Tag: parenting

mom

As I laid down and waited for sleep to take me to tomorrow, I heard a child in the parking lot below,

“Hey what does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Hey, hello?! What does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Mom!! what does the car tell you?”

He so deeply wanted his mom to answer the joke. Her silence was an exhaustion he did not understand. The tenor and the pleading sound of the word ‘mom’ made my psychic cackles go up – I felt for her. He had probably been telling this joke all day and jokes like it for days. She hadn’t tuned him out, but just wanted 20 seconds of silence.

The word mom. Mom. Mom.

It’s a monolith precursor of asks and needs and wants – a monolith of demands and expectations that never seem to pause. It’s often a child’s first word and the word that turns every unique individual woman who has a child into a martyr servant-being for at least 18 years. Even if your life’s quest is to be a Mother, the constant, intensity of the chant of needs will become exhausting.

The thing about the word ✨Mother✨ is that it takes away the woman who you were- sometimes even before you had truly become her. As soon as this title is placed upon your shoulders the world believes it has a right to criticize and speak down to you – in addition to the criticism and juvenilizing that happens to women for merely existing – as if you cannot be trusted to care for your child in your best intentioned manner. As if your choices, background, experience, education, or any other aspect should be up for judgment much less condemned by strangers; women who have chosen not to have kids, or men.

As a mother, your mere existence is questioned at every turn. You are criticized within an inch of your life, but honored one day a year with a Hallmark card and a box of chocolates. Oh darling! Being a mom is a Gift!

The word mother is not lifted up as a goddess term in our culture, but weighed down into a diminutive caretaker. Mothers are rarely praised for what they give their children, which is the best years of the first chapter of their life. Often mothers later feel obligated to give years beyond the best of their youth, thieving from the greatest of the wilding and free crone years. Mothers are expected to give everything and yet people say, “Oh but you can do it all … of course you can have a career … of course you can finish school … of course you can have time to write.” And YES that can all happen, but in order for it to be balanced there has to be support and boundaries and not everything will get a mother’s full attention. Mothers can do it all- but that doesn’t mean they can do it all perfectly.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the tears may fall.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the jokes will not be heard.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the world can become too loud.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the wine may flow.

When mothers are exhausted and just done they may need to simply rest, but the world does not embrace their need to take rest.

Next time your the mothers in your life seem to be fading, do not wait for them to ask for help- that is not something we are good at. Next time a mama is fading, step in and offer to drop off dinner, ask when you can pick up a kid for a few hours, ask if they need help grocery shopping so they can spend an hour doing nothing.

Next time you hear a child hollering for a mama’s demand driven attention just let the mama know they will be ok – they don’t have to provide the punchline to every joke. More importantly they should not be the punching bag of society’s criticism.

displaced, of sorts

I am not in the right place. I don’t mean I took a wrong turn and will be late for lunch or showed up at the wrong building for a doctor’s visit.

No, it’s the constantly nagging sensation that I’m in the wrong space. Instead of feeling anchored and stable, though all signs indicate I am, I feel like I’m floating in my life – unmoored within a forgotten bay with an eddy current being all that keeps me from moving toward elsewhere. It’s a sense of not belonging – that there’s something I just can’t attach to here because my attachment point is somewhere else that I haven’t identified.

It’s not the need to run. It’s not that I don’t want to face something. I am content in myself and my general life; rather, it’s this intangible sense that I’m simply in the wrong place. However, at this juncture in life I must keep remain in the eddy that is my daughter and I’m not going to leave her. She will be finishing high school soon and on her own journey. I don’t know where she’ll choose to go or what will happen but then I will have time to find my right place and who knows that right place may not actually be a place at all. Instead, it may be the momentum of the open road. The thing is, while I’ve been in a relative homeostasis for the last 17 years, I’ve never imagined being in a place and having all of the accouterments of permanence around me. To my heart, the world is my home and perhaps that’s why I feel as if I’m in the right wrong place. It’s not that I am presently in the wrong place specifically, but more that being in a specific place for an extended period of time does not compute with my nomadic psyche. As with all things, though, only time will tell and until that time I will continue to grow and think, interact with and experience life. Until the next chapter begins, I will continue to enjoy this interesting life and have as much fun as possible in this cosplay of a person who lives the repetitive nature of the day-to-day.

