everyday life

Little wonders all around

This blog began, and continues to be, a catalog of my life’s most ordinary moments.  Over the course of years, as I memorialized fragments of my everyday experiences, I realized that they were actually the most lambently beautiful of my life.  I used to regularly write posts about these small moments, when I glimpsed the glitter of divinity, when I remembered, and powerfully, that life is beautiful.

I don’t know why I stopped, but it feels like time for another benediction of the little wonders that are all around me.

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A Wrinkle in Time was my favorite childhood book.  Grace read it last year and Whit just finished it.  Watching my children fall in love with a story that I adored is among the most wonderful experiences of parenting.  Whit in particular loved it and is working his way through the series now.  I think he relates to Charles Wallace in a strong way.

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A glorious sunrise from the sky en route to Chicago for the day.

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A couple of weeks ago I played hooky for an hour to walk to school to get the kids in a blizzard.  We walked home slowly, stopping to play in the rapidly accumulating snow.  Both Grace and Whit were relaxed and joyful.  I defiantly ignored my blinking blackberry and sank into their delight.  There is so much magic here: we just have to let ourselves see it.

IMG_4676I love so many things about the organic geometry of bare branches against winter’s steel-gray sky, but most of all I love the way I can see birds’ nests that are hidden in other seasons.  I am constantly struck by this metaphor: when things are stripped down to their most essential architecture the trust safe spots are revealed, these nests whose existence in a New England winter belies their apparent fragility.  There is sturdy comfort in the most barren places.
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We didn’t go away for President’s Day weekend as I had to work a lot, but we did do a Saturday day trip to our favorite mountain and skiied with some of our dearest friends. I took this picture at the top of a narrow, deserted glade as I watched my children, my husband, and two of the adults I love most ski down. I felt a powerful awareness of how incredibly fortunate I am.

In those moments, like at the top of the mountain or in the air watching the sun rise, I feel a soul-stirring sense of awe which I can express best with the inarticulate and inelegant “wow.”

In the last few months I’ve found this in the skyfire of sunset and in the glow of the moon rising, in the nests in bare trees, in the sudden, noisy song of dozens of sparrows even though I can’t see them, in the long shadows of my daughter’s eyelashes against her sleeping cheeks, in the words of poets and writers too numerous to mention.

Does this constant wow contradict the low note of lamentation that plays constantly in my life?  I don’t actually think so.  Maybe remaining open to the wow necessitates a permeability of spirit that means I’m also open to a certain sorrow.  These are the two edges of the world’s beauty that Virginia Woolf described, anguish and laughter springing from the same single truth.  I suspect I’m just joining my voice to an ancient chorus here, kneeling in supplication among a swirling sea of humanity.  And we all whisper the same thing under our breath:

wow.

(I wrote parts of this in in April 2012, and every word is still true)

All you ever have

photo 3Sunday morning.

Much of the time, our family of four functions fairly smoothly.  Sometimes, though, we don’t.  Some days everybody’s edges feel especially jagged and as we rub up against each other emotions protrude and tempers flare.  Yesterday morning was one of those times.  All was not well at the homestead.  Matt and Grace left to do an errand.  Whit busied himself building something with Legos and blocks.  I put in a load of laundry, emptied the trash cans, finally sorted through the holiday cards (March 2nd seems like time).  I felt a familiar restlessness running under my skin.

Finally I went upstairs to our family room, lay down on the couch, and watched Whit.  He was building a luge track using blocks, legos, clipboards, and small rubber tires.  It was elaborate, and he kept testing and adjusting, testing and adjusting.  I glanced out the window at the tree that has accompanied me through the last 13 years, remembering sitting in this very room nursing a colicky baby Grace and watching dawn spread across the sky through the tree’s familiar branches.

As often happens, I felt the years between then and now collapse in on each other, telescoping into a tunnel of memory and loss.  My eyes filled with tears as I watched Whit play, overcome suddenly with emotions more complicated than I can fully parse or name.  I felt gratitude for this life, this boy, these bright Legos, this warm room, the years I’ve been able to be Grace and Whit’s mother.  I felt guilt for all the hours and days and weeks I have failed to appreciate, all the times I was distracted and short and not present enough.  I felt awareness of all that was over so keenly it felt like a physical pain in my chest.  I felt the frantic and dizzying sensation of time slipping through my fingers even as I try to grasp on.

