Another Year Over

I have been trying for the past few days to come up with a good way to describe and wrap up the past year. I wanted to make it shiny and fun and poignant. I wanted to unveil to you a McMahon Unwrapped much like a Spotify Wrapped with Best of, Favorite, and hours spent living a life. And while I do have best of and favorites, hours spent living a life requires a calculator, so that is out. I keep coming up with a year that was kind of good, kind of bad, and, overall, just a year. 

I’m grateful for this year. I had small adventures and large ones .I got to see amazing new places in WY, CO, and SD. I got to see all of my siblings and parents at the same time. I had adventures that I wrote about and some I have kept to myself because, well, they are mine. I have had joy and laughter and a milestone birthday surrounded by friends. I have had wins in the sports I coach and any day I can get a teenager to put down their phone and listen to me talk about literature is also a win. I have had happiness and contentment settle over me and leave me feeling peaceful and smiling. I have wondered at the beauty of snow, ice, mountains, and rivers. I have climbed and walked and hiked and moved through this Earth to see and do things. I have had excitement and wonder and anticipation. I have laughed with my head thrown back and for the world to hear.

I have had losses. I have cried and hurt and healed. I have cried and hurt and remain hurting. I have heard bad diagnoses; I have seen what it can and will do to a person I love. I have heard words I would rather not hear. I have felt inefficient, confused, and lackluster. I have felt like the things I do are not enough. I have felt tired to my very bones and depth of my soul. I have seen terrible things and heard worse. I have missed my kids until it hurts and keeps hurting. I have simply sat and stared and sighed. There are times where I just existed. Times when I forgot I was important or what I was doing was important. I have felt my heart hollow out. I have been scared, afraid, and hesitant. And with all of these things, just like that, another year over.

this tired.

There are always things we hope for when one thing ends and a new one begins. We make a big deal of saying “this year I will…” or “I will never…”. I don’t seem to have any of those right now. I wish for the things I always wish for: healthy, happy kids, a Bills’ Super Bowl win, and someone to stumble across my blog and offer me silly amounts of money to write for them. I wish certain things wouldn't happen: a hot summer like the last one, Donald Trump on any kind of ballot, yet another move to yet another apartment. 

I make no claims on this upcoming year. I know it will be a year, like the last one, where the good and the bad both attend. I will love and be loved. I will hurt and be hurt. I will laugh and cry. I will grow and feel stagnant. I will be an adventurer and a homebody. I will make friends and lose friends. I will delight and offend. I will succeed and fail. I will know things and learn things and forget other things. I will be confident and nervous. I will have great fun and great anxiety. In all of this, I hope I am present and acknowledging both good and bad as it happens and making room for what comes next. And in experiencing all of these things, in being a mom and a partner and a teacher and a coach and a human, I know it will seem like no time at all before this year is over too.

Figuring it Out

It is my conference period and I am sitting at my desk crying.  For once it is not because of something terrible that happened, or some new data thing we need to do, or some frustration over a student or procedure or this job, and not even just because I am tired and therefore fragile.  I am sitting here crying at my desk because I just sat in the last ARD meeting I will ever have as a mom.  I have cried at many an ARD or pre-ARD meeting, but this time it was again, not out of frustration or procedure, but the fact that the boy has done everything he needs to do and is going to graduate in ten or so days.   William McMahon is going to graduate.

As a baby, Will took forever to hold a spoon and actually bring food to his mouth, and I joked that I would have to go to kindergarten with him just to be sure he ate. But I didn’t, he figured it out.  In kindergarten, he wanted to play tether ball so badly but was so bad at it, the teachers kept him from it for his own safety.  We put a tether ball pole in the backyard and again, he figured it out.  I thought he would always just be friends with the kids of my friends, but in second grade, he figured it out and came home with a friend who brought a mom friend for me with him.  

I thought that neither of us would survive his middle school years.  Kind kids are an easy target for bullies and kind kids with bad eyesight who don’t play a lot of sports are their dream.  It was hard and there was so much sadness and pain.  Eventually, he figured it out.  He found his people, he played his trumpet, and he did all the normal ridiculous things boys in middle school should do: talk about farts and boobs non-stop if I am remembering correctly. 

Onto high school, to team sports, a brand new school away from his people and it was an adjustment.  As he was attending the school I taught at, I definitely did too much the first year or two to make sure he could figure things out.  He got there.  And then COVID.  None of us have any part of that figured out, even now.  He got a job!  He was immersed in a world of customer service and working with people who were not his peers, and he figured out how to do that while going to school and passing his classes.  Not all three at once all the time, but enough of all three to keep going.  Enough to get us to the meeting that showed he has figured it out and has me crying at my desk.

I always joke that this kid will live with me forever and I better move up north and get a house with a basement for him to live in.  But I realize now that he will not.  He will not always live with me.  He has struggled and fought and figured out so much in his life and he is going to do the same as he moves out of high school and into adulthood.  And all the worrying and pushing and fighting for him and holding his hand and moving him forward, well, it’s all but done.  He will always need me to be his mom, but I see my role as advocate diminishing as he grows up and on.  

This kid I thought would never walk or talk or use a spoon, or fall with his hands out to protect his face, or grow top teeth, or remember on his own to use deodorant, this kid is graduating high school with the grades he earned, with the friends he made, with the job he holds, with kindness still in his heart and eyes, and humor that is terrible and funny all at once. I couldn’t be more proud of this kid if I tried.  I asked him if he wanted me to just be a mom at his graduation ceremony and sit in the bleachers with his dad, or if he wanted me to be a teacher mom and sit on his row. He didn’t even think about it and answered quickly “On my row, Mom” while giving me a happy smile that went straight to my heart. I think he has me figured out too.

C is for Crushing Life Changes

I woke up from a dream the other night with tears streaming down my face and my heart heavy in my chest.  I have no idea what I was dreaming about but the sadness was so real and so very crushing.  I laid there, wiping my eyes, shifting to get comfortable, and failing to remember what it is that made me so sad.  I would have liked to have given it more time and thought, but it was about 2 in the morning, and I am perpetually exhausted, so sleep won out over wonder.

