I don’t like pictures of me very often, but I like this one. Taking photographs of my dearest friends, a beautiful sunset in the background, on a deck where I spent many formative hours in my late teens and early twenties. Doesn’t get much better than this.
many thanks to Kathryn for taking this!
A couple of people who commented on my Six Year post asked about what I am reading, both in terms of books and blogs.
Books is the easier answer. I am currently reading Teach Your Children Well by Madeline Levine. I recently ready Amy Sohn’s Motherland and re-read Operating Instructions by the incomparable Anne Lamott. Next up is Lee Woodruff’s Those We Love Most. After that, my list includes Allison Pearson’s I Think I Love You, Molly Ringwald’s When it Happens to You, Andrew McCarthy’s The Longest Way Home, and Will Schwalbe’s The End of Your Life Book Club.
Blogs. I read a lot of blogs. There are some I read in full every single time they write something, others that I tend to skim. It’s hard to pick my favorites, and even trying to list the ones I read makes me nervous because I know I’ll forget someone. Some of my favorite blogs are dormant right now, so I don’t list them. But here is a partial list of people whose blogs read most devotedly: Katrina Kenison, Jena Strong, Amanda Magee, Denise Ullem, Aidan Donnelley Rowley, Pamela Hunt Cloyd, Meredith Winn. There are so many more! There are over 100 blogs in my Google Reader, and I check that several times a day.
I read blogs in other categories, too. I read several style blogs religiously, a handful of cooking blogs, and a couple of hilarious commentary-on-celebrity blogs. I read a lot of what Lisa Belkin shares on Parentry at the Huffington Post and many pieces on Literary Mama.
For years I joked that you could tell a lot about someone from the magazines they read. After all, I have such a varied magazine list that a stranger on a plane once commented on it. I think that the same is true of someone’s Google Reader. What they value, what they love, what interests them: these are all apparent from what is contained in their Reader list.
If that’s so, I think my Google Reader selections demonstrate someone who cares passionately about excellent writing, who thinks often and hard about parenting, who likes clothes and fashion and Hollywood news, and wishes she cooked more often and more successfully than she currently does.
What do you read? Books, blogs, magazines? What do your selections say about you?
The long, coltish legs of an almost-young-woman
A few weeks ago, in a beautiful post called Pretty, Kelle Hampton wrote this about parenting: I don’t have all the answers, but I have good instincts and I love my kids something fierce.
I’m not sure that I have ever heard a lovelier description of what I believe parenting is. Instinct and love. That’s all I have ever had. As Grace’s tenth birthday nears, what parenting means to me has been on my mind. I’m not entirely sure why. What I do know is that in the last several months we have crossed a line, Grace and I. We have walked into a new season together.
I have never had all the answers. Far from it. But lately the questions are different, and I don’t feel like I have any of the answers. I am daunted by decisions about technology, boys, body image, confidence, and identity. For the first time, I confront closed doors and eye rolls. The issues that rise up feel newly fraught, and I’m ever more aware that the patterns she and I set now will take us through into the teenage years.
But, for now, I still get hugs at bedtime and requests to snuggle. Grace continues to love simply being with me, whether we are reading or doing errands or working on a puzzle. I know these days are likely numbered, and I’m sure this is why I hold each afternoon chatting idly as I cook and she draws at the table more and more tightly. My awareness of how fleeting this time is is so keen as to be painful. Every minute contains an ending, as well, of course, as a thrilling beginning.
The mothering ground is shifting under me in a particularly dramatic way right now and I’m trying to find my footing. I have no choice but to trust that the instincts that have always been strong will continue to guide me through. There’s no question that the ferocious love is undimmed. Just as I figured out how to coax a colicky baby towards sleep (though it took me a while, and an ocean of tears) I will figure out how to parent a nascent adolescent. Right? I have to believe this is true.
Love and instinct. Instinct and love. Here we go.
If you have children in the 9, 10, 11 year old range, does this sense of transition feel familiar? Any tips, advice, or words of wisdom are most welcome.