to my daughter
June 12, 2013 § 10 Comments
At bedtime we curled into easy conversation, side by side, replaying the day behind us and talking expectantly about the day ahead. Between our words I watched your eyes study my face, documenting my lines and questioning stray hairs. I marveled with amusement at your honesty and tried to give you answers that would inform how you gaze at your own reflection.
I told you I lingered in the sun too long when I was younger, smile at each opportunity, sometimes forget to wash my face before bed. I gave you honest answers without apologizing for what some might consider flaws.
I didn’t tell you that I don’t feel beautiful and I am often uncomfortable beneath another’s gaze. Even as you studied the tiny hairs on my face and pink blemishes that have accompanied me from my teenage years into motherhood, I tried not to look away and hide from your inventory. I knew you would filter my flaws with love.
My self-awareness is born of old insecurities whose cost undermine my greater worth. The intricate imperfections I wear with an invisible sensitivity are pieces of my entirety. In a room full of strangers the small lines and stubborn mass of hair, brown eyes with green flecks and imperfect smile are mine alone.
One day you may similarly find pieces of yourself you might change and I hope that in those moments you will remember you are a collection of differences, pieces of a puzzle that create a unique image. More importantly I hope you will know that it is the poetry of your mind and the span of your heart that inform the world of your true beauty.
Love, Mom
daydream
June 10, 2013 § 5 Comments
Yesterday I slipped beneath the sky and fell into the pages of a story. Drifting sounds from neighboring lawns were punctuated by the intermittent birdsong of a hidden companion. Momentarily suspended in time between dreams, I woke disoriented. My limbs were heavy with the warmth of the sun and a gentle breeze that seemed to pull the shade across my legs. I cannot remember a time when I was so easily distracted into absence in the middle of the day. The richness of summer’s textures lending comfort and peace in days stretched leisurely among hours unmarked.
curtain call
June 9, 2013 § 4 Comments
Last night the high school auditorium was hushed as rows of parents, siblings, and grandparents waited in the darkness for a familiar face to cross the stage. I knew from rehearsal when my daughter would enter and where she would stand among the young ballerinas, but I didn’t expect the rush of tears that betrayed my own emotions. More than watching the culmination of a year’s worth of Thursday afternoon practices, I was my daughter’s witness to a journey that began years ago.
Toddler arms outstretched to gather wind into her stride and eager twirls between footsteps, her joy and sense of self-expression extended beyond choreographed movement. This melody of movement accompanied us to her first dance lesson over five years ago where unkind words from her instructor introduced shame to joy. The little girl who so often invited dance into her daily movement became self-conscious of self-expression.
This fall my daughter asked to return to dance. She wanted to learn the graceful movements of a ballerina and fly again. The months between then and now have been a balance of hope and doubt, faith and fear. We returned each week to a gentle teacher who guided lessons with kindness and we honored our commitment until the final curtain call.
Moving forward, outside the lights and without the costume, I know that our new experience accompanies the old. My daughter’s footsteps may stray from the pink slippers of our Thursday classes, but her movements are inspired by her strength and informed by lessons in possibility.
party girl
June 4, 2013 § 5 Comments
This weekend my daughter attended a birthday party. Just as families were dropping off their young guests, uninvited raindrops scattered plans in a new direction. When the party was redirected to an indoor location I found my daughter displaced among strangers. The other girls, familiar from another experience, clamored together into a group of one while my daughter was left standing alone, gift in hand.
To my daughter,
Thank you for being strong enough to stand comfortably by yourself. Without inferring injury you moved towards belonging never loosing sight of your independence.
Rather than race into a cluster of girls eager to huddle together in another mother’s car you patiently waited for our host. At the moment, I wished you company rather than noticing your decision. In hindsight I hope you are always reserved when offered a ride with a stranger.
As the other mother realized you were standing alone she called the girls to befriend you, encouraging someone to step forward and wait alongside you. I was as grateful for this mother’s attentiveness as I was saddened by the girls’ collective hesitance to lend you company. I only saw a little girl left out and allowed my emotions to clutter my perspective.
There were no tears or anger, no eagerness to escape the sidelines. You stood in a moment, comfortable with yourself and patient with others. You held friendship like the gift in your hand and moved independently even as I wanted to shelter you.