If I am honest, and I truly don’t recall the dream, I know why I would wake up in the middle of the night crying.  But if I am honest, I have to admit things, and if I admit them, I can’t hide behind laughter and jokes, and if I can’t hide behind these things, then I am faced with what is making me so very sad, and if I have to face what is making me so very sad, I can no longer deny it is happening, and if I can’t deny it, well, I guess I just wake up crying.  It is very “if you give a mouse a cookie” where I am the mouse and the cookie is more of a gut-punch.

The fact is that in twenty-nine days, I will load my daughter’s car up with her and her things and move her to her dad’s in Dallas.  She will stay there for a month or so and then start at UNT in January.  This is a great thing! I told her she needed to do this great thing! I actually sort of two-hand pushed her into doing this great thing.  I did it because she needs it.  Her life, like so many others, has been on hold since about two months before her high school graduation.  I don’t want to be crass or insensitive and call it a casualty of COVID, but the class of 2020 and their hopes and initial dreams really took a beating.

So while I encourage this change for her, while I support it and nurture it, and help her plan to make it happen, I am so very sad.  This is the end to what was normal for the last almost twenty years.  Until the divorce, I don’t think I ever went more than a night or two without being with her or her brother.  I worry about her on her own, I worry about me without her here, and I worry about her brother who does not know a life without her physically present in it every single day.  They are currently dealing with their own feelings about this by arguing over who gets the PS4 and looking to me like Solomon to decide and I am like “split your own damn baby.”  

This really sums up their relationship.

I know that I have been lucky, so lucky, to have had an extra almost two years with her at home. Enough time to make me be really sick of the fact that she never changes a toilet paper roll.  She will take the time to perch a new one on top of the old one, but never switch it out.  I have had time to try to back away from her day-to-day and let her figure things out.  I have had time to get to see her as the adult she is becoming, while also tripping over her shoes and yelling at her to please bring down the ten coffee cups in her room.  It is a real narrow edge we walk between being very tired of one another and very dependent on the other in our normal lives. And if you know this person, you know she is amazing and full of potential she has never realized and won’t realize if I am still doing laundry for her because she knows if she starts it, I will finish it.  And I know this.  My brain knows this.  My heart, however, is very, very sad. 

When they were little, she and her brother used to snuggle up with me on the couch before bed.  One on my left, one in my lap.  They would smell like babies and bath time and they would giggle and watch shows with wide-eyed wonder and kick their footie-pajama feet and the world would be so good in that time before bed.  I miss this time. I miss innocence and wonder and make-believe and dress-up and her creating worlds to drag her brother through.  I miss nap time and ice cream melting all over their little faces before they even get to the cone.  And there is really no recreating this.  We all recently sat almost this close together on a flight and I did not feel happy and at peace; I felt annoyed and squished.

I miss them being  little and I am scared about her being gone.  Not for her; she will eventually figure it all out. But for me.  I am scared of not being needed, scared of being an obligatory phone call on the weekends, scared of being left behind. Scared of figuring out who and what I am supposed to be when I am down a kid and then another kid right after.  I really should have spaced them out better. 

So, there, I admit it.  I am scared and I am sad and I miss them being little and I don’t know how to plan for a life with just me and this is a whole mess on top of life and I am tired.  Someone please just get me a cookie. 

No Pomp, Just Circumstance

When she was little, she loved horses.  She must have galloped a million miles around our couch watching Spirit or Flicka.  We read all the horse books she could find.  She slept with a stuffed horse and played with plastic horses in a corral made by her Papa.  She loved horses and was going to be a veterinarian when she grew up because she also loved dogs and cats and all the animals.

She went to kindergarten and soon loved not only horses but new friends and teachers and reading!  Oh, she loved to read!  The first book she read on her own was a chapter book and while it wasn't about a horse, it did involve a unicorn.  She loved to make new friends and loved them all fiercely and forever; she was always very loyal.  She loved to learn and excelled and if it wasn't for Math, she would have never doubted how very smart she was.  She still wanted to be a veterinarian because, honestly,  she loved animals more than she loved people.

How do you caption your heart?

She was in the back row of every performance because she was tall.  She would stand up so excitedly, scanning the room, seeing who was there.  She sang her heart out, acted her heart out, and ad-libbed her heart out through every grade school performance.  Even that damn recorder.

She grew and changed but her heart stayed the same.  She loved all animals and most people.  If they hurt, she hurt more.  If they were happy, she was happy too.  If they made her laugh, oh, she threw her head back and her laugh would ring out across the room.  She was joy and wonder and the very embodiment of all that is good in the world.

She hit puberty and middle school and doubts.  She no longer sang as loud or looked as excited.  She withdrew, she hid, she tried to fit in.  Hurts from friends or not friends or boys pierced her heart.  She seemed to grow smaller as she grew taller and that beautiful heart seemed to always be in a million pieces or more.  She said maybe she didn't want to be a veterinarian any more because sometimes animals died.

She went to a new high school knowing just one person and her mom.  She worried about finding friends, she worried about where to eat lunch, she worried about worrying.  Yet, she prevailed.  She found friends.  She found a place to eat lunch.  She found where her mom hid her snacks and ate them and gave them to her friends.  She nurtured and counseled and helped new friends all while finding her footing in this new place.  She took hard classes and excelled.  She took Math and still hated it.  She took Art and her paintings, her drawings, her sketches took on life.  She said maybe she would be a doctor, a psychologist, a crime scene investigator, an artist, a lawyer.  

She got a job, then another job.  She worked hard and smiled and made people happy and when they commented that she was doing a great job, she was shocked and pleased; she was just doing her job.  She learned quickly these were not the jobs she wanted to be doing for a long period of time.

