pack & play
July 1, 2013 § 5 Comments
The day before vacation is a frenzied busyness fueled by an exaggerated awareness of time. Procrastination meets inspiration as I count down to our hour of departure.
While I attempt to toss together necessities for the days ahead, away from home, I am thinking back to yesterday’s outdoor symphony performance and holding tightly to the image of my family unbound by time and commitments beneath a canopy of trees on a cloudless day. The newness of this sharing keeps the images just beneath my eyelids. I see my daughter scribbling notes while my son pressed blades of grass into smooth streams of green silk; my son’s silent exclamation over the discovery of a ruby red lady bug and my daughter’s quick assimilation of his good fortune into her own. The contrast between yesterday’s whim and today’s work are a reminder that I must not lose a day entirely to planning for what is yet to come, rather I must hold tightly to the possibilities of magic amid the mundane.
With this thought close to my consciousness, I am tucking away my laptop to lighten my suitcase of the burden of distractions as we chart our course and collect new memories to carry home.
past present tense
June 28, 2013 § 6 Comments
This day seems to linger in distraction. Efforts at industry seem empty and directionless. I am unsettled, uncertain where to begin. Carefree days of busyness allowed me to shuffle decisions among indecisive possibilities, now time seems to be holding me tightly to emotions that demand attention.
The question: Do I return to a place from which I eagerly escaped, never looking over my shoulder to remember the way?
It is the eve of my 20th high school reunion. My connection to classmates is limited to the impersonal voyeurism of social media. Still, time and relationships with others have found new meaning in motherhood. A nagging curiosity and a previously dismissed connectivity to pieces of my past have fostered feelings of doubt for feigned disinterest.
No longer do I see my classmates through the narrow perspective of a self-centered teenager, overwhelmed by her own burdens. Instead they have become a cast of characters veiled in mystery for the unknown. The wanderers whose stories I am curious to hear.
The word reunion taunts an undercurrent of truth racing through my heart and mind with an intensity that seems to suffocate the air around me. The physical space of a place once my home is haunted by ghosts that cannot die.
Truth: I am hiding from memories of myself and a collision between the past and present. Do I meet myself among old harms, or do I stay present allowing the past to slumber?
In much the same way I scribbled my heart into the folds of old letters passed between the hallowed halls of high school, these are the words caught between breaths I cannot take and decisions I am struggling to make from conversations unspoken.
To my father,
I wonder if the calendar has marked my absence these past twenty years? If you found my truths in my absence or if we carry our own wounds too close to see each others’ heartache.
Here is the thing I could not say – it was never that I didn’t love you, it was needing to be loved in return. The impossible standards and ever-present disappointment, fear for your anger and empty trust that opened the door to my departure. I was a shadow long before I left, simply feeding off the light of hope waiting for you to materialize.
I forgave you quietly over time, but I never outgrew the hurt that accompanies old wounds. Between us we are caught in memories and faded photographs from another lifetime.
If I return I move into the past as a mother, unable to invite harm or inherent tragedy to the children I guard from heartache. They are my promise to myself.
When I imagine the possibility of sharing a sidewalk with my past in present tense, I mostly miss what never was.
M
road trip
June 25, 2013 § 7 Comments
These two words hold equal parts hope and dread. My husband speaks these words with reverence for an experience cast in nostalgia, togetherness and adventure on the open road. My anticipation is tainted by childhood memories of car sickness as my brother and I traded homes each summer at an insignificant point of travel from one parent’s car to another’s; suitcases of clothing and small comforts stacked with hopes and fears between hellos and goodbyes.
The decision to embrace this experience was simple. My husband’s daydreams of fatherhood and family are as important as memories of my childhood. In preparation for our upcoming trip I am making room in our suitcases for something new, settling into someone else’s perspective. It is the very theme of marriage, compromise and sharing as we appear in one another’s hopes.
