breaking bad
August 29, 2015 § Leave a comment
Living in close quarters, without familiar comforts, we explore new choices with a mindset of possibility. Of course, it would be almost as easy to dwell in frustration for lost conveniences, but for our family the days of mindfully navigating suspended normalcy in the temporary space of our hotel habitat have led to fewer bad habits.
We’re offline more, impulse eating less, exercising consistently and resting consciously. Budgeting food costs with attention to problem solving around nutritional needs has pushed us to more consciously consider when and what we eat. Given the physical limitations of our temporary home, we are similarly hesitant to invite snacks that might draw smaller visitors and so we have avoided the temptation to over-indulge in restless boredom. More often we leave our overlapping living space to explore our new community or unwind at the pool.
The novelty of a pool has become an important part of our transition. We play as a family and we sleep more thoroughly despite the distractions of our surroundings. Television and hand-held entertainment offerings have been replaced by a dollar store pool ball that volleys between us over evening hours.
Our days end quickly with sleepy limbs and full bellies until we begin again the next day with a now familiar cold breakfast courtesy of a small convenience. Without our tech savvy home and oversized kitchen, we are sated by a simpler offering. Less is genuinely more. The minimalist mentality of a more mindful appreciation for needs in place of wants is something I hope we unpack into our new home.
To break bad habits with new attentiveness for the simpler luxury of change and choice.
to my family
August 24, 2015 § 2 Comments
Today was the first day of school. We moved through awkward morning routines with a tenderness for tradition, laughing our way through nervous energy to break up the quiet of our doubts. In all the anxiety of change, we’ve found a gentler peace in one another’s company.
Over the past week we have simplified the space of family. Days spread across boxed corners of a house crowded into storage; evenings gathered around the table of friends who nurture us with kindness; dwindling summer days straddled between play and preparations. Home is a mindset of togetherness, a place of belonging that shelters us through change.
There is a certainty of sentiment, a comfort in the intangibility of tradition. Milestone photographs to mark this day were tempered by a silly appreciation for the comedy of our surroundings. We are living from suitcases in want of nothing more than time together. Breakfast balanced on hotel furnishings and a bathroom to share are small sacrifices for pool playdates and complimentary cookies.
This morning we expected to feel uncertain and the imperfect wisdom of this assumption created room enough for us to lean into our insecurities with a collective confidence. We’ve become more comfortable with the unknown, more certain of ourselves and one another.
As the school clock swings a neatly postured arm toward dismissal, I am eager to unpack the day’s events for markers of new adventures to come. Snapshots that spool around our words into a place of home.
stress & sacrament
August 9, 2015 § 2 Comments
In marriage there are milestones that bring occasions for unhappiness and invitations to greater intention. Change is a great catalyst for conflict, it takes the silence of things unsaid and ratchets them into a language of assumption. We see one another through a lens that is sometimes informed more by our own understanding than another’s intention; hurt feelings that misconstrue a purer language of love.
I feel this more tenderly as my children grow into their own expressions of friendship and family; forgiveness and trust. We bring to new relationships the lessons we first exercised at home, respectful disagreements and fierce independence. Of all my failed endeavors the greatest is to consistently model understanding over error; communication over blame. It is an imperfect intention.
My husband and I come to our marriage by way of family relationships in which we were constantly held to unrealistic standards and unkind criticisms. My father and his parents. For us there is a rhythm to our conflict; misunderstanding that breeds defensiveness which guards against openness. Later an inevitable tenderness that informs a more patient dialogue.
Mutually stubborn and equally wounded we have a tendency to speak before listening.
Most recently, long days of physically demanding tasks and the emotional pressures of financial decisions antagonized by family stressors has created a minefield of misunderstanding. Some days we hear and speak with the experience of our childhood conflicts before we remember the language of a healthier wisdom shaped by the values of own marriage and family.
In the week to come there will be moments we exhaust ourselves physically and emotionally to the point of conflict, in these moments I hope we can find a quiet place to lay down our defenses and demonstrate a gentler example of strength and kinder language of love. Temporary stress tempered by the sacrament of a deeper faith in each other. To model for our children and gift to one another a more compassionate lens for understanding.
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
in pictures
July 30, 2015 § 6 Comments
It is a curious thing to pack away memories and leave behind tangible pieces of our past. Yesterday I moved in circles around photographers, cleaning even as they navigated our rooms; remembering moments one cannot see in photographs, evidence lost in clean coats of paint and finished flooring.
Gone is the tiny black insect my daughter inked into a small dent in the hall stairway and the crooked lines of a secret safe sketched into the wall of her closet. No one is the wiser where little fingers dipped into the lacquer of a newly sealed plank of wood to drag an invisible smiley face against my husband’s wishes or where toddler toes tracked paint primer beneath finished floors.
Gone are the traces of crime scene chalk outlines covered by wooden floors and the indentation of a dismantled sandbox. The prideful markings of our children’s heights that once scaled our kitchen door frame, an evolution of handwriting in contrasting colors, has since been erased by a an overworked paintbrush and only our climbing tree knows it was my husband who, in his childhood, curled its branch into a handle that our children would one day grasp.