She looked forward to school and friends and change and finally being a Senior. What should have been a year of celebration and laughter turned into a year of sheer endurance.  She endured.  She endured her parent's divorce, moving from her childhood home, break-ups with friends, and with boys who were unworthy. She was sad, she was angry, and she fumed with a world gone wrong and awry and uncertainty about how to fix it.  She was recognizing her value and she talked of moving away, far away.  She wanted to run and fly and even gallop a million miles away.  She wanted to be anything but here.

She watched COVID19 shut the world down and felt relieved to be done with that grind of school.  She watched movies and spent time with her family and settled and healed and sighed.  After a time, she missed normalcy and other people and sighed even more.  She missed the things she would be missing.  She wanted stories of prom or skipping school or those sweet last days when teachers laughed more than they lectured.  She missed the idea of graduation and walking the stage and living that day about her, about her classmates, about what they had done, and the hope of the things they would do.  She wanted pomp but will just get circumstance.

Going forward, she will do great.  She will make mistakes and she will succeed.  She will find love and lose love and vow to never love again and then love again.  She will learn to drive and she will always park too close to the building.  She will befriend the friendless and she will care more than any other person in the world.  She will be loyal, she will work hard, she will grow and shine and be anything she wants to be. She will throw her head back and laugh and when she does, the world will stop.  If you are lucky, you will be the one that caused that laugh and be sure to listen to the joy and happiness and love of humor and life that ring in that laugh.  Notice how her eyes shine and her smile lights up her face because when you do, you will see how she will be anything she wants to be and we will all be better for it.

Oh! The Waiting!

Right now, I am waiting on bread to bake.  Of all the waiting I have done recently, this might be the most pleasant.  I am wearing my pajama pants, drinking a cup of coffee, and the smell of baking bread permeates the kitchen.  This kind of waiting is pleasant; the kind I have been doing a lot of lately is anything but.

Busy teenagers who can’t drive require a lot of parental driving back and forth. Traffic in Austin is ridiculous at best and since we don’t live close to the school we all attend, sitting and waiting has become my competitive sport.  For example, yesterday on a day off of school, the girl had basketball practice from 3:30 – 5:30. She then wanted to eat dinner with friends at a restaurant near the school at 7. I weighed out the options of driving back and forth, back and forth and decided it was best to stay up near the school.  I met friends and got a manicure, then went to Starbucks and picked up coffee for the week and then sat in the school parking lot for thirty minutes, waiting.  We drove home, (she had to shower) I then took her to her Friendsgiving and this time, I went to Target to wait.  After that $45 minutes of walking around, I was still too early to pick her up.  The parking lot was too dark to sit in and wait, so I waited in the foyer of the restaurant.  Waiting.  Waiting. Waiting.  Waiting and thinking that I should have handed her a bottle of perfume earlier and wished her luck instead of taking her home to shower.

A friend recently posted that her life now revolves around the nap time of her one-year-old and I sighed nostalgically when I read that.  Ahhh, nap time.  Nap time and sweet-footed pajamas and small humans who think you rule the world.  Sigh.  Her post and my response to it makes me think that when I am old and the kids are out of the house, I might even miss these waiting-in-cars years.  I love my kids and I am glad they are involved in things and have friends, but this waiting is going to break me either financially or mentally.

Hallway waiting: much better for people watching.

The problem is that I am so very bad at waiting.  I can’t do anything but wait.  I can’t read, listen to a podcast, knit, well, I can’t knit ever; I just sit.  And wait.  And play mental games with myself that I always lose but can’t stop playing.  Like, if I get here five minutes early, maybe they will get out on time.  Or just a minute late.  Or is that girls’ basketball streaming out? No, boys’ and maybe I should wear my glasses all the time now.  Should I listen to Spotify or NPR? Neither, I should shut the car off and not waste gas.  But now I am cold.  Should I get out and walk around or stay in the car?  I am convinced I am getting arthritis in one hip from being bent into my driver’s seat so often.  I also like to play the “if they get out in the next five minutes, we can beat traffic game.”  Again, that is always a loss.  We never beat traffic.  Sometimes, I like to list all the things I still need to do when we do get home.  This makes the car even smaller, the wait even longer, and my nerves frazzled which is a great way to greet the children when they get in the car.  The need to peel away before their car door is even closed is very, very real.

I look around and see a lot of other parents in cars, waiting, and I start to wonder what they are doing to not be on the edge of losing their minds.  They seem to just be sitting there too, simply staring into space, staring into their phones, staring. If the squeal of tires is any indication, they are probably staring and itemizing the things they need to do when they get home too.  I wonder if it would be better if we all got out of our cars and stood awkwardly around and made small-talk while we wait? Stranger small-talk vs. endless waiting insanity.  I’ll probably never know the answer to that because I am not about to start knocking on people’s windows saying “Hi, I am Rebecca and I am tired of waiting.”  Pretty sure Texas is a right-to-carry state and I can’t see knocking on someone’s windows in the dark going well for me.

I guess that I will continue to sit, and to wait, and to teeter on the mental edge of stability and realize that like nap time, this phase will also pass.  Sweaty teens with stinky shoes gone just like the squishy toddlers with sticky hands.  In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be in the parking lot at school waiting, staring into space, and mentally compartmentalizing all of my life’s good and bad decisions before finally peeling away.

Bye Week

We watched all the football this past weekend and as a result I find that I keep thinking about this week’s bye week. We know who is going to the SuperBowl and those athletes get a week off to rest, to recover and to recuperate. I have decided that this is a brilliant idea and that I need a bye week as well: a bye week from parenting.  I need time to rest, recover and recuperate so that I can start again fresh and be ready to be awesome in this next round of parenting.

