family

Family Play List

On Sunday, as we drove home from a wonderful, relaxing weekend by the ocean, we listened to Top 40.  When the four of us are in the car, music is always a topic of heated debate.  Matt prefers satellite radio, preferably the 70s or Classic Rock stations, Whit prefers country (Remember?  He’s from Texas), Grace likes Top 40, and my music preferences can best be described as boarding school, circa 1991 (James Taylor, Indigo Girls, etc).

It’s usually a battle of the guilt trip and the speedy channel-change.  All of a sudden, Matt switched channels, When I See You Again was on, and we were all singing along.  I was fighting tears within seconds.  At Grace’s sixth grade graduation luncheon they played a slide show with this song on, and I wasn’t the only parent wiping her face.  I loved that we were all singing it.  I knew in that moment I would remember it forever.  It’s normally the line about how “family’s all we got” that chokes me up, but on Sunday it was “As you go and every road you take will always lead you home.”  I glanced in the rear view mirror, saw both Grace and Whit singing along as they looked out the window, an felt a ferocious surge of hope that they’ll always remember these days, that somehow we’re creating a family and a home that they both feel comfortable leaving and know will always be there to return to.

I thought then about the songs that remind me of this motley crew, of this family, this time in my life.  I’ve written before about the various songs that take me back – often powerfully – to specific moments in my life.  This particular season is no different.  Certainly When I see You Again is one of them.  There are the lullabyes that remind me of both Grace and Whit’s babyhoods, though those are long-gone now (sob).

One night this spring during my vertigo month, I was tucking Whit in (from my knees, leaning onto his bottom bunk), and he looked at me and sang, “the world is spinning round and round I can’t see clear no more …”  I think it was the hardest I laughed all month long.  Since that moment every single time I hear Ellie Goulding’s Love Me Like You Do I think of Whit.  I realize it’s slightly creepy that the 50 Shades of Gray song makes me think of my son, but there you have it.

When Daddy Sang Bass by Johnny and June Cash comes on, we all start belting out.  Johnny Cash is one of both Matt and Whit’s dearest loves, and I love the way this song refers to a family of four.  And the way it asserts that the family circle will be unbroken.  This one isn’t a new one; in 2011 I mused on the way Johnny’s voice comes in my head.

I asked both children what songs came to mind when I asked what reminded them of right now, and they both instantly said Let Her Go.  Why, I asked?  Because it’s your favorite song, they said.  And right now (and for a while) it definitely is.

Team by Lorde always reminds me of one morning last year when Grace and Whit were bickering at breakfast (as they do almost every day; for some reason I remember this one).  I happened to have Team on my iPhone because it was on my running mix (I never listen to music on my phone other than when I run) and I turned it on, blaringly loud.  The move shocked them so much and I’ll never forget the looks on their faces as Lorde sang “And you know, we’re on each other’s team.”

Taylor Swift is a major family favorite.  When her songs come on the radio Matt is known to exclaim, “My girl!  Tay Tay!” and to belt out the lyrics.  Grace is a huge fan.  So am I.  Bad Blood will always remind me of this summer.

One Day by Matsiyahu is the song Grace mentioned, because for so many months it was the only song we listened to in the car.  Over and over again.  Christmas carols are also on the short list, though those (and One Day) are more evergreen than right this second.

What is the soundtrack of your right now?

Everyday life

I use the hashtag #everydaylife on Instagram a lot.  My goal is to convey the deep appreciation I have for my own ordinary existence.  Am I sometimes frustrated, cranky, tired, and ungrateful?  You bet.  Am I even more often thankful, aware to the point of pain, and struck with wonder?  No question.

So, I thought I’d share some of the #everydaylife moments from an absolutely spectacular three-day weekend.  For many years this has been a family weekend (no doubt driven in large part by the fact that my mother’s birthday is the 3rd).  It’s a weekend I look forward to all year.  My sister, our husbands, and our collective four children all gather with my parents.  It brings a lump to my throat to even write that, by the way.  I’m intensely conscious of how fortunate we are.

