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
unpacking time
March 29, 2013 § 2 Comments
Stranded between loads of unfinished laundry, I have been sifting through images of our family vacation. Snapshots tickling smiles and sentiment for the experience of our time together; my mind drifting to the moments captured outside the lens of our cameras.
My expectations for family vacations are born more of literary experiences than childhood travels. I have traveled more as a mother than I did as a child. I have come to understand that uncomfortable, imperfect moments lend as much insight as humor to our collective memories. Our personalities, larger than our physical presence, crowded into the confined spaces of public transportation or hotel rooms nurture equal parts frustration and appreciation.
Our children have grown, no longer are they tucked passively into strollers or nestled safely in our arms. Too big to tether themselves to our hands at all times their eyes scanned the environment for their own interests while I still marked their presence, reassuring myself of their safety among congested streets and crowded landmarks. Occasionally their stubborn impetuousness contradicted my Rockwellian expectations and I would pause among the sites to marvel at my children with equal parts irritation and amusement.
My temperamental preteen would bemoan the discomfort of unending sightseeing on loud, exaggerated sighs only to welcome each crosswalk with a march as elegant as a great dane puppy tripping over awkward limbs. Watching my son balance his attitude with unguarded enthusiasm he was an enigma of contradictions, trapped between illogical indignation and immature amusement.
My daughter was both fearless and fascinated. She absorbed our new environment in wrinkled stacks of pamphlets and haphazardly scribbled notes. She surfed the subway, determined to overpower the force of the train’s momentum with outstretched arms and a broad smile. The youngest and often our son’s model for social norms, she was fiercely independent in a new setting unthreatened by the scale of the unknown.
None of this is a revelation. My children unfold into new stages daily, but outside the framework of our routines I paused to acknowledge the passage of time. As we settle back into the comforts of home, I am unpacking expectations and realizations alongside laundry and souvenirs. Emotions and sentiment cluttering my thoughts like the physical trappings of our vacation littering our home.
home & away
March 17, 2013 § 2 Comments
As our family vacation nears I am closing my laptop to settle my home and prepare to pack. The days before an adventure I attempt to anticipate each family member’s needs outside the space of our routines while simultaneously preparing simple comforts for our homecoming. I tidy cluttered corners of our home between washing linen and stacking colorful piles of clothing and miniature toiletries stowed in suitcases.
These days are a prelude to a time of rejuvenation, exploration, and connectivity. There is no call important enough to interrupt our time, no message or update newsworthy enough to infringe on our activities. We wander new places, sharing discoveries and collecting memories. We carry wish lists of sights and sample new foods, cloaked in the obvious invisibility of tourists.
We leave behind familiar comforts to explore the unknown, unhurried outside the daily obligations of home, work, and school only to return eager for the familiarity of our beds, the luxury of home cooked meals, and predictable rhythm of our routines. Today I am giving thanks for the blessings of home and the gift of tomorrows away, together. Saying a small goodbye, until we return.
ever after
February 25, 2013 § 4 Comments
A friend’s daughter is getting married and the first refrains of territorial claims over endless choices triggered memories of my own wedding. From the beginning my husband and I didn’t want a wedding, we were already planning for the family we had begun and our hearts and minds were full of bigger choices; houses and baby names dwarfed reception menus and song titles. Our day was crafted out of good intentions and false assumptions, the imperfect moments more true to life than the ceremony that bound us together.
Intentions and assumptions often distort the scale of our troubles. This morning our breakfast table tumbled out of harmony over spilled cereal. I can guarantee that each of the four members of our family experienced the morning’s discontent differently lost to their own perspective with the same certainty that I know weddings are not about flowers or cake.
We photograph the beautiful moments while learning most about one another in the uncomfortable moments. Anger and sadness are guards against tenderness when we are our most vulnerable. So often our holidays and anniversaries are laden with vulnerability stretched between expectations and intentions. In everyday moments responsibilities, fatigue, and miscommunication similarly create conflict.
