bent pages
October 7, 2016 § 1 Comment
I want to dog-ear this day, to gently balance the pages of this week so that the story will unfold where I left off when I have time enough to write. It has been a week of lost hours and seemingly endless days.
In all the unexpected worry and delight there have been sturdy truths that lent care; no matter the burden of the day’s demands there was always time enough to be still and find joy.
This is what I want to hold closely as we unravel into the weekend, mindfulness and gratitude.
around here
August 29, 2016 § Leave a comment
The past week has been one of hopeful change, individual growth and familiar routines. Our children have settled into their school days and I’ve recognized new efforts at independence and accountability.
Our son is navigating complicated course material, struggling with doubts and nurturing his confidence with frustrated efforts at self-care. He’s asking for help, expressing worries, taking time to pause between assignments to connect at home and reach out to friends. It is an imperfect practice of resilience, but he’s gaining greater control over academic and emotional challenges.
Meanwhile our daughter is becoming more independent at home, taking greater care of her self and the space she consumes. She’s accommodating new expectations and seeking greater responsibility. Demonstrating small gestures of appreciation that communicate a greater awareness for those around her.
While our children are moving more independently through change, my husband and I are honoring time together; exploring new bike trails and swapping recipes while we draft ideas for our home and schedule plans for the year to come. Without the toxic behaviors of extended family, we’ve settled into gentler practices of parenting that more genuinely express the values and goals we share for our future.
Collectively, we’re nestling further into our community even as we gather quietly around simple family dinners; celebrating old friendships even as we cultivate new relationships.
mindful distraction
August 25, 2016 § 3 Comments
This summer has been a season of intentional distraction and meditative mindfulness. Choosing to move against the grain of familiar comforts for purposeful discovery and greater connectivity as a family.
I let the laundry gather, the beds rest unmade, meal times draw later. I set aside my laptop and pen for my camera, loosing myself in a different lens.
We wandered further from our new home, long hikes and touristy distractions. There were no extravagant vacations, no elaborate wish lists or daily demands. Only a promise of presence in togetherness.
Our children looked past landmarks to discover love letters carved in old wooden bridges and beautiful stones along unfamiliar paths. We mapped our days by destination, loosing track of time as we sought magic with each small adventure.
As the school year demands we readjust our leisure for a more regimented practice of individual endeavors, I’ve been working to recognize opportunities for continued consciousness. Making new plans to reserve time for a greater practice of discovery and celebration for small moments. Together.
A gentler appreciation and more purposeful joy.
misplaced memory
August 6, 2016 § 4 Comments
A while back I wrote on the loss of a special piece of paper, something carefully crafted to preserve a sentimental corner of our old home to weight our new home with familiarity. It was the growth chart we had carefully tallied against the door frame between our kitchen and laundry room. Small lines in varying penmanship that marked the passage of time in the progress of height.
Last week, as I vacuumed an overlooked corner of our home, the previously presumed lost piece of paper was found.
Even as I held the list, my mind argued the impossibility of its reality against the fiction of my memory’s certainty. I could replay my error like scenes from a movie that rolled slowly from frame to frame. The folded piece of notebook paper that I plucked from beneath our charging station; admonishing myself for safe keeping something I had not, for weeks, recalled referencing. I labeled it unimportant and shuffled in among so many other displaced items as I breezed through in a moment’s urgency to sweep away the chaos of clutter.
I can still feel the grit of dust and the course chafing of paper against my fingertips, the irritation that ruffled my patience. The satisfaction of crumpling my frustration in the a tidy ball and, later still, the sense of loss that I had been so reckless in my dismissal. The urgency with which I had mentally retraced my steps, unfolding a page and mourning dates and names that guarded a sense of us that could not be translated from numbers to words.
Only, my memory is wrong. The evidence rests in a piece of paper that tells another story. Old lines on new walls now guard the past with presence.
Which makes me wonder of the page I was so certain of. There are no other numbers I have missed, papers I cannot place. Maybe it was nonsense rightfully recycled into waste, but the exercise in mindfulness was not lost to error.
to market
June 24, 2016 § 4 Comments
Maybe it was the predictable pattern of beach days or the sudden breeze that pulled at loose ends and shuffled my sense of order, but yesterday found me gathering the kids into a different direction as we headed to our local farmers market.
Crowded sidewalks with broken lines and overlapping conversations trailed behind us like small children with sticky fingers. Fresh produce and artisan baked goods bookending handmade gifts and overpriced lemonade. We ate curled into shade to avoid hot park benches and window shopped air conditioned offerings.
Colors like street performers created a riot of music that drew the eye pushing us through currents of congested shoppers. We sampled and explored until our bellies were full and the sun slanted against our backs, each child lost to an unexpected treasure and eager for silence.
disappearing acts
June 22, 2016 § 2 Comments
It has been thirteen days since we first disappeared beneath the sun. If I am absent among my words, I am more present in the minutes given to conscious distraction.
Weekend meals with old friends stick to weekdays stretched across an almost empty beach. I have fallen in and out of new books and squandered an afternoon among dreams.
Time feels both endless and fleeting as days blur and minutes unwind in extravagant simplicities. Watermelon cubed and chilled pasta salad, white bread that presses pleasantly in hurried bites; sunset dinners and afternoon ice cream cones.
