Dear Kindergarten Teacher (On the First Day of School)

Dear Kindergarten Teacher,

It’s finally here, the day you’ve been prepping for all summer. Despite the common misconception that teachers close their door in June and skip off to the beach until the day before school begins in August, I know the truth, because I’ve lived it. I was a kindergarten teacher.

I know the painstaking effort you’ve made to prepare your classroom and write my child’s name in a million different places to make him feel welcome. I know the hours spent ensuring pencils are sharpened, Crayola markers all have fresh ink, and white glue is not clogged (a magical skill uniquely possessed by teachers). I know the thoughts in your head as you survey the kids walking through the door today – some clinging to their parent’s legs, some diving right into Legos and books you so carefully set out on shelves for them to find. A constant observer, you’re memorizing faces, learning names, and matching parent to child so you may greet and dismiss them to their rightful guardian for the next 180 days.

When you ring the bell to start the day, you’re already taking them in. You notice who cleans up quickly to join you crisscrossed on the carpet, who worries about saving their block creation to finish later, and which child, with eyes averted, discretely wipes tears on their sleeve after reluctantly withdrawing from a lengthy goodbye hug – to embark on their first day of elementary school, here, in your care. You respond to each need with kind smiles, special corner shelves for half-built towers, and kleenexes tucked in your pocket.

When you teach kindergarten, you must be prepared for anything.

Still, no matter how many times you’ve done this, the first day of school is a butterflies-in-the-stomach inducing day of firsts – for you, for your students, and for their parents. (I am no less susceptible to being overcome with emotion, despite years of standing in your shoes.) Maybe because I taught kindergarten, I understand it’s a year of transformation and learning like no other.

These students in your classroom, some of them only just beginning to recognize letters and sounds, will learn to read. These little bodies, barely able to fasten shoes and zip up jackets, will leave here stringing letters together on a page that we can actually decipher. (Sometimes even with correct punctuation.!?) These little people who’ve been balancing between toddler and elementary schooler for the past few years are now today making the plunge into the Big Kid Pool. (Though to be honest their giant backpacks and brand new shoes make them look more like well-dressed turtles than Big Kids.)

For us, their parents, today is a day of mixed emotions. If you see hesitation in our eyes when we introduce ourselves, or we respond to your cheerful, “Nice to meet you,” with a nonsensical “Fine, how are you?” please trust that our distractedness has nothing to do with you. You are lovely. It truly isn’t you; it’s us.

For some, it’s our first kindergarten drop off, and we’re overcome with the massive realization that our oldest is taking one step further away from the baby once strapped to our chest – in what our minds are sure was only a moment ago. If it’s not our first go at this, you’d assume we’d be skipping out the door, ready for a much needed kid-free morning and an uninterrupted, hot latte. You’d think we’d be undeterred by the First Day of Kindergarten hoopla. But we have ridden this ride before, and we are chock-full of knowing how fast it goes.

Don’t blink, they say. So we don’t.

We keep one eye fixed on our little person, our hearts, exploring the classroom, finding names on a cubby you so lovingly prepared just for them, hovering near would-be friends unsure of how to join in. We appear aloof, and at times tearful, because we’re consumed with taking in all the firsts – and lasts – all at once.

Whether this is our first, only, or last baby to walk through your door, we’ve spent years preparing for this moment. Just as these children filling up your carefully laid out classroom are unique, our efforts look distinctly different on each of them. For some, just getting shoes on the right feet is an accomplishment worth celebrating, while others tie laces and fasten complicated buckles without a second thought. With love and encouragement, some of our kids have mastered drawing elaborate, colorful pictures of beaches and families, complete with hair and accessories. Others painstakingly eek out stick figures on an otherwise stark white page.

Regardless of the outcome, our goal has been the same; we’ve poured love into these little bodies since the day they became ours. We’ve been celebrating successes, supporting efforts, and soothing failed attempts like crazy these past years – in preparation for this very day – the one where our once-babies dip their toes into elementary school and become kindergarteners.

We’re acutely aware that these kids of ours will shed first wiggly teeth, cast aside training wheels, soar across monkey bars, and dive into the deep end of pools, triumphantly resurfacing to search for our approving cheers, before this year is finished. And now, they’ll also look to you – their first elementary school teacher – after first words are written, first spiny-backed dinosaurs are drawn, and first future best friends sit next to them at story time. Today you are joining us on this journey, the one where our kids grow another year older under our noses. The one where we let them go just a little bit more than we ever have before.

