Finding Myself Again

This and That

Some random things, in no particular order.

This Spring has been terribly long, longer than most it seems. It feels as though Summer should have been here five times over by now. I know that one day I will suddenly wake up to the heat having finally broken through the barriers of the cold, but when will that day be? Ten more years? Twenty?? And yet, the other day I was looking at the calendar to find today's date and was thoroughly shocked that it was already over half way through April. Wasn't it just March yesterday?! It is such a constant mystery to me, how time can go both incredibly slow and ridiculously fast all at the same time.

The other night we were out to dinner for date night, and as she was sitting us the hostess turned to me and very randomly stated, "You are so pretty." And I was sitting there with my unwashed hair tucked into my ponytail and my weary eyes lined with wrinkles, quite literally shocked to hear this from a stranger, so I said something really classy like "SHUT UP." But as I pondered this later, still sitting in my shock, I wondered many times if I must have heard her wrong, because I'm not at a stage in my life where strangers tell me I'm pretty. I'm a Mom, wearing the years on my forehead and in my eyes and, as of late, sometimes comfortably around my midsection. I don't feel pretty. I do feel strong, though, and proud and accomplished and optimistic. But don't get me wrong, it was nice to hear just the same.

Last week I took Rockie out for her first trail run of 2019, and how long the winter has been was most apparent on her. She lugged a large amount behind me the entire way, huffing and panting while the fat on her neck rolls bobble up and down. The entirety of the run I would call back to her every ten seconds or so, "Good girl! You can do this Rockie! We are so close! This is so good for us!" And I found myself wishing I had the kind of supporter on my trudging post winter runs as Rockie has in me.

We registered Beck for Kindergarten. Let me repeat that, because I imagine you think I made a mistake in my typing: We registered Beck for KINDERGARTEN. No really, it's true! He starts Kindergarten this Fall! I know, it's okay, I was in denial for a while myself. I made Dan take him to get his Kindergarten shots, because I hate watching my kids gets shots and also, it seemed fair as I was the one to take them both to all of their shots and this is the last one. So he did, and apparently Beck was just a champ who didn't shed a single tear, and only held his arm tightly and cringed while shouting "ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE" while they stuck him with a needle. Chocolate ice cream afterwards made up for it all.

I was listening to an interview with a Professor at Harvard who studies happiness, and it was enthralling to hear all of the science behind optimism and joy. In one long standing study, they were able to determine that by asking your child at the end of each day to name three things they are grateful for, you can change a child who is predisposed to pessimism to become an optimist. So naturally, I have been asking this to the boys each night. I noted it here solely for a selfish purpose, because in twenty years I'd like whoever is reading this to tell me how I fared. Are the boys optimists? Did it work?? If so, please remind them of when this started and how they have their Mother to thank for it all.

Camping season kicks off with a camp trip next weekend! We will hide easter eggs throughout the dirt in the mountains for all of the kids while we are there. We have every single weekend in June and July booked with camping trips, a different location each time. YIKES how did that happen? We may have been slightly overanxious during the longest approach to Spring (as I mentioned earlier) and booked up all of our weekends in anticipation for the warm weather, oops! But as it is, I think it will be fine. Hectic, perhaps, but doing the thing we love most and so, worth it. Probably, I'll let you know.

Perfectionism

I am learning how to thrive in a life of imperfection.

For years, I wasn't accomplishing the things that would lead me to be my best self, purely because I was waiting for the perfect time. Some examples?

Writing.
Meditating.
Yoga.

These things were just notions floating around in the air above me, waiting for me to reach up and grab them, but I often didn't because I had a full time job and two young boys and when could I find the time for peace and quiet and ease? WHEN?! Never, that is when, and so I just sat there waiting for those perfect moments. And they came, now and again, so when they came I snatched the notions as I could. That was a lovely yoga session in the quiet! It has been months! Or, I wrote another page in my book! It is coming along like a snail scoots to China but at least I had those twenty minutes of silence just now! Maybe I'll get that again in six more months, and I can write a second page!