The images we see in glossy advertisements for home are an edited version of the truth; beneath the polished exterior of cleverly articulated interiors sleeps a life in pictures we cannot so easily photograph.
to my mother-in-law
July 28, 2015 § 2 Comments
There was a time your unkind messages would break my spirit and twist my thoughts into acts of defensiveness and guarded injury. I would speak your harm in confidence to those I trusted with my feelings to illuminate untruths and fortify my spirit with the love you did not have to give.
It was important, then, that others understand my experience. Over the past year it has become more important that your words do not define my identity as your daughter-in-law. I want my love for my family, your son and grandchildren, to be larger than your illness and so I no longer speak your unkindness as evidence of our wellness.
I will not share your messages in writing or speech, they are irrelevant to my truth. To share them would be to harm you and I fear you are wounded enough.
Instead, I wish you well; that you will find peace and heal. That there is time enough in your life to become the person you might have been and not the unhappy reflection of so much discontent.
Marie
guarding joy
July 12, 2015 § Leave a comment
During these early days we have held our news cautiously among only a few close family and friends. My mother, our children, family friends who are unofficial grandparents to our children, and old friends from before we became a family. When I look back on this time, I want to remember the outpouring of love and positive words that marked this transition. The generosity of this kindness has made our work a happier endeavor and for that I will be ever grateful.
As more friends return from summer vacations and calendar dates invite occasions to share our news, I am hopeful we can sustain this space of positivity for our children as we celebrating this new chapter of our story.
Both children will be navigating complicated conversations cluttered with difficult emotions. I cannot control the impossibility of unanticipated goodbyes any more than I can predict the uncertainty of our welcome into a new neighborhood of strangers; both invaluable lessons in navigating the unpredictable. For now I am encouraging both children to lead with a smile and listen with tenderness, to guard their joy in a way that creates an expectation of enthusiasm that allows others to follow their example.
by the book
July 12, 2015 § Leave a comment
Today we began the process of packing. Everyone woke eager to begin and so we dove into the nearest starting point, the fireplace cabinets. Behind each set of doors were shelves of books, well-loved and, some, long forgotten. Both children quickly fell into old stories while I created piles and folded empty boxes into shape.
I am practical above sentiment, but these pages of beloved characters were nearly impossible to sort. In the end each child was given two boxes each to fill, another box to share between them. I packed one of my own with room enough for picture books I could not yet part with.
Soon after we sifted through games and crafts without the same tenderness with which we struggled over book titles; old friends bound lovingly for their new home. The remaining titles were thoughtfully distributed among friends as parting keepsakes, a few stragglers reserved for strangers.
Full corners filling empty boxes, a slow beginning to a new chapter.
to my children
July 12, 2015 § Leave a comment
Tonight your father and I shared our news. We sat over a meal, not rushing the moment. Our telling was brief, we presented it only as fact; without choices or excuses.
There was no anger, only thoughtful questions and emotional responses; tears and well measured logic that quickly turned to enthusiasm.
I could not be more proud of your genuine response or mature questions. I admire the way you sought answers and were unapologetically fragile in the transparency of your feelings.
You were both exceptionally kind, quick to consider our feelings and to worry over your friends’ responses. You determined this was news best shared in person and cause for a goodbye gathering.
Thank you for making a difficult moment, a cause for celebration. For leaping with us into this new unknown.
Love, Mom
thief of comparison
July 5, 2015 § Leave a comment
In the time between falling in love with a new house and returning home for goodbyes, I have begun critiquing our choices with measures of comparison; the work of settling one home over the familiar comforts of another.
There is a temptation in comparison to contort fact with sentiment, filtered imperfections misconstruing truth. I find myself grieving pieces of my old home as if they always existed without the discomfort of change. For today I want to remember the effort beneath our comfort.
Wooden floors that were a patchwork of progress over years of divided attention, have become an assumption. I have forgotten the progress of change as I compare carpeting and wood grain.
Floor plans and color palettes, choices made permanent by the cost of change, have been distorted by familiarity. We are not loosing a larger space, we are gaining preferences lost in the extensive expenses of a past design.
Our yard, only newly an oasis, was first an unused, overgrown forgotten space that we thoughtfully carved into our favorite escape. It was a lengthy labor of love. It is also an overwhelming commitment.
The house we made our home was never our ideal; it was a product of concentrated efforts to remap a choice we regretted into something we came to love.
This thief of comparison is an unkind friend. I am choosing to remember the work behind our choices and the truth of old regret uncluttered by nostalgia as we create new lists for settling another house into a home.
I will no longer look at naked windows without seeing an opportunity to dress our rooms with warmth. I will sketch trees upon an empty yard to mark our years together. Mindful planning and cautious budgeting.
It is a time to center my thoughts between appreciation for what I’ve known and gratitude for what will come; learning and exploring a new space with the wisdom of old experiences. No longer stealing joy or inviting doubt with unfair comparisons.
scribblechic 