Welcome, we’ve been waiting to meet you. Thanks for your understanding as we linger a bit too long at the classroom door, watching our child find their spot on the rug and their place in this new world you’ve created for them. We just need a minute to take it all in.

It’s not you; it’s us. We’re trying not to blink.

Sincerely,

The Parent of a Kindergartener

To The Woman Who Buys My House

Dear Buyer,

I’m cleaning the front stoop with a scrub brush and bleach, which is for sure a thing I have never done in the five years I’ve lived here.

Five years.

Not a lifetime, not a childhood, but enough. Enough to pile up memories that stick to my bones and become part of the fabric of my family. These past weeks, I’ve worked hard to erase it all – the life we built here – my family and I.

As my mind writes this letter to you, I’m scrubbing muddy tracks off the concrete and wiping traces of my kids’ smudgy fingerprints from the front door handle.

I’m standing next to the porch swing – in the magic hour between day and dusk, against the sunlit backdrop of the neighborhood that has been home to my family for half a decade – when it occurs to me, there’s more to this house than what’s written in the disclosures.

Under different circumstances, I’d invite you in, offer you a drink, make you feel at home – I’m nothing if not a good hostess. But as it turns out, the passing on of houses is an emotionless, business transaction.

But let’s pretend it isn’t.

Let’s walk together (if only virtually) over the threshold I carried my youngest through in an Ergo and all-in-one footie Pj’s, on the day we closed escrow, five years ago.

Follow me. (Picture my hand beckoning you with a come-hither wave.) We begin this tour in the kitchen, undeniably the heartbeat of a home – and where coffee is brewed, so also the most essential. As women, we’re always holding things up and together until exhaustion sets in. I imagine, like me, you’ll need caffeine.

Do you see the window above the sink, overlooking the backyard? Good. Stand there in the morning with a warm mug perched in hand and gaze out at the patch of burnt-orange Peruvian lilies stretching toward the sky. Had you bought this house in any other season, you may have pulled them out, mistaking them for weeds. But in spring and summer, the apricot blooms are stunning, so we already share a secret.

Let’s move into the living room. You don’t see them now, but beneath the new paint and patched nail holes, Christmas stockings waited to be filled, elves hung suspended above mantles, and birthday-cake-covered-fingers left chocolatey handprints on walls. It would not be exaggerating to say the collective rounds of Uno, Go-Fish, and Boggle played in this room surpass triple digits.

In the corner stood our piano. At barely six, my oldest sat feet dangling from the bench, learning “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on color-coded keys. Now eleven, his feet solidly reach pedals, as he plays memorized bars of music from his favorite pop songs.

Down the hallway is the aptly named Family Room. You’ll find a chalkboard door perfect for Tic-Tac-Toe, or the first, brave, unsteady attempts at writing a name. On the ceiling, now filled with spackle, are holes left by hooks that held our projector screen. In rainstorms, on birthdays, and Just-Because-Fridays, the smell of popcorn filled the air and bodies snuggled four people wide on our pull out couch watching clownfish reunite, Jedis fight the dark side, and Goonies find One-Eyed Willie’s treasure.

Beyond this room is a staircase (which also makes a handy, indoor basketball free-throw zone – in case you ever need one). If you look closely, you’ll find residue of peeled off tape on the door at the bottom of the stairs, which once held a hoop and served as a backboard.

In the first bedroom upstairs, the carpet is worn in the corner where I sat on our large, sage-green rocker beneath the wide, westward facing windows – rocking, and nursing, and reading bookshelves full of bedtime stories in the dreamy sleep-deprived years from baby to preschool. If you look down at the yard from here, you’ll see the gravel terrace, between the jasmine and wisteria, where quite possibly a billion marshmallows danced above hot flames at the end of sticks – transformed into gooey perfection – on summer firepit evenings.

There’s one thing left to show you, downstairs, where we began. (I’m doing the follow-me wave again.) I saved this part for last because it was the hardest to undo. See the doorjamb between the kitchen and living room? Doesn’t it look shiny and white? (I know it does because I just painted it.) What you don’t see are the years I painted over – the pencil marks with dates and names marking the inches of time my kids grew, under this roof.

