conveniently troublesome
March 13, 2017 § 9 Comments
Our daughter’s school trip utilized social media for the purpose of sharing photographs with parents and permitted cell phones for communication, time (in place of a watch), and camera use. When they first outlined these details in the family pre-travel meeting, my daughter was uninterested in bringing a phone. My husband and I suggested she use her phone for photographs but resist the temptation to check in with us. To disconnect from her phone and connect with her environment.
In the same meeting we listened to humorous anecdotes of previous trips, parents calling the chaperones to ask questions based on social media snapshots of the trip. My husband and I laughed along with the collective amusement of the other parents at the obvious interference of helicopter parents and pledged not to disrupt our daughter’s exercise in independence.
Then, our daughter left home and early online images of her trip challenged our conviction. Looking at the social media snapshots of our daughter’s first day, I wondered such insignificant worries. Why are some chaperones so much more thoughtful in their documentation, while our’s appears lacking. Other times I would catch the corner of my daughter’s image and wonder if she were warm enough, tended to.
The pictures were inconsequential to my daughter’s experience and their value disproportionate to my doubts.
It is a strange disparity in pictures. The stories we tell ourselves and the meaning we infer. This age of hyper-connectivity invites unwelcome comparison and worry. These conveniences meant to lend comfort, invite opportunities for troublesome interference and undermine the illusion of independence our children need for maturity.
Modern conveniences let us meddle in a way that sabotages mindfulness with a distortion of truth. At the end of the second day it took every ounce of willpower not to pepper my daughter with reminders, to use the information I had been given to assume and infer, interrupt and instruct.
Today I’m celebrating the invitation to succeed with an imperfect practice of patience. Setting aside the stories I’ve created for my daughter’s photographs, to better fill in the space of her absence with the stories she tells face to face. Honoring the spirit of our first instructions with actions, disconnecting online to reconnect in realtime.
to my daughter
March 12, 2017 § 2 Comments
Saying goodbye, as you prepared for your first trip without us, was almost too easy. The effervescent enthusiasm of your anticipation was contagious. You were eager to leave; waking hours too soon, ready to take flight.
It was barely after one in the middle of the night when you woke me, draped in a blanket and wide awake. Worried you had overslept and ready to begin an adventure, you were restless. You curled up beside me, completely unable to sleep, perpetually checking the time and losing the struggle to silence with fragmented bursts of disconnected chatter.
When at last I conceded the hopelessness of sleep, you raced efficiently through your morning routine. It was, perhaps, the first time all year you were untempted to play when there were tasks undone.
At school, as the groups of families gathered for goodbyes, you bounced between friends and raced through impatient hugs. I tenderly and with great amusement remembered the little girl who clung so tightly to my legs each morning of kindergarten drop-off. Gone was the hesitation that informed an uncertainty, in its place a fierce independence.
It is as it should be and so your father and I were pleased when you messaged us late your first afternoon away that you missed us, but only a little.
Soon we will sift through photos of your school trip, a visit to a place we once traveled as a family. I’ve been peeking at old images in your absence, lost in the space of so many changes. The shape of your smile as you’ve grown further into yourself and the lingering traces of an essential self that sparks humor with a twinkle in your eye.
I wish for only a moment, to be your companion on this trip; to share your awe and gather your wit. Instead I am contentedly eager to be the recipient of your stories. To save you a place of homecoming.
Love, Mom
last month
March 11, 2017 § 4 Comments
February lingered unwritten in my memories; a month misplaced.
There was an unhappy argument whose sadness I dragged through unremarkable days, counting the hours until sleep. Not quite prepared to name my emotions, I would draft the day to dog-ear my thoughts; folding a corner of my attention over complicated emotions.
It was an unexceptional argument, but one that weighed on my thoughts and kept my spirit hemmed in. I couldn’t shake the tenderness and so I distracted myself with routine responsibilities, new book titles, and fresh air.
It was almost a week before I unfurled myself from caution and even then I was reserved in my joy. I had only just begun to relax into the luxury of a rare school day off from work, savoring the sweetness of unhurried errands, when our daughter returned home heavy-hearted over the unexpected resignation of a favorite teacher.
My own unhappiness had waned enough to absorb the balance of our daughter’s disappointment and I was reminded of a favorite quote by Ray Bradbury: We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
It was a month of filling our cups and then spilling beautifully.