Following your lead I stepped into my own discomfort and let go, giving you room to be successful. I welcomed our host’s offer to bring you home and waited anxiously for the party’s end. When our front door opened sometime later, you tumbled through on a gust of words winged with smiles. You found your way.
This day was such a small moment in our lives. Another party in a string of childhood gatherings that blend into an unexceptional pattern of predictable memories. Still, there was a moment in the mundane when you were exceptional and despite my worries wrapped in heartstrings, your strength and faith in others were greater than my assumptions.
I hope you are always prepared to move against the grain to find your own way.
Love, Mom
sand script
June 1, 2013 § 4 Comments
It is the first day of our summer vacation and I find myself wanting to sketch our days in sand so that the tide might hold our summer beneath a veil of possibility. This is the first year I have not mapped the months with specific promises, inviting uncertainty to guide our adventures. As the days stretch longer in the company of sunshine I am mindful that my children’s years feel shorter. They are growing too quickly and I am suddenly hesitant to look to into a future outlined in expectations, rather I want to wake each day to a new beginning with a heart weighted firmly in the present and plans written in sand script.
inspiration (verb)
May 30, 2013 § 2 Comments
Ever so often an idea tickles the corners of my mind and I find myself distractedly moving through my day while quietly measuring the potential within a thought. Today the air seemed to crackle with possibility as I gathered my distractions close, determinedly pushing them into action. Rather than circle around What If, I invited Maybe to accompany my intentions moving directly from curiosity toward certainty.
I drafted a letter I did not stow away, sending it quickly with the same enthusiasm the idea sparked within me. I followed a path to a new front door and extended friendship with an earnestness that hinted at the beginning of a conversation without end. I set aside doubt for effort and collected reactions that surprised me with their genuineness and positivity.
This feeling of hope and ability linger in a restless joy that hints at goodness yet to come, all the while reminding me that each day brings promises of kindness and opportunities unexplored.
reading, writing, & responding
May 26, 2013 § 10 Comments
There is an understated magic within written responses. A cluster of keystrokes and suddenly strangers and friends are tethered in thoughts that extend beyond the neat confines of simple typeface or hastily scribbled notes. The shape of ideas and emotions between sentiments gather us into a consciousness that is immediately intimate. Even here, despite discussions of technology interrupting the quiet connectivity within more naturally interpersonal exchanges, this space of shared thought offers borrowed moments of communication that resonate across the busyness of my days. Others’ words blend into my silence and I am left to consider perspectives that inform and inspire. Some days I want to stitch my responses among those others have gifted me, threading thoughts into a patchwork of letters to hold favorite moments close.
This intentional happenstance of reading, writing, and responding reminds me of letters long lost to old friends and distant relationships. Like the intricately folded origami notes of my teenage years tucked into textbooks and corners of dresser drawers or the painfully careful script on the unexceptional stationary of my childhood, I imagine these exchanges are endearments that connect us to pieces of self discovered over time. The voices at the end of our fragmented exchanges like shooting stars, beautiful and fleeting, writing us into new awareness across an endless evening sky and marking time by the exchange of ideas.
sight
May 25, 2013 § 8 Comments
My daughter begs for stories of moments outside her memories. Recently she asked her father how we fell in love. He gave her the well-told pieces of his early memories catalogued under a vague, but certain knowing; that with each sight there was a recognition of something significant, an undercurrent that separated me from those in our company.
Last week, at the end of her school day, my daughter said, “I saw you today, Mommy, and I understood. Everyone else faded into a blur and there was only you.”
This gift of sight, being seen and valued as is, may be the most beautiful expression of love. Belonging and being between two souls linked in time by chance and loved by choice.
acting out & standing up
May 23, 2013 § 4 Comments
Sometimes I feel my husband and I slipping into familiar roles unnatural to our expectations; fragmented statements and disconnected actions out of harmony with our intentions. The foreignness of our behavior is balanced by the familiarity of the exchange, footsteps in a dance we know but whose music comes from another place. Insecurities from old relationships whose harm is hidden behind scars only we see.