My cheerful, affectionate kindergartener – at one time scarcely reaching my waist – is now a temperamental (though charming) tween whose eyes (almost level with mine) roll back in his head in response to most of what I say. But sometimes, if the stars and moon align, and no one is looking, he still tolerates a hug.

My tiny baby who fit swaddled in my arms when we first moved in – barely to my knees stretched tip to toe – is now an independent 5-year-old whose long legs pedal bicycles and climb trees far beyond my reach. The last time I checked, my pencil marked him halfway between the floor and ceiling on this now very clean, but unexceptional, doorjamb.

Maybe it took me so long to paint over the marks because they served as visual proof of kids who no longer exist – those versions anyway. Forever frozen in time in No. 2 lead, I cannot pack them up and take them with me.

A fact that remains true, no matter our address.

You’ll find everything looks like new – my cue to leave. This house belongs to you now. I know you’ll change things, make it yours; but I hope you keep the lilies. By late fall they’ll die back, leaving no sign of their existence. But under the bark, they wait for spring’s invitation to burst through the soil once again with new growth. You’ll wake one morning to find familiar, firey-orange blooms filling the stems, marking another year gone by, and reminding you of the steady, reliable rhythms of life.

It’s likely you and I will never meet. My name on a line above the word Seller and yours above Buyer is the only place we’ll occupy the same space. Except here. We now share thread in the same tapestry – mine rewoven into your needle.

In this house, we overlap.

I’m both profoundly proud and saddened at the thorough job I’ve done removing any trace of us. Just like the lilies, and the younger versions of my kids pressed straight-backed against the doorjamb, we’re making room for something new. And that is as it should be.

We’ve undone our life in this house so you can begin filling it up with yours.

With mixed emotions and a kindred adoration for the place you now call home, I bid you Welcome and Goodbye. May your walls fill with holes, and your doorjambs abound with pencil marks.

Cheers,

The Seller

Why I’ll Never Complain About Turning Another Year Older

I just had a birthday, and at this point in my life, the celebration is mostly for my kids. They gleefully plunge candles into frosting, and enthusiastically help me blow them out. (We don’t put the actual amount because that might be a fire hazard.)

The real truth is I don’t keep track of candles anymore. (Honest, just ask my friend who one year calculated my age as we drank wine on my couch, astutely pointing out that I was, in fact, one year younger than I thought!)

My lack of age awareness isn’t a sneaky way to avoid acknowledging that the years have continued to creep up. Mostly, it’s laziness. If I’m completely honest, my brain is so busy with calendar dates, vet visits, field trips, hot lunch orders, and the ever-present needs of my children, that keeping track of how old I am is not high on the list.

But the biggest reason I don’t keep track is that I’m unconcerned with the number of candles on my cake, as long as I get to keep adding more.

Growing up, I saw firsthand the fleeting nature of life. I lost several family members to cancer, including my mother. She turned 30 in the hospital after accepting a terminal diagnosis for which there was no treatment.

In my 20’s I was terrified I’d be dealt a similar fate due to genetics and superstitious foregone conclusions. So sure was I of my impending death, that for much of my life, I lived in fear of my 30th birthday, looming over me like the End of Days.

To my relief, I turned 30 without incident and am genuinely grateful for each year since. Over time I’ve seen friends face their mortality, lose parents to cancer, and struggle with the unimaginable ache of watching their children become chronically ill.

Months after having my first baby, I watched my husband nearly die in front of me. He was just 33 when he almost left this life for good, without ever knowing our newly born son.

Now, we are lucky to be raising two boys, who together have provided us with more than our fair share of trips to the ER, sometimes propelled by heart-thumping, gut-wrenching, please-let-my-kid-be-ok, fear.

At the risk of oversimplifying and sounding trite (which unavoidably, I do). I’ve come to realize that this life we are living is a gift.

Each time life has flaunted its impermanence in front of me, I’ve thrown out all my hopes into the universe and asked for more. More hugs, more laughter, more time, more years. I want as much time as possible with the ones I love, which inevitably means growing older.

We can look at aging as something that is happening to us, beyond our control. Or we can view it as a badge of honor, and the awesome privilege it is. Whether we focus on the destination or the journey is up to us.

