Tag: families

You Have to be Present to Win

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“I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent Van Gough

When my nieces were in middle school, they went to a charter school that had a lot of fundraising events. At one auction event they invited me to, the older of my two niece’s was selling raffle tickets that were $50 each. That was really expensive but I didn’t have kids at the time, it was for a school and of course, it was my niece selling them so I bought two. The clincher was that, as if often the case with raffles, you had to be present to win.

I think of that phrase a lot in parenting – you have to be present to win. When I bought the raffle tickets I knew I’d never make it to when the raffle was announced, I wasn’t the type of person to stay long enough even before I had kids. Now I don’t have any choice but to see to the end of each day with my kids but I can choose whether or not to be present.

I know that I must not the only parent that takes an extra long time to roll the garbage can to the curb because I’m pausing in the quiet and looking up at the sky. My central nervous system gets overloaded from the activity, amplitude of emotion and state of vigilance so it feels like I can’t stay present one more moment. I just want to check out because I’m spent. My daughter is a master of asking open-ended questions right before bedtime like “What mistakes have you made, Mama?” so my strategy is to just keep things simple with one or two word sentences so I can get to the finish line. But the other night, while I was racing to the end of the day so I could have some grown-up time where I could check out by having a glass of wine or mindlessly scroll through Instagram, something reminded me of “you have to be present to win.”

My daughter was snuggled next to me in bed as I was reading Harry Potter and it was a section where Hagrid was saying that his dad taught him not to be ashamed of who he was and she asked what ashamed was. I explained it’s that feeling of not wanting to talk about something because it makes you feel yucky inside. And she said, “Like Ahti [her aunt that used to nanny for us] taking a job and not being with us any more?”

[Wow, wow, wow] I told her that I was so proud of her for telling me that she felt that way. Then she asked why Ahti had to do it and I explained that it was because she found a perfect job. And she said, “It isn’t because we were too bad and she didn’t want to be with us?”

There are moments when I absolutely need to check out and breathe and I’m trying to learn to give myself grace when I do. But I’m also trying to practice staying present so that when I’m with my kids, I’m truly with my kids. Because unlike when I bought a raffle ticket for my niece’s school, I do care about winning the prize. Not two hours with a lawyer to do estate planning or a wine tasting with five friends, but to be the person my kids trust to help them unpack the burdens they don’t need to carry.

Life at the Lake

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“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Jimi Hendrix

Going to the lake as a kid and going to the lake with your kids are two different things. I’ve been lucky enough to do both with a family I’ve known since I was 7 years-old. Their lake place has been for all these years the perfect place for kids to adventure, swim, inner tube, find treasure in its many forms until like my son did the other night, you can’t even keep your eyes open to read books and just want to dive into bed.

What is most remarkable to me was the way this family has made their lake place work. The parents bought it in 1973. They come back every summer as do their three daughters in my generation and their families for as much time as they can. I’m invited too as an honorary member of the family because I lived with them my senior year in high school when my dad took a sr. pastor job at a church on the other side of the state. They have created a compound where everyone can chip in according to their strengths and politely ignore each other’s weaknesses and all the members of the family have chosen to so because life at the lake is more fun together.

Every morning we were at the lake I got up early and went down to sit by the water. The scene holds so much more than just liquid. It’s all the dreams I had of what life would be when I came there as a kid. It’s all the hope that I have for my kids to grow up in a beautiful world. And it’s all the love of the family that owns this lake place – both in caring for it and for each other. It’s also a hub of connection for grandparents, parents, cousins, sisters and extended family like me. Just sitting by a body of water that holds so much filled me with the peace that comes with all that perspective and love.

I get so choked up thinking of the lifetime of friendship I have had with my dear friend and her family. And now her incredibly delightful and talented daughters have both nannied for my kids so the love spreads through the generations. Nothing better than going to the lake with my kids and discovering that it holds them as it did me, in complete awe of the way one place can hold delight for so many!