A day after our daughter’s teacher resigned brought another abrupt goodbye. Again my husband and I sat with our daughter, listening while she wrestled the emotions that accompany people leaving us unexpectedly without reason or closure. Days later we would revisit the language of change as we scheduled classes for the coming school year.
This time it was our daughter drafting unexpected changes, setting expectations and expressing greater independence as she outlined class requests and the logic behind her decisions. Some of the choices begged patience enough to empower our daughter with something Brené Brown calls an “inspired yes,” giving our daughter ownership of her schedule and accountability for her goals.
Then, with all the ceremony of adolescent milestones, our son began wearing braces while our daughter prepared for her first long distance trip away from home. It is a season of change, unexpected endings and new beginnings. The days are longer, but the hours fuller.
Maybe this is why I miss writing most, time stands still long enough to capture a memory as we spill the beautiful moments of ordinary lives into words.
to my daughter
February 9, 2017 § 5 Comments
Tuesday someone treated you unkindly, a new harm in a recent series of unhappy events. This experience of manipulative acts of mean spirited aggression is not new.
The first time you saw a child mistreated, it was your brother. Standing up and speaking out you held everyone accountable to their words and choices. Later you would do the same for classmates when peers were unkind.
It was in elementary school that you learned telling an adult did not insure safety, sometimes it emboldened the aggressor with a language of entitlement and misunderstanding by explaining away unkindness with empty platitudes.
It happened at the playground, in the lunchroom, after school in organized activities, and in living rooms between neighbors.
Generic statements of kids will be kids and vague I’m sure they didn’t mean it. Instructions to turn the other cheek or forgive and forget. We quiet the words that call us to action because they make us uncomfortable.
I failed, too.
When other parents didn’t want to talk about bad behavior, I smiled away the harm with polite silence. Other times I named the unkindness but failed to hold other adults accountable outside our conversations. I let discomfort create a passive permissiveness, but you haven’t.
This week, in the face of unkindness, you voiced your value and insisted on respect. Even when tears threatened to fall and your voice wavered, you knew your worth and you didn’t disappear into polite silence.
You said that it’s not okay to treat others unkindly. Period.
I wish I could say that things will get better, easier, but I can only tell you that it gets harder to stand up for yourself once you settle for silence.
Love, Mom
practice
February 8, 2017 § 7 Comments
Today the sky emptied its clouds of delicate flurries that made the world feel new and I relished the promise of those first footprints scattered across a perfect canvas. I was reminded of January’s resolve.
So much of creating an intention for the year is inviting conscious action to hopeful expectations with small goals. The first month of the New Year enthusiasm and momentum upended more stagnant routines with the promise of controlled change. The novelty of work feels a bit like play and I approach frustration with curiosity and determination.
Living mindfully has meant rooting myself more firmly to the moment I’m in while still trying to create a plan for my time. This is where the work of practice has been essential to cultivating new choices into stronger habits.
Mindfulness, in practice, has given me a path to simplify larger ideals into smaller actions that nourish my well-being and connectivity. In particular regular exercise, sacred rest, and healthier food. I’ve turned my attention towards a definition of health that embraces a kinder sense of self-care.
When I was ill, this meant rest in place of play. In good health it has meant embracing new physical challenges for greater strength. I’ve become less apologetic in honoring my awareness for those foods that leave me tired or unwell with the same wholeheartedness I embrace those moments of celebration or comfort with food choices that reflect joy. Most importantly, I have begun to indulge in bedtime routines that carve aside time to unravel the day from my night.
Scheduling time to move and be still has created a more “awake” in between the busier rhythms of my day so that I am present among others. I am listening more intentionally and leaving space in my relationships for appreciation; pausing in gratitude rather than dwelling in anxiousness or frustration.
It is an imperfect practice, one that demands flexibility and forgiveness as insistently as routine and accountability. Moment to moment, one choice at a time; mindfully connecting the optimism of New Year’s expectations with the work of daily efforts.
accidentally on purpose
February 4, 2017 § Leave a comment
Last week I suffered ailments of comic proportions. Physically uncomfortable and persistently impatient, I was desperate to exercise against my better judgement. Having only recently gained the momentum of new muscle I was stubbornly determined to rest, productively.
