to my husband
April 22, 2016 § 1 Comment
While you were gone I picked up your birthday present. I know it’s late and that we don’t dwell on gifts, but this time the object is less material and more an investment in time spent together.
I was passively procrastinating purchasing your gift when my good intentions and last minute plans were rerouted for an unscheduled trip to urgent care the morning of your birthday. I rallied that day just long enough to honor our family birthday traditions, all the while simultaneously relieved and remorseful that I had failed to follow through on an old promise.
I almost let myself off the hook, noting the obvious intervention of Fate, when the store closest to home sold out of their inventory. Three days later we celebrated our son’s milestone birthday and it felt as if the moment to revisit your birthday had passed.
Except, this past Christmas, when I told you exactly what I wanted in a rare and specific request – you made that happen. Even when our daughter spoiled the surprise, discovering my gift hidden in an unusual place, I was no less grateful that you listened.
This week, when a small window of time presented itself, I rerouted my attention and traced down your gift. Two stores and almost ten days later, I bought a bike. For me. For you.
We’ve been married long enough that we can laugh at my (lack of) balance on wheels with the same honesty I curse your fantasy of family bike rides. But what is marriage if not a compromise of dreams and imperfect performances of balance?
I’ve been listening.
Love, Me
to my daughter
August 9, 2015 § 2 Comments
Last year an unhappy surprise stole the sweetness of your smile. Ten was a difficult birthday, a complicated celebration with more unkindness than candles. Despite canceled plans and casual criticisms, you kept your chin up and welcomed double digits with a tolerance for unwelcome guests in the name of family.
This year we greeted the day with a quieter presence. We planned our own surprise and guarded the space of your joy with a greater appreciation for your needs over empty obligations to unhealthy relationships. Ten was a year of too many sorrows, your father and I agreed that we can no longer afford to willfully squander the celebrations of your childhood on certain unhappiness for the sake of empty responsibilities.
This birthday, for every tradition we created space enough for change to accommodate new expectations of healthier days.
Rather than streamers stretched across the threshold to your room, we crossed miles to walk the rooms of our new home. Between these walls we found new smiles over happy discoveries as you explored the promise of adventures to come.
Instead of best friends and classmates gathered under our roof, you shared the day with family and long distance friends under sunny skies. False bravado was replaced with genuine contentment for the company of uncomplicated loved ones and we relaxed into a less guarded posture of peace.
Rather than celebrating around our dinning room table with a homemade cake and a late night sleepover, we substituted with store bought cupcakes around a hotel room rumpled from late night movies. The celebration drifted between outdoor interests and poolside antics; favorite restaurants and curious window shopping.
In place of presents that would be quickly repacked in anticipation of moving, you acquired tiny keepsakes of the day to celebrate our move. Farmers market trinkets and mementos to be gifted to others.
It was a beautiful day, uncomplicated and unstructured; held together by family, friends, and home. Instead of themes and stages, passing interests and favorite colors or unhappy surprises and uninvited guests, this birthday will be remembered for a single image and colorful phrase.
You named the year Eleventeen and leaned into a more relaxed posture of togetherness for a fleeting snapshot that hinted at so much history to come. This is how I will forever remember your day; brushstrokes of individuality and tradition that spell family.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
March 21, 2015 § 4 Comments
I wish I could capture the texture of a moment in type, to preserve what my mind will revisit in dreams and my camera could not contain. My fingers have been twitching with the words constricting the fullness of my joy, my mouth eager to whisper your news.
You can fly.
I’m not certain how we will convince your father you are earth bound. I keep imagining he will see the air that tugs at your feet or the windswept hair that hints at adventure, rosy cheeks and distracted smiles cautioning a secret. It seems impossible he will not read the difference in your gait or pride in your stance.
Today you road a bike. Pushing off of old fears no longer propped up by stubborn refusal, you swept across the cracked cul-de-sac of your friend’s front yard; eyes bright with certainty and your body leaning determinedly into each effort.
You are saving this revelation for your father’s birthday, gifting him something he has wanted for you longer than you wanted it for yourself; accidentally discovering pleasure along the way. Already, an hour later, I can see the temptation to try again in your restlessness.
You did this without me, my hope was too noisy. Now my joy feels too big, like I cannot possibly keep my happy still long enough to surprise your father.
I can hardly wait to watch him see you fly.