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Thursday night we arrived in time for a late dinner, and to witness my father reading Swallows and Amazons to the four cousins.  I loved this book as a child, and have vivid memories of him reading to me when I was a child (Treasure Island and The Water Babies feature most in my recollections).

Friday morning dawned clear and beautiful, and Hilary and I enjoyed a supremely special and immensely rare lunch with our mother for her birthday.  I honestly can’t recall the last time the three of us had a sit-down meal alone, together. I’ll spare you the selfie I took of the three of us leaving, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment won’t ever forget it.

Friday night was birthday dinner, with presents and cake and candles and photographs of Nana with her four grandchildren that I prize.

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Saturday started with the small-town parade that we all love.  The children love the candy that the floats throw, we all love the music, and my favorite is the ever-dwindling number of World War II veterans in the parade.  I remember when some of them used to walk.  There was red white and blue, small waving American flags, marching bands, and homemade raspberry, blueberry, and yogurt popsicles by Grace.

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We all went out on my parents’ boat and through a series of unexpected twists ended up not joining the yacht club sunflower raft as planned but instead going out for a short sail.  The code flags that we had hoisted to celebrate the holiday ripped off the halyard.  Back on the mooring, we needed to get the halyard, which was billowing loose towards the top of the mast.  First Grace went up in a bosun’s chair, hoisted by my father and Matt. She didn’t make it to the top before we realized the block that the line hoisting her up went through as broken, and quickly she came down.  It was Whit’s turn.  About 2/3 of the way up he started shouting.  “Mummy!  Mummy!  I am terrified!”  We encouraged him to keep going, and he did.  He went all the way to the top of the mast, captured the loose halyard, and came back down again.  It’s hard to see in the picture above, but that’s him at the top of the mast.

I told him the bravest thing I thought he did was admitting he was terrified.  And then doing it anyway.

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We had dinner at the yacht club, a location which always gives me slight goosebumps and where the past glints particularly brightly in the present (it’s the location where Matt and I celebrated our wedding reception).  We watched the fireworks, breaths bated.  Grace noted the way you could see the reflection of the starbursts on the water.  Whit said he liked the ones that looked like falling stars best. I thought about how many years we’ve watched these same fireworks, at this same spot, marveling at time’s elasticity, amazed, as I am on a daily basis, at how quickly this life runs through my fingers even as I grasp at it.

We walked home and said goodbye to Hilary and her family, a farewell whose bittersweetness was tempered by how exhausted everyone was.  I woke up missing them yesterday and feel sad that a weekend I anticipate for so long is over.  Sunday was a quiet day, with sleeping in, tennis (we played singles, and it is near the end of days: Grace almost beat Matt, and Whit took two games off of me in a set), and an afternoon when Matt, my Dad, Grace, and Whit went sailing with a friend and Mum and I puttered around.

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I was sad leaving yesterday afternoon, and wistful as we drove home (slowly).  Summer is flying too quickly by, as is life itself.  Grace and Whit head to camp in only a couple of weeks, and at that point it’s incontrovertible that we’re into the second half of the summer.  As we crossed the Charles River into our home town, Matt pointed out the colors of the sky, the boathouse, and one of the Harvard houses.  Yes.  There is so much beauty all around us.  And so much sorrow, too.  Lambent colors, seen through the haze of tears.  That what #everyday life is.  It is full of beauty and gratitude and loss and memory and love.  It shimmers.

Things I Believe

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walking home after an evening baseball game on the last day of school, June 4th

There are certain absolutes that I believe, and that I hope to pass on to Grace and Whit.  I know they’ve got some of these already, and others are still works in progress.

These are some things I believe:

That you should write thank you notes.  For gifts, for experiences, and within a week (preferably within a day).  Always.

That most bad days can be turned around with a bath or a shower and climbing into bed with a book in pajamas.  Preferably together.

That you should wave to and acknowledge cars who stop and wait for you while crossing a street.