Next Chapter

“You will require a new level of integrity within your life, which will transpire into better boundaries and a more stable foundation” – Pivot Year

I’ve always been both an early & late bloomer. I was thrust into being an adult from the age of 8 when my father suddenly died and I felt I had to be responsible for helping keep my mother remain as sober as possible so she would be around for me and my sister. Of course, this wasn’t explicit and it’s hard to explain to those who haven’t experienced it – it’s just a survival instinct that you embody. As the eldest, I just did more and learned to fill in the spaces because one parent vanished and I instinctively knew another parent could as well so I worked to keep things as stable as possible and to be available for my mom. That being said, mom was emotionally absent, for the most part, and we survived by cobbling together cues on how to cook food, manage school, and navigate social interactions. If I ever was overwhelmed or sad my mother would tell me to sleep on it and I’d feel better in the morning – I learned to cope through avoidance and diminishing my feelings. 

We had an aunt who loved us fiercely, but after we moved from Texas to Colorado that lifeline was gone, save letters we would send back & forth. The Colorado move happened when I was 14 and my sister was 11. That’s when we really began being on our own for most intents and purposes. That fall I convinced my mom to let me travel to NYC on my own for a week. Her semi-boyfriend encouraged it, saying, “All flowers bloom in their own time.” I took that to heart and mom seemed glad to let me go. By the time I was 16 I’d begun periodically living on my own and had backpacked solo in Europe, twice. At 19, I had completed just shy of 2 years of college and enlisted in the Navy – letting my mother, who was off bicycling with a boyfriend, know via a phone call. My sister was finishing her junior year and maybe just off at summer camp, best I can recall. 

While I launched myself into the world as early as I could, I never took the time to look within or rather to claim what was within and follow my heart – there was no time for introspection in our home and I kept chasing my tail for decades. Even though my mom was emotionally vacant and I knew from a place in my gut that she’d never know how to support me emotionally, I so badly wanted to be seen by her. In the end, I waffled and wobbled through life until I found myself sitting, still unmoored at 50, unwrapping what I get to be in this next chapter, who I am now, and all that I’ve been. My longest role has been caregiver – first to my sister & my own mother. Later, as mother to my daughter. 

The role of mother – perhaps the most important yet least valued in our culture and I don’t mean that in some trad wife way, but that mothers are not honored for their sacrifice and diligence. It’s an expectation that the mother will simply Be There for their child and I made the expectation my identity. I did not demand that her father step up because it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t, until it was too late and I found myself resenting him for not being more engaged in her life. He had her half the time, but never actively engaged in ensuring all the details of life were covered. More precisely, I got there first. I took action- I wanted to be fully present for her while giving the best I could of life experiences. He was an available dad and, in truth, that’s solid.

When we were still married, he once told me, “If you want someone who is ambitious, we should just get a divorce now.” I replied that I’d be happy if he’d just finish projects around the house. But with thirteen years of reflection, he was correct. If I am to have a partner, I need one with ambition. That being said, my ambition was funneled into my daughter, which brings me to where I sit, 17 years later, wondering What Next?

There is no book on how to be a “Good Mother” and every single experience is different. We can only do what we feel is best, and no matter what our choices, our children will likely seek therapy. I watch my own daughter move through the world and I witness the success of my efforts. I feel validated for the sacrifices I made, the lack of career tributes are fully accepted when I watch the tribute that my daughter has become for the world, because let us not pretend she won’t be a tribute. All of her joys, successes, hardships, dreams, goals, and her soul itself will be chewed on by the world. It has already begun – that is what each of us is in truth- a tribute to the world we are part of in all ways. And the world, for me, has been focused on her for the last 17 years, but it is now time to begin a return to me.  

My focus, for the first time in my life, can be completely about the second half of my life and how I will begin to fall in love with life once more – not that my life hasn’t been good – but it’s been a buffet of taking care of others who I perceived as needing me and in that being “needed,” I failed to allow myself to be the main course. I am so excited to no longer be an option within my own life, but to be the Main Course in my decisions. 

Children Unwinding

No one tells you what a shock it is when your child gets their first vehicle- thereby extracting themselves from the calendaring of your daily life. This extraction is far from entire, of course, but their new freedom allows them to come and go on a schedule that no longer requires your time for them to accomplish their goals. With the turn of a key, your purpose as a parent shifts from absolute provider to a supporting role of sorts. Sixteen years of habits, shifting with the swiftness of an automatic transmission.

