ups & downs
September 24, 2015 § Leave a comment
If I were on a high this afternoon from last night’s homework endeavor, I was soon to discover the balance of the Universe in a humbling exercise in helplessness. My mind contentedly and completely absorbed with my daughter’s confidence, I wasn’t anticipating the sad eyes that met mine at the end-of-day dismissal; the slow walk to my car or the heavy sigh into a chin up, crocodile tears heartbreak.
My daughter’s new school organizes a service club that empowers children to serve as ambassadors to other new students. It is a position my daughter coveted for the chance to translate her experiences this fall for the benefit of other new students in the year to come. From the moment her application came home, she was already outlining how she might help; cataloguing her expertise and projecting purpose.
For the past week she’s talked herself into certainty with the same confidence that lead her to assign herself a more challenging math assignment. Today’s form letter declining her application was a humbling disappointment.
There were, however, a few beautiful moments I want to salvage from the loss.
To my daughter,
The sweetest part of your disappointment today was your sensitivity to language. That you felt “crushing” news was worthy of a more personal communication says something of your respect for others and sense of empathy. I hope you always recognize the value in handwritten notes and direct conversations.
You cried openly, allowing yourself to indulge in an honest acknowledgment of a difficult loss, but you also accepted as a new student those teachers or administrators who made the final selection did not know you well enough to judge your character or ability. Here you resisted the temptation to let failure define you.
These may seem like small observations, but they acknowledge an awareness beyond your years. In a moment of disappointment you weren’t pointing fingers or placing blame, but rather using the experience to grow. Learning in a way you might not have if you had found an easier success.
There’s something else. I owe you an apology; I didn’t have enough faith in your strength.
When you applied, I was tempted to stack the deck; to beg someone to offer you a safe place to shine. I knew you would be an ideal ambassador and I felt confident the experience would help you navigate your transition to a new community. I didn’t, but I dearly wanted to.
Your father and I agreed that helping you in this way would be cheating and, worse, would undermine any certainty that you could have earned this accomplishment independent of my meddling good intentions. This afternoon I was tempted again to fix your disappointment, to orchestrate success with a last minute interference.
It is so much easier watching you smile, than standing helplessly while you hurt. There was nothing to do but listen as you sounded out your emotions.
Know this: you would have been a wonderful ambassador, but you are an exceptional individual. I’m sorry for your disappointment, but I’m so proud of your heart. I hope you dream a new goal with the same courage.
Love, Mom
choosing confidence
September 24, 2015 § 2 Comments
Last night my daughter proudly brandished her homework. Eye’s ablaze she waved her math worksheet in the air, declaring: “We got to choose our homework, Mom. Guess what I chose?”
There were two worksheets available, one for children still mastering a skill and another for those who needed a challenge. One choice offered comfort, another offered struggle. She chose the challenge; confidently and passionately, eagerly and fearlessly.
For years my daughter has struggled to catch up to her peers, to sit among them as an equal academically. Here, in our new home, she is racing towards a new expectation of learning with a deeper understanding of self; a greater appreciation for error and earned accomplishment.
She’s taking chances and making mistakes; accepting the risk of error at the cost of success. There’s something remarkable about watching your child race recklessly toward the harder path. Last night there was a fierceness in the posture of her pencil and the angle of her attention.
Life does not always offer a choice in our challenges, but we are ever able to meet each uncertainty with a spirit of confidence.
Sweet Girl, I’m a student of your wisdom, a champion of your courage. Love, Mom
to my daughter
September 3, 2015 § Leave a comment
This week a clerical error in the online enrollment process created an unanticipated complication to your school day. An essential document was missing from your records, legal paperwork designed to safeguard specific supports that insure the best possible environment for your academic needs.
Let me back up.
On Monday morning I sent a casual message to your teachers. Having moved to a new state, new neighborhood, and new school I was looking to weave together a greater sense of familiarity with a more personal connectivity. My greatest concern was that you were settling into larger measures of independence. There were small concerns that I didn’t want to overlook or exaggerate.
A missing calculator and ungraded homework left inside your folder were questionable red flags. Rather than leap to worries that revolved around executive functioning skill sets, I wanted to first make certain that your teachers were not concerned. I offered you simple suggestions that would nurture successful habits, feeling comfortable that most of my worries were symptomatic of an adjustment period given so much change.
Before any of the teachers had time to respond, your vice principal reached out to identify a new concern that he might begin to rectify an unintentional error by changing your schedule immediately. I want you to know that in this moment we were all trying to honor the formalities of your needs. Clumsy and well-intentioned, we were checking boxes and honoring professional and personal responsibilities.
