to my son
September 7, 2014 § 6 Comments
I’ve been writing your sister more often of late, but my mind holds a space for you despite the deceptive inequality of letters. I see you struggling a bit to find your way, the determined quiet that speaks to your ever evolving independence. I collect your stories and note your choices, suffer your worries and applaud your conviction, temper my counsel with familiar boundaries.
I am standing a little further in your shadow, still ever mindful of your experiences. The truth is, some days the best I can do is offer you less. There are mistakes and accomplishments more fully measured without my presence tugging the scale in one direction or another. Pieces of your story that must be written in your hand.
I’m still here.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
September 6, 2014 § 8 Comments
This morning was your first soccer game. Until today your frame of reference for the sport was limited to Kindergarten drills and gym class scrimmages. Your enthusiasm for this new experience was based more in an excuse to spend time with a friend than a newly recognized passion for the game. Still, I was proud of your willingness to be uncomfortable and unknowledgeable, to risk failing in an attempt to succeed, to be a part of something larger than yourself.
I anticipated you might play poorly and I secretly wished you a natural inclination that could compensate for the absence of experience. What I didn’t expect was to find my shortcomings centerfield from the sidelines. You were lost and still, overwhelmed and hiding in plain sight. Each gesture of confusion was both genuine and dismissive, I could feel you attempting to shed the experience even as it unfolded around you.
Your teammates were struggling against other children, but you were struggling against yourself.
You may never play soccer again after this season, but you will undoubtably find yourself in new experiences confronted with familiar fears. I understand the temptation to hide behind excuses, to avoid discomfort; these are my ghosts.
No one is perfect. Each of us possess unique strengths and inopportune insecurities that inform our choices. My greatest regrets rest in moments of paralysis when I allowed my path to be shaped by the actions of those around me, bending to my doubts. Even my most colorful, public errors of assertion are rights of passage; proof that I have not forfeited my right to grow and learn in the face of uncertainty. It is a far greater loss to fail at trying; a hollow victory to succeed without effort.
Win or lose, you have to play the game.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
September 4, 2014 § 2 Comments
Last night over homework we pushed and pulled against one another’s expectations with false assumptions that undermined good intentions. I clung tightly to a desire to be purposeful and present in your learning while you built walls of righteous independence with admirable expressions of stubborn determination to hide hurt feelings.
Like an argument never spoken, we were responding to private fears and insecurities more than one another’s beliefs. I almost dismissed disrespectful undertones as a premature posturing of pre-teen arguments to come. Then, with a deep breath, I turned to leave and caught the sigh in your shoulders; recognizing a tenderness and vulnerability that mirrored my own.
It was an opportunity I might have missed had I blinked or looked in the wrong direction. Instead, by chance, I found the path to a conversation I was unwittingly silencing. First, though, I had to hear a few hard truths.
My messages of support were clouded in subliminal statements of judgement. Somewhere along the way you came to hear a criticism of can’t.
At this I wanted to bristle, I could feel the dander of prickly injustice. My head spun against the false contradiction to my genuine intentions, but my speech only cluttered yours. So I listened.
Every struggle shared with your brother, each statement of can and must; assertions of ability and questions of effort, however irrelevant to your personality or needs, had been carefully itemized and internalized as measurements for my expectations. Within these messages was the beginning of a new awareness of how my words translate your assumptions.
Today is cluttered with commitments, but I needed to carve out a moment to preserve yesterday least I forget this lesson between us: I had to first hear how I sounded to your ears before you were willing to listen. I had to accept responsibility for unintentional harm before you would invite my help.
I’m still listening.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
September 2, 2014 § 4 Comments
Today I watched one minute fold into the next, counting down the time between waiting for and recognizing the sound of your hand on the doorknob. I was impatient as I spent the seconds clumsily busying myself with empty tasks to keep still.
Between the false distractions I wondered if you look for me the way I look for you in familiar fragments of our days. I praised my patience even as I chastised my weakness, abandoning my perch to bridge the space between us. With each step I wondered if my love is too much, if the space you fill is too large for your needs.