I fell into a compromise that created stillness with a gentler practice of yoga.
It should be noted that I have failed colorfully and inflexibly at previous attempts in more public displays, but this past week was an accident in grace. Small pockets of time with unhurried devotion produced a new relationship with an old beau.
I’m playing at something I love with all the fussy infatuation of novelty in the comfort of well-groomed familiarity. Postures of strength and lines of submission.
More importantly, I am practicing without an audience; there is no mirror to reflect or compare, only presence.
In the uninterrupted attentiveness, there is only the gentlest listening as I open my body and mind moment to moment.
Accidentally, on purpose.
changing expectations
February 3, 2017 § 2 Comments
When we moved, our family began creating new expectations for one another and ourselves. The speed of change left us all a little bewildered and we settled into the discomfort of not knowing the otherwise predictable parts of our days with curiosity.
My children were used to me knowing what comes next. My routine circled my children’s in a way that kept me distractedly tethered to their needs with an invisible thread of communication between home and school. It was a once necessary open-ended energy that had been left running like a forgotten switch to a burned out bulb.
In our new space we had to trust one another to move through the murky unknowns, alone; to lean on strangers and navigate new challenges outside the familiar relationships of old experiences.
There were times it was tempting to exercise old habits, for myself especially. To draft messages that lent insight and history to our new community of teachers, but it was the occasions my children spoke for themselves or muscled through the difficult frustrations independent of my support that we fell into true appreciation and greater pride, humor and humility.
Some were substantial, like the morning the school called and my phone volume was muted because we no longer carry our phones like life lines. There were simpler occasions, too, of classroom confusion or forgotten materials. Then, there came the novelty of my decision to return to work and the subsequent patience and independence that guided my children to look further within when they might have previously reached out.
Yesterday as the hour of our daughter’s band solo neared, I marked the minutes with borrowed nerves; internalizing my daughter’s worries and dancing around a temptation to interrupt her attention with words of encouragement. Only, it occurred to me I was hijacking her experience with my eagerness to help.
Instead I waited for the impossibly long end of day to collect my daughter’s story in the lines of her posture and the angle of her smile. I listened as she talked about running late and loosing her place, the judge’s critique and the unexpected kindness in a stranger’s encouragements. Each moment was a gift I watched my daughter unwrap in her telling, something of her own to share.
It is perhaps an overdue epiphany, one I procrastinated passively out of a sense of purposeful self-importance. What felt like a kindness, protecting our children from emotional struggles, was quite possibly an error of affection. I’ve begun listening more than I speak, leaning quietly into a posture of faith that informs an expectation of strength.
Changing my expectations of self.
a question of quitting
February 2, 2017 § 2 Comments
There is no greater measure of truth than the weighted minutes of nervous anxiety on the eve of a much dreaded day. One year ago it was a time for my daughter to confront self-doubts and insecurities as she procrastinated preparing for her band solo by sounding out the language to quit. Not one for standing alone under a spotlight of attention, I understood her pause and kept her company as she waded more deeply into her discomfort.
Last year she found the notes among her nerves and conquered her fears in a messy and brave posture of determination. This morning my daughter woke early to another performance, but this year’s ghosts were dressed in last year’s doubts. Two nights ago she unraveled into a memory from last year’s experiences. One new to my ears, but well worn in the quiet of my daughter’s thoughts. Her teacher, counting out a song, begged a question. My daughter asked why the pattern was different to which her teacher asked, “Don’t you even know how to count?”
It was a criticism in place of a question, a small condescension that directed quiet and silenced my daughter’s learning. She didn’t ask again and has since created her own cues to find her place in a collective melody. As part of a whole, she has disappeared in the silence between notes, but on her own she is lost in the sequence of unanswered questions. Without answers to fill what she does not know, she is certain only in the deficit she measures in doubt.
Such a small space between learning and letting go, wanting to grow and giving up.
Last night I listened as she fought her way through her sheet music until she had exhausted whatever joy might be had from each success. It’s a sad truth, a weighted reminder – our answers invite questions just as clearly as our questions invite answers.
One person has the power to inspire or intimidate.