Everyone was frantically trying to do the next right thing by you, but it would be you that lead the way.
On the morning that your classes changed, you left our care open-minded and confident. It was only after school, when you walked stoically to the car before crumbling into tears that I knew we had made a greater mistake. On sobs that stole your breath you forced together words that would draft a new expectation of wellness. You told us that you had been placed in a class you didn’t belong in, that the students in your new space needed attention that you did not, and that this change told you and your community of peers that you were not enough.
I let you tire yourself with every steadfast declaration. Your father and I listened carefully and questioned thoroughly each statement for logic and emotion. We pushed against every sensitive doubt to make certain your conviction could withstand a thoughtful challenge.
I asked you to name your worth and the value of others’ judgement. I questioned how hard you would work if allowed a harder path. I prepared you for a long-term investment and the possibility that you might have to wade into discomfort before others would honor your choice.
Internally I struggled between wanting to provide extra academic supports and recognizing the value in self motivation. Ultimately, your father and I decided to support your untraditional request and immediately reached out to your school. We told them that the abruptness of the change had undermined the sense of self and community that you had already established, that we were making personal decisions based on impersonal data. Then we waited.
Late last night, the same administrator who adjusted your schedule to honor your academic needs honored your decision to return to the familiarity of your original schedule. More importantly, he validated your sense of self in the context of your new community. This morning he met you at the school door with a smile asking if you remembered your old schedule.
It isn’t going to be easy, but it doesn’t need to be. You are enough.
Love, Mom
tech support
August 26, 2015 § 4 Comments
It was a predictable problem. Take one new student, place them in the company of children navigating the distractions of online social media, and you have crocodile tears and a self-righteous indignation for the contemporary convenience of cell phones in the unstructured space of the school day.
Today I listened as my daughter made a case for banning cell phones from her school. I paid close attention to her self-awareness when she acknowledged it would be worse to be the girl who took away everyone’s phone than it would be to sit ignored. I waited as she circled sadness and frustration for her to sound out the core of her unhappiness and then I invited someone wiser to offer a new perspective.
Given the source of my daughter’s unhappiness I holstered my phone, resisted the ease of e-mail and returned to school. Mom to educator and administrator, I asked for suggestions to ease the loneliness of our transition. In the space of a half hour we considered how technology use can sometimes be misunderstood; that a child disappearing into a screen may want an excuse to look up. We also considered that it is easier to assume “everyone” is using tech than it is to search out those who aren’t, but we balanced these possibilities by acknowledging the emotions of feeling ignored or left out then brainstorming active ways my daughter can facilitate a more rewarding experience with support.
Tomorrow my daughter is going to purposefully look for peers who aren’t online and she’s going to be more tolerant of those who exercise the choice to connect in a way different from hers. She’s going to hold tightly to her choice, but she’s going to respect other’s right to choose differently. More important than arguing policy from a perspective biased by a singular opinion on a difficult day, she is learning how to advocate for her needs in a way that makes happiness a product of her actions rather than a reflection of her environment. She is learning how to ask for help and how to extract insight from obstacles.
My children are growing up at a time when technology and social experiences are creating new lessons in communication. It is unreasonable to eliminate technology and irresponsible to make it a scape goat for accountability. It is a learning moment.
Tonight I’m thankful for complicated choices that invite greater consciousness for how we use technology and for the individuals who support us in real-time, offline.
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
making happiness
July 26, 2015 § 2 Comments
Tonight my daughter mused that the work her father has been gifting our house isn’t for our happiness, it is for the New People. We, she stated emphatically, will have to make our happiness somewhere else.
There hasn’t been a day since we first shared our news that our children haven’t sounded out questions and hopes in overlapping thoughts. We talk about the unknown New People, joking at our happiness for their good fortune as my husband finishes old projects. Tonight I was marveling at beautiful pieces of a home that is almost no longer ours. This is how my daughter came to announce that we will just have to go to our new house and make our own happiness for ourselves.
Her confidence and cheer were as pronounced as her dimples; I wanted to capture her effervescence like bubbles mid-flight that we might marvel together over the luminous wisdom of her simple certainty. We will make our happiness into our home.
I wish her words were a wand, or at the very least an enchantment, that I might ward off sadness or fear to better guard her joy. I am certain there will be emotional days to come, but tonight it is enough to capture the shape of her hope.
to my daughter
July 14, 2015 § Leave a comment
In all the busyness of moving there are unanticipated lulls; pockets of time where we sit still, share a laugh, or settle into conversations that drift aimlessly.
Today there was a single moment at the top of our stairs, you were stretched across a patch of sunshine on new carpeting. We talked about everything and nothing, but I was thinking of something I found while packing; an unintentional discovery.