As I rounded the corner of our street, pledging silently to go no further, I spied your easy gait as you stretched your arm high into the air, waving dramatically. On a whim I elongated my arms into wings and marveled as you mirrored my lines. When finally you were close enough to see the twinkle in your smile you slipped into a run and I lowered my arms as you leapt, holding you tightly against the memory of so many similar exchanges.
Thank you, sweet girl, for quietly answering questions I was struggling to form; for filling the space that is yours alone.
Love, Mom
torn pages
August 31, 2014 § 6 Comments
There are uncomfortable experiences of self that are centered in perfectionism; pages torn whose rough remnants are stubbornly stapled among those unmarred. I sometimes feel the knowing tug of sharp expectations as they pull at my thoughts and ruffle contentment. They are self-imposed standards that speak to a perceived ineptness scaled against impossible expectations.
Failure is first painful for the uncomfortable perceptions of self that glare unkindly, taunting old wounds. Slowly, persistently, the mind smooths over crumbled insecurities, stretching emotions to accommodate a gentler logic; one that forgives sharp creases for the fullness of their texture.
It is a personal poetry, the faults and fears illogical once voiced, but too cumbersome to be kept in silence. Instead I speak the difficult truths onto clean pages, gathering fragments of self from torn pages.
to my children
August 29, 2014 § Leave a comment
For all the anticipation of this first week of school, I find my heart is tender with appreciation for the experience of watching each of you stretch outside the familiar to grow into new experiences. Your stories fill the quiet of your absence and I catch myself smiling with each remembering; your tales tumbling into one another, almost impossible to distinguish for their complimentary themes.
To my son,
This week you accepted new boundaries in assistance; with the support of a new aide we drafted altered expectations that would allow you more authority over your success. In the evenings, I repositioned my support permitting you space to choose accountability for your time and responsibilities. I could itemize these changes to mark the blueprints of our goals, but I would rather dwell on the footprint of your smiles with excerpts from this first week.
For the past few years you have had the benefit of a separate lunch space with a company of friends, removing you from the noise and social chaos that are hallmarks of school cafeterias. I worried how you might navigate the loss of this safe haven in your day, hoping someone might befriend you and guide the way. Instead, it was you who recognized someone else’s loneliness and extended a hand of friendship.
Over the course of the past week you have shifted your seat over each lunch hour, moving confidently and curiously into each day. Similarly, I have watched you strike up conversations with strangers in unhurried moments before school and execute an amusingly musical leap down the outdoor stairway at dismissal. You have made jokes with teachers while finding amusement in the comedy of your errors.
The days have not been without frustration, but your attitude has been one of determined ability. Where once you proved to others your academic potential, this week has been an acknowledgment of your social strengths. So often well-intentioned educators and friends misread your tendency for individual tasks and awkward social mannerisms to inform a deficit of empathy or a preference for solitude; this week you corrected false assumptions while challenging stereotypes for other children who share your needs.
Like the casual high-five you traded with an old friend at the end of school yesterday, these everyday exercises of extension demonstrate an eagerness to connect and a presence of intention.
To my daughter,
This year you have moved more confidently into the space of academic uncertainty. Where so often you accept classroom challenges as a personal weakness, this year you have begun exercising greater confidence with a willingness to error. In emotional acknowledgments you have outlined an increased awareness of weighted expectations and more challenging goals.
In the midst of these emotional outpourings you referenced a quote your teacher utilized, redefining the value of errors and lending bravery in moments of doubt. Mistakes are proof that you are trying. I do not know the origin of the message, but I am grateful for its motivation; the gentle nudge that has raised your hand and moved you more intentionally and confidently into the act of learning among your peers.
This ownership of effort and error has remapped our homework table, too. You have rejected assistance that masks imperfections, insisting your mistakes are important markers of effort and ability. It was a statement of confidence and ownership that quieted the doubts that had so long informed a struggle.
You wear this new experience of permitted uncertainty with a confidence that is contagious.
