On Falling in Trust for 20 Years... Happy Anniversary Sephus.

 Last Saturday I was beyond exhausted, going on three hours of sleep the night prior after a week of judging and coaching and supervising energetic and lovely teens.  I was trudging through a “Phoenix Hot” Airport (which is my way of saying that though I was not sweating I was beet red and my lungs were filled with the dry air that had made my skin itch all week and the noses of students and colleagues literally bleed).  I had just dumped 14 people at the departures entrance, returned a rental car, and was now dragging my front heavy suitcase (apparently you shouldn’t pack extra Diet Mountain Dew bottles in the front zippers) which awkwardly toppled every few minutes.  Though I had two very very kind adults with me, my slow walking, and the challenge of the task while so very very tired left me feeling alone.  As I sat there wondering what my freaking weak ass deal was, it suddenly occurred to me, I had not wheeled my heaviest suitcase through an airport for over 20 years now.  That, along with things like mowing the grass, taking out the trash, cleaning the fridge, and replacing the air filter, are just Sephus’s jobs.  The absence of him in that moment, and the knowledge that I would go another week before seeing him weighed heavy on my heart but also filled me with a clarity of love I am still in the process of realizing.  

When I was a kid all I wanted was to fall in love.  I was a sucker for every side love story in every narrative I consumed.  I fell in potential love on a daily basis -  every male remotely close in age to me being carefully assessed for his potential to be the one to write my personal fairy tale of romance inspired by all the books, movies, and TV shows I constantly enjoyed.  I used to sit in the back of my mom’s mini-van belting “I Am a Woman in Love” (a 4th grade woman mind you) and my Barbie dolls would slow dance to Air Supply.  I would watch Dallas and ask my dad to play Pamela and Bobby.  Sixteen Candles played on repeat, and I would dream of a Jake Ryan look-alike who would ask to carry my books once I got to high school.  Spoiler alert - it didn’t happen.  High School brought me a series of very very good guy friends who dumped all their relationship drama on me which I eagerly comforted them through just glad for their time and company in some watered down version of what I actually needed.  I sacrificed myself so often back then.  I smiled through all the jabs disguised as kindness… you are going to make someone so happy someday…  you will make such a great wife, girlfriend, etc… just not for me… The combination of this slight alongside the importance I placed on this made me feel perpetually unworthy of what I deemed the most important love one could receive.  

Then I met Sephus - and we instantly crafted that obnoxious form of “in love” I had craved for so long.  We had that instant can’t get enough of you, we hit the jackpot, everyone around us hates us or wants to be us kind of in love we had been denied in the years leading up to that. It took us all of two months to say I love you and all of ten months to seal our fate by getting engaged.  And then things got real… which sometimes meant hard.  And I soon found out I didn’t make such a great wife…  I was selfish.  I was obstinate.  I was messy.  I spent (and spend) much of my days giving the world my absolute best and come home and breathe this sigh of relief into my home that looks grumpy and lazy and inconsiderate more often than it should.  And despite all that, Sephus loves me through it all in ways that look nothing like the narratives I embraced as a child.  

What I didn’t realize all that time was that there was something out there so much more important than falling in love - falling in trust.  Trust that you will be loved through your ugliest and weakest moments.  Trust that you will find new ways to enjoy each other’s company.  Trust that when things get really really hard you might take a breather but you will never ever leave or be left.  Trust that you can raise a family together and tap out and tap in as the other needs with the unique skills and expertise you each have so that together you can build your best lives.  

When I lugged that obnoxious suitcase around the airport I was filled with a passion for Sephus that I don’t always appreciate.  Taking care of other people’s kids for a week without that equal partner to just hand it over to when the decisions got as heavy as the bags made me realize how incredibly blessed I am to have found someone willing to give me the freedom to live the life I want with the guarantee of a constant safety net.  Today we celebrate (or don’t celebrate because he is now off supervising other people’s children in the Tetons) twenty years of marriage.  Twenty years of him caring for me in ways that look nothing like the romances that made me fall in love with romance, but which keep me from toppling over on a daily basis.  And when I do topple, he is always there to catch me, pick me up, and lug me to our next step.  I thank him for showing me daily that love hides everywhere.  If you can see it and learn to give it, you will construct a story worthy of chasing. 

