Not the Summit

Last night I watched my five year old daughter exhaust herself during gymnastics.  Abby was working on a drill by herself without any instructor to please or frustrate, yet she pushed herself to utter muscle fatigue.

The tears escaped the second our eyes met after practice.  "Mommy, I'm so, so tired."

"I bet you are, Baby.  You know something?  I'm so proud of how hard you are working out there.  I can see how great you're doing and so can your instructor.  And you know what?  You can rest at times.  I think maybe go slower sometimes.  You don't need to work so hard."

"Let's go home, Mommy."

Then I felt the zing.  The parenting boomerang that headbutts us when we've rallied against the machine.

You don't need to work so hard.

Those are the words I choose to usher my girl into her formative years?  Don't work so hard?  Will her teachers pummel me with spitballs for saying that?  Will her future employers write me a pink slip for teaching her the virtue of slacking off?  Will her future spouse forget my birthday every year because I've raised an entitled child?

I don't think so.

I don't think we live in a day and age where hard work necessarily always wins the good fight.  I think smart work does.  There is a distinction.  And I believe it's unrealistic to expect hard work to result in success every single time.  It won't.  And I don't really want my children falling into that antiquated trap.  Hard work will end in exhaustion every single time.  Which will lead to unfulfilled dreams, slighted passions, and built-up resentment as a result of punching in 12 hour days, plus a cruel hour commute in traffic away from the city.

I'm going to teach my children that hard work is a virtue, yes.  But it is not the most virtuous virtue.  Hard work to be married to intelligent shortcuts and updated thinking is what I believe brings happiness.  What good will your calloused hands do you they are reaching for the bottle of Motrin for your stress-induced migraine or worse, the bottle of gin to numb your pain?

With things moving so quickly online and kids needing to know how to interface well with websites, it seems the natural trend will continue to move toward technology.  I'm not advocating daily marathons of Mindcraft and Lego Batman but I'm also not entirely against it.  Those computer skills, after all, are the real-life skillset our children will need to have in their adult world.  No?  You don't think so?  Ask any new graduate from any college.  Even performance-based schools.  Entire musical scores are recorded, engineered, tweaked, and graded on computer programs that require more hours staring into a screen than practicing bar chords.

Hard work plus a dose of worldly perspective is what I'm after.

Of course I want my children to pursue their interests and their passions.  I want my children to know that you can't skip a practice from a bruised foot and expect to make it regionals.   But you know what else?  I want them to love it.  I want them to look forward to it each and every day, be fueled by it.  I hope when they wake up, they will be itchy underneath their skin for the thing that brings them inner joy, not outward recognition.  I hope Grayson will reach for the piano keys when he can't figure out how to ask someone he's been pining for to prom.  I hope Abby will turn to her art table when she's sorting something out about her crazy moody mother.

I think there is too much to lose from pushing our children to be better, faster, smarter, stronger all the damn time.  If they show Olympic promise?  Ok, go ahead and push.  But for the 97% rest of us, it's a push and a pull.

The push alone gets hard-wired into our children at an early age and before long, their natural curiosity dissolves into ashes on their Gifted & Talented diplomas.  We don't need more "perfect" adults in this world.  We need more imperfect adults who know true personal fulfillment.

We need more imperfect people who glean enlightenment in the doing and not the victory.

Ask any mountain climber why she climbs.  Not many will say the summit.

A taxed, frantic, relentless young mind becomes a neurotic, chaotic, unhealthy adult mind later on.  It's about learning balance early on.  Yes, please do practice your soccer drills.  But also please completely f*ck around in the backyard for an hour afterward without any catalyst or blue ribbon in sight.  That is where your happiness hides.  And sometimes it hides well.  I always want for you to find it.

Life just becomes hard work for hard workers, I'm afraid.  

But life is mysterious, rewarding, and delicious for smart workers.  People who have their finger on the pulse of what makes their generation tick.  People who understand what the hell Bill O'Reilly is saying and why we should dig harder than the sensationalized news channels.  People who aren't so booked every second of the day that they can't take a walk with their grandmother around the parking lot of Applebee's on a regular Thursday.  People who know the importance of following through but also understand regular vacations will keep their fuses soft and their mental health sharp.

People who know how to push themselves and also know how to pull back.

And parents who will let them.

Manifest

Sometimes I don't know where to turn.

The usuals aren't working:  the silence, knockoff Oreos, sideburns of sun on the too-tall grass in our backyard, or the third glass of wine.  Nothing, none of it's working right now.

