Friendship break-ups are the worst.
I’ve been having this conversation with one of my daughters on the reg lately.
Listening to podcasts, reading books.
Explaining that I’m thrice her age and still figuring it out myself.
Suddenly, your people aren’t your people anymore.
What’s a girl to do?
Find new people.
My daughter almost drowned today.
She’s a strong swimmer and had spent the past 7.5 hours in and out of the ocean.
It was the last ten minutes of our day on the beach, when she swam out to retrieve her sister.
Her daddy was walking towards the trash cans.
I was 100 yards away, in my chair, recognizing that she was no longer on the sand bar but being pulled by the current.
Only her head was visible when I started to run.
She climbed onto me as I swam parallel to the shore, out of the current and into safety.
Adrenaline coursed through my body as a lifeguard pulled up on his four wheeler.
“Nice rescue.” He offered.
Apparently, as he tossed our trash into the can, my husband heard the guards talking on the stand about a mom running to her child
He turned and saw Emma in my arms.
“My God.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“Thank God you were watching. I turned my back for just a second.”
And that’s how long it takes for someone to drown.
It’s only been a few hours, but I can tell my relationship with my third-born has changed.
She looks at me differently.
She has struggled with feeling overshadowed by her big sisters and replaced by her health-demanding youngest.
Today, she felt seen.
She’d been rescued.
And it was by me.
She didn’t want to walk with me.
She wanted to walk with her friends.
It was the last day we would ever walk to school together but she couldn’t possibly understand the magnitude of that.
I’ve read, listened and discussed it all. I’ve even lived these tween years but yet, here I am, still in shock that it’s actually happening.
My first born, off to middle school.
Such a small transition compared to when she crawled, walked and first went to preschool.
And yet, it hits different.
Can we have just one more day?
Tonight held one of those moments in life when you recognize it’s special, while it’s happening.
The kind where you know you are making unforgettable memories, real time.
We went to see The Jesse Chong Band playing at Harborfest. Today happens to be June 10, just one month exactly shy of our 13 year wedding anniversary, where Jesse and his band entertained a full dance floor.
This time, we brought along our brood of four. He played my most favorite cover of his: Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon- a song I requested at our wedding.
Afterwards, as we walked to my dad’s condo, we awed the most incredible sunset- a sun so red and large, you could have plucked it right out of the tree.
Then, we were bedazzled by our first drone show, right alongside my aging dad. He’s lived in that front row seat on his balcony for so long, the fireworks have ceased to surprise him. But tonight, at age 91, he saw something for the first time- and witnessing that experience for him was something I’ll never forget.
It’s never too late.
LIfe continues to amaze.
All the pretty lights.
The teacher asked us to take notes.
I had no idea what she meant by that.
Pauli saw the panic.
She met me where I was.
She calmed me down and step-by-step, taught me how.
I will never, ever forget her kindness.
“Look for the helpers.” Mr. Rogers said.
I did.
And I still am.
In fact, I’ve become one.
My car broke down.
My dusty, musty, rusty ole’ van that has seen 10 years of abuse by children.
Her rugs are crusted with smashed applesauce.
Dead bugs lie unreachable on the dashboard but close enough to the windshield that I’ve had the privilege of watching them decay for years.
And let’s not forget that my youngest proudly carved the first four letters of her name into the side of it at the ripe age of four.
When faced with the choice of dumping five grand into a vehicle on her final wheels or starting anew, we felt torn.
Ultimately, finances forced our hand, so to the repair shop our trusty van went, and in our driveway, a brand new loaner car, while we waited.
So. Many. Buttons.
The girls had to push them all. Their eyes twinkled with excitement.
And, I admit. It was fun while it lasted.
The new car smell (similar to the allure of a new puppy!). The magnetic phone charger (game changer).
But I was annoyed when my car told on my speed so that my children called me out. I needed my speedometer back.
And I didn’t need my car to lower my side mirror to see the road when I reversed, thank you very much.
I lived in a city and can parallel park in my sleep.
Days went by and as the newness wore off, I realized I missed the familiarity of my old van.
In the age of “House Hunters” in which we are encouraged to update to keep up with the Joneses, I found myself, instead, revering all that I already have.
I walked into rooms in my house that I’d previously seen through a critical eye and I smiled. Grateful for the memories made in each.
I relaxed.
No need to trade in.
No need to keep up.
Time to maintain.
Seek, don’t settle.
That’s pretty much it.
“Just pick up fast food!”
My husband was out of town.
Gosh, if only it were that easy.
