To my youngest on her 10th birthday

Dear Maggie - 

I dropped you off at school yesterday morning, and we were both frustrated because we were running late.  You lost your temper.  I teared up.  It's not my norm.  And when you noticed you lingered outside the car with such a concern in your eyes.  You apologized and asked me if I was okay.  You wanted to stay I could tell.  But we locked eyes in understanding and love and inadequacy, and we gave each other a weak smile and both went on to face our day.  

As I drove away I realized you were growing up and growing into the kind of empathy that only comes with a willingness to let go a bit of childhood innocence.  I remembered at that exact moment that I owed you the ten year old gift I gave your sisters - a letter celebrating and reflecting on our first decade together. But in that moment all I could think about was a fall afternoon when you were not quite three and I woke you up early from a peaceful Saturday nap to go pick up one of your sisters from a birthday party.  I realized that day that the world does not revolve around babies as the narrative goes.  Your life from day one can never be completely about you when you are the youngest.  At two weeks old I dragged you to Avery's first parent teacher conference because both your dad and I felt we should be there, and we couldn't exactly leave you at home.  An older parent or grandma tsked at me in the elementary school office and then chastised me for taking an infant out as young as you were.  But this was not your first or last infant outing.  You came to a Girl Scout meeting later that week because I was troop leader.  We have pictures of you sleeping in strollers at Big Surf and in shopping carts at Sam’s because by the time you were born our lives couldn’t pause because babies nap two hours each afternoon.  While your sisters spent their toddler weekends with library mornings followed by primary color compartment plates featuring a protein, fruit, and veggie topped off by an afternoon tuck in, yours were spent on the sidelines of soccer fields, in the bleachers for CYBA, or as the audience at TRYPS - and your lunches were often tossed to you in your car seat as we rushed off to another scheduled event.  Everyone says I spoil you, but maybe my willingness to have laid with you longer than I should have for more years than I should have to get you to sleep at night were one big apology for the way we asked you to bend your little life and needs around ours.  Your life never got the structure it deserved. 

But then I think of other pictures - the one where you aren’t even two and you have your own ice cream cone the size of your head because you had just let us know our Virginia vacation would be ruined if we thought you would be satisfied with a few bites of our concretes… or the one where you weren’t quite three and you marched into your first dance class beaming from ear to ear.  The rule was that you had to be three by summer to start regular classes at CPAC but I asked for an exception.  They said they had to meet you first, and you marched in there and shouted, “I’m Maggie and I want to dance on your stage!”  You started class the next week.  There was no way your sisters were going to continue to do things you couldn’t.  You have had to fight a bit for the time, energy and experiences you want and deserve, and it’s made you feisty and makes us exasperated at times - but I take comfort in knowing you won’t let this world pass you by. Also, you won’t let me not love you with my whole whole heart.  

Last night you asked me to lay with you again (a habit we finally shook some time this past year.)  You told me that turning ten was a reminder you wouldn’t be little forever. As I scratched your back and made you listen to my newest song obsession  I thought about something you have been teaching me for a decade now - the youngest somehow grows up so much faster and slower than the others.  Your request that I lay with you caused me to be still and present for the first time in days, and I realized what a gift it was to have one that clings on as you do to me and how good it feels to cling back.  I know with certainty that you will be by my side for whatever lies ahead for both of us.  Somehow, despite all my inadequacy you continue to look to me with love and understanding and a pleading to be still and to be a mom - the most important and rewarding job on my list.  Despite the structure I couldn’t give and the bends we couldn’t and won’t always be able to make, you bent and twisted to squeeze your little self into our lives - filling in the holes we left to make us whole and loved and better people.  Thank you for being the force that you are.  

All our love always. 

