wanting & having
July 14, 2013 § 6 Comments
This morning my husband and I circled our daughter with choices, attempting to create birthday plans that would evolve into cherished memories from daydreams and wishes. What would you like? Who would you like to include? What might you like to do? Each of us became dizzy from the momentum of expectations.
We looked outward toward dramatic visuals pinned with promises of parties tinted in tones of joy. Images not unlike the of artistic filters that cast contemporary photographs in shades of nostalgia. Themed cakes and clever goody bags were missing the quaint charm of blank space.
Then, we looked inward.
I cannot remember my parents interviewing me to create an ideal, rather I remember a sense of gratitude for candles that invited a reason to cast a wish among friends. My experience was less wanting and more having. In truth I had less and dreamt more, my riches greater for my dreams.
My daughter’s birthday is just around the corner and this year I am giving her a little more wrapped in a lot less. A simple cake and a couple of friends. A special gift and room to wish.
secondhand strength
July 12, 2013 § 2 Comments
Unpacking our cramped suitcases I keep marveling at pieces of remembrance tucked in the folds of clothing. Keepsakes that are empty artifacts without the weight of memories. My favorite moment unfolded on the second day of our drive as we detoured from our original itinerary to visit a homestead dedicated to preserving pieces of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories.
Wearing a borrowed apron and perched eagerly on an antique desk, I watched my daughter from the bench at the back of the one-room schoolhouse. Listening intently to the teacher’s thoughtful presentation of prairie life for students of days long past my daughter leaned into the words. In a room freckled with strangers the teacher then directed her attention to my little girl inviting her to portray Laura. Back straight, pride resonating in her poise, my daughter’s joy was underscored in the lines of her body.
Then, with a simple request, we traversed an old journey in postures I translated in tones of fear and strength. Laura, would you please read to the class. My daughter’s back bent, curving into a delicate rest for her chin; a safe haven from the watchful gaze of others. Slowly she raised her chin into a forced gesture of bravery, rolling her shoulders back into a framework of fortitude. I’m sure you are a good reader. One careful foot placed in a determined step my Laura moved from doubt to intent. Cradling the book she sought her place among the unfamiliar text. Then, she read aloud. With each word I felt my daughter’s strength – secondhand.
There was no greater moment, no more meaningful exercise so far from our daily lives. As my daughter found her way to the last strand of prose, I exchanged celebratory smiles with my husband and silent applause when my daughter’s eyes found mine. Without the adulation of other’s, these quiet victories clamor loudly across years of frustration.
To unknowing eyes the photograph of my daughter’s head bent over a book is a memento reproduced with each wave of tourists traveling through time. For me the image is riddled with a language of love and knowing that weights it in a strength we will borrow from long after we returned home. A keepsake with a story not entirely my own that represents our past and present.
pack & play
July 1, 2013 § 5 Comments
The day before vacation is a frenzied busyness fueled by an exaggerated awareness of time. Procrastination meets inspiration as I count down to our hour of departure.
While I attempt to toss together necessities for the days ahead, away from home, I am thinking back to yesterday’s outdoor symphony performance and holding tightly to the image of my family unbound by time and commitments beneath a canopy of trees on a cloudless day. The newness of this sharing keeps the images just beneath my eyelids. I see my daughter scribbling notes while my son pressed blades of grass into smooth streams of green silk; my son’s silent exclamation over the discovery of a ruby red lady bug and my daughter’s quick assimilation of his good fortune into her own. The contrast between yesterday’s whim and today’s work are a reminder that I must not lose a day entirely to planning for what is yet to come, rather I must hold tightly to the possibilities of magic amid the mundane.
With this thought close to my consciousness, I am tucking away my laptop to lighten my suitcase of the burden of distractions as we chart our course and collect new memories to carry home.
past present tense
June 28, 2013 § 6 Comments
This day seems to linger in distraction. Efforts at industry seem empty and directionless. I am unsettled, uncertain where to begin. Carefree days of busyness allowed me to shuffle decisions among indecisive possibilities, now time seems to be holding me tightly to emotions that demand attention.
The question: Do I return to a place from which I eagerly escaped, never looking over my shoulder to remember the way?
It is the eve of my 20th high school reunion. My connection to classmates is limited to the impersonal voyeurism of social media. Still, time and relationships with others have found new meaning in motherhood. A nagging curiosity and a previously dismissed connectivity to pieces of my past have fostered feelings of doubt for feigned disinterest.
No longer do I see my classmates through the narrow perspective of a self-centered teenager, overwhelmed by her own burdens. Instead they have become a cast of characters veiled in mystery for the unknown. The wanderers whose stories I am curious to hear.
The word reunion taunts an undercurrent of truth racing through my heart and mind with an intensity that seems to suffocate the air around me. The physical space of a place once my home is haunted by ghosts that cannot die.
Truth: I am hiding from memories of myself and a collision between the past and present. Do I meet myself among old harms, or do I stay present allowing the past to slumber?
In much the same way I scribbled my heart into the folds of old letters passed between the hallowed halls of high school, these are the words caught between breaths I cannot take and decisions I am struggling to make from conversations unspoken.
To my father,
I wonder if the calendar has marked my absence these past twenty years? If you found my truths in my absence or if we carry our own wounds too close to see each others’ heartache.
Here is the thing I could not say – it was never that I didn’t love you, it was needing to be loved in return. The impossible standards and ever-present disappointment, fear for your anger and empty trust that opened the door to my departure. I was a shadow long before I left, simply feeding off the light of hope waiting for you to materialize.