I expect conflict in the confines of our car, moments of discomfort or disagreement, but I also foresee discoveries as we walk new paths and collect memories that will follow us home to the familiar place of our belonging.
rain
June 24, 2013 § 9 Comments
This morning the sky is cast in gray, the clouds pregnant with excuses to curl indoors. Stacks of books and board games, paint brushes and chocolate chip cookies promise to mark our hours between raindrops among friends. Nestled in my chair, warm coffee cooling beside me, my mind drifts to another rainy day not so long ago. My daughter’s hand in mine, her giggles bubbling up as we splashed in puddles.
Every once in a while it feels indulgent to get caught in the rain without a care in the world for the inconvenience. Some days rain is the perfect companion to sunshine, an open invitation to escape expectations for the possibility of something else.
extended family
June 23, 2013 § 2 Comments
This summer has been marked with friendship, my children’s and my own; the shadows of those we love filling our doorway and leaving smiles after goodbyes. Tonight we will gather friends who are family into our home. Unofficial grandparent figures who in moments of orphaned uncertainty, spontaneous celebrations, even mundane misadventures lend us the comfort of family.
These special souls are cornerstones in our children’s community, neighbors whose presence serve as silent reminders of days past. For one couple their home carries memories of my husband at our children’s ages, his stories and our children’s overlapping like seams of wallpaper. Further down the street and just around a corner lives another couple, compassionate souls who gift us acceptance despite complicated experiences. They know us in a rare and eclectic gathering of memories, one half simultaneously educator and friend. They are a home to which you find yourself knocking for a temporary distraction because there is something reassuring in their steadfast kindness.
Today while I plan for the evening ahead, I am thinking of the years of shared moments between our homes and giving thanks for family born of friendship.
remembering this
June 21, 2013 § 6 Comments
In the earliest hours of the day, before I was ready to dangle my toes from my dreams, my thoughts were nestled in my son’s experiences this week. So often I guard him, ever mindful of challenges that seem to shadow our days, but this week I found myself giving him space to explore his environment and excusing myself from the fallacy of controlling what I cannot. In letting go and gifting my son small exercises in independence I found reasons to believe in his ability to move confidently and capably through his day. In challenging my son, I reaffirmed my own ability to trust in each of our strength.
To my son,
I wonder how you might remember this week. Would you recall the freedom of your brief walk between downtown stores on a warm day? Maybe you will hold tightly to the sense of accomplishment in venturing out on a simple, solitary excursion with money in hand and time to spend. Or perhaps you will recall finding a place among another family visiting an unfamiliar pool, a stranger among strangers, temporarily belonging to another family’s company. Will you dwell in the adventure that accompanies walking towards an unknown or revel in the sense of returning to what is familiar?
For my part I will remember the moment of unhinged fear as I let you go, immediately measuring the potential for harm with hands folded in an unspoken plea that you would succeed. I kept out of sight, pledging to trust in things unseen, only to steal a glimpse of your retreating form as I peeked from the doorway. Most importantly, I will remember the sight of your gangly form returning, the cadence to your step with your shoulders pushed pridefully back, eyes smiling.
This letting go and holding on is always new. Each success lends comfort to the next challenge, building confidence and granting reassurance. Please remember I have become so accustomed to your company that I, too, am finding my way into a space without you; knowing that in time, you will map a future defined by your own choices and actions. You were meant to find you own path and these first steps are a timely reminder that motherhood is an act of faith spoken in a language of love.
Love, Mom
girl next door
June 19, 2013 § Leave a comment
We moved into my husband’s childhood home the summer before our son began first grade, when our daughter was still a toddler. The sidewalk that runs past our home carries memories of footsteps shared between my husband and neighborhood friends. Over the past seven years my children have collected memories and chased friendships along the same concrete squares.
Yesterday my daughter filled an entire day with a girl from just down the street and around the corner. Our backyards practically hold hands but the girls have only played together occasionally, until yesterday. On a beautiful summer day they hid from the sunshine and interfering company of our household in my daughter’s room, occasionally scampering to our deck sharing a meal and giggling soundlessly behind the glass doors only to scurry back to play.