The Practice

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“One filled with joy preaches without preaching.” – Mother Teresa

My mom’s church has been doing these Wednesday night park programs for kids. It’s a little like Sunday School where there’s singing, a short message, some games and then Otter Pops at the end. You come with your family and can picnic there and then all participate in this hour of fun. It’s been lovely and my kids have loved it – it’s a fun way to return to being together. One of the songs we’ve been singing has gotten stuck in my head:

I’m inright, outright, upright, downright
Happy all the time
I’m inright, outright, upright, downright
Happy all the time
Since Jesus Christ came in, and saved my soul from sin
I’m inright, outright, upright, downright
Happy all the time

So as it’s been running that circular loop, I’ve realized that as a Presbyterian minister’s kid, this was exactly the messaging I grew up with. Jesus Christ = happy. And there’s a lot more of those kid songs with a similar message (like When You’re Happy and You Know It). I’m a pretty naturally happy person so there was no inherent conflict there as I grew up. But now, as I’ve pondered why I can’t just be a traditional church-going person, I wonder if I just outgrew that message as life got more complex and had to find my own practice. For me that has become listening to the quiet within every day on a meditation cushion. I also love a great sermon in church or fun in the park finding community but it’s the personal practice I always come back to.

It reminds me of the dance of falling in love. We lead with the message that we think is going to make us most attractive – that we are happy, successful, strong or sexy. But any relationship that goes the distance exposes all the facets of who we are. In that same way, religion (in my experience) uses happy, fun songs to get kids to listen and then for it to take root, they need to incorporate the message into the depth of what they believe. In this way both love and faith are a practice, not just a belief.

This ear worm of a song is leading me to realize that I want to support my kids in the incorporation of what we believe. To practice seeing that in the beautiful mystery of life and time as humans, we get to celebrate being here every day. And that God, in whatever way we conceive of him, is in each part of this experience whether we label it as happy or not.

Climbing the Walls

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“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” – Psalm 139:13-14

My daughter went to rock climbing camp this week. And absolutely loved it. The camp is at the gym I’ve climbed at for 20 years so I love being there, climbing there and just walking in there. [Aside: When we walked into the gym the other day, they were playing “I Melt With You” by Modern English and it gave me a moment of realizing how much I missed being places where music was playing in the background. ] I wonder about the unconscious effect that climbing had on her when she was in utero. I only did a bit of low bouldering when I was pregnant, nothing I could fall off or had to wear a harness for even though I was told it was perfectly safe. I stopped when I was about 6 months along and my center of gravity changed but we climbed “together” up until then.

I think of the story of Alison Hargreaves, a British mountain climber. She had an impressive mountain climbing career including summitting Everest on her own and without supplemental oxygen. She solo climbed six great north faces of the Alps including climbing the north face of the Eiger while she was six months pregnant with her first child, Tom. But she received a lot of criticism for climbing when she had young children at home. Much was made of the fact that male climbers aren’t subjected that kind of scrutiny if they are parents. Alison died when a bad storm came in while she was descending from the summit of K2 in 1995. She was 33 years old and her kids were 6 years old and 4 years old.

Her son, Tom Ballard went on to become an acclaimed climber in his own right. He died in bad weather conditions while climbing Nanga Parbat in Pakistan in 2019 at aged 30.

That story fills me with deep grief and also sends me running to do my work. I don’t presume to know anything about the Hargreaves/Ballards other than what I’ve read and I’m not adding judgment to their tragedy but I know things are passed down organically in families. In my family, that was a deep sense of faith and a complete avoidance of conflict. In utero I was hearing my mama’s prayers and daddy’s sermons from within and though it’s taken me a long time to find my own deep sense of faith, I am so grateful for that. The people pleasing/conflict avoidance part has been passed down to me as part of my work.

I love that my daughter loves rock climbing. I’m hoping that climbing together, all the hours I spent meditating and knowing she was a miracle continue to influence her from her time in utero. For all the things I don’t want to pass along, I’m grateful that I’m old enough to be aware of them and mindful enough to be working on them.