Love, Mom
forty
March 2, 2015 § 2 Comments
Some days I scribble the word or sketch the number with the same curious fascination I once drew my husband’s family name, sounding out the word for reassurance and resonance. It seems at once amusing and impossible, a trick of deception that I might wake up months from now another version of myself. Names and numbers inconsequential mirrors of meaning.
Unlike birthdays past that welcomed the weighted freedom of driving or the privilege of participating in elections, this new milestone seems an elaborate illusion of make-believe. Like misfit toys or an island of lost boys I feel contentedly unqualified in my absent maturity with no desire to feign a more sensible expectation of adulthood.
There are no aspirations of accomplishment to mark the occasion; no destination that designates the culmination or commencement of adventure; no marathon that tempts my endurance or material possession that honors the accumulation of years. Not one for extravagant displays of celebration, I want to invite a childish enthusiasm to this occasion least I take myself too seriously and the blessing of good health for granted.
I am reminded of discarded notebooks crafted in the unknown in-between of college friendships on the cusp of marriage and motherhood; empty pages weighted with magazine cut-outs collaged into a subconscious map of dreams. I’m looking to the margins of my thoughts for an excuse to doodle the future into my consciousness with playful anticipation and personal significance. Collecting my wishes long before I have an excuse to circle candles on a cake.
to my daughter
July 31, 2014 § Leave a comment
Today I am marveling at the mystery of time; days that stretch endlessly, then disappear, lost to fleeting years. Like grains of sand that drift between water and wind, it seems impossible to preserve the very minutes that accumulate into years.
Tomorrow is your tenth birthday. Despite the simple math and surety of the date, this fact of numbers feels implausible to my every sensibility. Your own uncomplicated and humble requests for the day seem to invite denial and so I am bewildered by the fiction of reality.
There are no grand expectations or overly choreographed celebrations to differentiate the days, only family and a single friend to mark the milestone. Simple traditions and home.
Everything and nothing tied in heartstrings and candlelit wishes.
With only hours separating the years, I am counting memories in place of minutes. Tallying the impossible to preserve a moment.
Love, Mom
wanting & having
July 14, 2013 § 6 Comments
This morning my husband and I circled our daughter with choices, attempting to create birthday plans that would evolve into cherished memories from daydreams and wishes. What would you like? Who would you like to include? What might you like to do? Each of us became dizzy from the momentum of expectations.
We looked outward toward dramatic visuals pinned with promises of parties tinted in tones of joy. Images not unlike the of artistic filters that cast contemporary photographs in shades of nostalgia. Themed cakes and clever goody bags were missing the quaint charm of blank space.
Then, we looked inward.
I cannot remember my parents interviewing me to create an ideal, rather I remember a sense of gratitude for candles that invited a reason to cast a wish among friends. My experience was less wanting and more having. In truth I had less and dreamt more, my riches greater for my dreams.
My daughter’s birthday is just around the corner and this year I am giving her a little more wrapped in a lot less. A simple cake and a couple of friends. A special gift and room to wish.
thirteen
April 15, 2013 § 2 Comments
I am not one to dwell on numbers. Symbols of time feel inconsequential, tallies and record keeping unweighted against immeasurable, everyday moments. Until today. Tomorrow my son will turn thirteen and I am at a loss for words, my emotions categorically scattered and my thoughts anchored to a simple, unavoidable awareness.
My heart keeps tripping over old memories and small victories, twisting and twirling around years that seem to have passed too quickly to have been properly measured. And yet there is no miscalculation.
As he sits somewhere behind a desk, distracted by the routine activities of his school day, these are the thoughts that crest on waves of memories as I speak, silently, to the little boy who is ever-present in my day. To my son,
I love that your childhood stuffed rabbit has never been shuffled into storage and that we as a family collectively reference him with love.
I admire your ability to forgive others for unkindness while holding yourself accountable for demonstrating kindness.
I respect your efforts to assimilate into others’ expectations without sacrificing your sense of self.
I love that you are in no hurry to be grown, while fiercely passionate about being treated as an equal to adults.
I admire your ability to memorize information accidentally and your efforts to master that which you do not know naturally, with intent.
I wouldn’t change the difficult pieces of your story to script a simpler experience.
I am a more compassionate individual for your company; gentler for your strength, stronger for your vulnerability.
I wish others understood what they cannot see, the beautiful contradictions that spell both struggle and success.