The boy turns twelve today and I was okay about that until we started talking about how he was the skinniest baby in the world when he was born.  Maizy sent us some pictures she found of him when he was about three and they just killed us:  soft, yellow hair, no glasses and that huge space where his two front teeth were knocked out. These pictures are so super sweet, however it is the look of pure joy on his face that grabs my heart and smacks it.  There has not been a lot of joy on his face this year.  Middle school can suck the joy out of even the happiest kid in record time.   I look at those pictures and barely remember the tiny kid he was and only see the big kid he is now and it makes me a little sad, a little wistful and hoping I enjoyed him then and trying to find ways to enjoy him now.  

Maizy graduates in about four months and if that isn’t crazy enough, she has also decided she is moving to California pretty much the second she graduates.  I don’t think I have really given it a lot of thought other than I think she is taking the hard road and we talked about that, but she is 18 and she knows what she wants to do.  Bill gets teary every time it comes up and as I write this, I realize I am sad too.  This girl and I have gone head to head and toe to toe and taught each other a lot about ourselves and what makes a family.  She is a terrible slob, mostly non-committal when I ask her to do something and slightly self-absorbed, but she is also as funny as hell and integral to who we are as a family.  Damn, now I am really sad.

SG, normally my rock, my stalwart child and my kindest soul, killed me with her words yesterday.  Her words reached into my chest cavity and pulled out my still-beating heart which she then held in her hands and utterly destroyed with her tone.  The look on her face and the hate in her eyes then finished it off by tearing it to shreds.  I know this is timely, I know it was bound to happen, I know I have been lucky on what a good girl she has been, I know.  But it still hurts!  And even though Bill stepped in as the heavy and made her stop, made her see it from my side, even though she apologized later, it still hurts.  I forgive her and I see she feels bad, but I need some time to regenerate my crushed and shattered heart.

Just one of the looks I have received this week.

Therefore, I need a bye week. I need a week where my children are cryogenically frozen and where I can rest and recover from them.  I need a week to pause and think about what it is I am trying to teach them and how I can best do that while letting them make their own mistakes.  I need a little time to reflect in how little they once were and how big they are now and how much bigger they are going to get.  Bill and I need some time to regroup and focus on us.  Just one week off to look at all the parenting we’ve done and gear up for all that we still have to do.  I’d love to hit the rest of this parenting thing refreshed and repaired.

I know that I won’t get that bye and I won’t get that rest and I am jealous of professional athletes and a little weary of myself.  But weary or not, we push on.  I will keep trying to pull the boy out of the cocoon of “cool” he tries to layer himself in and celebrate when I see actual joy come across his face again.  I will admonish, lecture and preach about all the things Maizy needs to think about before she goes but I hope that I listen, encourage and laugh with her as well.  And as for SG, she and I are going to have more of those major disagreements but I will try hard to remember that I am the adult.  Or at the very least, learn to guard my heart.

Parental Exhaustion Suggested

I have not actually read Dante’s Inferno, however I am confident that one of his circles of hell must include having two children in middle school at the same time.  I have not been this parentally exhausted since the crying-poop years of 2001-2006.  There is a reason that so many shows and books are dedicated to the woes of middle school: it sucks.  And it sucks even more watching and pushing your kids through it. 

My night last night is indicative of all the nights since school started.  4:58pm call from home asking if they can have a soda.  The next three minutes spent in a debate as to why caffeinated soda is not a good choice at 5pm and to stop calling me to ask if they can drink soda.    Get home, SG has some sort of tooth emergency.  We have at least three of these a week and when that girl gets her braces off, I will cry in relief.  There was nothing but she felt like it was something could I immediately walk through the door and look in her mouth?  If she would just let me go to the bathroom, maybe change my clothes, I might be more sympathetic.  Quick dinner while we encourage William to stop talking and start eating as piano guy will be there any minute.  Piano guy is there, piano lesson for the boy followed by guitar lesson for SG.  SG starts guitar, homework begins with W.  He failed another Social Studies test, so while going over economies we are also correcting types of government on the failed test.  He can’t keep either straight.  He gets teary, I want to get teary.  SG comes in and starts her math homework.  Math homework is a two person process for her.  I am now doing math and social studies and making lunches.  Oh and she tells me she has to do a SS review for a big test tomorrow.  I ask why she wasn’t studying for it this weekend.  She goes dark.  Why wasn’t it written in your agenda?  No reply.  9pm she finishes her last math problem and heads up to shower and go to bed.  I move to the living room and sit in a chair.  I am empty, glaze-eyed and as a hollow as a pumpkin about to be carved.

The nightly war room.

This is every night and this is a night we didn’t have to be out somewhere.  I am going to bed after telling the children I love to get their heads out of their ass or step it up, or please just let me sit here a minute.  I am emotionally, physically and spiritually exhausted.  My wine and chocolate consumption is through the roof and it is not helping.  We have Sunday meetings to look at grades and walk through what we have to do this week.  We menu plan because last week we didn’t and I am embarrassed to tell you how many nights we ended up eating tater tots.  We are on this sinking ship of middle school and while I am bailing as fast as I can, the two of them are watching me as they lean casually up against the mast and talk about how tired they are and how hard school is.  What hormone is it that turns kids into sloths?  My children are producing all of it.  I wish they sold spray-on ambition like they do sunscreen.  I would dose them both head to toe each day.

In addition to the nightly shenanigans, we have also had illegal social media apps found on a phone, bullying and social drama at school, the start of a brand new sport and someone needing to go to tutorials every morning.  If having a baby and toddler at the same time gave us the crying-poop years are these now the holy-crap-I-can’t-keep-my-head-above-water-years?  And I know they will be grown and gone before I know it and the house will be quiet and small and I will be sad.  I know.  And yet driving home I routinely think “please no homework”, “please someone have had a good day”, “please, can I just put on my pajama pants” and “for the love of God, if I could just pee before I need to look in someone’s mouth.”