So I turn inward and starve myself from connection, figuring nobody can touch what they can't see.  Then, in a mean twist of chemistry and human condition, I turn it outward and clean the crumbs from underneath the plate of a child who is still eating.  Nothing, none of it's working right now.

I don't go for the spiral, the deep dive down in to the well where things are just plain pitiful.  Mostly because that is selfish crap.  We all have this sometimes.  Nobody is saved from their lives.

But it's there.  The desire to be saved.  To be taken by the wrist, shown the way down the dark hall, sat down in a place I don't recognize, and held strong by someone - anyone- who means it.

I'm no more tired than you.  Not in the physical, more something else to do with your worn out soul-ical.  Your fatigue from life and mine are the same.  And utterly different, all the time.  Because it's work.  We all have it.  We wake up, nobody but us steers the day.  We look at the clock to see how much longer we have, as if a certain whistle gets blown at a certain hour.  We fix dinner we won't ourselves eat, we make more dishes like an evil boomerang.  I swear I just washed this knife.  We hide in our bathroom from more innocent chatter about impossible treehouses and Spongebob.  We are found by all sets of eyes, human, canine, and now feline.  We can't hide from life.  Life finds you and has you clock the hell back in.

Because there is no clocking out.

I never knew that.  I should've, but I didn't.  I figured there were diapers, formula, bouncy seats, playdates, wine, and then YAY school!  Oh, dear HayZeus, how naive of me to think there was a space between.  The only spaces I've found in between is laundry.  The beautiful puzzle of laundry that allows me to pine for sister wives, churning butter, and sharing a man who will only annoy the sh*t out of me once a month.

It's going to be fine because fine is what I'm after.  No epic knowledge of home making.  No epiphanies about child rearing or "finding myself in the mundane."  If I haven't found myself by now, there may not be real reason to keep looking.  I've been here all along, cursing, singing, writing, saving dogs.  It takes more than gray hair and eyebags to suffocate that girl who refuses to go out without a fight.

Manifest.  I keep saying this word to myself:  manifest.  Manifest the will to keep pushing through the muck and the sludge in the miracle likelihood there is someone at the end of this to hug me tightly.  To show me that love and willpower are, in fact, always met with the reward of a brighter day.

And by brighter, I totally mean overcast with over a 60% chance of rain.

The...Bright Side?

A good friend of mine recently told me to look on the bright side first thing in the morning in order to have good thoughts for the day.  Even when you're doga** tired, the alarm is going berserk, your dog shoved her claw up your nose you still wake up and say, "Hello sunshine, I am ready for you," and good thoughts will beget more good thoughts.  So, I'm trying it now.  At night time, before bed.  A rough draft, if you will.

Lesson Number Uno:  At 8a.m. this morning, I was on the couch reading with Grayson when we both heard a thump.

After some investigation I saw a deceased something (you don't want to know) right smack in the middle of our back porch.

Upon further investigation, I noticed its little something mate five feet away who stood vigil for its very-much-gone friend.  The mate stood there, in profile, staring at me with one speck of an eye through the window for at least ten minutes.  Of course in my Dr. Doolittle brain it was asking me for help.

I went outside to see about that but soon realized whatever happened had completed the task and her mate was gone forever.  She waited for me to assess the situation with a stick, say a little something prayer, and go back inside.

I watched through the window as she perched herself up high (stop trying to guess, trust me you don't want to know) to see if I produced a miracle.  I didn't.  It broke my heart.  She took her final leave only after I eventually scooped up her friend and relocated it to its final resting place (not the garbage Mom, I'm not a monster.  Ok maybe the garbage.  But I will bury it tomorrow?)  

The...Bright Side?  This morning we just witnessed something amazing.  We just saw proof that all creatures love.  People who don't believe nature's creatures have feelings have never seen the demanding speck of an eye plead for a human's help.  They have never watched as she stood solidly next to her mate like a worried mom.  She didn't just take off for the next good lookin' something to cross her path.  She waited.  She waited a long time for him to come back to her the way she expected him to.  It was incredible to see we are not the only ones capable of loving something so much it waits for the impossible until it just can't wait anymore. (Do you want pictures?  You know I totally took pictures.)

***********************

Lesson Numero Dos:  After the kids' swim lessons, Grayson looked funny and wanted to go home.  This should have been enough information for me but apparently it took him, an hour later, writhing in pain and tearing at his hairline screaming about how badly his head hurt for me to throw us all in the car to get to the doctor's office in less than seven minutes.