The wear and tear of aging is evidence of all the living we’ve done; marking our bodies with keepsakes, reminding us of where we’ve been.

My scars are reminders of the times I tested personal limits, pushed boundaries, and learned about caution, risk, and judgment.

My freckles mark the carefree, sun-filled summers and mid-day hikes of my 20’s, tanning my skin and taking me to the tops of mountains and the shores of lakes when time stretched wide open, and there was nowhere I needed to be.

My once toned legs have been softened over the years by fewer gym visits and more giggling bodies piled onto my lap for bedtime stories, or late night starry-skied cuddles.

My tummy, at one time lean and flat, found its purpose as a safe-haven for two little humans to evolve from tiny bundles of cells into babies, my babies, ready to enter this world. Now squishy and round, it serves as a soft landing for tickle fights and frequently a pillow for my wildly-coiffed boys, while they watch clouds shift in the sky on lazy-park-Saturdays.

The lines on my face tell the story of my experience. Happiness, gratitude, sadness, fear — and everything in between — are the rivers of emotion that, over time, formed grooves around my eyes and mouth, leaving a map of how this life has shaped me.

It’s tempting to pine for a re-do of the years behind us. Given the chance, would we push pause? Preventing distance from forming between our youth and our inevitable end game— when we won’t have the luxury of lamenting another candle on our birthday cake.

I continue to welcome the candles and embrace the privilege of age. Each birthday is another year I get to be here, living this life, surrounded by friends who support me, a husband who accepts me unequivocally, and my children who have taught me more than I ever knew about unconditional love.

If I’m lucky, I’m somewhere near the middle of this journey.

So bring on the wrinkles, belly jiggles, and gray hair. Each has brought me wisdom, peace of mind, and the unmatched comfort I’ve found in my own skin, age spots and all.

When I blew out the candles this year (wedged between squealing children) my wish was the same as always — to take another trip around the sun and add more candles to my cake.

This post was featured on HuffPost

Being A Mom Is Having Stuff Stuck In Your Hair

Being a mom is the entering of uncharted territory.

Being a mom is packing a hospital bag as one version of yourself and coming home as another, tethered to a new life, now forever in your charge.

Being a mom is signing agreements and waitlists, then crossing fingers, miles, and barriers to make a family with a child where there wasn’t one before.

Being a mom is injecting hormones, counting calendars, and pouring hope and science into a bottle and throwing it out to sea, waiting for a gift from the universe.

Being a mom is learning on the job how to swaddle, bathe, soothe, bandage, feed, and care for an ever-changing being in constant need of something, from the very small to the very large. Every. Single. Minute.

Being a mom is lonely.

Being a mom is wiping. Wiping snotty noses, dirty bottoms, muddy hands, and slates clean — over and over again.

Being a mom is packing. Packing lunches, and backpacks, and sleeping bags for camp. Childhood rooms into boxes, boxes into car trunks, cards into envelopes, and books from dorm rooms to apartments, offices, and new homes.

Being a mom is holding. Holding hands, bike seats, and the “Oh sh*t!” handles of 16-year-old’s cars. Holding arms down aisles of weddings, and grand-babies in laps, and more often than you’d like, your tongue.

Being a mom is never knowing if you’re doing it right.

Being a mom is more. More love, more hugs, more laughter, more silly, more fulfillment, more pride, and more contented-quiet-moments-of-awe-and-gratitude than you expected, hoped, prepared, or bargained for.

Being a mom is less. Less time, less sleep, less exercise, less romance, less friends, less books (that aren’t filled with pictures and made of cardboard), less room in the bed, less time in the day, less interests, less hobbies. Less of you — the person you were before becoming a mother.

Being a mom is full. Full of play dough, easel paint, science projects, gymnastics, playgroups, school drop-offs and pickups, music lessons, soccer matches, cooking, dishes, laundry, and the mess that is life with children.

Being a mom is carrying. Carrying groceries, art projects, unfinished juice boxes, half-chewed gum, sleepy bodies from car seats to cribs, and worry, and angst, and dreams, and wonder.

Being a mom is carrying too much at once.

Being a mom is “Look Mommy!” and “Watch this!” and “Come here!” – all the time.