There was one time when the boy was a newborn and SG was a toddler where we all ended up sobbing at the check-out at Target.  The boy was crying because he was hungry, SG was crying because she was two and I was crying, sweating and leaking while trying to calm everyone down and pay for my diapers as everyone in the store was judging me and I remember just wanting to sit down and sob.  This very nice lady came over and put her hand on my arm and said “Honey, it gets easier, it really does.”  That simple reassurance gave me the hope to power through.  I really would like that reassurance now but what I am getting is laughter while I recount my episodes, or nods of agreement when I say HOLY CRAP ten times a day, or tiny smirks in the corner of people’s mouths.  Someone please put your hand on my arm and tell me it will get easier!  I don’t care if it is a lie; say it!!  Until then you can find me in bed by 9pm staring straight up at the ceiling thinking HOLY CRAP.

P for Parenting, P for Pride

Parenting: it is a mixed bag.  You are happy, you are sad, you feel like you own it, you feel like it owns you.  You are sure you are doing everything right, you are sure you are doing nothing right.  It is easy, it has never been harder, you love it, you want to run away from it.  It can seem like everyone around you has all the answers and are doing everything right, so you make snarky remarks about them to make yourself feel better.  This works for awhile.  

With a teen, a tween and a big kid, parenting lately has been something that I feel like I just joined.  I have felt at a loss on how to deal with bad behavior that doesn't stop. I have felt lost on helping kids through crushing blows. I have felt meaner than Cruella DeVil ever was when I yelled "This conversation is over!  You are doing it." and walked away.  I probably even kicked one of the dogs out of the way as I did it.  Bill and I have had countless talks about what it is, what are we doing, what are we doing wrong and wondering if parenting ever gets fun again.  We even started to wax nostalgic about the crying poop years; the 0-3 years when everyone is either crying or pooping or crying and pooing at the same time and you feel like your life is one vicious cycle of crying and poop and you will be mired in the poop years forever.  

Definitely crying and pooping.

But they pass; everyone eventually poops on their own and the crying tapers off as well.  So we know that these hard years of parenting will pass too and we will be left behind as the kids move on, so we try to find the joy in it.  Even the crying poop years had joy.  Small warm bodies fresh from a tub smelling like Johnson's baby wash and encased in ducky pajamas melting into you as you read a bedtime story.  Sigh.  But now, in all honesty, it can be awfully hard to find that joy amid the drama and confusion and hormones.  

This week I was incredibly blessed to find moments with all three of my kids that made me see the people they are becoming.  That made me realize all the drama, confusion and hormones and relative insanity that is our day to day is shaping these kids into the adults they will become.  As I realized this, I was overcome with pride.  The weary of the past few weeks was replaced with pride.  Glowing, heart-exploding, tear-leaking pride.  Not pride in myself or my parenting, but pride in what these kids are achieving, what they are doing and who they will become.  

The teen is a driver.  A registered, approved by the state of Texas driver.  She operates a motor vehicle mostly to take herself to and from work.  She may drive me crazy with her inability to pick up after herself or hear what I am saying, but I am so proud of how she handles responsibility.  She even drove her sister to school one day this week and treated her to Starbucks on the way. Glow.  The tween competed in her first ever athletic competition and while I am sorry for her it was 90+ that day, I was so glad for the excuse of the big sunglasses I got to wear that hid my my leaky-eye pride.  Sniff.  And the boy?  He stomped off to school because he was angry at me and in doing so ignored our neighbor who was telling him to have a good day.  When I told him later that day he had to go over and apologize, he didn't argue.  He went out the door and across the street and did it.  Heart-exploding.  A perfect trifecta of moments showing me that they do hear us.  They do get it.  They will be good people.

I guess that parenting goes through stages of development as the kids move through their stages.  Hands-on, hands-off, tolerant, involved, wait-and-see, jump right in.  It is confusing, it is hard and sometimes it is no fun at all. Maybe one day we will look back on these years of drama, confusion and hormones and think of the joy.  Ha!  Okay, I hope we can look back at these years of drama, confusion and hormones and remember the pride.  

The Boiling Point

I will preface this rant by saying that it has actually been a very good summer.  The weather has not been insanely hot and we even had three straight days of rain!  We have gone on some small adventures that both the kids and I enjoyed.  We have relaxed; we have spent mornings hanging out in pajamas and just savored the not having to be anywhere right away.  Bill has not had to travel much at all this summer (other than his crazy commute each day) and is home almost every night.  It really has been good.

However, even with all the good, I am slowly reaching my summer vacation boiling point.  I can feel it bubbling under the surface about to break through in an ugly crescendo of swear words, tears and/or a primal scream.  I find myself weary of making sure the ADHD boy gets enough exercise to keep him calm when all he wants to do is play video games and/or watch cartoons.  He has been relegated to Tom and Jerry and Animaniacs for the rest of the summer because they don’t leave him quoting the episode word for word or over-stimulated. I am weary of the sloth-like teen who emerges from her teen cave at noon at the earliest and uses me as a taxi service to her various social engagements.  She can’t understand why I am not ready to pick her up as soon as she texts me and I can’t understand why she wouldn’t think to walk the half mile home instead. 

I am annoyed with giving them all one small chore for the week and still having to remind them to do it every day.  And the glasses!!!  ARGH the dirty glasses.  Our dishwasher is running twice a day because none of them can use the same glass twice.  Rinse it out, use it again, I say.  They look at me as though I have two heads.  Or when I reach into the fridge and someone has put the ice tea pitcher back in there with just enough tea to coat the bottom of it.  Mmm, refreshing.  Thank you for saving me that half-swallow of tea.

And while kid hygiene is never stellar – does it get worse than ever during the summer or what?  I didn’t realize that tooth brushing was only necessary when school is in session.  Or deodorant.  Why is telling them that they stink and to put deodorant on funny?  It’s not funny and the funk they expose me to is not funny either.  They started doing their own laundry this summer; as a result my son has been wearing the same pair of shorts for the past four days. 