I love that even as your shadow falls near my own, we don’t have to see eye to eye to share one perspective.
I wish I could create a tidy list of thirteen thoughts from the countless memories that accompany this moment to honor each year you have inspired me. Instead words fail, where love cannot. This day sweeter for all the days before and a new tomorrow.
wishes and wants
September 3, 2011 § 1 Comment
I have simple wishes. On my birthday I wish for the company of my husband and children, the anticipation of cake, and handmade cards from my children. Predictably, each year my husband asks what I want for my birthday. I want my wishes to come true.
I love a happy surprise wrapped in a bow, but tokens of affection have little value if unaccompanied by sentiment. I want to wake up to cuddles from my children and to share an easy day of togetherness without arguments or anxiety. I want to spend each meal distracted by a sugary confection tucked away for later. Despite my love of beautiful stationery, I want to read my children’s wishes woven around art that fills the blank spaces of homemade cards.
Friends sometimes fill the day with treats, my preference is time. I have no need for gifts, I rather share a meal or conversation. Time is an indulgence, most of us too busy to sit still, but it is my favorite gift: the company of people I love and the sound of their laughter.
Inevitably someone will ask how old I am. There are those that antagonize over a number: age, weight, IQ, income. I prefer undefined anonymity. I scatter my numbers to the wind, happy to let go of such boundaries and definitions. On my birthday I am no different, I think less of the progression of time and more of sentiment. I cherish birthdays past and stay present, uhurried as I look to the future.
In the days following, someone will ask if I had a nice day or if I received everything I wanted. The answer is: most days my wishes come true, I am rich in the blessings of family and friends.
birthday presence
July 31, 2011 § 2 Comments
On the dawn of each child’s birthday I wake to memories of the day we met; sentiment draws me into consciousness. Today I am remembering my daughter’s first moments. Tomorrow is her birthday.
She came into the world like a storm, energy emanating from her tiny form; her first cry a declaration of arrival. The nurse settled her, swaddled, into my arms and my heart seemed to sigh with the weight of peace. I had not been able to hold her big brother and the simple act of nestling her to me was a balm mending an old heartache. In the span of a moment, my daughter had given me a gift of experience; time overlapped as she connected two very different deliveries.
Watching her eyes search my face, her tiny rosebud mouth pursed with determination, I was enamored by the strength of her spirit. Headstrong and peaceful, she was a beautiful contradiction from the beginning.
She still clamors noisily when passionate, eager to be heard and desperate to be understood. Each day she wakes full of the sunshine that slips through her window; tossing boisterous good mornings and gifting exuberant hugs and kisses. I stand in gratitude and absorb her presence.
party planning
July 10, 2011 § 2 Comments
Both of my children were preemies and so I find irony in my inability as their mother to properly prepare for their birthdays each year. I inevitably turn the calendar casually only to panic at the stark realization that I am predictably unprepared.
I toss around ideas throughout the year, fantasizing about spectacular themes and imagining finely organized, charmingly coordinated events worthy of magazine quality photographs. Time gets away from me and suddenly I am bouncing between retail spaces frantically searching out the images from my mind’s eye. Typically these items are fabrications of wished for items not yet available in retail stores or indulgences at the cost of sensibility that I cannot in good conscience accommodate.
Last week my daughter received birthday party invitations from friends that caused me to look ahead at the approaching month earlier than normal. I was happily reminded of my daughter’s special day and pledged to prepare in advance.
My daughter’s theme provided our first challenge. She began with one idea and then jumped ship. I was slow to swim to shore. Meeting her on different ground, disorganized and unprepared, I struggled to switch gears. As someone who is chronically indecisive I continually endeavor to teach my children to embrace their decisions without fear of remorse. I gave my daughter a choice between her ideas and then let go.
Our second challenge came when addressing our list of potential guests. I worried we had excluded children and began to add names attempting to be inclusive. My daughter’s list, short and sweet, helped me focus; I reminded myself that this day was hers and allowed myself to set aside my own rational. Again, I let go.
As my daughter’s party took form I realized we had begun to create a party that was genuine; composed of friends and activities that bring her joy. I am inspired. My little girl made decisions without remorse and I have fostered a spirit of celebration for the unique soul that lights up my days with her own definitive sense of style.
Preparations void of my own opinions has created an infectious sense of anticipation. Looking to the calendar, I am ready to turn the page.
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