Mom

On the Beauty of Asking Questions

I have been asking questions my whole life, but two particular childhood moments of inquiry stand out to me.  The first happened when I was in second grade. Officer Friendly came to school to talk to us about what to do if an adult “touches you in a way that doesn’t feel right.”  The obvious first step was to tell your parents.  But as someone whose brain always jumps to what if scenarios and deconstructs to the point of annoyance I immediately began wondering what someone would do if their parent was the perpetrator.  It seemed like a genuinely important question and my hand shot up immediately to ask it.  I still remember the look on the officer’s face and his grapple for an answer that ended with the suggestion that you talk to a teacher or other trusted adult. That made sense to me so I mentally moved on.  It wasn’t until I was a little older that I found out the question triggered a talk with the teacher and had my parents not been more involved in the school/had I not already established myself as an incessant questioner could have also triggered a hotline call. 

A few years later I was in large group at an Awanas youth group weekly gathering.  We were not raised attending church regularly, but I was lured in by the games followed by Bible passage memorization for fake money to spend on candy and other prizes I never  was patient enough to save for.  Church and the Bible are heydey for young questioners with little previous exposure. I was always baffled by prayer and what I considered the potential selfishness of these nightly requests of God.  I always figured for every bride begging for sun there was a farmer praying for rain.   We ended these Awanas nights with large group and I decided to raise my hand and ask a question of the youth pastors.  “Is it possible to pray for too much?”  I appreciated that they instantly knew I did not mean pray too often but literally ask for too much.  I don’t remember his response that day, but I do remember coming back into the same room, boys and girls previously separated for games and passage time now all together to learn as one…  he told the group that someone had asked a question the last week that he hadn’t really felt good about answering on the spot and that he had spent his week contemplating and preparing his answer.  I don’t remember the nuances of his answer but it was basically no prayer was asking for too much if well-intended.  I was too busy being struck by the power of a question and how important I felt as a child for posing it.  I felt like asking questions might be my superpower.      

Despite how powerful I felt in that moment, over the years I mostly learned to silence most of the questions that parade through my head daily - not completely…  I had two different teachers in high school contact my parents with calls or postcards complimenting me on my ability to pose hard questions, but I think I picked up at some point that my questions might annoy those around me or sound like picking an argument when I was just genuinely curious.  But believe me - those questions have not stopped torturing me on the regular - keeping me from ever feeling any sense of resolution, any peace from doubt or comfort in conviction.  

These two moments keep playing through my head at night this week.  I kept wanting to share them with the world (aka the few of you who do me the kindness of reading these waning posts) but I couldn’t figure out why.  Then yesterday and today, surrounded by voices and opinions about month 22 of Covid and how we should proceed, I realized why these stories have been tapping on my door.  One thing my love of questioning has created in me is an almost disdain for any form of certainty.  It can be a troubling way to exist - embracing constant curiosity and cognitive dissonance, but it does bring with it a willingness to listen, learn, and consequently love in ways I have seen a shortage of lately.  Everyone has so many opinions as we are all facing so many collective problems requiring patches that impact our interwoven lives in such significant ways.  These opinions have also become announcements of who we are and what we believe way outside of viruses and masks and what kids need most creating a space for lots of judgment and assumptions of moral/intellectual superiority.  It’s exhausting really - all the yelling and the asserting and the certainty.  I feel certain about so little except how committed I am to caring for and about those I am surrounded by on a regular basis.  

I think one of the reasons I like to ask questions is because I accept that sometimes conflicting things can be true at the same time, and sometimes truth as we know it can change over time.  I know there is satisfaction in being sure, but somewhere outside of it is the chance to come together and learn more than you ever could otherwise.  I often think about a PD I went through once where they said we need to stop thinking in terms of right or best and instead in a mindset of tensions we can live with.  A lot of the disagreements that are tearing apart communities right now are not because we disagree about facts, but because we disagree about what tensions we can live with.  And it makes sense that we would - because we all have different tensions we can live with.  I wonder if questions can create a dialogue to help us learn where each person’s tension lies, what life experiences led to those tension preferences, and how we might better coexist in a way that honors someone else’s tension while making room for us to nurture our own.  

There is so much to heal from in light of our last 22 months as a country.  When I imagine reflecting on this time it saddens me to think that that reflection might dwell on how we grew apart instead of came together.  Why? -  I like to ask myself.  How did we get here?  What do we do about it?  

“He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.”

― Elie Wiesel, Night