Over the years, my husband and I have exchanged countless words. Most of them with less consideration than I poured into our vows. Emotional and honest, there is little poetry to these exchanges but they are the very foundation for where we stand.
Today, on the eve of our anniversary and following a morning tinged with chords of disharmony I am most grateful for the unspoken committment between us, the silent promises to weather difficult moments mindful of our good fortune. The awareness that as we look back at our greatest challenges in marriage and family, our footsteps are always close together.
perspective & planning
February 4, 2013 § 8 Comments
In a little over a week my husband and I will gather among teachers, therapists, administrators, and support staff for our son’s annual IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting to discuss his experiences this school year and create a new plan for the coming year. Each meeting over the past seven years has created new opportunities for our family to challenge ourselves to honor our son’s ever-changing needs, this year we are adding a new chair to our table of experts, requesting our son sit in on the process.
From the beginning I have honored our son’s unique perspective by bringing written representations of his experiences, created in his own hand, to these meetings. Drawings, lists, and letters have filled gaps in comprehension between observations. Conscious that each year our son grows more independent and that he will, one day, need to advocate as an adult for his education and eventually his career I have determined this step is essential to his journey. This decision comes one year after a difficult experience.
Last year we struggled as a team; teachers were without resources, the school was without strategy, and our son was lost to challenges that created an expectation of failure. My husband and I endeavored to create relationships with otherwise unfamiliar teachers and support staff without the reassurance of trust. No longer nestled in the familiar rhythm of our elementary school experiences we were overwhelmed. Every member of our son’s team reached for a lifeline that had to first be constructed with procedures that consumed time we didn’t have with mandatory requests, documentation, and extensive testing. Meanwhile our son showed up each day consciously drowning socially and academically in his educational experience. At the end of the struggle there was success, but the cost of lost time could not be regained.
This year I partnered more intentionally with teachers outside the neatly outlined expectations of formal documents, creating personal experiences that built confidence. We met with teachers before the school year began, exchanging introductions that allowed for questions and expectations while creating a relationship that lent itself to mutual trust; establishing an easy, fluid dialogue with teachers.
At all times our son carries with him the memory of failed experiences alongside success intimately, with a presence each of us as members of his team are second-hand witnesses to. Rather than plan around our son, I think it is time to invite him into the process.
Knowing our son is presently emotionally, intellectually, and verbally capable of expressing himself, but not yet mature enough to be in control of decisions concerning his supports I believe we are at a point where experiencing the formalities of the meeting will prepare him to engage in future meetings more confidently. This year he will make a verbal statement to personalize his experience and bring materials to take notes and record questions or concerns for a family conference after the formal meeting.
While we have always explained thoroughly each of our son’s supports, this year those decisions will be shared from the perspective of each individual team member rather than translated by us, after the fact, to the person central to our every discussion. I am eager and curious as we near the day, to see how this experience will inform our son’s understanding of his academic resources and for him to recognize the time and care invested by each individual that becomes a piece of a collective initiative.
It is a new step on a long journey and I am grateful for this opportunity to invite our son to walk beside us in preparation to move ahead more confidently into his future.
ramblings
February 3, 2013 § 4 Comments
The first keystrokes today are a blind search, easing into the undercurrents of my thoughts. Sifting through pieces of our family’s days, beneath the distractions, gathering the details of our story into a place of remembrance. This past week my fingers and thoughts have felt clunky and awkward, directionless. My mind and heart have been weighted by worries for those I love most.
We are standing in a place of transition and the growing pains that accompany discovery have made me more sensitive to our collective vulnerability. My husband’s brow is creased with worries and his eyes bright with hope for career changes that hint at a promise of greater possibility. My daughter is on the edge of academic accomplishment, her efforts often mismeasured by irrelevant gauges. My son is slowly assuming greater responsibility in advocating for his needs academically and socially; reaching out into the uncomfortable intersection of awareness and need uncertain how his requests for assistance will be met by those individuals, friends and teachers, who are central to his success at school.