God Bless You

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“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi

I don’t know what is in the air but it’s making me sneeze. But yesterday I had to drive my toddler to the very first birthday party he’s ever been invited to on a farm an hour from our house, I didn’t take any allergy medicine just in case it would make me sleepy. We had a great time at the party but whatever it is got worse so by the time we got home, I was sneezing non-stop. Achoo, achoo, achoo. My kids think it’s funny and maybe it was fine for the first 100 but by the 101st, I was tired of it. Finally, I took an allergy pill.

I tend not to tell my kids when I’m not feeling well. I guess I think they can’t do anything about it, it’s not their problem… <snort> until it is because I’ve got a fraction of my patience and am swimming in the shallow end of my grace pool. But last night, I did tell them as I went to lay on the couch for a minute, the Benadryl made me drowsy.

Their reaction was fascinating. They tried to help. My 5-year-old daughter took off my shoes and covered me with a blanket. My toddler son followed his sister’s cue and piled on whatever he could find on the floor, which these days is a lot of stuff, and then sat on me. Not particularly helpful but very amusing. And he tried to say, “God Bless You” which came out sounding a little like a sneeze itself.

Yet another little lesson for me not to keep my inner world and my outer world so separate. Somehow in the communicating of how I’m really doing, life continues but just a little more authentically, humorously and with a little less effort. Not to mention it’s hard to keep anything to yourself when you are violently sneezing… achoo!😊

Projections

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“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” -Oprah Winfrey

My five-year-old daughter was sitting at the kitchen table doing her remote Kindergarten class the other day. To do the work, she needed the packet the school had sent home plus scissors and glue. I found the packet for her and then she couldn’t find her scissors and glue because she hadn’t put them back where they belong. She said to me, “You are making me have the worst day.”

Psychology Today defines the term projection as the “process of displacing one’s feeling onto a different person, animal or object.” We project our feelings onto someone or something else as a defense mechanism. Instead of owning our own BS, we can turn the issue into something else in an effort to protect our own egos.

I think of the time I found out about my husband’s infidelities. One of his friends, who was also my business partner, invited me out to lunch which was odd since we had never had a meal without my husband there too. When I arrived the sense of foreboding was amplified enormously because the friend had chosen a table in a closed section and also ordered me a beer. It was almost a relief when he started telling me of the infidelities because the build-up was so intense. But then I had to go home and tell my husband that I knew. He wasn’t home so I called my brother and four of my closest friends and then went out to dinner with my two best girlfriends. I finally saw my husband and asked, “Have you ever been unfaithful to me?” He answered “no” but seeing that I knew something, he then asked, “Who told you?” Then the next question he asked was, “Who else knows?”

The next months were a master class in projection. That is the perfect word for it. There is a source that is running the show but whenever you try to look for it, you are redirected to the pictures showing on the big screen. Any time the infidelities came up, he expressed his rage that his friend betrayed him (and yes, I saw the irony). Any time he got uncomfortable, he blamed me for revealing his secret. It made it so that we never could talk about the real problems. The message communicated was not that he was sorry, but just that he was sorry that I found out. By flipping the conversation to who I told, it made me the person who had been hurtful.

In a truly honest discourse, we would have been able to discuss not only the root issues but also my shortcomings as well. But if he was going to deflect, there was no way I was going to step forward either. I’m so grateful that marriage ended so I never wonder whether it could have been saved – but I do wonder if we could have cleaned and bandaged the wounds a lot faster had we not lingered in the defensive woods for so long. As it was, it took me many more years of my own work, reading, listening to others, and primarily having to sit with myself in meditation for me to finally own my part in the destruction. Projection might work as a defense but it does not work to heal and grow.

So I find it fascinating when I see the little examples of where my daughter projects. She moves past it and back to her happy place so quickly that it’s just a flash but when it’s calm, I try to guide her back to where it’s safe so we can remove our defenses and own our feelings and mistakes. It’s the only way we can take down the screen and really see what kind of day it is.