Being a mom is fueled by caffeine, lists, calendar reminders, “I did its!”, “Thank you Mommys!” and “I love yous!”

Being a mom is trade-offs, and sacrifice, and compromise, and career diversions, and life detours.

Being a mom is considering another person’s well-being and interests before your own with every decision you make.

Being a mom is being less to others so you can be more to the ones who need you most.

Being a mom is canceled plans.

Being a mom is handmade cards, and clay hearts, and macaroni necklaces, and stick figure drawings of you hand-in-hand together. It’s nose-to-nose kisses, and round, soft faces looking into your eyes and saying they love you more than ice cream and candy ― and meaning it.

Being a mom is having someone see you as a better person than you actually are.

Being a mom is being someone’s person.

Being a mom is lying. Yes, that squeaky rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle” on the recorder is beautiful! Not much longer. We’re almost there! It doesn’t taste that bad. Plaid and stripes are a fantastic combo! Your blue hair really shows off your eyes.

Being a mom is telling the truth. I don’t know. It’s broken. It’s going to hurt for awhile. Time heals (but not everything can be fixed). Life isn’t fair.

Being a mom is saying “no” when it’s hard and “yes” when it’s harder.

Being a mom is lemonade stands, sand castles, and snowmen.

Being a mom is fevers, thermometers, and sleepless nights.

Being a mom is always taking the smaller half of the cookie.

Being a mom is slobber running down your cheek from open mouth kisses, paint on your shirt from spontaneous mid-craft hugs, and half-eaten food in your pockets and purse at all times.

Being a mom is yelling when your child breaks a vase, squirts you with the hose, or spits gooey, pink medicine out all over the couch and carpet because (even though he’s sick) You. Have. Had. It. And sometimes you are your worst self.

Being a mom is having stuff stuck in your hair, like jelly, or vomit, or the plastic, handheld fan your 4-year-old tried to “cool you off with” that wound itself into your tresses and made a nest, which you will likely have to cut out later.

Being a mom is looking into the worried eyes of the kid who tangled up your hair (maybe not by accident) and laughing hysterically; choosing forgiveness over shame because sometimes you are your best self.

Being a mom is constant, and steady, and sure. It’s no-matter-what and for-always.

Being a mom is forgiveness, and apologies, and absolution – every single day.

Being a mom is a noun, a verb, and an adjective at any given time, and all at once.

Being a mom is discouraging, and heart-wrenchingly draining, and rewarding, and soul-satisfyingly wonderful.

Being a mom is a craft to be honed, a work in progress, a circuitous route to an unknown destiny.

Being a mom is a leap of faith.

Being a mom stretches you to the ends of all that is reasonable, and is a full-time, round-the-clock, never-stopping endurance test.

Being a mom is something that once you’ve known it, you wouldn’t trade for anything in the world – even though sometimes, it would be nice to take a vacation.

This post was featured on Scary Mommy and HuffPost

This Cake Is Everything

I spent the better part of today making a cake for my 4-year-old’s birthday. Not just a one pan and frosting kind of cake. Nope. A “rainbow cake” which, you guessed it – includes EVERY color of the rainbow.

I divided batter into six mixing bowls and carefully blended each into a colorful arch of the rainbow; with the enthusiastic help of a PJ-clad 4-year-old sous chef. (I’m not gonna lie, he isn’t the cleanest of assistants, so calling it “help” is a stretch.)

This project requires A LOT of bowls, and six layers mean six pans. (Really, three pans twice – because who has six round pans?) However you add it up, a lot of mess and clean up are involved in This. One. Cake.

In many ways, it’s crazy-making considering how easily I could pick up some cupcakes or cookies; which would be so totally appropriate for a 4-year-old’s birthday – where, let’s face it – a bunch of keyed-up preschoolers will sit just long enough to shove maybe three bites of frosting into their mouths. Getting most of it on their face and cute party outfits, before they start running around the room and bouncing off walls.

So why do it?

a) I crave praise.

b) I’m a “Pinterest Mom” and this is another notch in my crafty, gingham apron strings.

c) I’m a masochist (and a martyr) who takes on insurmountable obligations and projects in excess.

These theories aren’t entirely baseless. At one point or another, I’ve been one, or the other, or all three – at once.

But not today.

Today, I’m a mom who feels so much is out of my control when it comes to the current task at hand: Raising my kids.

