to my daughter
September 3, 2015 § Leave a comment
This week a clerical error in the online enrollment process created an unanticipated complication to your school day. An essential document was missing from your records, legal paperwork designed to safeguard specific supports that insure the best possible environment for your academic needs.
Let me back up.
On Monday morning I sent a casual message to your teachers. Having moved to a new state, new neighborhood, and new school I was looking to weave together a greater sense of familiarity with a more personal connectivity. My greatest concern was that you were settling into larger measures of independence. There were small concerns that I didn’t want to overlook or exaggerate.
A missing calculator and ungraded homework left inside your folder were questionable red flags. Rather than leap to worries that revolved around executive functioning skill sets, I wanted to first make certain that your teachers were not concerned. I offered you simple suggestions that would nurture successful habits, feeling comfortable that most of my worries were symptomatic of an adjustment period given so much change.
Before any of the teachers had time to respond, your vice principal reached out to identify a new concern that he might begin to rectify an unintentional error by changing your schedule immediately. I want you to know that in this moment we were all trying to honor the formalities of your needs. Clumsy and well-intentioned, we were checking boxes and honoring professional and personal responsibilities.
Everyone was frantically trying to do the next right thing by you, but it would be you that lead the way.
On the morning that your classes changed, you left our care open-minded and confident. It was only after school, when you walked stoically to the car before crumbling into tears that I knew we had made a greater mistake. On sobs that stole your breath you forced together words that would draft a new expectation of wellness. You told us that you had been placed in a class you didn’t belong in, that the students in your new space needed attention that you did not, and that this change told you and your community of peers that you were not enough.
I let you tire yourself with every steadfast declaration. Your father and I listened carefully and questioned thoroughly each statement for logic and emotion. We pushed against every sensitive doubt to make certain your conviction could withstand a thoughtful challenge.
I asked you to name your worth and the value of others’ judgement. I questioned how hard you would work if allowed a harder path. I prepared you for a long-term investment and the possibility that you might have to wade into discomfort before others would honor your choice.
Internally I struggled between wanting to provide extra academic supports and recognizing the value in self motivation. Ultimately, your father and I decided to support your untraditional request and immediately reached out to your school. We told them that the abruptness of the change had undermined the sense of self and community that you had already established, that we were making personal decisions based on impersonal data. Then we waited.
Late last night, the same administrator who adjusted your schedule to honor your academic needs honored your decision to return to the familiarity of your original schedule. More importantly, he validated your sense of self in the context of your new community. This morning he met you at the school door with a smile asking if you remembered your old schedule.
It isn’t going to be easy, but it doesn’t need to be. You are enough.
Love, Mom
objects in mirror
August 25, 2015 § Leave a comment
Yesterday I watched my daughter hesitate outside the entry of her new school; early and alone, I wondered if she would find a friendly smile that might help her navigate the minutes before her first day. Gauging her image in the frame of my side mirror, I was tempted to rescue her from a solitude that felt larger in a backward glance. Instead I watched as she held a door open for someone else and stole away beyond the scope of my gaze.
It had been easier to watch her brother race, gawky and eager, toward an uncertain friend whose backpack invited an immediate introduction; a shared interest that might lead to a companionable moment on a day that wore a little starched for our unfamiliarity. I worried less about the outgoing teenager who didn’t look back than the child who watched me from the periphery of my mirror. It was the solitary figure who cast a larger shadow across my thoughts; I couldn’t imagine it might be my son who would struggle against the loneliness of missing companions as he raced to make new connections.
By dismissal my worries were exaggerated by the clumsiness of my own confusion at pick-up, congested carpool lanes crowded with children and adults all moving in chaotic circles of rushed energy. I anticipated need in error and allowed my thoughts to race toward false expectations.
My daughter had struggled against all the change with humor and humility, she counted each honest mistake while adding her strengths. By day’s end she stood a little taller in her knowledge, a little more comfortable among her mistakes. It was my son, the outgoing personality who so often speaks uncensored of self-confidence who struggled against a distorted measure of success. There were no mistakes to correct, no uncomfortable moments of embarrassment; only loneliness for friendships not yet formed.
Today I am trying to remember that challenges may feel larger than they appear, that success and error are little more than different perspectives of a shared experience.