What I didn’t feel, though, as I swam in that tearful wave of thankfulness and sorrow, was any of the frustration and aggravation that had marked the first hours of my day.  By sinking into the now of my life, by watching Whit carefully, by breathing and just being, I had touched again the hem of heaven, reminded myself of what matters, of all the divinity that glints through our daily lives like mica glittering in the concrete pavement.

My phone, which I’d forgotten was on the table next to the couch, beeped.  I glanced over.  My best friend from high school, a woman I see not nearly enough but still love fiercely, had texted me this quote.

The tears that had threatened to fall did so now, slipping down my cheeks. Thank you, universe.  Thank you friends and children and love and trees and everything about this daily life.  Thank you.

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The prism through which all of life is seen

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Motherhood is is both enormous and tiny. It is made up of emotions so unwieldy that I can’t put them into words, and of moments so small I would miss them if I blinked (and I’ve surely missed millions). Sometimes the feelings are so giant I feel swollen with them, taut, tight, very much like I was in the last trimester of pregnancy. Sometimes the minutiae is so small that it seems impossible to hang any meaning onto it, and every time I am surprised when somehow, the hook actually holds.

For me, motherhood is more than one facet of the human experience.

It is the prism through which all of life is seen.

In my struggle to make sense of the moments of emotion so overwhelming I feel as though I’m jumping off a tall pier into the ocean, or ducking through the heavy downpour of a waterfall, I turn to the page.  I read the words of others and I write and write and write, circling the same topics, over and over again.  I cannot fit my arms around the enormity of it, no matter how I try.  And as soon as I think I have, it expands, changes shape.  Motherhood is a balloon expanding all the time and floating upward; I watch it above me, face tipped up, standing in the shadow it casts.

For the tiny, the minute, I don’t have to look any further than right here. The moments flutter like magnolia petals around my feet, stunning, short-lived, and quickly turning to brown mush. When I write about them I’m trying to memorialize them in their pink beauty, their spring perfume wafting off of them in waves.  Motherhood is running into Michaels in a suit on the way to a meeting to grab a gingerbread house kit so that your daughter can make it that afternoon.  It is  sleeping on the top bunk on robot sheets because the resident of the bottom bunk was having a bad dream.  It is muting your conference call to advise on a homework question about fractions.  It is rushing home from visiting your mother in the hospital to have your daughter confront you about not spending enough time with her.  It is losing track of time while writing your son a birthday letter and then hurrying to a meeting with red eyes and the sheepish look of someone who’s clearly been crying.  It is missing your children with a visceral ache while they are at school and then, within five minutes of their reentry to the house, snapping at them to “keep it down!” with a surge of aggravation.

Big and small. Tiny and huge. Overwhelming and underwhelming. Tears and laughter. All of these tensions, some of them cliches, exist in every single day for me.

Some parts of this post were originally written four years ago.

 

Small moments, and a snowman

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This, right here: my favorite moment of the winter break.  On the last weekend, Grace made a scavenger hunt for Matt and me, which took us all over the house with clues that each mentioned a cherished memory of our time off.  These included the snow fort she and Whit had built, Old Sturbridge Village, skating outdoors during a cold snap, dinner with our dear family friends, and the New Year’s dinner that the four of us had and the board games we played after.

The scavenger hunt culminated here, with this big snowman and words of thanks, on our bed.  I sat down and folded Grace in my arms, eyes swimming with tears.

Thank you, I whispered into her ear.  Sometimes her creativity and generosity take my breath away, as does her visible gratitude for this life of hers (and of ours).

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that scavenger hunt or that snowman.  What it reminds me is that children do not need grand plans to create special memories.  Yes, maybe I’m contradicting myself, since I know I recently vowed to help my children see the world.  But maybe these two things can coexist.  And, dare I say it, I think this snowman and this series of reminders of how important little experiences can be actually means more to me than do large adventures.  As I said in August, I am rarely prouder of my children than when they enjoy small moments.