My tidy list of summer promises and curiosities sits forgotten beneath open faced books and notes that loop around fragmented wonderings. Calendar dates like photographs not yet developed.
one day
June 9, 2016 § 3 Comments
I spotted the beach last weekend and wondered if both children might discover a new sense of familiarity this first summer away from old routines. Each season since our move brings memories that awaken a disoriented contentment, a loneliness for something uncertain or a guilty exuberance over an intangible certainty. Home is a memory of something simultaneously old and still unknown.
I wanted only an hour of their time, without guarantee they might one day return. It was all I asked for – time enough to explore a new idea for possibility over permanence.
I suggested both children consider the unfamiliar beach an experiment and reinforced my encouragements by traveling light. Faded towels and hastily filled water bottles, sunscreen and a last minute football. No books that might stretch on through shifting sun patterns or sketchbooks that would demand extra care. No elaborate sand tools or snacks. I left the unused, inexpensive inflatable rings buried in my bag as a leftover intention from another day.
A gesture of optimism or guilty bribe.
The beach was quietly busy with comfortable stretches of space between clusters of children; room enough to bury our feet long past the edges of our towels without our conversations reaching our neighbors. Toddlers wielded clumsy shovels against misshapen castles and teenagers waded past the reach of adult reminders.
My children settled into a solitary excavation of distracted amusement. Hours fell comfortably like the sand that dried against our skin and I held my thoughts while stealing photographs of their uninhibited joy least they change their minds and ask that we return home.
In the end we stayed until the temperature threatened good sense, both children bartering our leave with promises to return. One day for another and more to come after. A new pattern emerging in the sand.
good & bored
June 6, 2016 § 3 Comments
Summer vacation has officially begun, but my calendar is long forgotten. Impromptu evenings with old friends and spontaneous indulgences bookend long days of sunshine squandered in a restless independence. These hours of curious emptiness are a season of their own.
Gone are the lost years of infant naps and toddler busyness, extravagant vacations or overly choreographed afternoons; it is a time of work and rest as we complete tasks and slip guiltlessly into distraction. This first week we labored, collectively, over enclosing our yard then slipped quietly into gentler distractions.
Both children have begun resting later into the morning and playing at old interests; exploring new spaces and toying with creative endeavors. In their contentment my husband and I have had time enough to linger, together, between the bustle of booths at a farmers market, but also to delight in stolen moments of easy confidence with each child, separately.
I am planning less, moving beneath the sun in search of active stillness and cool pockets of shade. It is a time of searching without ambition and delighting in uncommonly beautiful discoveries. A season that invites boredom for the magic of exploration.
fenced in
June 2, 2016 § 2 Comments
My husband and I have been a bit off, short on patience and disconnected. We jump from irritation to assumption, quickly without looking for the best.
Mostly, we were just tired and distracted. Busy and empty.
Then, we took on a project. As the homes adjacent to our property sold, we recognized a timely need for a fence. Months of our pup commandeering neighboring yards had us worried about alienating strangers with unfortunate bathroom breaks.
So, with lots of space between us, we built a fence around us. Together.
It began with help. Someone stronger than me to balance my husband’s muscle as they set about hefting an auger through feet of clay; establishing space for concrete footings. The days that followed were long days under an unforgiving sky. Tedious work timed to weather forecasts and threats of impending rain.
That first day I began anticipating my husband’s steps and working ahead of his requests. It’s something we don’t often do.
As parents of older children and adults with divided responsibilities, we’ve moved past the early days of courtship. We rally in moments of celebration and appreciation, frustration or harm, but the uneventful days can be overshadowed by a self-centered rote performance of needs with fleeting respites to indulge wants.
We move through meals and household tasks, errands and a myriad of responsibilities without much thought for offers to help or opportunities to ask. Beneath a burdensome sun and under a time restraint, with an end in sight and physical pieces that needed assembly there was an easy assumption of shared effort and an immediate demand for partnership.
My husband and I took the opportunity to voice messages of appreciation as we exercised grater patience in partnership. At day’s end we’re more understanding of each other’s sore muscles and tender emotions, our own strength and the generosity of one another’s help.
Insofar as this is a journal of our days, it must also be said that our children have matured into their own place of partnership in these memories. Our son shouldering greater responsibility to physically demanding tasks and our daughter growing into more independent efforts to assist with practical necessities. Each offering help without hesitation or expectation of acknowledgment.
full circle
May 27, 2016 § 2 Comments
This morning both children paused patiently to accommodate an end-of-the-year photograph. Long after the bus had delivered them to their last day of school, I was drawn to the image; remembering a photograph from their first day this past August.
In both pictures our son looks rooted to an easy confidence in complete uncertainty. That first fall morning he did not yet have a class schedule for his new school, but he was undaunted. Today, despite lingering anxiety over final exams, he stood unhurried in a moment of delayed sentiment for the significance of the moment.
The greater difference was our daughter.
Leaning against our son this morning, our daughter had shed the tender discomfort of last fall. In August she stood burdened with supplies she held tightly in a backpack pressed securely to her chest; an armor of necessity to ward off sadness and uncertainty. Today her posture was open, unguarded; a genuine mess of ease. The baseball cap that has become her signature accessory and her binder slung haphazardly, cutting the length of her torso as she leaned into a playful posture of amused contentment.
We’ve come full circle, but it’s so much more than milestone photographs and school year celebrations.
Our children are settling into their new community, making our house a home, but they are also becoming more of themselves. This past year they have settled into discomfort in a way that has demanded they look inward for a sense of self they might have previously found in others.
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