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.
long goodbyes
May 30, 2015 § 2 Comments
Nine years, more than half my days in motherhood have been spent in my husband’s childhood elementary school. It is the longest I have ever been a member of a single community; three preschools between two children and a kindergarten year in a different school district, my own education divided neatly between divorced parents. It has become a new normal, this space of my experience, and I cannot fathom the impossibility of goodbye.
Every day of the past nine years there has been a familiar face to welcome questions and offer guidance, hallways that lead to memories and individuals who have shared extraordinary measures of kindness as we stumbled over unfamiliar challenges toward personal success. I’ve leaned across the boundaries of parent-teacher conversations and witnessed loss and celebration with intimate expressions of grief and joy.
These men and women are my friends, but they are so much more than the sum of my memories. Despite the details we have shared over class conferences and play ground banter, these individuals are more complicated than my school year partnership permits. They have classrooms filled with families in need and years of families in friendship beyond my experiences. They are parents and children, friends and students, athletes and architects of dreams I only passingly understand.
Teachers and therapists, administrators and aides, they have chosen professions that anticipate personal investment and seasons of goodbye, but for me this moment feels impossible. I keep sounding out first sentences and last hellos not wanting to speak the inevitability of the week to come. A thank you that feels too small and a wish that feels too selfish.
sound & sentiment
May 21, 2015 § Leave a comment
Sitting on folding metal chairs stretched neatly across a familiar gym room floor, there is a sound to this memory. Children shuffling nervously and parents settling into quiet greetings, a scraping and rustling as we nestle into one another’s company. We are near the end of our days in this season of elementary school gatherings and today my heart is full of sentiment for the sweetness of this time.
It seems like only yesterday I was wrestling a wiggly toddler onto the same uncomfortable chairs, begging stillness from my daughter while my eyes sought my son’s over the chaos of children filing determinedly into position. Personalities as different as their eye color and years between their songs, both children began every performance with an anxious seeking until their gaze would relax into a reassuring smile.
This morning I marveled at the dance of time, my oldest’s teenage limbs folded uncomfortably into stillness as we settled into his sister’s school performance. Gone is the madness of restlessness, the quiet encouragements and pleas for patience. We have moved collectively into a new togetherness and I was left to note the unexceptional sounds of a too often overlooked moment.
Today my joy and sentiment push against the music of my memories, the present and the past scraping into the folding metal chairs that hold our place even as we approach goodbye.
to my daughter
April 29, 2015 § 4 Comments
I’ve been missing a little lately among my words, shuffling between spaces even as my mind seems stuck to Monday.
This week your father and I gathered among administrators, educators, and support staff to outline your transition from elementary school to middle school. We were sitting amidst professionals in a personal moment of accomplishment and anticipation; change rattling around old memories and stirring up little motes of sentiment.
The newer members of our team only know the vibrant student quick with a smile or kindness between distracted demonstrations of ability. Your test scores and report cards don’t illuminate the place from which we began, so we piece together your progress with memories of the little girl who was lost at school to give form to the path of your growth.
Your speech therapist was witness to your preschool precociousness. In her early memories I see you stomping through adventures with loud, messy footprints as you twirled noisily into the fun of discovery. Your words were delightfully backwards and your behavior was harmlessly resistant. I ran circles around your day dreams and might have had more luck lassoing the moon than containing the enthusiasm of your mischief. Over the years you’ve settled into your skin, honoring others’ expectations, but you’ve preserved the twinkle in your eye that accompanies each well-humored smile.
Your resource teacher could chart your consistently inconsistent performance with memories of old struggles and new confidence in the same way your social worker might acknowledge your tenderness for adversity in others and your tenacity in self-sufficiency. Among these friends I remember the doubts and fears of anxious tears against the contrast of beaming revelations of ability. In these memories I recall the shape of each accomplishment by the scale of the challenge behind us.
Others in our company knew you first as your brother’s little sister, a bright smile in the shadow of your big brother’s experiences. A personal counsel in matters of social norms who leaned pridefully and competitively into shared interests; guiding and following your brother’s attention with a sister’s mastery of familiar frustrations. In this context I could hear your footsteps chasing after your brother’s as you push your way into his experiences in search of your own accomplishments.