My daughter wants to quit as much as she wants to play, to learn as much as she wants to leave. For all the words of comfort and empathy I’ve offered, the balance of my encouragements and another’s criticism rests in the silence somewhere between the music.
one at a time
January 23, 2017 § 2 Comments
Before we were a family of four, I drafted lists of good intentions for who I would be when we were no longer three. At the very top of my list was a pledge to set aside time to devote to each child – separately. One at a time.
I understood that I was better when my attention wasn’t divided, but I could not yet know how I would grow into another version of myself; that I would find beauty in the chaos of both children unraveling my frayed sense of order. More importantly, I did not anticipate the ways they would complete one another.
Last Thursday, our children sharing cookies after an evening band performance, the conversation overlapped in a family shorthand of movie quotes and comedy skits. These moments of frenetic stillness, times when the dishes stay put and we linger unhurried in the noise of our thoughts, these are the reasons I’ve returned to a commitment of fewer distractions, less multitasking, and uncluttered weekends. Singular conversations and collective contentment.
Small moments, together.
One at a time.
save me a space
January 16, 2017 § 8 Comments
It’s the smallest request, to hold a space for someone to belong. There is perhaps no greater kindness than to offer such generosity of acceptance to one another; no greater space than home in which to teach belonging except school. This is the heartache I have been sounding out for over a decade as I help my children navigate the broken spaces of their education.
I have written often these past years of academic challenges and the emotional harm of exclusion, but these themes were offered new insight last November through an online parenting course offered by Brené Brown. I’ve long admired her research on shame, but this course offered a discussion on belonging and fitting in that gave me a new language for contextualizing the challenges I have encountered as a mother raising special needs children.
I posed this question (specific to my son) towards the end of the curriculum:
How do we address subjects of shame and belonging when raising children with special needs? My sixteen year old boy (son) on the Autism Spectrum cries openly, fails colorfully and speaks genuinely, he has been made to feel “other” for these behaviors/qualities we celebrate and cultivate in adults.
In an effort to keep my question concise, I edited the following from my submission to the live Q&A session:
He has given his younger sister a model of masculinity I think is both rare and exceptional; his emotions and vulnerability, the brave and authentic way he navigates mixed messages underscores a deficit in social norms.
Maybe one day there will be a parenting class to discuss the significance of belonging over fitting in as we look to inclusive classrooms to model empathy and diversity.
Privately, in my personal notes, I mused:
I’ve also been thinking about how we categorize children, offering preferential treatment that harks back to an unhealthy selection mentality; students who are deemed gifted are granted an exclusivity of privileged resources that in turn limit the potential of a larger population with an assumption of inequality.
This last wondering was specific to my daughter’s experience, but inclusive of so many misunderstood, stereotyped children. Those students ranked by generic test scores that exclude intelligence we cannot gauge in standard testing, but whose grit and resilience have made them stronger learners for their personal challenges. What might these children become if offered courses that encourage and inspire new passions?
I want to pause here to acknowledge the obvious deficit of editing. I debated tidying these thoughts into something beautiful, but there is an uncomfortable truth in the mess that I want to preserve for the integrity of my own experience. I am publishing them today to move them from the stagnancy of my drafts to better own them as an essential part of my story.
I considered offering a shorthand of harmful past experiences in the interest of identifying a pattern of exclusion that illuminate the essence of fitting in over belonging, but I want to speak instead to the rare moments of extraordinary kindness – of invitations to belonging.
For my son it was one teacher offering a safe place where others could not push, mock, tease or taunt for one period each day of his middle school career. During those three years she provided him his first experience of belonging, in which he was allowed to invite friends and breathe a sense of safety and acceptance not available outside her walls.
For my daughter, the experience came last year as a result of an administrative oversight after our move when she was allowed to perform academically by assumption of ability over predetermined restrictions. Her school saved her seat when paperwork dictated they shuffle her into another space. It was only after our daughter was offered an opportunity to thrive outside the limits of labels that we watched her excel along a trajectory of her own determination that exceeded expectations.
This is the truer gift of parenting children with special needs, the way in which we reframe understanding by potential; looking past the unspoken rules of fitting into social scripts for success to a more wholehearted place of belonging just as we are. It demands championing learning over testing, character over accomplishment; teaching children to save a space for one another with acceptance and appreciation.
I think we are on the verge of something remarkable and I’m saving a space for all of us to consider the difference between fitting in and belonging.
