family

Commensurate to our capacity for wonder

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I’m still processing all the marvelous experiences that we had in the Galapagos last week.  It is going to take me more than one post to capture everything about the trip, what we saw, what we learned, what we remember.  The thing that struck me most of all, however, is clear already: the sky.  The sunsets and sunrises, both of which I watched each day, were outrageously glorious.  We had a full moon while we were at sea.  At night, because we were so close to the Equator, we could see the Southern Cross and the big dipper in the sky at the same time (something Matt and I last did while on Kilimanjaro).

Galapsblog2Related to how much I loved the sky was the emptiness.  Over and over again we could not see anyone in any direction from the boat.  We felt like the only people in the world.  One morning, after traveling overnight to Genovesa Island, we walked along the ridge of an island formed by a volcano.  As we walked carefully over black lava rocks, the view was breathtaking.  I could not stop thinking of the last lines of Gatsby:

… face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. 

Oh, yes.  This was commensurate to my capacity for wonder.  This island, so far from home, out in the Pacific Ocean, no land visible in any direction, was nothing short of magical.  I exhaled slowly, trying to capture everything about the moment and preserve it, remember the fullness of time, the glory of the physical place we were, the bigness of the emotion swelling in my chest.

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I looked up to watch the birds wheeling in the sublimely blue sky.  I saw my children in front of me, tall, lanky, growing before my eyes, shedding the skins of early childhood and moving towards adolescence.  I watched the ocean lapping at this former volcano, traced the various shades of heartbreaking blue out toward the horizon.  There is no way to capture it all, this life: I can only grope around the edges of experience, fumbling clumsily as I try to express what it is to be in this world.  To watch.  To witness.

There’s no question that in the Galapagos all four of us felt wonder.

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None of us will ever forget this trip.  The animals, the sky, the time together, the reminder that this world is enormous and can still take our breath away.

The Big Apple Circus – discount and giveaway!

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Grace loves animals.  Worships.  This was a big reason that we chose the destination for our spring break adventure, which I’ll talk about this week.  It’s also why she – and we – love the circus.

Over the years we’ve had a wonderful experiences at the Big Apple Circus.  There is an intimacy to the Big Apple Circus that I just love; you feel like you are so close to the action, no matter where you sit.  I also love that the tent goes up right in City Hall Plaza in Boston.  There’s something so magical about being at the circus right in the heart of our city that I am moved by every single time.

I am absolutely thrilled to offer a discount and giveaway today for their Boston-area show (3/28-5/11).  If you enter the code BIGAPPLE when checking out online you will save $10 per ticket (Per ticket – not per order!  Offer good on specific shows and seats, and limited availability).

Also, I am giving away a pair of tickets to the 6:30pm show this Friday, March 28th.  All you have to do is answer this simple question: what is the height of the big top?  (hint: their website contains lots of great information …)  If you simply enter a comment with your answer I will pick a winner on Tuesday night, March 25th.

We’ll definitely be going to this year’s Big Apple Circus, and we can’t wait.  I hope you enjoy it too!!

Full disclosure: the Big Apple Circus provided my family with tickets to a show. 

Children of the 21st century

I have often discussed the dissonance that comes from staring 40 in the face while still feeling like I’m 18.  Or maybe 21.

But now and then I am reminded that I can’t be that young anymore, mostly when I realize that Grace and Whit really are growing up in a hugely different world than the one in which I did.  I love those lists of things that children of the 70s can relate to, and they always make me laugh.

Grace and Whit, though, are children of the 21st century.  Herewith, eleven ways my children are growing up in a world different than that in which I was a child:

1. They love – in fact, prefer – to talk on the phone on speaker.  This segues nicely into being very comfortable with FaceTiming.  I had a conversation recently with the ear of someone in their 60s over FaceTime because they assumed that you hold a phone to your ear.  I’m somewhere in between these two poles.  We’ve come a long way from the phone on the kitchen wall with the long twisty cord.

2. They don’t think a device needs charging until it is actually dead.  I start looking around frantically for a plug when I’m at about 70%.

3. Their passion for YouTube knows no bounds.  It is almost always the first stop in trying to find anything – music OR video – online.

4. They love scented things.  This may not be generational, but in our house it is.  Grace walks around billowing clouds of Wonderstruck by Taylor Swift.  Me?  Unscented.  Less glamour, sure, but also less choking.

5. Carseats are so integral a part of life in America that cars come with built-in tethers for them.  In our day?  Floating around the “way back” (untethered to anything) was my favorite way to travel.

6. They have never known a world when TV shows were on certain times, on certain days.  Friday night was when Dallas was on, and you had better be there at 8:00 to watch it, or else you were taking a big risk if you tried to program your VCR.  They want to watch something?  They just click to it.  Incredible.  And VCR?  They have no idea what that is.  They don’t even know what “to Tivo something” means.

7. They wouldn’t know what a mimeograph machine is if it hit them in the head.  The smell of those purply-blue print pages, however, takes me back to grade school faster than almost anything else.  Grace and Whit log onto the class Google Drive to check their homework assignment.  I flipped through the mimeographed pages in my Trapper Keeper.

8. Their ability to suspend disbelief is pretty weak.  I see this when we watch old movies – notably, lately, The Princess Bride.  “Those are not real,” Grace scoffed when the rodents of unusual size scurried across the screen.  I blame the extremely lifelike special effects in movies today.

