to my son
February 19, 2015 § 4 Comments
Yesterday you noted the neighborhood children piling off the school bus and registered familiar faces with remorse. You shared a simple wish for a reset button, a second chance to go back in time and not make old mistakes. You thought that maybe then those children you always considered friends would invite you over and include you in their easy comradery.
For a moment the car was completely quiet. I quickly contemplated all the ways I would use such a button, the choices I would remake and the actions I might retract.
My first response was to honor the humility and self-awareness of your wish. I validated your emotions and shared my own remorse for the impossibility of time travel. Then, I reminded you that friendship is not so easily misplaced. You were looking to the gentler memories.
I didn’t share my memories; the gatherings I tolerated adults mocking your inconvenient fascination with batteries or unfortunate unauthorized appropriation of household and garage materials for play. I didn’t share the destruction their children had similarly imparted on our home or defend your impulse to create when left outside the circle of their children’s company. I thought I could pretend away the things that divided us as parents, to save you a place at their table. I still remember the sadness in your voice when you would ask for help on the routine occasions those same companions made you cry and the quick dismissal of your peers’ accountability as we dismissed ourselves prematurely from each invitation.
I cannot guide your wishes any more than I can undo what has passed, but I can inform your understanding.
Friendship doesn’t point fingers or turn its back. It doesn’t come and go to the lull of convenience; it accepts us as whole, filling in the broken places with kindness not criticism. Sometimes we miss the illusion of something familiar, forgetting with the luxury of time the uncomfortable pieces of casual harm. You haven’t lost the safety of friendship, strangers lost the privilege of your forgiveness.
This doesn’t ease the ache in your chest; you miss what was never really there with the fullness of genuine loneliness. Rather than looking behind you, look forward; your truest friends are those who stand beside you.
Love, Mom
it’s me, not you
February 18, 2015 § 2 Comments
There are days I am lonely for a misplaced friendship, acutely aware I have fallen out of the social graces of your company. Some days I whisper across the chasm between us, inviting a familiar smile or laugh; missing the sunlight of your enthusiasm and the effervescence of your chaos.
I thought I left because of you, but maybe it was me.
When we met I was outside my comfort zone and trying desperately to assume a role that did not fit. I was less myself and the surety of your confidence permitted me a place I could more easily disappear. Had I given my needs a more honest voice, we might still share conversations that don’t hint at forced politeness.
Instead I abandoned our friendship, consciously, with a passivity that was cowardly. Had I waded further into accountability and invested greater trust, I would be a better person in your life.
It must be acknowledged that our last year together was a horrible time for both of us, I offered only what I had to spare without trusting you might survive the burden of my grief. I waited for you to see my heartache, but I had stood too long in a place of silent acquiescence.
Some days the things I did not say sit against my tongue with a bitter aftertaste of remorse; I should have fought harder for the goodness between us. Instead I am carrying the sharp pieces of these lessons with greater consciousness, inviting myself in all my uncomfortable imperfection to each new relationship so that I am more present in my care.
It wasn’t you, it’s me.
purposeful accidents
January 10, 2015 § 5 Comments
Most days I count my blessings before my worries, naming first the companions that lend me strength and nourish hope. It is a preference I learned first from my mother who always guided my mindfulness towards a positive perspective with frustrating refrains of overly cheerful adages and stern reminders of worse misfortunes. In motherhood, my worries are the balance of my children’s joy.
Some days there is a loneliness for the fears that alienate me from the sisterhood of friends whose worries divide us with complicated languages of need. On these occasions, it is a gentler love that offers borrowed strength; a kind smile, shared laughter, or fleeting distraction that helps us tread the water of our worries until we are rested enough to hold our own heads a little further from the threat of drowning.
Some days, the friend is a familiar stranger. Today I am giving thanks for the company of friends who lend us perspective on impossible days.
This morning’s errand to my least favorite grocery store placed me solidly in the path of a woman I know by heart more than name. Our experiences in motherhood have gifted us a language of compassion and courage that inform possibility in the face of exhausting doubts. She is someone who speaks in a subtext of understanding that allows me to drop the armor of false bravery for a more tender authenticity.
To this woman I met by chance in a manner I will forever feel was orchestrated by an architect of fate,
thank you.
sharing secrets
January 9, 2015 § 2 Comments
There is a lovely message of friendship circling my facebook newsfeed; individuals inviting and accepting the challenge to create a commitment to kindness. A voluntary chain letter that promises generosity of friendship with anticipated acts of unexpected kindness.
I was first introduced to this concept last year when an old friend extended the invitation online. My response then was to challenge myself privately to embrace the spirit of my friend’s promise. It was in this vein that I talked my family into a road trip to celebrate the same friend’s birthday; it was the encouragement that buoyed me to take the uncertain first step in getting to know someone I admired and inviting a friendship of sincerity; is was even the borrowed bravery that allowed me to be present for a friend in the face of grief despite a longstanding discomfort that borders on fear of raw loss. The challenge was a catalyst for a perspective that invited greater commitment to relationships often procrastinated in the busyness of everyday care for family and home without compromising the integrity of prioritizing my husband and children before others.
What began in attentiveness evolved into something greater than a singular act, the momentum of kindness created a richer experience of friendship.
This year I would like to challenge others privately to extend kindness to strangers in the same way we offer kindness to friends. I won’t choose an ideal number of acts to perform or a timeline within which to demonstrate this secret conspiracy of kindness in word or deed. I wonder only what change we could inspire if we woke committed to creating an opportunity to practice kindness without an expectation of completion. It is a perspective of generosity that informs a more beautiful community and a more empowered image of self with greater mindfulness.