I forgave you quietly over time, but I never outgrew the hurt that accompanies old wounds. Between us we are caught in memories and faded photographs from another lifetime.
If I return I move into the past as a mother, unable to invite harm or inherent tragedy to the children I guard from heartache. They are my promise to myself.
When I imagine the possibility of sharing a sidewalk with my past in present tense, I mostly miss what never was.
M
road trip
June 25, 2013 § 7 Comments
These two words hold equal parts hope and dread. My husband speaks these words with reverence for an experience cast in nostalgia, togetherness and adventure on the open road. My anticipation is tainted by childhood memories of car sickness as my brother and I traded homes each summer at an insignificant point of travel from one parent’s car to another’s; suitcases of clothing and small comforts stacked with hopes and fears between hellos and goodbyes.
The decision to embrace this experience was simple. My husband’s daydreams of fatherhood and family are as important as memories of my childhood. In preparation for our upcoming trip I am making room in our suitcases for something new, settling into someone else’s perspective. It is the very theme of marriage, compromise and sharing as we appear in one another’s hopes.
I expect conflict in the confines of our car, moments of discomfort or disagreement, but I also foresee discoveries as we walk new paths and collect memories that will follow us home to the familiar place of our belonging.
rain
June 24, 2013 § 9 Comments
This morning the sky is cast in gray, the clouds pregnant with excuses to curl indoors. Stacks of books and board games, paint brushes and chocolate chip cookies promise to mark our hours between raindrops among friends. Nestled in my chair, warm coffee cooling beside me, my mind drifts to another rainy day not so long ago. My daughter’s hand in mine, her giggles bubbling up as we splashed in puddles.
Every once in a while it feels indulgent to get caught in the rain without a care in the world for the inconvenience. Some days rain is the perfect companion to sunshine, an open invitation to escape expectations for the possibility of something else.
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.
remembering this
June 21, 2013 § 6 Comments
In the earliest hours of the day, before I was ready to dangle my toes from my dreams, my thoughts were nestled in my son’s experiences this week. So often I guard him, ever mindful of challenges that seem to shadow our days, but this week I found myself giving him space to explore his environment and excusing myself from the fallacy of controlling what I cannot. In letting go and gifting my son small exercises in independence I found reasons to believe in his ability to move confidently and capably through his day. In challenging my son, I reaffirmed my own ability to trust in each of our strength.
To my son,
I wonder how you might remember this week. Would you recall the freedom of your brief walk between downtown stores on a warm day? Maybe you will hold tightly to the sense of accomplishment in venturing out on a simple, solitary excursion with money in hand and time to spend. Or perhaps you will recall finding a place among another family visiting an unfamiliar pool, a stranger among strangers, temporarily belonging to another family’s company. Will you dwell in the adventure that accompanies walking towards an unknown or revel in the sense of returning to what is familiar?
For my part I will remember the moment of unhinged fear as I let you go, immediately measuring the potential for harm with hands folded in an unspoken plea that you would succeed. I kept out of sight, pledging to trust in things unseen, only to steal a glimpse of your retreating form as I peeked from the doorway. Most importantly, I will remember the sight of your gangly form returning, the cadence to your step with your shoulders pushed pridefully back, eyes smiling.
This letting go and holding on is always new. Each success lends comfort to the next challenge, building confidence and granting reassurance. Please remember I have become so accustomed to your company that I, too, am finding my way into a space without you; knowing that in time, you will map a future defined by your own choices and actions. You were meant to find you own path and these first steps are a timely reminder that motherhood is an act of faith spoken in a language of love.
Love, Mom
girl next door
June 19, 2013 § Leave a comment
We moved into my husband’s childhood home the summer before our son began first grade, when our daughter was still a toddler. The sidewalk that runs past our home carries memories of footsteps shared between my husband and neighborhood friends. Over the past seven years my children have collected memories and chased friendships along the same concrete squares.
Yesterday my daughter filled an entire day with a girl from just down the street and around the corner. Our backyards practically hold hands but the girls have only played together occasionally, until yesterday. On a beautiful summer day they hid from the sunshine and interfering company of our household in my daughter’s room, occasionally scampering to our deck sharing a meal and giggling soundlessly behind the glass doors only to scurry back to play.
This day of friendship, exploring the corners of imaginary play until the moon pushed the sun from the sky with sad good-byes and tired eyes, was a happy reminder of our good fortune in purchasing a house that was familiar as a home, inheriting a stretch of sidewalk that leads to friendship in every direction.
trading places
June 18, 2013 § 4 Comments
Peeking in my daughter’s doorway at bedtime I found her form curled over a heavy volume of poetry, her fingers drawing an invisible line as her eyes searched the dense table of contents for titles. Next door her brother was playing a game. I paused in the tiny space between both worlds marveling at the unpredictable experience of my children trading places. Stacks of books still litter my son’s bedroom floor and pockets of cluttered play spill across my daughter’s room, but the child whose face was always tucked within a book was otherwise distracted and the child who struggled to find her way into reading was caught in the pages of a book.
I was immediately reminded of a time long past, a memory of a day under the sun as my children navigated a park. My son’s small form racing ahead towards a new discovery, my daughter toddling unsteady at a different pace in a separate direction. With one hand I reach to draw one child back while guiding the other forward. Standing outside my children’s rooms I could feel my daughter racing forward, stories and poetry drawing her into discoveries. Letting her chase words onto a new path I turned to my son silently promising to guide him toward new stories, reaching one hand back while ever mindful of the path ahead.
scribblechic 