9. Photography is an unlimited exercise for them: we were recently discussing buying a disposable underwater camera, and Whit asked whether we bought memory cards for it.  No, I explained, you had 27 exposures, and that was it.  Both Grace and Whit were frankly aghast at the idea of paying per photograph, of pictures only in hard copy, of having to wait overnight to have your film developed.  In fact, at the word “film” at all.  Totally foreign.  I like digital photography myself, an awful lot, but I do think that we have lost some discernment and care now that a camera roll is unlimited.

10. They don’t know a single phone number.  For that matter, neither do I.  Whereas I can still remember the (home) numbers of my childhood home as well as a few close friends.  Those were the numbers I punched into that kitchen phone with the twisty cord.  Grace and Whit don’t have to remember anything since it’s all programmed.

11. They don’t know how to read a map.  My father always told me that one of the most essential life skills was ability to read a map while traveling.  Now, my aforementioned carsickness often got in the way here, but I do know how to read a map and often joke that I’m one of the last remaining people who prints out maps before going somewhere.  Grace and Whit just assume a destination will be punched into a GPS and we’ll be guided there.

Are you a child of the 70s?  Are you parenting a child of the 21st century?  What differences do you note in growing up now vs. growing up then?

 

 

28 Days of Play

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I am delighted to be participating in Rachel Cedar’s marvelous, thought-provoking series about the power of, and occasional reluctance to, play.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading the posts each day and am happy to be featured today, talking about Grace’s passion for crafting and my commensurate dread of it.

Please click over to read about Cake Pops, Felt Turtles, and Me … comments are closed here but I hope you will come over and read Rachel’s wonderful series and let us know how you feel about playing with your children.

An elegy to what was and a love letter to what is.

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I have never been particularly maternal, I never babysat, and I never daydreamed of the day I would have my own children. I was as surprised as anyone, then, when I realized that motherhood was the love affair of my life, the subject that found me, the role that made everything else in my life make (at least some) sense.  After Grace and I made it through months of colic (hers but also, I’m pretty sure, mine) and a dark year, we entered a period that I think of now as what Laura Ingalls Wilder called the happy golden years.

But lately, I am in a new season of motherhood.  At first there were isolated events, rolled eyes and crossed arms, flares of aggravation I did not understand.   These moments, each on their own as small as a speck of light in a wide night sky, came together into a constellation that was eventually impossible to ignore.  Something is changing.  Something is different.

For a long time I worried that my days with Grace at home would never end.  I waded through her dark and sleepless first months for what felt like an eternity.  Then, truthfully, I rejoiced that that time had ended.  We dove into the happy hours of early childhood, celebrating all the things we could do together – swimming, tennis, reading, adventures. Grace (and her brother) was my favorite companion and I was hers.  And now, suddenly, the end of something is undeniably in sight.  It reminds me our annual summer trip to the White Mountains: we hike for what seems like forever in the trees and are always startled when, all at once, the summit comes into view.

Grace’s years at home with me are well over halfway done.  The time of me being her favorite person, of my company always being her first choice, are surely almost completely over.  I am so keenly aware of how numbered these days are that I can barely think of anything else.  It is not an exaggeration to say that my every experience is filtered through the prism of time’s passage.

I have said goodbye to sippy cups and diapers and sleep schedules and baby food and cribs and high chairs and even, mostly, to carseats.  I have welcomed yoga pants that I sometimes mistake for my own when I’m folding laundry, a riot of peace sign patterned sheets and towels, a closed bedroom door, and handwritten postcards home from sleep-away camp.

I don’t worry about SIDS anymore, or about whether I’m producing enough milk, or about putting a baby to bed slightly awake so she doesn’t get used to falling asleep in my arms.  Instead I worry about Facebook, and friends who have cell phones, and when it’s ok to get her ears pierced, and the insidious approach of eating disorders and body image issues.

The predominant emotion of this time, as Grace embarks upon the vital transition from child to young adult and to an autonomous and independent sense of self, is wonder.  Wonder upon wonder, so many layers I have lost count: there is awe, fear, and astonishment, and also an endless list of questions.  I gaze at my daughter, coltishly tall, lean, all angles and long planes, and wonder where the last 10 years went.  It is not hard to close my eyes and imagine that she is still the rotund baby or chubby toddler that she was just moments ago.  At the same time I can see the young woman she is rapidly becoming in her mahogany eyes.  And there are so many things I wonder about: separation, mood swings, puberty, boys, technology, school pressures, body image, and more.

I’m reminded now and then of the fears and concerns that flummoxed me when Grace was an infant.  The world shifted more then, when I brought home a crying newborn, but this transition feels second only to that.  Then as now, I’m guided by only two things: love and instinct.

Overnight we’ve gone from a world where a never-ending ribbon of days unfurled in front of us, so many they overwhelmed me, to one where every moment feels finite, numbered, and, as a result, almost unbearably precious.  It feels like as soon as I figured out how to truly love being a mother with children at home, it’s almost over.  More and more, I feel the tension between holding on and letting go.  I want to help Grace find her footing in the uncertain terrain of adolescence, but I never expected it to be so bittersweet.

And all I know what to do as we move into this new season is to pay attention, to look and listen and write it down.  Everything I write, everything I live, an elegy to what was and a love letter to what is.

This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.