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.
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.
moments & mementoes
July 15, 2015 § Leave a comment
Recently my errands have provided a retail outlet, a brief reprieve from packing for the pleasure of brightly stacked, neatly organized objects that promise a sense of order and beauty with a small, indulgent purchase. I’m tempted by something tangible, until I remember the boxes and bags of beautiful nothings that have so recently found new homes as we minimize our belongings to ease the work of moving.
There were inexpensive toys, embarrassing bribes and impulsive indulgences; pretty accessories forgotten in the simplicity of our preferences; luxury items stored carefully for a day that never came. These items were once neatly packaged promises of surprised delight, messages of care and celebratory keepsakes; few still carry the enthusiasm or sentiment that informed their arrival in our home.
Yesterday I caught myself seeking out an object that might mark this moment of change and hope, a vessel to contain my excitement and hold a place of permanence. I greeted each object of possibility with a curious uncertainty, testing the colors and space in my mind’s eye as I tried to imagine a familiarity that felt too forced.
Today I’m thinking instead of beloved family pictures and framed letters in my children’s handwriting that will mark a place of new memories with old rememberings. I am pledging to postpone purchases, necessary and frivolous, until I unpack; to begin with what we have and supplement only after I am certain of our space.
I am hoping we, as a family, will spend less time seeking ways to fill our new home and more time shaping our time together with less. To live more mindful of the distinction between collecting moments and storing mementoes.
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.
changing places
June 27, 2015 § Leave a comment
It is an ongoing conversation, a place of home. The comfort of familiarity over the lure of possibility. The temptation to move tickles the quiet of our ease into an enthusiastic wondering. The balance of our uncertainties, little voices of worry dressed as practicalities, caution us against impulsivity.
I’ve been making spreadsheets of change for as long as I can recall; notebook paper scratches tallying choices into an accounting of probability. Almost every outward decision stems from an internal question of wants and needs, responsibilities and opportunities.
In motherhood I have come to list my children’s hopes and fears in the same space as my own. Inseparable and unequal, there is an imbalance of importance; like a hand that lingers too long against the scale until it is impossible to weigh the value of change. Do I guard my children’s fears more closely than their dreams? What of my own or my husbands?
Are we selfish in our wants or crippling in our protection? A lesson in change or an unnecessary experience of loss? Do we wait for life to pull us into change or march fearlessly by a map of our own design?
My children cannot imagine a home without their friends anymore than I can imagine never moving. In the same way they crave stability, I itch toward the temptation to explore.
For now our decision teeters between the freedom to choose for ourselves and the burden of choosing for our children. Drafting daydreams and counting excuses.
the work of joy
May 26, 2015 § 9 Comments
I think, too often, I anticipate joy will arrive in fleeting moments of superficial pleasure; something that acts upon me or interrupts the work of living. Some days I schedule excuses for joy, a cup of coffee with a friend or distracted escape into the pages of a new story. Yesterday pleasure came in measured efforts of work, tending to my home in tasks that I more often procrastinate.
Vacuuming the traces of a week’s busyness and pulling weeds that freckle my garden beds, washing my family’s clothes and sifting through cluttered paperwork were efforts that pushed against happier interruptions. It was only at day’s end that my muscles and mind relaxed into a content peacefulness that I recognized the work of joy; the purpose within pleasure that rewards effort.
Tomorrow I will undoubtably conjure new excuses to postpone those tasks I shuffle to the perimeter of my schedule, but for today I’m inspired to lean into the lingering places of neglect and dwell in a different sense of joy.
to my daughter
May 18, 2015 § 2 Comments
It is no secret that I abhor clutter; I am notorious for fussing over forgotten items interrupting the surface of my contentment. It would seem impossible then that I occasionally seek respite from the quiet of my days in the unapologetic chaos of your corner of our home.
Today I found myself willfully stranded in the center of your room, laundry in hand, marveling at the accidental harmony of your distraction. A newly acquired tissue paper jelly fish dangling curling ribbon tentacles neatly segmented your room vertically as it twirled beside a construction paper snowflake hung from your antique chandelier; a half-inflated pool float contorted just inside your closet like a clumsy, bloated acrobat. Your bedding is still crumpled as if I might find remnants of last night’s dreams in the folds of your duvet and misshaped fragments of paper litter your night stand with evidence of sleepy origami efforts. Miniature toys converge around impromptu Lego scenes, patterning your floor with stories while your desk is accidentally structured in want of mischief, your pens and scissors loyal soldiers guarding a space for play.
Illogical and passionate, fearlessly unconventional, it is the place in our home where the colors sound like your laugh and the stubborn contempt for order feels allowed. Here your treasures and curiosities speak loudly of your thoughts and I find myself forgiving the noise in want of your company.
In this island of disorder time stands still and sweeps in messy circles; stealing me from structure in a landslide of memories.
Love, Mom
picking & choosing
April 4, 2015 § Leave a comment
Fresh flowers are an intimate indulgence; inexpensive clusters of personal favorites a simple joy. I’m grateful for the luxury of this weekly whim of sunshine on my window ledge. The colorful distraction is a smile that pulls at my attention as I sweep through daily tasks. It is a small kindness to myself, a doting attentiveness for my home, an uninhibited appreciation for a modest beauty.
I am familiar in my choices; seasonally and sentimentally. Today, in anticipation of Easter, I lingered over the colorful exuberance of perky blossoms begging a broader canvas than the tightly packaged company of their neighbors. I hesitated between favorites seeking a color and bud that whispered of childhood Easter eggs and the sweetness of forgotten traditions; little girl bonnets and the stillness of Sunday service.
Then, I remembered my daughter’s face just yesterday as she swept through the front door with two bundles of carnations, contrasting shades of pink highlighting a prideful blush as she gushed over the care with which she choose her bouquets. They weren’t my choice and I promised myself a tiny concession; planning my morning errands to facilitate this moment among quiet friends.
Mentally I gathered my bundle, already nesting them in place in my mind’s eye. Juggling vases and rearranging. My choices kept drifting to my daughter’s blooms, trying stubbornly to compliment her choice with my own. I saw her disappointment as I rearranged and suddenly my choice was more complicated.
I recognized my daughter’s unpretentious heartiness in the carnations’ blossoms. I heard the same language of care and choice, celebration and ceremony that are quiet hallmarks of our home. This Easter I am choosing my daughter’s expression of beauty and creating a new memory, honoring the care with which she made her choice and the joyful practice of picking flowers.
secret keepers
March 18, 2015 § 4 Comments
We bought my husband’s childhood home, begrudgingly; overpaying at the expense of our pride. It was a decision layered with gestures of false generosity and cautious hope, like the wedding we did not want, we acquiesced to parental requests in an effort to please. Our home, our wedding, and the years of silence all payment for a peace that never came.
My husband could not live among his memories; truths that are not mine to share but read a sad tragedy, an impossible fiction of reality. He moved doors and ripped out dry wall, tore up the floors and built new walls; still the secrets reside like scars hidden in fresh coats of paint. No amount of windows or light can disperse the ghosts who haunt our joy; flesh and blood they move among new boundaries with old demons.
We build a life around these secrets, with the wisdom of a professional who guards these truths and family friends who stand witness to old harms and new, releasing us from the burden of someone else’s unhappiness. They stand witnesses to the past we do not name out of respect for those we love but cannot live with. Guardians of the past, the secret keepers who remember even as we struggle to forget.
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