I’ve given you journals for years, hoping to catch the evolution of your handwriting and the composition of your language for a time you cannot yet imagine; a paper trail to a simpler self. It was in one such notebook that my eyes snagged on a single passage on the only page of writing.
“… if I tell the story the other way then it will be like a piece of paper chewed up.”
Reading the surrounding sentences it was hard to tell if you were frustrated with my retelling of a story at a social gathering or an unsolicited suggestion for a written assignment. What lingered was the tone of a stubborn certainty and passionate conviction in your playful use of language; the intention in retraced letters and hastily erased strokes of pencil against paper.
It was none of my business, something I might not have discovered if I weren’t trying to make sense of misplaced items, but tonight it is the place my thoughts rest. A curious wondering and a happy mystery.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
June 22, 2015 § 2 Comments
The house is too quiet and the rooms too tidy without the parade of distracted play that so often litters your path. I miss your nest of early morning tangles and your stubborn late night tangents.
I’ve enjoyed every stolen minute with your brother in your absence; still, there is a place in my day where only you fit and without you the hours feel a little lopsided. I wonder at the whirlwind of personality that dislocates the molecules we cannot see into a feeling I cannot escape; there is an energy to your stillness that fills unexceptional moments with an intangible source of comfort.
Today I’m counting down to arms that fold neatly around my neck and stories that chase away the chores. Give Daddy a kiss for me, I’ll see you both tonight.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
June 6, 2015 § 2 Comments
Yesterday was your last day of elementary school. It was a week of long goodbyes and distracted celebrations culminating in an evening among classmates under the stars. You sang in harmony around the fire to the accompaniment of a guitar; chased noisy ghosts through an imaginary graveyard; played between doorways as we fought off sleep for stolen moments of conversation.
It was in the quietest of interruptions that I heard you whisper first for your father and later for me that I gathered the sweetest memory of the day. In the pathway that separated houses and divided the company of children and parents you guided our eyes with a steady hand, conjuring a constellation into our line of sight. In a day busy with friendship and celebrations, it was this tender discovery that guided my dreams.
Sweet girl, I hope you always navigate your time and company by a compass that is mindful and true; that you will find joy among friends and in the solitude of appreciation for quieter pursuits; that you may find magic in overlooked moments of possibility.
Love, Mom
to my daughter
April 29, 2015 § 4 Comments
I’ve been missing a little lately among my words, shuffling between spaces even as my mind seems stuck to Monday.
This week your father and I gathered among administrators, educators, and support staff to outline your transition from elementary school to middle school. We were sitting amidst professionals in a personal moment of accomplishment and anticipation; change rattling around old memories and stirring up little motes of sentiment.
The newer members of our team only know the vibrant student quick with a smile or kindness between distracted demonstrations of ability. Your test scores and report cards don’t illuminate the place from which we began, so we piece together your progress with memories of the little girl who was lost at school to give form to the path of your growth.
Your speech therapist was witness to your preschool precociousness. In her early memories I see you stomping through adventures with loud, messy footprints as you twirled noisily into the fun of discovery. Your words were delightfully backwards and your behavior was harmlessly resistant. I ran circles around your day dreams and might have had more luck lassoing the moon than containing the enthusiasm of your mischief. Over the years you’ve settled into your skin, honoring others’ expectations, but you’ve preserved the twinkle in your eye that accompanies each well-humored smile.
Your resource teacher could chart your consistently inconsistent performance with memories of old struggles and new confidence in the same way your social worker might acknowledge your tenderness for adversity in others and your tenacity in self-sufficiency. Among these friends I remember the doubts and fears of anxious tears against the contrast of beaming revelations of ability. In these memories I recall the shape of each accomplishment by the scale of the challenge behind us.
Others in our company knew you first as your brother’s little sister, a bright smile in the shadow of your big brother’s experiences. A personal counsel in matters of social norms who leaned pridefully and competitively into shared interests; guiding and following your brother’s attention with a sister’s mastery of familiar frustrations. In this context I could hear your footsteps chasing after your brother’s as you push your way into his experiences in search of your own accomplishments.
You were there in that meeting in so many different memories. The preschool firecracker and the fifth grade safety patrol seemed to wink at us from the perimeter of our protocol, chin up acknowledging the work of progress and the play of growing up. We were there to advocate in your absence, but every decision rang clear with your presence. We placed new challenges beside old supports and aligned ourselves to uncomfortable certainties for uncertain success.
I’m excited and terrified, inspired and cautious. This new beginning feels a little like starting all over again and I’m desperate to peek ahead to the next chapter for reassurance.
Love, Mom
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