He officially has the yuck.  He actually had it all over the doctor's floor three times.  I felt awful to bring a viral boy in when an hour prior to the yucking I was sure an alien was going to gnaw its way through his ear canal and find its way into my corneas.

Bright Side:  We are going to watch so much TV tomorrow that our brains will ooze Pillow Pets and Bakugans.  And all that talk in my other post about an "agenda?"  Ha!  I take my theoretically proposed agenda and I Half Nelson it with strep, Flubug 982798, or whatever extra terrestrial lifeform is using my children as its host.  Maybe the Curiosity's sky crane will find its mother to come get it and take it back home to eat dust balls instead of human DNA.

(How cool is NASA, by the way?  Mars now has tire tracks on it because of the U.S.A.  Huzzah!)

So there, Dark Side.  You can't own me.  You can't even borrow my sweaters.  I am looking on the Bright Side until it hurts.

Or maybe after it hurts because today?  Ouch.

xoxox

My Son, The Theologian

Grayson has always been a sensitive child.

When he was only six months I was beside myself with wondering why he wasn't anything like those happy Gerber babies I saw in play yards cooing at stuffed caterpillars and sweet-eyed baby elephants.  He wasn't content unless one of his "people" was near enough.  I mean near enough to see them, smell them, feel them with his invisible tentacles that couldn't reach across a small room.

Grayson never wanted to be alone.  I realize most babies don't like to be alone but if you ever met us in the first year of his life, you would see a baby who could sense when his person even thought about sprinting to the upstairs to bring down some clothes to fold without him.  He required lots of attention and loved having things explained to him.  In detail.  Until your brain fell out of your ears.  And then again more. 

It was sweet but difficult too because sometimes I just wanted to have a cozy little uncurious lump on my chest who slept for hours instead of minutes.

And if he was handed off to someone he didn't particularly have memorized, all fury broke loose.  Dude was not having any substitutes.

My "friends" told me I needed to socialize him more.

I considered drinking.

My family reminded me he was Grayson and had his own personality way before we met him.

This idea finally sunk in the day a book called, "Parenting Your Sensitive Child," literally fell into our shopping cart on one of our thousands of trips to the thrift store.  I practically read that puppy cover to cover before we left the parking lot.  It would be my new bible; paragraphs highlighted, sentenced underlined, pages dog-eared to show Andy.

THIS AUTHOR KNEW GRAYSON!  Where was BOOK TWO?

This book, my family, and a gigantic learning curve taught me how to appreciate Grayson for who he was:  a sensitive, beautifully deep, and compassionate boy.  Little did I know just how deep.

When he was very small, not quite two, we took a nature walk around the neighborhood.  Grayson stopped to smell a neighbor's cluster of flowers.  He gibber jabbered something about them and began walking again.  "Mommy?  What dey name?"

"What, Honey?"

"What dey name, da fowers name."

"Ohhh, the flowers?  Those are called, ummm, they're petunias I think."

"No, Mommy dey not toonias."

"Then what do you think they're called?"

"Dose fowers name imp-AY-shuns."

And hell if he wasn't correct.  Those flowers were impatiens, I had forgotten that was their name.  I should've known because my grandmother planted them every year in the front yard.

"You're right, Grayson, how did you know?"

"She tell me."

Um, what the who the what?!?

"Who told you, Honey?"

-Pointing to the yard- "Her.  Dat Lady tell me."

OMGOMGOMG  he can see my grandmother.

"Is she an older lady?"

"No, she is same as you."


So who knows who he was talking to but I can promise you I've never met an under-two-year-old child who can tell you the difference between a petunia and an impatien.  It fa-reeeeaaaked me out.  But in a good way.  Suddenly I gave way to a possibility that Grayson's sensitive nature just might be a bigger blessing than I knew.  Or it could just cost us playdates, playground playdates, and other people in general.

So many more stories to share about Grayson's take on the cosmos but zoom ahead to a few nights ago to a conversation we had right before he fell asleep.  He was practically snoozing while he was talking which only loaned itself to the eery innocence of his words for me.  I will warn you that the first sentence is a doozy.  Consider yourself forewarned.  He's not a child who cares much about Legos or riding his bike although sometimes I wish he was.  Sometimes I wish he wasn't so consumed with the bigger picture.  But he is.  It's the undercurrent of his thoughts that comes out when he is comfortable, peaceful, and feeling safe.  It always has been.

 

Our Conversation Not About Power Rangers

 Grayson: Hey Mommy, we're all going to die. 

(Oh boy, here we go again.)