We carry within us our experiences as someone’s child, another’s sibling, friendships and relationships whose memories, joys and harm, rest within us. In moments we do not always recognize, a word spoken shuffles old emotions to the surface and we react from a place not present but past.
Recently a disagreement seemed to strike the tender places of my heart like memories too faded to outline with words. By the time we had reconciled our emotions I felt too hollow to give what I did not hold within. There was no defensiveness or anger, just a sense of loss.
This experience of harm and healing is ongoing, tenderness challenging emotions hidden beneath benign words. The false comfort of time undermines effort, relationships endure with intent rather than assumptions. We accept our partner’s flaws alongside their strengths, becoming our best selves to better the life between us in a never-ending act of loving.
I suppose this is my love letter to those pieces of my personality and my husband’s that create unrest, that call us to embrace each disagreement and misunderstanding with a commitment to lend kindness before anger, to offer understanding alongside our wish to be understood. Standing up for the person across from us even as we act out, changing the footwork to an old dance in the middle of our song.
thumbs up
May 19, 2013 § 8 Comments
In the earliest stages of our daughter’s presence, when the idea of a second child was bundled with eager expectations for the mystery of a life newly formed, my husband and I promised to steal moments from our routines to be present with each child, individually. Careful not to disrupt the experience of parenting our son and mindfully pledging to share our time equally with someone new. Over the years we have found creative ways to borrow time alone with our children. Some days we invite them into an activity, other days we insist on their company.
This weekend my husband and daughter embarked on a camping trip with friends, leaving my son and I to rattle around the quiet. No longer easily distracted by my activities, my son is now old enough to hold expectations for more independent interests. Rather than forcibly shuffle him out the door under the pretense of preformed plans I decided to stagger through uncertainty setting my hopes for little more than time away from distractions. As a newly official teenager with an ever-present appetite, I decided to appeal to my son’s taste buds.
We began at a restaurant of his choosing. Less than a bribe and more than a concession, I wanted to meet him in a place of happy anticipation. Watching him inhale his favorite milkshake while we waited on our food I was smitten with the man-child who balanced awkwardly in his seat while draining his beverage with the sloppy, unbridled enthusiasm reminiscent of a toddler who once stuffed his order of french toast into his cheeks too eager to chew. Between bites of burger I realized I was watching my son eat pickles, onions, lettuce, and tomato without second guessing the ingredients between meat and bun. As a toddler he ate everything, but over the years stubborn expressions of self have created food boundaries that were as predictable as inexplicable. It’s funny how in motherhood something as simple as a shift in food can stir memories. I’m quite certain my son wasn’t remembering french toast as he contentedly consumed his meal, unaware I was traveling through time between bites.
Preparing to leave the restaurant I was still smiling at his loopy gait, the way he throws himself forward unaware of his surroundings, when he abruptly changed gears and pushed himself eagerly into the entryway door, holding it open for a parade of strangers. A young family entered the restaurant, the father manipulating a bulky stroller into the foyer. As an older couple made their way past my son the young father looked at me silently mouthing the word “yours” while pointing a questioning hand toward the door. As I nodded he flipped his hand into a subtle thumbs up.
This one small sign was the equivalent of silent applause for what no stranger could have realized was a special recognition. My son doesn’t always notice the people around him. His words and mannerisms can create moments of frustration among adults and peers who do not understand this child, who by all outward appearances is unexceptional, struggles to translate the world around him. The effort it takes for my son to step out of himself and juggle the multiple signals around him is exhausting at best. Only I knew that he had gone from studying the pattern of the floor, leaping from planks of wood to avoid the cracks, determined to reach a shelving structure littered with playful distractions for waiting guests his borrowed book in tow – to recognizing a need on the other side of the door. Breaking from his own momentum was more than etiquette, it was an exercise in effort that extended beyond what I could communicate in hand signals.
My husband and daughter will return today with stories of time with friends outdoors. They will settle dirty gear and smoke laced laundry as evidence of their campfire adventures to tidy for another day, but I am holding a special place in our sharing for my son’s intangible memento of our time together. A symbolic acknowledgment that he’s listening and trying, even when we are too distracted by our daily routines to see our son’s progress. Sometimes we have to spend a moment away from our expectations to allow ourselves to see something new, all the while remembering the old.