Every day is unpredictable. I’m kept on my toes a lot, and my balancing act leaves tons to be desired. Most days, I eek by with a C. (On good days a solid B.) I yell. I lose my patience. I have even, on occasion (Gasp!), resented my children.

I’ve wanted to disappear out the front door, leaving their always-in-need-of-something little bodies behind. Transforming into the Me of decades past; hopping into my green convertible and zipping off to get sangria and tapas with the man I was madly in love with – who, by the way, is the same man I’m married to – even though sometimes, sadly, I forget.

But I love those needy little monsters, so in lieu of convertibles and fruity wine I occasionally seek out closed-end tasks for sanity’s sake.

Like baking fancy birthday cakes.

Somewhere in this buttercream frosting and R-O-Y-G-B-I-V is another year of my kid’s life gone by, another year of me being a mom, and a million things that both did and didn’t go well.

Like the frosting on this cake, depending on where I stand, how the light hits, or the angle of my gaze – I can see it as perfect – or I can see all the flaws.

Just like parenting.

The amount of care taken in adding One More Candle to the cake is overwhelming.

Fevers, ER visits, X-rays, tears shed, tantrums thrown, knees skinned, pets lost (OK, they were tiny frogs, but the amount of sadness expressed rivaled me watching “E.T.,” so our dogs better live at least another 65 years!) All of this, and So. Many. Band-Aids.

But it’s also lovely.

Rainy-day-book-forts built, nose kisses given, lazy-morning banana pancakes made, kites flown, puddles stomped, ice cream licked, and fears conquered. The unbridled and euphoric laughter of childhood floating down hallways. Fresh pencil lines on doorjambs proclaiming a newer, taller version has replaced last year’s model.

So much life in a year.

The possibilities of how these little lives might shake out over time make my head spin with equal parts hope and fear.

Bookmarked in my mind is an image of my older son, exuberant when we made his rainbow cake, six years ago. Before I’d met the indifference of 10 – proof he’s in there somewhere – and that favoritecolorrainbow is genetic.

Today for a minute we all overlapped, in front of the round pans and the pre-heated oven, like déjà vu.

In this frenetic life that so easily pulls us all in a million different directions, I need to touch hands with these memories, as a reminder of the life I intended, before becoming so wildly distracted with the life I am actually living.

Parenting is hard. I don’t trust myself to keep it up as well as I want to, for as long as I need to. (If all goes as planned, there’s a long way to go.)

Maybe, by making this cake, I can do other things I already did right once. Maybe, if I thread pieces of the past into us as we move forward, somehow we’ll get through this growing up thing intact – even the frosty throes of adolescence, on the other side of closed bedroom doors, and loathsome glares.

Maybe these layers will remind us we are unconditional.

As a parent, it’s easy to remember the times we fall short. I need to remember the times I showed up, had patience, and dove in with my whole heart. The times I read the extra bedtime story, hugged a little longer, and played Candyland 17 times in a row. I need to remember the days I was the best version of me: making magic out of cake mix.

I don’t know what the future holds, so I’ll take stock of what is sure.

Another year is in the books.

This memory is mine to keep come what may.

And as we journey together toward One Candle Older, I’ll fold down the corner on this day to visit again. A time when mixing birthday batter into rainbows – and the joyful face of a little boy who has his whole life ahead of him – is all I need.

And for reasons maybe only I understand, right now, this cake is everything.

This post was featured on The Huffington Post

Things I Say to My Kids That Really Mean “I Love You”

Here is a picture of my kids 🙂

And a link to my latest post on Popsugar about all the sneaky ways I tell my kids I love them!

Warning: Contains Sarcasm and Potty Humor

Our Eyes Adjust

My 3-year old and I have this deal at bedtime—two stories on my lap, five minutes of cuddle time, and a big ‘double hug’ goodnight. Each time, as I flip the lights off after stories and make my way to his bed, I am stopped in my tracks. It’s always darker than black and I can’t see. Even though it happens every night, I am never any less surprised. Every time, I have to take a minute and let the ambient light filter in before I can navigate through the darkness to his bed, and snuggle in beside him. Once my eyes adjust.