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

On Running Our Collective Marathon

 

There is a lemon seed on the floor of my main level bathroom. This is despite not having cooked with lemon for over a week, and despite having cleaned the bathroom last Friday before a few friends came over, and despite telling myself I'll lean over and grab it after I wash my hands multiple times over the past four days.   Each time I head in there I think this is the time I will deal with it and then forget by the time I leave.  Once this week I washed my hair twice in a row and another time I washed it with conditioner because I cannot remember which has the cream top and which has the white top.  On Wednesday, Sephus found chicken in the oven I had started the cooking the night before. 

So how am I doing?  I am tired.  But not didn’t get enough sleep tired.  That’s a surprising gift of being tied to my home.  It is more like "I started running a marathon last March and I had no idea how many miles this would end up being" tired.  And also – I had no idea that after seven solid months of running that we would get to the hills.   No one has energy left for hills.  But no one can escape the marathon either. 

I have been thinking about this analogy a lot lately – even before watching Maggie do a hills workout out at cross country practice it occurred to me that we were running a race with no fans.  No one is on the sidelines yelling how much longer we have or handing us water or protein gels as we pass by.  Though I had already made the observation, the momentum of it hit when I watched a little guy collapse in tears each time he crested the hill at practice.  A coach would lift him up and give him a pep talk and he was able to make it through another round. 

I am a teacher so that’s my lens, and I could go through the ins and outs of how very hard it is to teach other people’s kids while my own are pulling at me with physical and emotional needs.  I never quite realized how necessary leaving my house and utilizing a new space/other caretakers was for me to turn off working mom guilt…  But that feels too unique and indulgent and more journal than blog worthy, so let me just say that I know everyone is struggling in their own way with how different their days continue to look and how former support systems have been shut down. 

We always tell Maggie the coolest thing about cross country is that everyone who finishes the race is a winner.  I am not sure what crossing the line will look like or when it will happen, but I try to remind myself how good it will feel – and that rest from the chronic turmoil our country and communities and homes feel like they are in will come.  I am trying to find ways to be my own cheerleader, to give myself the protein packs and water, and to shout encouragement alongside my fellow runners as we go.  Thanks for running with me – even if you had no choice 😊. 

On What It Feels Like to Work at the Crap Cafe: Schooling in the Age of Covid

 

I love a good joke, and I love a good analogy…  so I have been sharing this one with everyone I have chatted with lately.  I will clean it up a bit for the worldwide web.  It’s like the school district has turned into a restaurant called Crap Café.  All we are allowed to serve is crap.  So when our patrons come in we are left asking would you prefer our crap soup, crap sandwich, or crap soufflé?  There is really no need to protest about how much a meal of crap sucks.  We don’t want to serve these things.  If we have kids in the district we really don’t want them to eat these things…  It’s really hard when you are in the business of nourishing and nurturing and you suddenly realize that you might make people sick no matter what you give them – mentally and physically sick.  When you put it that way it's suddenly not so much of a joke now is it… 

So what do we do? 

If you can’t see the mental health toll kids are feeling being isolated from friends and normalcy – I mean the real lived out toll that is playing out in homes across the country then consider yourself blessed.  I won’t share those stories out of respect for those who mean the most to me. 

If no one you love has lost someone or been lost to the real horrors of Covid-19 then consider yourself blessed.  I won’t share those stories because no one deserves to capitalize on them to make a point. 

I guess we could close the restaurant down all together, but there are genuine health impacts of an economic shutdown, which schools are intricately connected to and if you are not aware of exactly how those impacts play out then feel blessed that you have lived untouched by true poverty.  Heck – you must not even visit those circles.  I won’t bother you with the horrific details of that either.  It would be hard to really imagine if you never loved someone who could not afford life-saving medical care.    