Do you see what I mean? Do you see why I was sleepwalking passively through life, waiting for perfection to fall in my lap and only then being proactive because, only then could I live as my best self?

Do you see how silly that sounds?

I stopped that thought process this year. I started doing things like yoga in the living room while my boys were in the next room playing nintendo, loudly calling out every five minutes "MOM COME SEE THIS!" to which I would calmly reply from my downward dog "I have twenty more minutes of yoga and then I will be glad to, please be patient." and they wouldn't be patient, but I would finish my yoga just the same.

I started doing things like writing my book from my front porch while the boys ran in the sprinklers of the front lawn with loud screams of excitement, or writing from the back patio while they watched a tv show in the living room and, heaven forbid, letting them make their own lunches, or while they played on the slide at chick-fil-a and I sucked up the free wifi. And I would be interrupted, inevitably, but I would write and my boys would learn how important it is for me to write, and we would talk later about what I was writing, and about storytelling.

I started doing things like meditating in the morning chaos, shutting down my mind and sitting on my bed or the hardwood floor and closing my eyes to breathe. And when the boys would come in they would sit beside me, and put their hand on their heart, and breathe with me there. They wouldn't last as long but they would get enough in and I would think, well how lovely that because I am mediating with them here, they are learning the art of meditation themselves!

And maybe one day they will remember all of this about me, how I was mindful and how I found moments to breathe and connect throughout the crazy-ness of life and how I would sit beneath the shade of a tall maple tree and write my book (that maybe once they are older will be published, god willing) and how I would stop every now and again to let them tell me a story or get them an apple, and how hard I worked and how invested I was in all of the things I was passionate about.

And maybe one day that will make them want those things for themselves too.

And how sad it would have been if I had only done these things when the boys weren't there, when it was perfectly quiet and easy, how they wouldn't have learned those things for themselves at all.

And how sad it really would have been, because I would have waited for years and years and maybe never accomplished those things at all.

So, goodbye perfection, and hello to this season of a beautiful, messy, chaotic, loud and ever-changing life that is mine.

It is all about the journey, friends. Get out there and get you some.

We are now in the thick of a hot and sticky summer and I took a few pictures of how we are surviving so far! I hope you are doing well for July and drinking a lot of water and staying up late and living in the moment as much as you possibly can! Don't blink, Summer will be over all too soon! Exclamation marks and all!

First Day

The week before was the hardest. I found myself on an emotional rollercoaster, crying at all of the most inconvenient times, drowning in sadness and weariness, trying to cope with all of these very big feelings about life.

There are so many triggers in my life this year. Just about anything can elicit an overly emotional and sensitive side of me, a side that lays dormant, that hides beneath boulders and deep in dark caves, where no one will know it lives until it is awakened somehow. Sometimes those triggers that wake it are loud as the echo of a cannon, while other times a mere whisper carried on the wind.

And so it was with the thought of this day arriving. The end of an era, the beginning of a brand new stage in life. It was the trigger to my overly emotional state, the momentary wake to its insomnia of a slumber.

I have been filled with nostalgia in preparation for this day. I have been reminiscing about days past, easier days, different days, days from which I have long since changed tremendously. We all have. You especially have changed. You have lost every ounce of baby chub you once had. You are tall and skinny and your face is that of a real boy now, with a soft dash of freckles sprinkled across the bridge of your nose.

Watching you grow and blossom into the human you are right now has been one of my greatest privileges. We have been through so much together. We have hiked up the hills of the hard phases and soaked in the sunshine of the good phases and ridden the waves of every phase in between. No matter what has happened, at the end of every day we know that we belong to each other. That we are yours and that you are ours.