Self Compassion

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“You must transform and transcend your unconscious habit of pitying yourself and having feelings of inferiority if you want to grow and feel the experience of your mind reaching into infinity.” – Yogi Bhajan

This past Sunday I loaded up my stroller with all the things we’d need for a morning outing – picnic blanket, food, coats, masks, map for a scavenger hunt we were doing and took my kids down to a local wading pool that is empty this time of year and a great place for my daughter to practice with the new roller skates we’d gotten at a garage sale. We’d been there a few minutes when a dad arrived with three kids, his stroller similarly loaded and all of them riding bikes/trikes. I was idly watching him as he engaged with his kids – 6 yrs, 3 yrs and 18 months. At one point the 3 year old was upset and the dad got down on the ground right in front of the strider bike the kid was riding and talked it out with him. Then the dad turned to me and started talking about being exhausted. The story almost just tumbled out of him – his wife is considerably younger, in grad school and he doesn’t want to spend what could be the last decade of his life exhausted. Although he didn’t look that old to me, I appreciated his candor and his quest to find a way to enjoy this phase of life.

For anyone that is living this part of life with young children or remembers it, you know there is a lot of caretaking to happen. Bathing, toileting, eating, cleaning, reading, planning, communicating, entertaining, regulating emotion – none of these happen for my little people very proficiently quite yet. I had these kids late in life and so intentionally, that there are many days I don’t even question why I spend an 13 straight hours of a weekend day so focused on someone else’s care. I remember the time before I had children when I just had myself and my dog, Biscuit, to care for and I was so incredibly tired of just thinking about myself. I’m delighted to have these bright lights in my life and when it’s so clear that their needs outweigh my own, doesn’t it just make sense to focus on them?

But the balance has possibly tipped too far towards the kids, sometimes just simply as a practical matter. Why wear clean clothes when they will be dirty in 10 minutes? How can I brush my hair properly with one hand while I hold the baby with the other? Do I bother to prepare myself food that I is good for me if no one else will eat? And finally there’s the question of how to work out for my own benefit when I’m already exhausted from exercising my patience.

In my determination to make sure my children are taken care of, I’ve lost regard for myself. That is to say, I don’t even make the list as one of the key people to take care of. I think there is a price to be paid for losing your self-regard, even if it happens only as a practical matter. The consequence of never thinking I am worthy of care is that I start to believe it. In holding them up, I’ve let myself down.

Listening to this dad last weekend, I felt so much compassion for everything on his plate and it was in having his story laid out before me that allowed me to see that I need to extend the same compassion for myself. I’ve been falsely believing that it’s a dichotomy of my kids needs or my needs instead of expanding my pool of compassion to see that we all need care and that includes me.

As we talked and our kids played, a van from the city’s parks and recreation department pulled up with a bunch of toys for the kids to play with – pogo sticks, balls, noodles, the corn hole game and more. It was such a gift to have an hour free from being the entertainment director and a good start to relaxing into compassion for myself. Now I just need a clean shirt and some healthy food.

Ripping Off the Band-Aid

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“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” – Dr. Seuss

Last night as we were doing the bedtime routine, I started to change the gauze pad that was on my daughter’s knee from a scrape the day before. When we peeled it back, it was stuck to the scrape in the center. Any little jiggling of it caused her to howl with pain. As I weighed my options, I thought of the intro to MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational. He tells about his experience as a burn patient when he was in his late teens. He was there for a long time so he’d developed a warm relationship with the nurses. When it came to changing his bandages they’d say it was better to just go quickly to experience the intense pain of ripping the bandages off instead of the slow torture of an incremental peel. Well, Dan of course went off to become a celebrated behavioral economist and studied the question of ripping the band-aid off. Turns out, the pain isn’t any less for the patient – but it is less painful for the nurse.