That everybody cries for no reason sometimes.  It’s ok and normal.  It might even be good.

That these foods should be made from scratch: applesauce, chicken stock, marinara sauce, chicken noodle soup, chocolate chip cookies.  As a bonus, they all make your house smell great.

That you should not talk on your cell phone while checking out at a store.  Ever.

That you should answer “how are you” with “well,” not “good.”  And that the difference between “can” and “may” is vast.  Try to use the right words at the right time.

That you wear a shirt with a collar (Whit) and clothes that are not athletic attire (both kids) when you go to a restaurant.

That there’s great value in saying yes.  I try to remember that, though I definitely fail a lot.  Try to say yes.

That Dumbledore is the greatest, kindest, wisest, most powerful figure in all of literature.

That you notice when I’m there, even when I’m quietly watching from the sidelines.  One of the most important things we can do for people we love is showing up and staying near.

That I haven’t irreparably damaged you by working throughout your childhood (first part-time, now full-time).

That it all begins and ends with sleep.  I’m not super fussed about food (the only vegetables Whit has ever eaten are lettuce/kale/spinach) but I take sleep very seriously.

That what matters is trying hard.  In school, in sports, in life.  I care much more about the effort than I do about the result.

What do you believe?

Through the looking glass

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my sixth grade graduation, May 1986.  Sorry for the shadow and poor photo; the picture was so thoroughly glued to the page that I couldn’t take it off to scan it, and I wanted to include my father’s handwriting, because the carefully composed and annotated photo albums that he made are among my most-cherished things. 

Tomorrow, Grace graduates from sixth grade.

I remember the day that I graduated from sixth grade, in the same school, in the same building, better than I recall yesterday.

I’ll sit in the gym that I’ve picked her up from for many years, and once again, my own memories will collide with reality and I’ll fall down the telescope into that disorienting place where I am not sure what’s now and what’s then, what’s me and what’s her.  But even in this vertigo-like swirl of memory and emotion and time, something essential endures, the sturdy presence of my love for my daughter, a cord whose strength I’m trusting more and more.

I almost worry about saying that out loud, because I fear jinxing myself.  I’ve written at length (ad nauseum, even) about my fear of the distance that I know must mark these adolescent and teen years, and about what will happen to my relationship with Grace as we make our way through this time.  I know the red string that ties our hearts needs to stretch, and it will, but more and more, I’m also trusting that it will come back eventually.

We are again in the season of endings and beginnings.  Of commencement.  I feel like a broken record, but I find myself aghast, awestruck, frankly shocked by the velocity of time.  Life’s whistling past my ears ever faster, just as I was told it would.  Even as I join in the celebrations, which are bigger this year than ever, because graduation from 6th grade is a big passage at our school, I’m sorrowful in equal measure, and Stanley Kunitz’s feast of losses echoes in my head.

Last night was the sixth grade graduation party, and I was proud to watch Grace dance all night long, singing enthusiastically to everything from Journey to Katy Perry.  The moment I won’t forget was when all the parents were dancing with our sixth graders, belting out the words to I’ve Had the Time of My Life.  Once again, then and now collided, and I found myself blinking away tears.  Time is confoundingly elastic, and the past – in the song, in the memories, in the dizzying blending of then and now – felt animate, tangible, in the present.

At our sixth grade graduation, in 1986, we sang Whitney Houston’s The Greatest Love of All, and that night I co-hosted a graduation party with some friends at a local tennis club (I went on to celebrate my engagement to Matt, my 30th birthday, my mother’s 60th birthday, and a host of other meaningful occasions in the same space).  It was a sunny and beautiful day and my conviction that the future spread in front of me, glittering, assured, was tempered substantially by my parents’ recent announcement that we were moving to London after Christmas.  I recall sitting on the sidewalk outside of the tennis club crying about the departure, though I can’t recall if that was before or after the party.  I also remember that one of our longtime babysitters DJed and that the last dance was Phil Collins’ Separate Lives, played twice.