Adjust. Adapt. Move forward. It’s in our DNA; we evolve. Our beds, once warm with same-sized bodies and newspapers strewn about on lazy, Sunday mornings are now filled with miniature, ever-wiggling versions of ourselves, tiny feet in our backs, alarm clocks that never give us enough time to meet the demands of our day-to-day, and exhausted partners desperate for sleep, who don’t kiss us goodnight anymore. We barely even remember where we started. Our eyes adjust.

Our tiny babies, once so miraculous and novel, who filled us with meaning as they smiled for the first time, just for us; become burdensome as we struggle for sleep and time to ourselves. They grow into bigger, saltier versions of themselves, challenging us at every turn, pushing us away and daring us to love them anyway. Instead of their cribs, we pick them up from school. Barely meeting our gaze—we know not to ask about their day. We hardly recall when they were once perched in bulky carseats, filling the air with non-stop-words. Our eyes adjust.

We get so busy living, we actually forget the moments that once shaped and defined us as parents. I don’t remember the last time I sat in a rocking chair with my shirt pulled up to my neck and sleepily nursed a child. Or the last time I zipped up footie pjs or snapped a onesie. I don’t remember the last time my oldest child held my hand or kissed me goodbye at school drop off. And I can’t remember the very last time I set him down and never picked him up again. Our eyes adjust.

New firsts crowd out the lasts so fast we don’t even have time to notice. Our lives fill up with milestones. Tiny, pudgy hands, are now lean, capable fingers; effortlessly playing piano keys and guitar chords. Clumsy toddler steps become swift and sure, as they steal home plate or kick the winning goal. Our laps, once filled with lift-the-flap bedtime books are instead dinnertime discussions of heroes and wizards who face complex moral dilemmas. Four protective stroller wheels transform into sturdy two-wheel bikes; shiny helmets and independence gleaming in the sunlight as we watch them ride away. As accomplishments pile up, trophies and schoolbooks replace finger-painted pictures and carefully constructed clay figures on bedroom shelves. Our eyes adjust.

If we’re lucky, the mundane takes over and we sail through the middle of life. Because darkness can strike unexpectedly, as my friends and I have seen all too well. Divorce, illness, saying goodbye too soon—to parents, friends, or God forbid, a child. In a blackout, the best you can do is stop, breathe, and wait for the ambient light to come. And it does, eventually. Me too, I’m here, I’ll wait, When you’re ready, I’ll listen. It seems insurmountable, but the darkness will lift. Our eyes will adjust.

We move forward. We move on. Some days we are so shiny and new, the future is bursting with promise. Other days we are caught off guard. Maybe it’s an old photo in the junk drawer, the look on someone’s face, a familiar smell, a memory that catches our breath, or the love-worn item we discover under the seat of our car—now forgotten and obsolete, but once full of context. Or it’s the stranger from Craigslist in our garage, thumbing through our kid’s old sleep sacks and checking the tread on tires of a worn down stroller, miles of memories, asking, “How much?” For a minute we lock eyes with them and envy where they are, looking ahead at what we’ve left behind. We close our eyes and soak it all in.

But when our eyes open, we are right where we belong; buttering the toast, feeding the dog, filling our car with gas, picking up way-too-big-and-sweaty bodies from baseball practice, or loading our old memories into someone else’s trunk in exchange for $60. We move on from the moments we are caught in the dark; stopped in our tracks. We wait. We breathe. We count. And before we know it, we can see again and move forward in the direction we were heading.

Across the dark bedroom floor, to the bed with the little, warm, squirmy, not-yet-grown-up body, waiting to wrap themselves around us. Once our eyes adjust.

This post was featured on Mamalode

This IS a Test

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No seriously, this really IS a test. I don’t know what I’m doing. Apparently there are things called ‘Widgets’, ‘Jetpacks’ and ‘Plugins’ and I NEED them if I stand a chance of anyone reading my blog. I could barely set this page up, so I REALLY have no idea if it will even be a blog. I’d be happy for a few words on a page…searchable on Google, or anywhere in cyberspace!

So while I don’t know how to set up a blog, make it look snazzy, promote it on social media, or ensure it’s user-friendly for anyone who actually wants to read it– I do like to write. I do like to share ideas. And I do like to try and make meaning of this frenetic and unpredictable life I am living. If any of that sounds appealing to you, then by all means, read on…

Author: writewhereiamcom