A secret worth sharing.
measure of joy
June 1, 2014 § 5 Comments
I am cautious in my exuberance. Academic accomplishments are celebrated with words of appreciation rather than gatherings or gifts. I try to center my attention on the progress of effort over accomplishment; careful not to foster an expectation of grandeur in my children’s minds. There have been so many moments of carefully contrived simplicity that I have begun to wonder if I am undermining the magic of more.
Recently I caught myself rebuffing the formal activities thoughtfully coordinated by my son’s middle school to celebrate graduation; a term I hold with reverence as an accomplishment better reserved for high school and college. The energy I exerted pushing against the tide of anticipation was exhausting and contradictory to the spirit with which I embrace spontaneous moments of celebration for everyday measures of joy.
I was tallying gestures of celebration in place of gratitude for countless experiences that lent immeasurable growth. These past three years have been substantial and this ending leaves a legacy of friendship and accomplishment far greater than academic markers. We have navigated crises with strangers who became friends and we have grown collectively into readiness for new challenges.
I cannot celebrate friendship so mildly for there is no greater gift. As we move through the celebration and ceremony of the coming week I am embracing with unmeasured exuberance the quiet enduring blessing of our community of friends and this chapter in our story. More words of thanks, more excuses to gather in celebration, more moments of appreciation for gifts that appear in our lives wrapped in everyday experiences.
to my son
January 3, 2014 § Leave a comment
I cannot count the days I have wished you greater compassion and friendship among your peers. On days you ached with a friend’s unkindness or a stranger’s ignorance I stood beside you marveling at the forgiveness and faith that would propel you into new experiences ripe with old challenges.
I wish I could say that my words in these moments give you peace or hope, but instead it is your actions that inspire me.
This year you befriended someone another may have overlooked or misunderstood. You didn’t extend a hand of friendship out of obligation or expectation, you saw in another’s smile a moment of joy and it was enough to give what you needed most. Humbly and gratefully you found what I could not give, learned what I could not teach.
Love you. Mom
threads of thanks
September 28, 2013 § Leave a comment
Motherhood has been a happy accident of intentional relationships; exceptional moments of kindness creating connectedness between strangers. This past week was freckled with moments of gratitude for familiar faces lending strength in smiles and new relationships threading themselves among the old inviting hope. Our story is a marriage of chance and intention sweeping across adversity towards possibility in conscious acts of friendship. We learn and teach in the company of individuals who share our days, some from afar and others walking beside us. In each image of friendship I recognize reflections of experiences I cherish and faith in a future shared.
This morning, as I linger over my coffee in a quiet corner of our home, I am casting a silent note of thanks for the kindness of strangers who have gifted me the company of friends.
extended family
June 23, 2013 § 2 Comments
This summer has been marked with friendship, my children’s and my own; the shadows of those we love filling our doorway and leaving smiles after goodbyes. Tonight we will gather friends who are family into our home. Unofficial grandparent figures who in moments of orphaned uncertainty, spontaneous celebrations, even mundane misadventures lend us the comfort of family.
These special souls are cornerstones in our children’s community, neighbors whose presence serve as silent reminders of days past. For one couple their home carries memories of my husband at our children’s ages, his stories and our children’s overlapping like seams of wallpaper. Further down the street and just around a corner lives another couple, compassionate souls who gift us acceptance despite complicated experiences. They know us in a rare and eclectic gathering of memories, one half simultaneously educator and friend. They are a home to which you find yourself knocking for a temporary distraction because there is something reassuring in their steadfast kindness.
Today while I plan for the evening ahead, I am thinking of the years of shared moments between our homes and giving thanks for family born of friendship.
wheels & wings
April 6, 2013 § 7 Comments
My husband and I used to talk in muted tones of wishes we dared not draw in permanent sketches, simple childhood exercises in play that seemed just outside our son’s ability. We watched other children peddle to our neighborhood park while our son’s bike sat like a mysterious relic misplaced and unused in the corner of our garage.
This week sunshine interrupted gray skies, stretching the days further into the evening. The school bell signaled play, the park and sidewalks clustered with children meeting beneath the sunshine into unhurried, animated conversations. I watched all of this unfold, no longer lonely for our son’s image among his peers. I had accepted his unique interests alongside the social challenges that accompany these moments, settling into the casual company of individual friends.
Yesterday our son asked to bike to our neighborhood park to play with his friends and I found myself re-sketching expectations, cautious and hopeful, but also uncertain. No longer elementary age, our experiences with neighborhood children carry a burden of complicated history. Friends have acted unfriendly, sometimes unintentionally and other times maliciously, our son included. They have erred collectively and the uncertainty of their kindness makes me question the certainty of their company.
We have given our son wheels, but not wings. The ability to play without the freedom of letting go. So long have I hovered over our son, navigating the unspoken language of play that I am intimidated at the suggestion of letting go and inviting harm. Aware that the months and years have led us to a moment when I should stand more confidently among experiences, I am instead uncertain. I can feel the harm behind my doubts as I hold our son within arms reach.
Today I am trying to gather the lessons we have outlined, remembering that the times we have accompanied our son in difficult moments were in preparation for footsteps that would fall further from our side. Trying to gather old hopes into new opportunities to be among friends as a friend, exceptionally normal moments on wheels and wings.
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