You were there in that meeting in so many different memories. The preschool firecracker and the fifth grade safety patrol seemed to wink at us from the perimeter of our protocol, chin up acknowledging the work of progress and the play of growing up. We were there to advocate in your absence, but every decision rang clear with your presence. We placed new challenges beside old supports and aligned ourselves to uncomfortable certainties for uncertain success.
I’m excited and terrified, inspired and cautious. This new beginning feels a little like starting all over again and I’m desperate to peek ahead to the next chapter for reassurance.
Love, Mom
second fifth, last third
February 12, 2015 § Leave a comment
Tomorrow is my youngest child’s last elementary school classroom party. It’s a funny emotional hiccup that keeps pulling at my attention today, a small acknowledgment that these otherwise unexceptional experiences are exquisitely fleeting in their inconvenience. For all the times I cursed the chaos of crafts or the responsibility of organizing restless bodies into overly enthusiastic efforts at recreation, I am suddenly unwilling to imagine this is the last time I will chase after last-minute necessities or fuss over the impossibility of reinventing traditional games into politically correct, themed celebrations.
If I am entirely honest, I should confess that I won’t miss the preparations; the uncomfortable suspicion that I have overlooked or underestimated an idea. The secret insecurity that manifests in wanting to please the partygoers and not lose face among mothers who so often seem in possession of a secret knack for the task of controlled silliness. Most often I drift to the sidelines of the synchronized madness, marveling at the mechanics of my child’s community of peers and wondering at what futures wait for them as they grow further into the personalities I have had the privilege of witnessing.
More than the festivities of the day, I am mindful of the impossible goodbye within the routine of these elementary traditions. It is my second time navigating the halls of my children’s fifth grade experience, my last third party of the school year, and a bittersweet milestone as we near a new beginning and move further from the halls that guard memories of my husband, son, and daughter’s childhoods.
to my daughter
September 4, 2014 § 2 Comments
Last night over homework we pushed and pulled against one another’s expectations with false assumptions that undermined good intentions. I clung tightly to a desire to be purposeful and present in your learning while you built walls of righteous independence with admirable expressions of stubborn determination to hide hurt feelings.
Like an argument never spoken, we were responding to private fears and insecurities more than one another’s beliefs. I almost dismissed disrespectful undertones as a premature posturing of pre-teen arguments to come. Then, with a deep breath, I turned to leave and caught the sigh in your shoulders; recognizing a tenderness and vulnerability that mirrored my own.
It was an opportunity I might have missed had I blinked or looked in the wrong direction. Instead, by chance, I found the path to a conversation I was unwittingly silencing. First, though, I had to hear a few hard truths.
My messages of support were clouded in subliminal statements of judgement. Somewhere along the way you came to hear a criticism of can’t.
At this I wanted to bristle, I could feel the dander of prickly injustice. My head spun against the false contradiction to my genuine intentions, but my speech only cluttered yours. So I listened.
Every struggle shared with your brother, each statement of can and must; assertions of ability and questions of effort, however irrelevant to your personality or needs, had been carefully itemized and internalized as measurements for my expectations. Within these messages was the beginning of a new awareness of how my words translate your assumptions.
Today is cluttered with commitments, but I needed to carve out a moment to preserve yesterday least I forget this lesson between us: I had to first hear how I sounded to your ears before you were willing to listen. I had to accept responsibility for unintentional harm before you would invite my help.
I’m still listening.
Love, Mom
the play of learning
June 3, 2014 § 6 Comments
On sunny days we are accounting for snow days, but the work of learning has passed. Grade books are closed and text books returned, while attendance requires a presence of mind and body. Eyes cast to the windows and minds quietly tolling the lingering minutes of each day I find classrooms returning to play for an opportunity to control the distractions of the day.
These are the sweet days between homework and summer; we internally exhale relief for an end to testing and standards while breathing in anticipation of summer’s promise. No longer bound by the rules of curriculum, there is an unofficial standard of play. Teachers are creating excuses to absorb time and wrestle attention from daydreams least the students fall into disorder.
While some bemoan lost days of academia, I am hoping our teachers think outside the limits of formal expectations and embrace lessons in play. Learning in the context of joy and curiosity without the weight of grading expressions of knowledge. Today I am wishing both my children and their teachers time to play at learning.
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.
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