The full photograph above, which I cropped, includes the faces of three of my closest friends from lower school.  I’m grateful to still be in touch with all three of them.  I look around at Grace’s friends and wonder who she’ll still count dear in 29 years.

While it feels like only weeks ago that I stood there, it was almost 30 years ago.  Wow.  Tomorrow I’ll go through the looking glass again, into the place where time and memory and love and loss swirl together into a heady mixture whose power can bring me to my knees.

Only one thing I can do.  Blink back my tears, look at my only daughter, my first child, and be here now.

Everything is changing

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Grace at my 15th year business school reunion on Saturday, sitting in my 1st year classroom, in my 1st semester seat. She’s closer to the age I was when I sat there than I am now.

I’ve long been a huge fan of Kyran Pittman‘s writing.  I loved her book, Planting Dandelions: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life, and I also follow her blog.  A few weeks ago she shared a Humans of New York post on her Facebook feed.  It was a picture of a man with his teenage daughter, and what he said was:

“I’m supportive of anything that keeps her focused and moving forward. All I can do is try to clear away as much bullshit as possible so that she can access her future. The older she gets, the less I can control, and the less I can protect her from. It’s a bit nerve-wracking. I did get her a Swiss Army Knife last week. Because you never know when you’ll need one of those.”

Kyran’s introduction was:

This is as great a teen parenting philosophy as I’ve ever heard. Getting them to adulthood with as many choices intact as possible, and the wherewithal to choose well–that’s what it’s about now for us.

And then she added:

Or as Asha Dornfest so aptly put it, we’re parenting with the end game in mind now. When they’re little the whole object is to keep them safe. And then one day it hits you, that was just a temporary assignment.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these lines. Parenting with the end game in mind now.  Yes.  And the object is still to keep them safe, but the definition of safe has changed entirely.  It doesn’t feel accidental that I have this stop-and-go vertigo right now, that I feel a little unsteady on my feet, that the world feels like it’s whirling around me in a way a little more unnerving than usual.

Everything is changing, and the truth is it’s hard to catch my breath or find my footing.

Grace is sprinting towards 13, and her entire body and self are leaning towards the future in a way that I find both deeply reassuring and frankly terrifying.  She’s a young woman, and suddenly parenting feels different.  Of course I’ll be her mother until the end of time, even when we’re both gone, but the definition of motherhood has changed, and it feels a bit like an ill-fitting garment.  Certain things that I had just gotten used to are gone and others which I somehow thought I had more time to prepare for have arrived.

I’ve always, from my very first days of motherhood, believed that my children do not belong to me.  I’ve written that very sentence point-blank (as an aside, in searching for that link, I discovered that I wrote my daughter, who’s about to graduate from sixth grade, a letter on this blog on her first day of kindergarten – wow).  Grace and Whit are passing through me on their way to the great wide open.  They are not mine; it is my distinct honor and privilege to share these years with them.  But still, the realization that I’m in the second half – probably the final third – of this season jars me.  The losses pile one on top of each other. I’ve said before that while motherhood has contained more surprises than I can count the central one is probably how bittersweet it is.  I ferociously love my children, and the emotion I feel for them is the central guiding tenet of my life.  But even almost 13 years into being a mother, I’m staggered, over and over again by the losses that this ordinary life contains and by how frequently my eyes fill with tears.

My role these days with my tween is about abiding, knowing when to bite my tongue, being patient, and trusting that our bond will survive this passage.  It is making sure she has a soft place to land when she needs it but also gently encouraging her to step outside of that familiar circle to challenge herself.  It’s in that space beyond what is known that growth happens, even though it’s scary.  For us both.

It’s keeping the end game that Kyran and Asha mentioned in mind.  It’s knowing that what I want is an independent, brave, autonomous child.  After all, so many years ago, when I put 5 year old Grace on a plane alone, I said confidently that only a child secure in her attachments can venture away.  I still believe that.  I just didn’t realize how much it would hurt.