Me: Why would u say that?

Grayson:  No, I mean all the people on earth are going to die because 

people can't live on and on forever you know.

Me:  No?  Can anyone?

G:  God.  

Me:  Yeah?  How do you get to be that guy?

G:  You die an then you become God.

Me:  So people who die get to be God?

G:  Yeah.  Mommy?  What do you think God feels like?

Me:  Probably like flying.  What do you think?

 Long serious pause, I actually thought he fell asleep thinking about it.

G:  Like guarding.

Whoa.  Never thought about it that way.  Poor tired God. 

Me: Sounds exhausting.  Do you think God naps?

G:  No.

Me:  That's a raw deal.

G: What do you mean, raw deal, Mommy?

Me:  Nothing Honey.  It just means I hope you're wrong about the napping

and right about everything else.  

Botox By Abby

When I was eight or so I tried to do a cherry picker on a swingset by myself and broke my arm.

I wore a cast forever.

One night in my sleep I accidentally hit my mom in the face with my cast.

My poor mom suddenly burst into adult words and flew from the bed like her nightgown was spontaneously honey-coated with bees.

Guess what, Mom?  Karma has visited your daughter.  And her name is thy Abigail.

Let me preface by saying Abby does not have a real handle on her gross motor skills yet.

She doesn't quite know where she ends and other people begin.  It's sweet but so very unruly and usually ends up in things dribbled all over the house (yes, I'm still working on the Glitter post).  And every single day there are tiny fists in my eye because she is an enthusiastic hugger.

We're kind of hoping she needs glasses, actually.

So after receiving an Abby skull to my chin during dinner (don't ask) and then a subsequent Abby fist to my left eye after brushing teeth (I'm not even sure) I felt like I earned a nice relaxing evening.  We made it through the hard part with minor bruising and abrasion.

Little did I know, the best was yet to come.

Princess Battleship and I were reading a story right before bed and just as I was mouthing the very last word of the very last story she walloped my face with her head.

Once again, I was Abigailed.  Only this time it hurt.

I cursed, she ran crying to her dad.  Apparently my lip hurt her skull.

I had an utter mommy tantrum of my own and ran to a scalding hot shower, crying about how I won't take anymore abuse from anyone in this house anymore, not even the dogs! (Take that you dogs you who do nothing but love, honor, and cherish while protecting me to the core of my being.  OH THE ABUSE!)

I need therapy.

Or a very long session in Nepal with a monk who sees through my fat lip and bitter root attitude.

Oh yes, I was mad enough to snap a shot for the cops when Abby's 16 and threatening me with taking the keys to my car.  Sure, I'll have to age the picture a little but then again, maybe not.  I'm kind of liking the way Botox looks.

 

Black and white to save you from the extreme close-up.

 Color brings the lip to life though so Hello nostrils!

I wonder if I could get her to zero in on my other side tomorrow?

Bright side:  Some NeNe earrings and we are ready to attend a fundraising event!

So there you have it.  My night brought to me by that b*tch, Karma.

Sorry, Mom.  I'm sorry for not having great gross motor skills years ago and believe me, now I know how much all those years of Dizzy Lizzy hurt.

I hope I was worth it.

Maybe I need glasses?

The Important Things

My grandparents had a canvas poem hanging from a nail in our house for years and years.

There were two little Precious Moments looking kids painted on the canvas next to the words.

From the time I learned to read, I read and reread this canvas until I could recite it myself.

Then my brain got filled up with unrequited love, philosophy papers, IEPs, and grocery lists.  The poem I once knew by heart was leaving me behind to scramble after it like a lovelorn twenty-something at the door of a Greyhound bus.

It was almost gone forever.

But Google found it.

After three or four nights of typing half incorrect stanzas into the search engine, the real deal finally popped up.

I'm never letting it go again. 

It will be forever immortalized on a new canvas (or wood depending on what I can find at Micheal's.). 

The important words will again be memorized by my own children who will sound out the words at first and their resolve second.

As adults they will search their version of Google to help them remember the imporant things.

And come to realize not much in that department has changed from when they were little.

Children Learn What They Live

If children live with criticism,
They learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility,
They learn to fight.
If children live with fear,
They learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with ridicule,
They learn to be shy.
If children live with shame,
They learn to feel guilty.
If children live with tolerance,
They learn to be patient.
If children live with encouragement,
They learn confidence.
If children live with praise,
They learn to appreciate.
If children live with approval,
They learn to like themselves.
If children live with acceptance,
They learn to find love in the world.