You will still provide food and shelter, but not as much food because they now have a job and they go out to eat with their friends. You will still provide shelter, but not as much shelter because they’ll be sleeping over at a friends’ houses more often. Your advice is no longer sought first because they will have already unloaded to their friends so your thoughts become just another layer of consideration and really they just want you to listen so they can process everything that’s coming at them from the world. A world they are more immersed in than the four walls that have been the space where your love lives. And while your heart has been outside of your body since their first breath, it now lives beyond your reach.

They are learning to become adults. They are practicing living in deeper waters and sometimes they may choke because they aren’t as strong a swimmer as they believed and you may never know or they may come running back to your arms. But no one tells you how empty and eerily quiet your home becomes when your child has the freedom of their own car and that first job. How you must suddenly learn, with a swift immediacy, that the emptiness of your home is not an emptiness of your child’s heart.

Just when your house feels totally empty & your heart is aching for a hug- they will come barging in with stories and questions and friends and the ability to wipe out your pantry in 30 seconds flat. They’ll come home late and the next morning you’ll see them sleeping in their bed at 10 in the morning arms sprawled, hair a mess, and they’ll be a whisper of that sweet baby of the past. That child who would’ve already been up tearing through the house. That sweet little baby whose ass you would’ve had to wipe and fed them and taken them to the playground and answered 10,000 questions all before 9 AM.

But you did a good job mama and papa and now that sweet baby has found their friends and has found a first job and is learning to get around the world. It may seem like they don’t, but they still need you, even if it is not as apparent. They still want to be part of your life even if they don’t always say so. They’re simply pushing off the shallow end of the pool. They’re testing the waters and figuring out what they’re gonna be like as an adult. So give them a little space and let your little birdie fly. You will always be connected by the blood that runs through your veins. Let them know you care, listen more than you talk, learn who they are becoming and what they enjoy, ask questions that let them teach you and give them space to learn how to love you on their terms.

free range mama

I was sitting in a very hot bath, enjoying a semi-silence, but Zach Bryan cooed in the other room. 

The other room, my daughter’s was a spotless room, because she cleaned head to toe, while she had COVID, but no fever that day. As I sat in my bath, she was completely locked in on her chemistry, advanced chemistry, thank you very much. She’s incredibly capable and it’s fascinating to watch her navigate this complicated world with such grace.

Meanwhile, my room was a complete disaster. It’s true. I had worked all day, and it was not as bad as it had been in the past. I suppose, at least, clothes were not strewn across the floor, but random computer cables were and jewelry adorned my dresser top with scattered indecision. There were papers out because I had thought I might need them someday, and that someday has passed, but I hadn’t had the gumption to toss them yet. There might be another someday. It was just a hot mess. 

But I lounged in my bath and I dreamt about a future where I can spread my dreams. My future and what I want to do and where I want to go in this world. And I know I want a place.

I want a place that my baby will always be able to come back to, a place that both of us can always call home. Presently, that’s my mom’s land, the last bit of our family land. I know my mom won’t always be there. She will die at some point. It’s just the guarantee of living. Once she dies, I don’t know if I still want the land where she lives. It’s just outside of Austin and it will get busier and more crowded. Water will become more of an issue, as we may or may not continue to get rain. And so I thought about it. I thought maybe I will look for a place far north- somewhere where things are damp and green and water and food grows with the seasons.

This idea of place is something to think about for my future, but it’s not required for me. A place in the future comes down to: I want my child to always have a place to come home to. She has commented, “I don’t really have a childhood home.” It’s true, I bought and sold two houses- the first sold because of divorce and the second from being overwhelmed with managing a home on my own. Selling both is one of the few regrets I have in life, but there’s no reason we can’t create one for the future. A place her children will always know, should she choose to have them, and a place she can return whenever she needs.

I want to work toward that and in that, I want a place that I can lock up and leave and go away from for months at a time. I still dream of volunteering with Peace Corps. I should have done it with or without her dad so many years ago, but he said the psych evaluation was foolish and dug his heels in against having one done. I acquiesced and dropped the application process. A bit later, an opportunity opened for me in New York and I was able to leverage that into a move to the City for us. While that was an experience I would never trade, it’s not the calling of volunteer community development and support I still crave. Once my daughter has flown, that will be a goal to achieve- serving in Peace Corps or with another organization. 