I sat with that as I wanted so badly to rip off the gauze pad. And I thought of the many corollary experiences where I’ve done something similar – delivered the bad news abruptly because I needed to get it off my chest or severed a relationship without any discussion because I couldn’t stand the back and forth. It is a long standing pattern in my family not to say “no” to giving help when we don’t want to but instead make it so painful for the other person to ask that they never bother in the future. But robbing me of the assurance that I’m doing for the other person has made me think twice before proceeding.

So I left the gauze pad hanging off her knee and tucked her into bed. It filled me with self-doubt because as often is the case in the evenings when I’m tired, I have found my inner voice to be much more critical. In this case I worried that I was not helping my five-year-old face pain. This morning when she awoke, the pad had worked itself off in the night.  It turns out the lesson was that some times we can ride the flow to where we are going instead of pulling with force to get the same place. It’s something I’ve been working a lifetime to understand.  

Enjoy This Time

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“Time has a wonderful way of showing us what matters.” – Margaret Peters

I recently ran into a neighbor whose kids are age 12 and 14 while out walking. As we chatted about the trials of pandemic parenting , the topic of the parenting advice that I’ve heard so often: “enjoy this time, it goes so fast” came up. She confessed that she had recently had said to her mom in tears, “Did I enjoy it enough?”

Of all the advice that I’ve been given throughout my parenting journey so far, that theme of enjoying kids while they are really young has been the most prevalent which makes me think its important. But it’s also the most puzzling because it’s often said so wistfully as if there is a little residual regret. Which makes me think it’s wisdom that’s hard to follow. That makes a lot of sense to me, because while I love being a parent, I’ve found difficult to enjoy this time of early childhood, if we are talking about the Oxford Dictionary definition of to luxuriate, revel or bask in.

At first it’s hard to enjoy because of the sleep deprivation that comes with an infant. And now that I’ve seemed to have gotten past that phase with both kids, I’d say it’s hard because it’s both incredibly busy and repetitive. There are big emotions that cannot yet be regulated and a lot of missed communication with little people just learning to talk. It’s a lot of work.

Of course, parenting is also incredibly rewarding. The amount of change to witness is stunning. These little people are growing and learning at a lightning speed. They want and need so much attention but it’s all absorbed and exhibited pretty quickly in their growth. Reading together, singing together, playing with the farm set out in the backyard, there is so much simple sweetness. The problems my kids have at age 1 ½ and 5 ½ are small and they are solvable.

Trying to understand this hard to follow wisdom, I think of my former hobby of mountain climbing. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed myself while on a mountain. It is a big and hard thing to take on. I’ve felt the same doubt with climbing that I think is being communicated with the parenting advice – did I take in enough of the experience while I was up there?

Here’s what I’ve realized. That climbing mountains and raising young kids have a lot in common. There is a lot of tough endurance involved.  It’s easier if you are in good health but it’s never easy. There are some moments where you are so tired that all the obstacles appear too great and you feel that you can’t keep going. And it all becomes worthwhile if about once an hour, you take a break and raise your head to look at the view.

My neighbor told me that her mom replied to her tearful query, “The fact that you’re crying shows that you did.” Which sounds so wise to me as well. We do our best as we go through it, enjoy it as much as we can and give ourselves some grace for the moments we didn’t.

The Perfect Gift

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“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon

On a sunny evening this past week I had just put my toddler to bed and my 5 ½ year old daughter was just starting a popsicle while watching her show before bedtime when we heard the ice cream truck outside. She put down the popsicle, started bargaining with me about whether she could get something from the truck all the while moving towards the door. But by the time we’d gotten our shoes and my wallet and gone outside, it was just turning the corner about 100 yards away. It didn’t take her long to realize that we were too late. She sighed, took a deep inhale, then brightened up and said, “It’s okay. Basically, I have a good life.”

And that was what I wanted for Mother’s Day. Healthy kids that are resilient through the ups and downs in life and can express themselves. Really it’s what I want to be too. In the moment before she said it, I couldn’t have defined it as succinctly. But as is often the case with perfect gifts, once I got it, I understood it was exactly what I needed.

Happy Mother’s Day Everyone!