expressions of living.
It is a week that begs greater attention and a clarity of intention as I navigate complicated questions in search of honest answers; the quiet of my resolution drowned too quickly by the noise of so many distractions. It is an imperfect exercise in balance as I stay open to the necessity of e-mail correspondence and the serenity of these written meditations, but it is a much needed reprieve from the false assumption of availability that extorts time and attentiveness from greater personal consciousness and emotional connectivity.
purposeful accidents
January 10, 2015 § 5 Comments
Most days I count my blessings before my worries, naming first the companions that lend me strength and nourish hope. It is a preference I learned first from my mother who always guided my mindfulness towards a positive perspective with frustrating refrains of overly cheerful adages and stern reminders of worse misfortunes. In motherhood, my worries are the balance of my children’s joy.
Some days there is a loneliness for the fears that alienate me from the sisterhood of friends whose worries divide us with complicated languages of need. On these occasions, it is a gentler love that offers borrowed strength; a kind smile, shared laughter, or fleeting distraction that helps us tread the water of our worries until we are rested enough to hold our own heads a little further from the threat of drowning.
Some days, the friend is a familiar stranger. Today I am giving thanks for the company of friends who lend us perspective on impossible days.
This morning’s errand to my least favorite grocery store placed me solidly in the path of a woman I know by heart more than name. Our experiences in motherhood have gifted us a language of compassion and courage that inform possibility in the face of exhausting doubts. She is someone who speaks in a subtext of understanding that allows me to drop the armor of false bravery for a more tender authenticity.
To this woman I met by chance in a manner I will forever feel was orchestrated by an architect of fate,
thank you.
sharing secrets
January 9, 2015 § 2 Comments
There is a lovely message of friendship circling my facebook newsfeed; individuals inviting and accepting the challenge to create a commitment to kindness. A voluntary chain letter that promises generosity of friendship with anticipated acts of unexpected kindness.
I was first introduced to this concept last year when an old friend extended the invitation online. My response then was to challenge myself privately to embrace the spirit of my friend’s promise. It was in this vein that I talked my family into a road trip to celebrate the same friend’s birthday; it was the encouragement that buoyed me to take the uncertain first step in getting to know someone I admired and inviting a friendship of sincerity; is was even the borrowed bravery that allowed me to be present for a friend in the face of grief despite a longstanding discomfort that borders on fear of raw loss. The challenge was a catalyst for a perspective that invited greater commitment to relationships often procrastinated in the busyness of everyday care for family and home without compromising the integrity of prioritizing my husband and children before others.
What began in attentiveness evolved into something greater than a singular act, the momentum of kindness created a richer experience of friendship.
This year I would like to challenge others privately to extend kindness to strangers in the same way we offer kindness to friends. I won’t choose an ideal number of acts to perform or a timeline within which to demonstrate this secret conspiracy of kindness in word or deed. I wonder only what change we could inspire if we woke committed to creating an opportunity to practice kindness without an expectation of completion. It is a perspective of generosity that informs a more beautiful community and a more empowered image of self with greater mindfulness.
A secret worth sharing.