Even as I try to neatly summarize this moment, grasping tightly to the possibility nestled within uncertainty, I am aware these new experiences carry the emotional charge of daily disappointments stacked against the light at the end of the tunnel. I see my husband moving through joyless workday routines to provide for us, our evenings as a family a small reprieve from the disappointment of his days. My daughter struggling to master reading and math skills discouraged by the ease with which her peers seem to exercise knowledge she demonstrates more slowly, swallowing her own disappointment beside those who flaunt the ease of the task at hand. My son seeking friendship and trying to please others by following social rules that are often contradictory in their logic; too often tangled in another’s joke, hurt and yet determined to remain a part of his peers’ play.
In the weeks ahead my husband will learn if a new career opportunity will provide greater stability and inspiration, while he goes through the motions of life as is. Our daughter will make slow steps towards progress, her potential greater than her classroom demonstrations, frustration accompanying her dedication. Our son will sit beside teachers and support staff helping to outline the education plan that will inform other’s of his daily needs, speaking for himself while other’s speak of him.
Individually, and together, we must believe in our capacities to create our own destinies while navigating the challenges that exaggerate our fear. As a wife and mother I will be in the background lending encouragement and love while holding my breath, my heart and nerves stretched to encompass the fears and anticipation that accompany uncertainty. In quieter moments I will tap away at my computer keys to mark our path, capturing fragmented moments alone with my thoughts.
main characters & supporting roles
January 29, 2013 § 5 Comments
My daughter has been home, under the weather, our normal school day routines replaced with restful inactivity. Yesterday the hours passed quietly as she slept through most of the day. Today her eyes alert and body sleepy I picked up a book title we had recently begun eager to fill the hours of the day and curious to follow our story to its end.
We met our main character, the story’s narrator and a big sister to a little brother with Autism, in the quiet darkness of bedtime. That first evening my daughter’s face registered surprise and comprehension.
Mom, her brother is like mine.
Her words were not accusatory but rather a statement of self. Through the wall of her room came my son’s voice volleying an equally firm statement:
He is nothing like me.
Main characters in their own shared story I was determined to meet my children in the middle, supporting each of them with a neutral acknowledgment that similarities allow for differences. Both children accepted this fortune cookie truth with a sense of validation.
The second night that we read from the book, my son was quiet. There were no arguments or defensive proclamations of self to distinguish himself from the young man in our story. I wondered at his silence, but resisted an urge to draw out his thoughts and emotions. Instead I let the story unfold between the wall that divided my children hoping that each child might hear one another’s voice in a shared story.
Today I allowed the quiet of our empty home to give my daughter room to speak between the lines of the main character’s story. In recent years the weight of looking after her big brother has created an awareness of imbalance between my children. On the most difficult days her needs are sometimes misplaced in the chaos of her brother’s behavior. Curled away in her art she waits for us to complete a teaching moment with her brother, a lesson that all too often she, his junior, has mastered.
This story seemed to create an exaggerated sense of normalcy for experiences that sometimes leave our daughter sensitive to the differences between her story and her friends’ experiences. Despite an unconditional love that binds each of us as family, there exists an unspoken subtext of secret wishes for simpler moments uncomplicated by needs outside our control. Even in the silence I could hear my daughter’s wish that her brother might out grow pieces of himself.
Today, without her brother listening in the dark from the other side of her bedroom wall, it was safe for my daughter to share words like embarrassed and angry without letting go of the word love. For just a moment, art imitated life, and we acknowledging our own stories as main characters with supporting roles.
new day
January 22, 2013 § 4 Comments
The day began with sleepy steps and hope. My son woke slowly, his long limbs curled beneath his comforter as if he were hiding from responsibilities, silently petitioning his dreams for more time. My daughter woke achingly tired after a night spent wrestling the discomfort of a cold; her floor littered with tissue snowballs. My husband woke eager for a new experience, his nerves and hopes as crisp and tangible as his carefully orchestrated attire.