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  They are beating me down, but I am going to stop and take some deep breaths and not let them beat me. I will take comfort in my fellow moms who lock eyes with me at the grocery store as if to say “Solidarity, sister” as we ignore the whines of kids begging for various bags of high fructose junk.  I will revel in the Facebook posts of other moms who lie in bed and pretend that they can’t hear fighting from the other rooms in the morning.  I will immediately empathize with other moms when they start a sentence with “I just can’t stand….”  Doesn’t matter what it is, I am right there with you.  And when all else fails, I will remember the mom I passed in church who was close talking to her son while pointing a finger in his face and telling him he’d better shape up or he was going to lose baseball.  I wonder what that kid did bad enough to push his mom into yelling at him in church and warrant losing a whole sport. 

We are 2/3rds of the way through; I am not going to trip at the finish line.  We are going to end this summer vacation strong.  We still have homemade poptarts to make and bike rides to take that last more than 5 minutes.  There are pools to swim in, friends to have over and feeble stabs at craft projects to make. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.  I can do this and enjoy most of it while I do it.  I can do this and enjoy them because they are just getting so big. I can do this and not inadvertently teach my children more swear words. I can do this!

Tradition

I think that everyone should have a 96 year old neighbor living across the street from them.  It really gives you perspective on things.  When they first moved in, I took cookies over to our neighbor and his much younger bride.  (Bride.  They were newlyweds!)  He thought this was a wonderful gesture and proceeded to remind me each time someone new moved in that I should do the same for them.  So I would – sometimes happily, sometimes grudgingly, but he was right, it was a nice thing to do.  He also hated to see women mowing the lawn.  Any time he saw me out there cutting the grass, Bill or I would hear about it later.  He would provide us with a comment, a harrumphing tone, or a haughty eyebrow indicating his disapproval.  And again, in a way, he was right.  Not in that women shouldn’t cut grass, but women who hate to cut grass and don’t have to really should not.  Bill likes to cut the grass and I was not really helping him at all by periodically butchering the lawn.

Our neighbor took an active interest in our kids, in the families around him and in doing so made all of us get involved with each other as well.  It is easy to just pull into your garage at night and forget that there are families living along side you raising their kids as you raise yours.  He and his wife have an uncanny way of getting us to be invested in those around us.  For a long time, they were front and center at all the neighborhood activities, showing the rest of us that it is wise to make the time to invest in others.  They showed us that it is important to carve out a sense of community and to truly get to know the people along your fence line.

Our neighbor is a quiet member of that Greatest Generation.  He served in World War II, but he deemed his service not as important as others.  He would not talk much about the war or his part in it.  He would dismiss it like it was no big deal but he was out there at sunrise every holiday that required a flag, unfurling his American flag, hoisting it up and smartly saluting it before going back inside.  The first time I saw him do this, I was instantly choked up.  There was something so beautiful in this old man who stood a little more stooped over each year, but became ramrod straight when it came to saluting his flag.  

Sadly, we have watched our neighbor’s health decline over the last few years.  All of us holding our breath as he walked to the mailbox, not sure if he would get there or not, but there was no way to offer this proud man a hand.  Or as his hearing declined, conversations became more of loud HELLLOOOOOS and thumbs ups rather than discussions on things.  It was hard for this proud man to decline, hard on his wife to shoulder it and sad for the rest of us to see a cornerstone of our community crumbling.  When he was taken to the hospital last month and things looked very dire indeed, we sat down and told the kids.  They both burst into tears and our 11 year old said “But he has always been there.”  He has a sense of permanence in both their memories and his presence has been a source of continuity and comfort for all of us.  However, I think that what this man has instilled in all of us the most is a sense of tradition.  

Ditcionary.com defines tradition as the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice.  Our neighbor has helped us to realize that tradition can be so much more than that.  It can be starting something and following through with it every time whether you feel like it or not – like in the case of cookies for new neighbors.  Or that tradition can ensue when you take the time to get to know the people around you and start sharing your life and your children's lives with each other.  Or that simply, tradition can be that you continue to do what someone has done before you.  In our case, with our neighbor winding down his days in hospice, we chose to honor him and his sense of tradition by continuing to raise his flag for him.  It was a beautiful and bittersweet moment on the 4^th of July as my Canadian husband and 9 year old son unfurled our neighbor’s American flag, hung it with care and then stepped back to salute it, just as our neighbor would have done.  

It didn’t take much time or effort but it helped cement for us that with just a little forethought and some consideration, tradition can be a constant in our lives as well.  Thank you, Bentley.

A New Normal

I have news.  Exciting news!!!!  Ready?  I have been offered a…..full….time….JOB!!!!!  Can I get a WOOHOO?!?!?!  I will be working in a high school library come August and I am thrilled!  HOORAY!  The funny thing is that I was actually offered two different jobs the same week – the when it rains it pours deal I guess.  I hemmed and hawed, I made a chart, and I compared and contrasted and went with the one I felt would be best.  Whew, all that interviewing over and a new chapter about to begin – have I ever mentioned how bad I am with change?

Once the thrill of being offered a job settled down, anxiety started to creep in. Anxiety to me is like a rat running around and around on a wheel in your head that keeps you from totally paying attention to what is going on around you or listening clearly or even thinking clearly.  I tell you, there was a pet store full of rats running around up there.   

I have not worked full time in a long time.  Like before kids long time.  I have been fortunate (i.e. saddled with debt) in that I have been able to be at home with my kids this long.  With my kids in different schools next year, I need to figure out what to do with my son after school.  Why does elementary school get out first?  Why can’t middle or high school get out first so that the girls could watch their brother and make my life easier?  I am a wreck trying to decide if I should find someone to watch him at the house or enroll him in something at school or something offsite that will pick him up.  I know my daughter will forget something vital each day and I keep picturing her waiting for the bus in the rain.  Am I crazy?  This is Austin, it rarely rains and certainly not every day.