This is an absolute priority for me as a parent: protecting Grace and Whit’s propensity towards wonder and their predilection to be overjoyed by small things.  Grace’s scavenger hunt reminded me of this, and of what I believe children need and want above all else: our attention.  Attention, which is, after all, love incarnate.  What we pay attention to blooms.  Being with them, in the moments big and small, that’s what matters. That’s why the snowman exists: because in those ordinary experiences – sledding, building a fort, sitting around a dinner table, laughing at a board game – I was truly there.

I know this, but I needed the reminder.

The truth is I need to refocus on this.  I’m embracing what Rachel May Stafford advocates in Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters.  On Ali Edwards’ blog I read about Rachel’s suggestion to publicly declare the intention to be more Hands Free, so I am doing that now: I must rededicate myself to the practice of being present with my children.  I must put down my iphone.  I must trust that my work and personal email will wait.  I must remember the critical, essential importance of just being with Grace and Whit.

I must remember the snowman.  I apparently could do it over winter break.  Now I need to keep doing it.

The ugly and the broken, the beautiful and the beloved

I thought about my friend Amanda’s wonderful post, Do you see me? all through the holidays.  December is, of course, a season rife with images of perfect celebrations, of handmade cookies and advent calendars and faces aglow with candles and wonder.  And I won’t lie: we had our share of those things here (well, not the perfect, but the cookies and advent calendars, the candles and the wonder).  But there was also plenty of bickering, of exhaustion, and more than a few tears.

Amanda‘s musings on what we share, both easily and haltingly, what we reveal and what we don’t, really stuck with me.  I think about this all the time, particularly because I’m often asked by people I know and those I don’t what it is like to write so openly here.  “Don’t you feel too vulnerable?” people often ask me.  It’s always that word.  And my response is always the same: no.  Everything I share here is true, but I also get to choose what it is I write about.  This choosing, this filtering, is something I think about all the time. One of my favorite posts from last year, It’s Not All Shiny, focused on this exact question.

This is related, I think, to what Amanda’s talking about.  What can we learn from the things we are ashamed of and the things we hold back?  Surely our instinctive reaction to hide certain truths and realities tells us a lot.  Are we disavowing the things that we don’t like about ourselves and our lives?  Does not displaying certain things mean we are denying their truth?

I am not sure, but I don’t think so.  Surely some degree of filtering is necessary to operate in the world.  It’s a slippery slope, of course, that runs between being discerning about what we reveal to others and being disingenuous or, even, dishonest.  And in certain relationships and at given moments, it makes sense to share even the darkest contents of our hearts and minds.  But to broadcast them doesn’t feel right to me.  In fact sometimes I think that sharing the messy and ugly stuff is almost a defensive move, to preempt judgment, somehow, and it can put the recipient of the reveal in an awkward position.

What I do know, though, is that I’ve grown more cautious about what I share.  In my real life people often tell me that it is hard to get me to talk about myself.  Some of this is innate, and some of it is a wariness that comes from having been stung by all the ways I have been misperceived over the years.  The truth is this concerns me, and makes me second guess my deep sense of settling more comfortably into my own life.  If I’m growing quieter, and more tentative, does that mean the opposite is true?  Or am I just more protective of the discoveries I have made, many of which have been of glittering, shimmery things in the piles of life’s ordinary dust and mundane moments.

I am in love with my life.  With all of it.  I embrace the shadowy valleys that are as integral to the topography of my life as are the peaks and the wide, sun-drenched plains.  After all, we are only here for a brief, shimmering second; the least we can do is throw our arms around – and ourselves into – the whole of our lives, as they are, right here, right now.

These sentences, which I wrote almost a year and a half ago, are still absolutely true.  I believe fiercely in the power of recognizing and acknowledging and, yes, loving, everything in our lives: the ugly and the broken as much as the beautiful and the beloved.  I still think, though, that it is our prerogative to decide what we share and when.  I am an open person but also a private one.  I personally think those two things can coexist.  Still, as Amanda says, I think there’s value in looking closely at the things we hold back; casting out shame as much as we can, embracing the whole, sharing when we feel comfortable doing so.  That’s my plan for 2014, at least.

What do you share and what do you keep to yourself?  Do you think there’s something to be learned about understanding what falls into each category?