And it seems so ridiculous, feeling all weepy because of Kindergarten, doesn't it? But starting school is so significant to me, such a huge milestone, such a momentous turn in the road. And it's the nostalgia that makes me misty-eyed, it's the heart-warming memories of a once chubby baby, of all the milestones we have crossed this far, that constantly flood my mind.

What it really all comes down to is this: I am so very proud of you. I am so very proud of your sweet kindness, of your delightful sense of humor, your independence, your cleverness, your abilities and talents, your optimism and drive for adventure and fun, the huge capacity of your heart that you reserve for genuine friendship and love.

You were so excited about school and it did not disappoint. You are naturally a quiet and timid soul, especially with new people, but you were oh so brave and daring walking into the unknown with your head held high. You were ecstatic because you feel big and grown up and I love that about you, that you love feeling big and grown up, even though I am not ready for you to be.

Thank you for being mine.

impending doom

Yesterday Jace had his pre-kindergarten assessment.

Dan and I sat in child-sized chairs a few feet behind him and watched while he sat very seriously at a tiny table next to a kind assessment woman. The kind assessment woman would ask him to count to twenty and spell his name and tell her all of the plastic bright colored shapes at the table. My heart threatened to beat out of my chest while I watched, Dan kept tilting his head casually while trying to hear everything, we both would randomly flash him a big thumbs up which he would return with a cheesy grin on his cute face.

In less than one week now it will be his first day of Kindergarten.

I don't know how we got here.

I get it, the clock ticks and the earth rotates around the sun and time continues to slip through our fingers like sand in an hourglass whether we are ready for it or not.

I get it. I do.

But how did we get here?

And more importantly, how do you do it? How do you pull your child from safe and secure and drop them into the real world, just like that?

Jace is unique. All children are, but as his mom I can vouch for the fact that Jace is really very unique. He is his own self. He hates to have his hands dirty or sticky in any way. He is oh so shy and there aren't many things worse than throwing him into the middle of a large group or a bustling activity filled with people and noise. He has always hated crowds. He takes a long time to warm up to new people. Even, sometimes, to people that aren't new at all. He has a temper that can sometimes turn him into the hulk, a teenager of a hulk squeezed into a five year old's body. So we work on it. We teach him to use his words. It's okay to be frustrated buddy, we say, but you have to handle those feelings better. We can't scream, we have to use our words. It's okay to have big feelings, but we have to be big and brave in how we handle those feelings.

Currently Jace goes to daycare three days a week. His daycare center has fences and only one door to enter, which is always locked and you can't get in without clearance. We know everyone there, the teachers are amazing, the class sizes are small. It feels safe and secure and simple.

And now I am sending him into the real world, where teachers are kind and wonderful but doors aren't locked and the class size is doubled. I wish I could hang a sign around his neck saying, PLEASE BE NICE TO ME! Only, that would likely have the opposite affect. What I really wish is that everyone could see him and know him and love him the way I see him and know him and love him.

And even worse than that, what if an evil person walks into his school through those unlocked doors with bad intentions? What if something happens and I am not there to protect him? Isn't that every parents worst nightmare, that you won't be there to protect your child when they need it the most?

He is so excited for Kindergarten. He has woken up every morning this week extremely disappointed that it wasn't time to go to Kindergarten yet. He is ready to grow up and to be big, he is ready for the real world, and I love that about him.

But it scares me so much.

I feel so brave this year. I feel like everything I do is brave. Like I am walking a lot of planks and jumping into oceans with only hope that I will be able to swim to land somehow. Sometimes I feel hopeless and sad and unsure about everything, sometimes I feel like I am drowning, but I never do. I stay afloat and wake up the next day to do it all again, and I think that's pretty brave.

It has been a hard year. The hardest year.

And now I am pulling my firstborn son from safe and secure, and that feels like an entirely different plank to walk. I have knots in my stomach and I'm still so unsure of how I will do it, how I will just let him go like that. How will I turn my back and walk away on that first day?

How does anyone do it?

HEAVEN HELP ME.