Other craziness that has been spinning around is when can I kettlebell? Or volunteer at school?  Or bake?  Or take a nap during the week?  These little rats of insanity going around and around in my brain have led me to make many proclamations based on hormones and my fear of change.  Kids will now do their own laundry.  Kids will learn to cook.  Kids will actively engage in helping to make pizza or I will not make pizza any more.  Luckily for the kids, Bill reined me in before I could make more proclamations and completely ruin summer.  “We have time” he said, “We will figure this stuff out”.  He is so wise and calm to my crazy.

I did stick with the proclamation that kids will do their own laundry.  I watched my son fold his the other night and while it took him 45 minutes, he did it.  It made me think of all the other things he could do if I stopped doing them for him.  Maybe he will have better luck with friends if I am not there trying to smooth over his social awkwardness.  It made me realize that my daughter will definitely forget things she needs for school, but if I am not there to run them up to her each time, I bet she will forget them less often.  And I can always buy her an umbrella for the 4 days a year it does rain.  Maybe if they are hungry enough or bored enough, they will be the ones starting dinner and they will learn to cook.  And maybe if I back off a little, they will help make pizza on Fridays and Friday Pizza Night will be a real tradition, not just mom making pizza. 

I have been aware lately how big my kids are getting.  It is hard not to notice when two out of three are taller than you and that they no longer smell like puppies when they come in from outside; they just smell.  It is time for me to work more and it is time for them to do more and this change is a good thing. The new normal that will develop is a good thing, it will just be new.  Whew.  I have banished the rats from my head and am looking forward to this change– just in time to enjoy the rest of summer!  And my NEW JOB! WOOHOO!!!!

My Achy, Breaky Heart

Tomorrow is my 5^th grader’s Learning Celebration/Graduation.  I can’t believe she is done with elementary school!  She has had a hard year and is so excited to be done with school and to move on to middle school and I am glad for her.  She is anxious by nature and I am glad to see her looking forward to a change rather than worrying about it.  Lately, she has had to dress up for activities at school and I am stunned by how tall and grown up she looks.  She looks much older than 11 and that has been an eye-opener.  I have also learned never to shop for clothes with her at the same time.  Ugh. 

A sweet note I had to save

We were talking the other night about how she and the 3^rd grader will be in different schools next year and the more we talked, the sadder he got.  She has been his constant companion for his entire school career.  Finally, near tears he said “I can’t talk about this anymore; it is making me feel fragile.”  To be honest, I am feeling fragile about the whole thing too.  I like her in grade school, among friends I know and the parents I know.  I like that she is well cared for and has a good group of friends and that they all treat each other well.  I am dreading the shifting of friends and activities as these kids branch out to find themselves and grow.  Blah!  The drama of “she is my friend, she isn’t my friend, she said, I said, I think she said”.  My tender-hearted girl is in for a wallop, I know it and it makes me sad.  I just want to tell her that friends will disappoint you, that boys at this age are not worth worrying about or EVER waiting at home for them to call.  I want her to apply herself and to be passionate about something.  I want her to continue to be so kind people remark on it and I get to tell them that kindness, like height, seems to skip a generation.  I want her to remain the person who befriends the new kids.  I want to her to be self-confident.  I want to tell her not to worry about being cool; no one is cool right now.   I want her to just be herself, because she is so amazing.  She is kind, she is beautiful, she is smart, she is funny and she is interesting.  She relays a story with so much enthusiasm and emotion you feel like you were there too.  She loves children and animals and they love her back. 

Best work, ever.

I have this slide show of her going through my head as I think about her heading to middle school and it makes me feel so happy/sad.  I see her as a newborn when I held her and thought: “This.  THIS is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”  Or at age 2 throwing a fit at Target that was so lengthy and loud in its duration that a woman came up to me and said “Don’t worry, this really does pass.”  Or at age 4, singing “Go Tell it on the Mountain” so exuberantly in the Preschool Christmas Program, that the man in front of me turned around and said “It’s been told!”  There she is at 5, running, skipping, leaping, and galloping all the way to kindergarten.  Or at 6, reading her big chapter books, Hank the Cowdog almost exclusively.  Second grade, trying to be so brave while changing schools and looking out for her brother.  Braces and braids and the last year she would ever wear skorts.  Third grade and Girl Scout vests, DI tournaments and giggling, SO much giggling with girlfriends.  Fourth grade and zip up sweatshirts despite the heat to hide her changing body.  Fifth grade, a hard year – slumped shoulders, angry eyes, sad faces, angst written all over her.  And now, at the end, of fifth grade, taller than me, smiling so that her eyes shine, she gets ready to step into this next chapter of her life while I am trying to hold onto her childhood with one hand and help guide her into her teen years with the other.  When they are little, you hold their hands to steady them or to keep them on the right path or to encourage them to keep moving and you are always a little bit in front of them.  Now I feel like it is her hand that is one step ahead of me and that I better run to catch it.

D is for Done

Done.  I am done with school.  I am done with early mornings and I am done with packing lunches.  I am done with homework, I am done with projects and I am especially done with projects that require poster board or tri-folds.  I am done with kids being stressed about testing or kids being too relaxed about testing.  I am done with emails home saying "School isn't over yet".  The kids are definitely done.  I was in the library at school helping out today and the noise in there was amazing.  I was also in the cafeteria at school today and the noise in there was tremendous.  You could feel the noise rumble in your chest like a herd of elephants approaching the closer you got to the cafeteria.  God bless those teachers and the school staff the next few weeks; they deserve combat pay.

I haven't been this eager for the end of school since I was in school myself.  Usually I am the parent who knows exactly how many days of summer vacation are left three days into summer vacation.  Seeing the big pencil hanging from the ceiling of Target in mid-July gives me a Christmas morning kind of feeling when I see it.  I like to buy the school supplies in the beginning of August and lay them out on the dining room table as a warning to the kids and as a beacon of light for myself.

In the beginning of the year, I pack lunches with thought and care and nutritional value. I cut off crusts and write little notes about how much I love you or you make me proud.   I use reusable sandwich bags and tiny containers housing tiny healthy snacks.  By now most of the reusable bags are lost, the containers have no lids and I am packing Reese Puffs instead of sandwiches because they claim to be fortified with iron and I choose to believe them. 