Today each member of my family woke needing a particular measure of space. My children needed space alone, one to wake and the other to fall back to sleep. My husband needed space to prepare for a step he has been anticipating anxiously for some time. I moved among each loved one gauging needs and guiding them into the day. One to school, one to bed, the other toward opportunity.
As the house settles into quiet I will wait for my family’s path to wind back toward home where goodbyes and hellos intersect and our hopes and dreams collect in the space between us.
to my son
January 16, 2013 § 11 Comments
In the earliest days of motherhood I marked your milestones on calendars, each independent accomplishment was cause for celebration. No one cautioned me that there would come a time when acts of independence would create moments of conflict – joy for your competence and loneliness for the company of your tiny hand forever tugging me along.
Over the years small exercises in independence, natural lessons of choice and consequences have created an awareness that accompanies you in my place. You were intended to let go of my hand and move ahead of me as you create your own path. When loneliness challenges joy, I use that free hand to applaud your strength so that I do not interrupt your progress.
In those moments when I do block your path, it is not an absence of faith for your strength that informs my action, but rather old habit. The murky gray social experiences that we have always navigated together have made me accustomed to interpreting the chaos of the world around you. There is never a question of your ability or character; you are foremost kind and curious, you have a goodness that is pure and solid.
At twelve you still believe in things you cannot see, but you question the decisions of adults whose actions contradict their words. Your opinions are unbending and unapologetic, you have not learned to form yourself into other’s expectations. Your interests are solitary but you give friendship generously with complete loyalty. Even when you brace against a boundary with sharp words or challenge an expectation with a choice, you explain yourself before apologizing – trying to create understanding while acknowledging others’ feelings.
Your father and I in our uncool, sometimes authoritarian rule, impose ourselves on your day exercising our right to claim your time and mandate behavior. We hug you when you feel too big, dictate actions, and question your decisions even as we permit you freedom to fail. For a child that sometimes struggles with social inconsistencies we are creating contradictory expectations of independence and submission.
Here’s a secret: we have forgotten much of our adolescence and we are new to parenting an adolescent. We are forever making choices for the adult we hope you will be while trying to honor the little boy you were. Somewhere in all of this we are getting to know the boy in between who is finding his way. On the days it seems we do not understand and that we are hopelessly unfair, I hope you also see the hands that are forever reaching out to guide and applaud as you find your way in the space between our expectations and your own ambitions.
Love, Mom
du jour
January 13, 2013 § Leave a comment
Over the years our children’s food preferences have shifted, open-minded experimentation has faded into short-sighted favorites. Most of the animated anxiety over dinner time offerings suggests an undercurrent of self-awareness. I don’t like that a statement of self hidden in criticisms of my culinary offerings.
I would love to say that in a zen-like consciousness it was I who created a solution, but in fact I was lost to the struggle for control over mealtime mumblings. Tired and uninspired by the chorus of complaints that met each meal I missed my cue. It was my husband who recognized an opportunity to shift the weight of responsibility and invite a new experience to our table. He proposed that once a week we would plan and prepare a meal as a family; from choosing the menu to grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning.
Yesterday morning we introduced this new expectation, beginning with selecting a meal so that we could inventory ingredients to create a grocery list. For this particular meal there were fewer opportunities for each child to participate in preparation, something we will have to amend next time, but I was pleased to note the division of responsibilities between children. Where our son helped shop for ingredients and prepared the table, our daughter cleaned up every last dirtied dish wrestling the heaviest of cookware.
At day’s end there were only questions rather than complaints. I wonder if this change would be consistent or sporadic, the enthusiasm contagious or fleeing? Could the initial division of tasks represent individual interests? I am curious for the weeks to follow and inspired by new opportunities to share a meal with my family.
scribblechic 