I have no answers.  Sorry if you came for that…  But I do have some certainties.  One is that no matter how you feel about if schools should open, your opinion is most likely built upon the needs and interests of someone you love dearly as is everyone else’s (minus a few opinionated loonies).  You are sure that your preference meets the more important need.  The problem is we disagree adamantly about what that might be right now.    If we can recognize that driving force in each other’s arguments maybe we could sit back and really find the menu item with the least amount of crap.  Instead of getting angry at anyone who disagrees with us, we have to be willing to be really flexible and creative about what school and learning might look like.  We have to be married to almost nothing except a deep concern for the well-being of children and those who care for them in and out of schools.  We have to be willing to accept and make changes as we go.  We must be gentle, assume positive intent, and be willing to listen.  Just remember, we aren’t voting for which movie to watch on family movie night, we are debating choices that inevitably pit different genuine needs against each other. 

And no matter what, remember that eventually the café will bring back our old favorites along with new dishes discovered due to the kind of creativity only born of necessity.  I can’t wait until both working at and eating at the Crap Café is a distant memory. 

On Things they Don't Tell You About Parenting (Inspired by Sandra Cisneros)

Parenting by Danielle Johnson (Inspired by the opening of Eleven by Sandra Cisneros)

What they never tell you about parenting is all the stuff that comes with it - tennis shoes and crocs and slides and Friday Folders and lunch boxes and deodorant and hoodies and socks and Shopkins.  You are pretty sure your kids drink hand soap and eat toilet paper as often as you run out of each. And even if you do laundry every day you are never caught up and the socks will never equally pair up even when you think you have washed every dirty thing in the house.  And when you empty the dishwasher there is always another load waiting to go in. You never feel caught up. You never feel like a real parent. Instead it’s like a game of house that is never as much fun as it was when you were seven and you never really feel good at it.  

Like some days you wonder if you are a failure at life because you can’t even get a four-year-old to stay in bed and you want to cry because it feels like your shift was supposed to end at nine so you could squeeze in one selfish and exhausted hour of Netflix but instead you are in the hallway begging your child to just fall asleep.  No one really tells you that parents can’t clock out.  

What they also never tell you is that you want your kids problems to not exist because problems means hurt and the last thing you want is for someone you love that much to hurt.  So when your kid tells you about someone being mean to them at school you brush it off or undermine it. This makes your child think you don’t care about their problems, but really it just shows that you consumed their assumed fragility when you first felt that baby soft infant skin or saw their scrunched up face cry for the first time.  You would do anything to keep them from ever feeling pain. But you know their pain is the only way they can have a full life - and you want that even more than you want their safety and innocence. Their best life becomes your driving force. That’s just how parenting is.  

 Excerpt From Eleven by Sandra Cisneros

What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are --underneath the year that makes you eleven. 

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three. 

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. 

That's how being eleven years old is. You don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don't feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is. 

To My Middle Child on the Eve of her 10th Birthday

            Ever year when Tessa’s birthday approaches I think about what a delightfully easy child she has been to raise.  She loves to sleep – major parenting win in my book.  She allowed for the shortest stay in the hospital.  To my recollection she has never warranted any school contact for behavior issues.  She is our one kid who has never had surgery.  She wears hand-me-downs with excitement.  She shows parent devotion bordering worship that can warm my heart on the toughest of days.  She really has been a breeze I told myself nostalgically as I mentally prepped a little Facebook birthday shout out in honor of her tenth birthday. 