I also want to hike great distances- the Appalachian Trail- America’s southern borders- at least some of the Pacific Crest- to walk the Santiago Trail in Spain- the caves in France where it is said Mary Magdalene lived after Christ’s ascension. I don’t have a goal to scale any mountains, but I want to see the world on foot. Maybe a little on bicycle, but there’s something about my feet to the earth, step after step, crossing miles and passing through time, that makes me really happy. 

While I walk, I want to hear the stories of the people I meet- collect them like a bowerbird, collects shiny objects. I want to collect the stories of people’s lives and wear them in my soul. Woven like the stardust, they are. Stardust that is now only atoms of air that rest upon our ears, and I can carry with me. I want to learn the fiddle so I can play the woven songs into the night.

I want to learn ASL so I can share the stories of people that can’t hear my language. Other languages as well- a babel fish placed in my ear would be a wonderful addition- so long as I can reply to all.

I just want to be of the world, and I want to love within this world. To me, that is love. It’s your soul sharing with souls. Stop for a bit here and there and hither- work in kitchens or learn massage so I can make due. Wherever I go. There’s cooking. There’s writing. There’s organizing. I’m sure I can get it together to be on the waves of the world. Then quietly there will always be a place- that place I’ve set aside for us. Small and simple- accessible from a second bus and a ride from a local to the top of a long road, at the end of which will sit a little house overlooking a nice, low, curving hill that ends with water. It will always end with water.

potatoes

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s about eating and intentionally being thankful, not in that order, but this demonstrates my values. In past years, I have cooked for upwards of 25 people with very little assistance. It’s not that I didn’t want the help, but that I adore the frenetic dance of juggling multiple timelines and dishes and those points of separating food so that part of the batch remains veggie or vegan, while the other part of the batch becomes meat or dairy enhanced. Then, it all comes together with chosen and friendly family as I beam at all the love I am surrounded by in that day. Thanksgiving is the best.

This year we will be traveling and the actual meal will be at a restaurant, as we will be celebrating an aunt’s 75th birthday and she has chosen to keep things easy. It’s all the best parts of my family who will gather so the drama level should be close to non-existent. I’m excited to see everyone, but I know I’ll be missing my gift of cooking.

However, never fear, my kiddo has been looking out for me. She’s had two Thanksgiving events this week: one for school and one her own Friendsgiving. Mind you she’s also been working extra hours and has afterschool activities so she asked me if I would please make something for each of these meals. And I did, gladly. Both groups got potatoes. Side note, potatoes should be their own food group. That is an undeniably fact that my Irish, German, Czech heritage will always support. But I digress. Back to the potatoes.

One group got garlic smashed potatoes in which I boiled small potatoes smashed them by hand and then fried them in a seasoned butter mixture. Those were delivered to her school; hot, fresh & crispy, for her athletic training class holiday lunch. Next, I made Vermont mashed potatoes. They are Vermont only in that you’re supposed to use Vermont sharp cheddar cheese, but always the rebel, I used New York sharp cheddar cheese. These mashed potatoes have the requisite amount of cheese, heavy cream, butter, and even eggs such that as a weekly staple you would live happy, but not for very long. However, these are going to be shared by a group of Arwen’s friends for a Friendsgiving so their youth and moderation of serving should keep them alive. I will not be there, but I know there will be laughter and joy, and most importantly, I will have delivered love.

returning to adventures

I have been a solo traveler since before I was of legal age. In the fall of my 14th year, I traveled to NYC and stayed in a women’s boarding house, The Allerton House, at 57th & Lexington and explored the City on my own for a week. The following spring, I visited London & Venice, respectively staying in London with a guy we’d met on a family weekend in Denver and in Venice I stayed with a woman I met while in NYC. I took the trains and read maps and discovered museums and street performers and walked around the canals as I pleased. Next, at 15 I hit up Seattle via a Greyhound bus and stayed with a family friend, who I don’t think actually expected me to show up. By 16, I was back in Europe with a backpack and Eurail Pass. Paris, Nice, Rome, Athens, Mykonos and then home. Between all this, at some point I got a driver’s license, but my mom was letting me drive solo well before I had the license, or permit. I never finished high school, instead opting for my GED at 17 and community college. Next, was a year at the University of Wyoming and then the United States Navy for four years. During the Navy, I was stationed stateside because, as it turns out, the “travel the world” part of enlistment is not guaranteed. However, during my service, I managed to drive across large swaths of the country with fellow sailors. Post military, I was back to primarily solo traveling. In those years, I made it to Belize and Guatemala and got back to Europe- seeing the Czech Republic, a bit of Germany, and the northwest coastal area of Italy.