Homework?  I am over homework too.  They tell me they don't have any, I choose to believe them.  This did lead to a harried, hurried project involving posterboard and copious tears from the 5th grader last night but I am focusing on the life skills she is learning.  Don't put things off to the last minute and unlike your mother, always have posterboard in the house.  Spelling tests?  Listen you are three weeks away from the end of 3rd grade, if you can't spell these words by now, well, there is always next year.

Maybe it is because my 5th grader had such a hard year this year and her usual enthusiasm for school and learning has been whittled away to lethargy about school.  I want her to have the summer to rest up and get ready for middle school.  Or maybe it is because school is such a chore for my 3rd grader and he is tired of holding it together and I am weary of holding him together.  Maybe it is once that damn STARR test is over that everyone is just too depleted to keep going.  Why don't they have those tests the last week of school?

Realistically, I know that summer vacation can seem endless as well.  We don't  have any travel plans this summer.  No camps lined up.  I know it will be 100+ every day and the kids will be bored with being home.  I know they will use every glass and plate in the house and leave them all over.  I know they will eat more food in a day than I planned on for three days.  I know I will have great plans of forcing math facts on them thinking that with all the time we have they will finally embrace and learn them and that they won't. I will get tired of swimming and applying sunscreen and washing towels.  I know.  But as of right now, it just sounds so much better.

Read it and Weep

Open another window, go to amazon and order "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio.  Go ahead, I'll wait......

 It is targeted for ages 9-12 but I think it was a great read for any age. My friend, CG, and I get tired of adult fiction with its repetitive plot lines: main character has horrible disease, husband has horrible disease, husband is cheating, main character has horrible disease AND husband is cheating or, my personal favorite, main character involved in illicit affair and will soon be punished by death of lover, death of husband, death of best friend, etc.  We often prefer Young Adult Fiction because everything is new and hopeful: love, friendship, opportunities and everyone is just so fresh faced and interesting.  This book falls under children's literature, not even YA, but it was just so good, I have to share! I read this book in a day and half and cried for about a day and a half when I was done. 

"Wonder" tells the story of August, a ten year old boy with severe facial deformities who is about to enter middle school, and a mainstream school, for the first time.  The author does not come right out and describe what August looks like, but gives each character a chance to tell and I am left thinking he looks like the guy from the movie Mask, only more disfigured.  Maybe even the third brother from "The Goonies".  Anyway, you soon forget to imagine what he looks like because you are caught up in what he and the others are thinking.  Auggie has not had an easy life and he is used to people staring at him, he expects the worst from people and he often gets it.  He is slow to expect goodness or kindness but his happiness when he does experience it jumps at you from the page.  While most of the kids at school are horrible to Auggie, or indifferent, he does make friends with some amazing kids and has good experiences along with the bad.

This book changes between the characters and often revisits a scene in order for each character to tell what he/she was thinking and tell it from their point of view.  I love when a book switches voices, I just cannot read it fast enough.  We hear from Auggie, from his sister Via and from an assortment of their friends.  We do not hear the story told from an adult character, but the kids do an amazing job of describing their interactions with the adults and they leave you knowing what the adults are feeling or thinking.  For example, Via describes seeing her mother standing outside Auggie's door in the middle of the night "her hand on the doorknob, her forehead leaning on the door.  She wasn't going in his room or stepping out; just standing right outside the door, as if she was listening to the sound of his breathing as he slept". (Palacio, 99)  I knew instantly that it was a mother calming her own fears by listening to the peaceful breathing of her child at night, convincing herself that he is okay, she is okay, that everything will be okay.

I like that the characters in this book, Auggie included, are not perfect.  They are flawed, they are selfish, they are so very human.  Auggie is not given a free pass because of his deformities; the author portrays him as selfish, as bitter and even using his disability at times to influence a situation.  His sister and his friends are not always noble. They all wish that Auggie could just be normal or that they didn't feel like they needed to protect him, that they could just be cool with the other kids.  The parents disagree, the parents admit to lying and the parents yell at their kids or miss opportunities to help or listen.  It is how very genuine and honest these characters are that really gets you.

When I finished the book and finished crying, I picked it right back up again to read with my kids.  This did not go over well because as my 9 year old said "we can read on our own" and it is killing the 11 year old with how long it takes to read when reading out loud. And while they could read it themselves,  this book presents so many teaching opportunities and so many things to discuss on how to treat people.  It also facilitates conversations about what the characters in the book are learning and how that connects to what they are learning themselves in school.  Last night the 11 year old explained inherited traits to the 9 year old, she amazed me!   I watched their faces as I read how no one will sit near Auggie on the first day and how he describes what it was like to walk into a crowded lunch room.  They were mad, they were sad for Auggie, they said they would sit with them.  I hope that they would.  I don't think I would have.  Sure, I would have been nice(ish) and maybe said "hi", but I was a jerk in middle school.  (those of you who knew me, feel free to confirm)  I was worried about how I looked, who I hung out with and being cool.  One time, this girl kicked a ball into my face in PE and because I was already self-conscious about the size of my nose and it swelled, I hated her and iced her out when she tried to apologize.  More than once.  See?  Total jerk.  I can't wait to see their reaction at the end of the book and I can't read fast enough to get them there.

Read this book because it is a good story.  Read it because it is so well-written it is hard to find fault with it.  The only one I could come up with is that it was easy for me to see what would happen next, but really, I am a 39 year old woman reading a book meant for a 9 year old - I should be able to cue in on the  foreshadowing.  Read this because it makes you think about how you treated and still treat other people.  Read it with your kids because they are out there treating or being treated in ways that will break your heart.  Read it because someone will make a movie out of it and ruin it and you can say "I liked the book better".  Read it because it will grab you by the heart and take a long time to let you go.