            But in this reflection I suddenly took pause, and several buried moments started to surface.  Like the time I was SO excited to see Hotel Transylvania as I neared the end of my final pregnancy  (I am a movie loving loser who always fears lack of theater going each time I approach the stage of infant parenting) and my popcorn loving soul was stopped dead in my tracks when one look at the poster as we entered the theater sent Tessa into such an emotional frenzy that we had to leave the theater.  This Adam Sandler movie was going to be way too frightening for her…  Or the time she boycotted every ride at Disney after getting scared in the dark on Frog and Toad and Sephus and I had to take turns holding the lover of sleep after seven each night while we took turns on rides with Avery.  Or the time Sephus had to rush her out of Sophia’s because someone near us ordered seafood… or the time she puked on the table at Mandarin House because our food smelled too strong. 

            And as I thought about these events some even more distant memories surfaced.  One from the time my dad had to drag me to the car at a fireworks show when I was four because my tears were “ruining 4^th of July for the rest of us” or the time my mom and I left a movie theater to shop at K-Mart after a scary face in the movie Time Bandits had me screaming so loud no one could hear the movie.  Or the time I repeatedly yelled, “You lied to me Uncle Jack” during a train ride around Disney after he forgot to mention the tunnel when I made him promise there were no dark parts on this ride…

            Tessa has been so easy for me because she embodies so many of my idiosyncrasies.  Perhaps this makes her predictable.  Perhaps my attempt to laugh off her faults is my secret demand that the world do the same for mine.  In all honesty, I watch her with some combination of pride and concern for the life I see unfolding before her.

            I see her taking a book to the park or recess and I worry that she will never break any athletic records and will sometimes struggle to notice that she hasn’t connected with real people nearly enough, but I also know that she will be wiser and more empathetic for living alongside so many characters in so many places.  I know her interest in stories will make her a good listener and a good touchstone for advice from those who seek both. 

            I know this book obsession alongside her quirkiness makes her a bit of a loner at times.  I see her watch her super cool older sibling get social invite after social invite while the phone line remains pretty silent for her.  I hurt for her on some level, but I also know that having an older sibling that cool is a gift in and of itself.  I know that this relationship will open doors for her and allow her acceptance she hasn’t even had to earn.  I know that she worships that older sibling so much that she is happy to be waiting at home when the social events end to live vicariously through every awesome detail she eagerly devours at the end of the evening.  I also know that this time spent outside the cool kid spotlight will help her find all of her confidence from within and will help her steer the course as the winds of relationships change over the years. 

            I see her coming home from a tough recess where she has decided to stop hanging out with someone who made fun of someone else and remember how hard it is to maintain friendships when you want everyone around you to be just a little kinder and just a little more committed to rule following than human nature dictates.  I know how hard she will be on herself when she bends her own virtues to not always be on the outside. I also know that someday she will find a balance she can live with and true friends that are good-hearted and generous.  She will also learn that breaking some rules can be a little fun sometimes.   

            I listen to her correct adults and peers and literally hear voices from my childhood scolding me to not be a know it all.  I tell myself that someday she might find that know-it-alls get to lead initiatives and mentor colleagues through challenging times at work.  She will learn that bossy is one letter away from boss.

            I watch her pensive eyes taking the world in with curiosity and concern and compassion.  I know her brain never stops spinning.  I know there is torture and reward in a brain that never stops spinning. 

            She will be okay.  She will be more than okay…

            When Tessa was three I took her in for testing for the peer mentor program for pre-school.  She was offered a tooth brush.  She asked for a second one.  The person in charge of testing told her that if she took two it would not leave enough for the other kids.  She said, “If I come home with only one toothbrush it will make my sister really sad.”  When I remember her as an easy child it’s moments like that which stick out the most. 

Tessa has a good heart.  She is smart.  She has a goofy sense of humor.  She is adorably clumsy. She is a reader.  She is a thinker.  She is driven. 

When she was much younger she rolled around in a princess dress, sobbing “cleaning is so hard” I felt so in love with this mini-me and all of her beautiful imperfections.  I have heard that people often have children for a second chance… to maybe get it right this time.  Spending the past ten years with Tessa makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I’ve been getting it right all along… As she and I laid in bed reading a book together on the eve of her 10^th birthday, I knew I was getting it right with her. 

Happy 10^th birthday Tess!