This day of friendship, exploring the corners of imaginary play until the moon pushed the sun from the sky with sad good-byes and tired eyes, was a happy reminder of our good fortune in purchasing a house that was familiar as a home, inheriting a stretch of sidewalk that leads to friendship in every direction.
trading places
June 18, 2013 § 4 Comments
Peeking in my daughter’s doorway at bedtime I found her form curled over a heavy volume of poetry, her fingers drawing an invisible line as her eyes searched the dense table of contents for titles. Next door her brother was playing a game. I paused in the tiny space between both worlds marveling at the unpredictable experience of my children trading places. Stacks of books still litter my son’s bedroom floor and pockets of cluttered play spill across my daughter’s room, but the child whose face was always tucked within a book was otherwise distracted and the child who struggled to find her way into reading was caught in the pages of a book.
I was immediately reminded of a time long past, a memory of a day under the sun as my children navigated a park. My son’s small form racing ahead towards a new discovery, my daughter toddling unsteady at a different pace in a separate direction. With one hand I reach to draw one child back while guiding the other forward. Standing outside my children’s rooms I could feel my daughter racing forward, stories and poetry drawing her into discoveries. Letting her chase words onto a new path I turned to my son silently promising to guide him toward new stories, reaching one hand back while ever mindful of the path ahead.
in writing
June 16, 2013 § Leave a comment
Ever endeared by the promise of a postmarked envelope, I have come to find them more meaningful on uneventful occasions. Too often a holiday creates an expectation of grand acknowledgment, one that overlooks our flaws and celebrates only our accomplishments.
I thought of this first on Mother’s Day when my husband’s card to me was filled with repetitive reassurance of my strengths as a mother and my family’s good fortune. I thought of it again last night when pressed to create a similar declaration of exceptional parenting for Father’s Day.
Here is the thought that chased around my script – parenting is a bundle of mistakes and mundane moments sprinkled with remarkable moments of love. We don’t memorialize our errors, rather we hold tightly to ideals of perfection.
I am grateful everyday for the traditional trappings my husband’s busy days provide. Our home rests in a safe neighborhood and between our walls we are blessed with comforts that are a privilege. Our children do not want for food and they are clothed in warmth.
Still, as parents, most of our greatest gifts to our children have come from moments of colorful, noisy mistakes or discoveries that undermined our assumptions. We gather our individual flaws into efforts to model strengths for our children to learn from, each day a new beginning in a love story centered in a commitment to be present.
To my husband,
Thank you for the everydays between, before, and after the holidays; the grand gestures of love and the everyday routines that build toward our future. Thank you for growing from your mistakes and giving us room to uncover our own lessons. Thank you for modeling a man whose footsteps our son can grow into while walking beside you and for demonstrating the kind of man we can hope our daughter might one day find in a young man’s friendship. Thank you for being perfectly imperfect and uniquely ours.
Love, Me
choreographed & carefree
June 15, 2013 § 6 Comments
Our first days of summer were a happy distraction of dinners, play dates, and dance overlapping in joyful festivity. This week the exuberance of these gatherings collided into empty calendar days stretched between penciled in plans.
My children take joy in carefree moments; lazy mornings and late evenings. Left to their own devices the minutes would pass unmarked by agenda. Still, at day’s end, they look to me with questioning uncertainty. Beneath masks of indifference I see the tell-tale signs of restlessness that begs a task or companion to contradict the independent stillness of solitary endeavors.
Acknowledging the fleeting experience of childhood summers I pledged to guard days of discovery alongside moments of rest. Not one to commit entire days to overly orchestrated plans I crafted a wish list of summer memories. Moments to share as a family that would sustain our spirits come fall’s routines; indoor, outdoor, inexpensive but often priceless summer traditions to punctuate the quiet. Then I scribbled my list of ideas into a promise, a contract etched into the chalkboard door tucked in the corner of our kitchen. Memories to gather like coins in a jar.
The past few days the words have tumbled from promise into action. One moment my daughter is bent over a concrete canvas, chalk confetti gathered around her form. The next, we linger over colorful treasures of produce and art at a local farmer’s market. Friends in tow or all alone we explore beneath the sun then curl into the shade with a book. This is my hope for the days of summer: nothingness and busyness in balance with self and others.