To you both,
I could not capture the joys of this week separately. I hope when you find these words you will read one another’s letters with the same eyes, seeing the fullness of our lives in the balance of your differences. I love you both, in equal measure, to the moon and back.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
August 26, 2014 § 2 Comments
Yesterday was your first day of fifth grade. Unlike so many years when you lingered among peers and their parents exchanging hugs and smiling for photographs, this year you slipped quietly inside the building to collect a new responsibility. I wish I could have seen you slip into the bright orange belt that accompanies the happy task of becoming a patrol guard, I imagine it was punctuated with the same dimples that rewarded news of the privilege. Instead I left you to your task, honoring your need to take direction and lend assistance, despite a secret wish to spy from the perimeter of your experience.
On the walk home I noted the length of my single shadow across the sidewalk and registered the irony that the little girl who used to give me cause for chase along this path could now walk so confidently under the weight of authority. The little toe that would teeter just across the line of good behavior now informing others by example. It was a reminder of the beautiful complexities of your possibilities.
Last night, after unloading your day’s stories and trading your patrol belt for soccer cleats, you blazed a new trail. It has been years since you attempted soccer, your last endeavor was marked by flushed cheeks and sleepy limbs in the company of Kindergarten classmates. This time you raced towards a damp field between a sprinkling of raindrops accompanied by a close friend. The only two girls you moved confidently into the fray of boys, asserting yourself into their comradery. This time I stayed to watch.
There was one moment among all the others that I loved best. Towards the beginning, just after introductions and silliness, the coach demanded laps. While the other children, familiar with the routine moved forward, you looked first to the coach then back to your teammates. Registering the expectation and error you compensated by stretching your legs to catch up; chin turned toward the sky you began to steadily pass others until you settled into the middle of the pack and held your pace.
There were other moments, too. The look on your face when you realized you had forgotten your water bottle; the shaky length of your form as you fought tired arms to execute a determined push-up; your arm tossed casually around your friend’s shoulder in a stolen moment or the way you casually proclaimed a willingness to wear a number I knew to be your favorite. Colorful demonstrations of your personality that complimented exercises in character.
I wonder if I tell you enough that I envy your strengths. Not the tough exterior of false bravado, but the tenderness of your most genuine endeavors. Those exhausting moments of uncertainty when it is so much easier to look away, step aside, or hide behind excuses. I love the way your toes still stretch across the lines we don’t always acknowledge. I used to worry I might not be woman enough to model such character and so it is immensely humbling to watch you lead, ever modeling for me the woman I hope you grow to be.
Love, Mom
to my children
August 25, 2014 § 6 Comments
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.
time
August 23, 2014 § 6 Comments
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.
to my son
August 20, 2014 § 8 Comments
I like you. I wonder if I say that enough. Love isn’t something that I contrive to express; it is a fluid language that is ever-present. Liking you is a separate matter.
If you weren’t my son and we were choosing seats on this journey, I would want to sit next to you so that I could hear your thoughts and better watch your adventures. I would want to know the warmth of your friendship and the fierceness of your convictions.
I just like you. Period.
You move and speak at times like a cartoon whose ink has been blurred into curious action. This display of self sometimes garners unwanted attention but you are tirelessly comfortable outside the norm.
While some seek to impress others at the cost of unkindness, you are fearless in your forgiveness and loyal beyond reason. You harbor no grudges against friends or family and you accept those you love’s faults unconditionally.
Every day you question the world around you in search of answers to endless questions. You see broken logic with the same eyes that find beauty and look inward to weigh your experiences for self truth.
You leap into uncertainty with confidence, prepared to succeed and willing to fail; able to laugh and comfortable enough to cry. There is a brave, unapologetic honesty to your emotions that allows you to be fully present.
I so often look at you and wonder at my good fortune that you are mine to love and yet I exhaust more time reminding you to pick up laundry than I do acknowledging your character. I’m going to work on that, because I want you to know I don’t just love you, I genuinely like you.
Love, Mom