I feel like I’ve spent adulthood explaining this notion of “privilege” without realizing I’ve even done so.
Fast food?
That’s privilege, at least for my family.
We have a child with severe food allergies so “fast food” is not an option.
Instead, we have to plan painstakingly ahead.
“You were meant to be her mother.”
Was I, really?
What did I do in my past life to deserve this honor?
That’s what I would like to know.
It’s not her fault and it’s not mine either, or maybe it is- I don’t even know anymore.
What I DO know is that giving grace to any and everyone is the very best thing we can ever do.
Because, how otherwise, could we ever truly know their story?
We cannot.
So, we give grace.
Always, we give grace.
Dear Daughter,
As your grandfather reaches the end of his life, I find myself craving more.
More time. More information. What was his life really like? How did he come to be who he is today?
So, I figured I’d make it a little easier on you.
I was born in the early 1980s, when TVs still had antennas, or as we liked to call them: rabbit ears.
If the show was fuzzy, I had to get up and move the rabbit ears to try and get the station back in tune.
There was no remote. Instead, I had to get up and turn the knob for the very few channels available to us.
There was no choosing what we wanted to watch. We watched what the stations offered.
Sometime in the 1990s, we got a tv with a remote and cable which offered a lot more channels. Still, we found out what was playing by reading the newspaper, The Virginian Pilot, which printed a schedule of shows by the hour.
I vividly remember channel 99 because we didn’t “subscribe” to that channel but there was a lot of moaning and an occasional boob or two amidst the fuzziness- chaotic, zig-zag lines that perpetually moved down the screen so you couldn’t get a clear view. I was equally confused and fascinated, wondering what these people were doing.
Yikes. Now, I know.
My grandmother had a rotary phone- one where the numbers were displayed in a circle formation and you rotated the dial on the front for each number. I loved it when someone had a nine in their number because I got to move the dial almost a full 360 degrees!
We had a phone with a very long cord so that my teenage sisters could walk into another room from the kitchen and close the door to have their private conversations.
Sometime in the 1990s, the “sneaker phone” was all the rage and boy, you know I had one, too! It looked like a shoe but was actually a phone (with a cord of course)! That was the bees knees.
When I heard a song on the radio that I loved, I had to quickly find a blank cassette tape to record the song if I wanted to be able to hear it again. Cassette tapes were four inch long plastic cases that held magnetic recording tape. Sometimes, I accidentally recorded over another song that I loved and there was no going back. Once it was replaced, it was gone.
I lost many a tragic recordings to this oversight.
I also eventually got a boombox that had TWO cassette tape players, which meant I could copy one tape to the other, making “mix tapes” for my friends. I would create a playlist of my favorite songs, decorate the plastic cover, paper insert and plastic case and give it to them as a sign of my love and friendship. It took a long time, so it was a gift from the heart.
The same went for movies. We had VHS tapes, not DVDs. If you wanted to jump to a certain part of the movie, you had to fast-forward. If you wanted to go back and re-watch, you had to rewind. It wasn’t as easy as choosing a “scene”, so you really had to want it to make the effort.
I think that’s what I’m learning from my dad.
He was born in 1931.
Everything took more effort, then.
And even in the 1980s, things took more time.
Now, it’s faster.
And yet, I frequently feel the need to slow down.
Your dad, born in the 1970s, really works hard to keep you all grounded.
To keep you playing outside.
Often shoeless.
So, when things feel too fast.
Cast off those shoes.
Head outside.
Remember where you came from.
And slow down.
Dear Daughter,
Stay grounded.
I was in the room when the doctor announced “There appears to be a mass behind your aorta.”
My father is an intelligent man and although we spent the rest of the week in the hospital for the biopsy and a week more for results, we both knew.
Fucking cancer.
I wish I had words for the experience of breath leaving your body.
It’s as if time stops.
Short enough for no one else to notice but long enough to recognize when it begins again.
She left the room.
And we just stared at one another, half smiling.
“So this is how it ends.” He almost chuckled.
Even when you’re 91, you never expect it.
And ignorantly, neither did I.
Weeks later we were having breakfast together, discussing death (as one does when upon death’s door) when he did one of my favorite things:
He spoke in poetry.
“Death, be no proud, though some have called thee . . .”
I asked him if he had a copy of the poem and he described the color, size and feel of the book I should look for on the wall-to-wall bookshelf.
I found it, along with many of his other favorite poems and (as one does when upon death’s door), I asked him to share.
Because at the end, isn’t that what we all seek?
Time to share.
Time.
Let us share.
New Leaf Parenting 