Sunset on our first night in Waves, NC. One week into a three week road trip, Spring 2021.

Everything before 17 might seem completely insane and as a parent today, I agree. I would never let my now 16 year-old child be out in the world to the degree I was allowed, but today’s world is very different than it was in the early 90s. However, now or then, I would still agree with the sentiment, “What were her parents thinking?” The answer is there wasn’t a they and my mom was barely surviving. My dad died without warning when I was not quite 8 and my sister was 6, leaving my mom with an industrial photography business and alcoholic tendencies. She went into a tailspin with the unexpected role of solo-parenting and I don’t think she ever truly recovered. She was supposed to want kids, but she did not have a strong parental model and I don’t think her mothering instinct was a natural tendency. When I showed a strong independent streak, she was thrilled and encouraged me to do my thing.

With the tools she had, she did as good as she could for us, but there was limited oversight and I learned to hustle at an early age. I was pleased to be responsible and glad to be able to help her with anything I could including learning to pay bills, and listening to her stories of boyfriends and breakups. My young brain figured if she was happy she wouldn’t leave like our dad had left. To be clear, I logically knew he had died, but no one in my family talked about death or those who died. He was there and then gone. We just kept moving forward. To me he had left us to fend for ourselves so that’s what I would do as well as I possibly could figure out each day. Now there is a word for the reality I grew up in- parentification, but at the time it was just, “being such a great helper.” Regardless of labels, my mom saw me a capable young adult so that’s how I ended up traveling at 14. I distinctly recall her saying, “Well, if you figured out all the travel plans and lodging, you must be able to manage the trip.”

To this day, being free to roam through the world is where I feel most myself. For me, the unknown outcomes are far outweighed by the freedom of moment-to-moment independent choice making. My experience has been that the independence of solo traveling is the best possible outcome for life. Now that my daughter is preparing to soon launch into the world, I am looking forward to returning to a life of being more on the road- exploring and teaching, than in a locked location. It always astonished when people, especially women, haven’t discovered this freedom. I look forward to sharing this freedom, to teaching and guiding women to find a comfortable thrill in traveling solo, and close to solo, throughout this world.

hard re-set

At least once a week she wants a hard re-set. 

Full speed into the back of stopped traffic.

Tear through a red light with a cargo truck passing in the perpendicular.

The sign reads slow to 45, but keep it at 65, don’t curve or slow into the highway overpass turn.

How the days bled from one into another week with punctuations of cooking and cleaning and interrupted sleep. Just one little ‘accident’ and it would all stop. Just. Stop. The noise. The demands. The uncertainty. The fears. Just one little accident to end it all. 

All of the hard re-set possibilities would cause moderate to severe injury, possibly death. The level of her consideration of re-set, rear-end, t-bone, or sailing into and possibly over an overpass, would depend on the week.

After a hard re-set, there would be quiet. No demands on her time. No coordination of events. No conversations she’d rather not have. No worrying. Oh the worrying. It wasn’t a conscious worrying, but it was a never ending worrying about her daughter. The love was so strong that she stopped trying to explain it. She stopped trying to describe how it felt to have part of herself in the world, but with no control of its consciousness. Just her inside someone else’s body, but not knowing their world and as that other her grew bigger and more into their world, becoming more like her and also further away. The quiet worrying grew. The desire to be Present, while also a pulling darkness to re-set. She didn’t want to die- just wanted it all to stop for maybe two months. Just a medically induced coma to sleep through and a year of PT. A re-set.

When she was back, it would all still be there, but shifted. The shift might be worse, might be better, but her heart might have a rest for a bit of time and she might not feel so terrifically overwhelmed through every moment. 

The truth though, is that life would keep rolling and while the re-set could possibly maybe help her bring it all back in- The re-set could possibly maybe calm the turmoil in her mind- The re-set could possibly maybe keep her heart in her chest for a bit- it would also tear more that just her world apart. People would worry. Her heart outside her body would be destroyed with worry. A re-set would stop hers and everyone else’s life in the worst ways. so …

She slams on the brakes.

She turns out of the cargo truck’s path.

She slows into the turn.

Another week to worry and wonder after the peace of a hard re-set.