Tag: love

Always in My Boat

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“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” – anonymous

This morning I was trying to put shoes on my toddler. I got one on before he starting running around the kitchen island. It started a game where we were chasing each other and hugging when we collided. My five-year-old daughter got in the mix and I stopped running just to watch them run, collide and hug. A moment of pure fun and joy.  

In my twenties I dated a man who had rowed crew for the University of Washington. His stories of teamwork and precision were beautiful. If I close my eyes, I can still see the images painted in my head. On a calm, still morning at the break of dawn, 8 rowers carrying a shell down to the water with the coxswain giving directions, they flip the boat and lower it in to Lake Washington. Once they are all in with the coxswain nestled in the front, they take up their oars and in perfect rhythm set off across the smooth surface as the morning mist swirls around them. The cox calls directions and timing. Stroke, feather, stroke.

I’ve been picturing my family as a rowing team. Each of my kids is a rower and I am the cox, at least for this phase in life. We get up every morning and do our best to row across the expanse of the day. Each of us has a part and some days we are in sync and glide smoothly.

And then on some days, one or both of my little rowers or I have a fit which I liken to catching a crab. That’s rower lingo for when the blade goes into the water at the wrong time for the momentum of the boat and results in the oar driving hard into the rower, perhaps even knocking them out. It’s a hard moment for everyone in the boat and we have to take stock as to whether we keep rowing until they can get back into the rhythm or stop to help them center themselves again. Because we are a team and no team gets good without practicing together.

We also have to take into consideration the conditions outside. Right now as we transition back to in-person activities, it feels like the lake is choppy and it’s hard to hold the boat steady. It’s also when we have to set our expectations that we won’t be going as far or as fast until conditions improve.

I like this analogy because it helps me see the long view of life and my family. For now they are in my boat but someday they’ll have their own boats and I’ll be a rower for them. And then of course, I’ll be gone and then they’ll have to close their eyes to see me pulling for them as I do with my dad and the feeling that he’s always in my boat.

Because what is the boat? I think of it as anything that keeps us above water. For me it is Faith and it makes it so much easier to stay afloat in the reassurance there is a Higher Power so much bigger than me. I step into the boat trusting that a master craftsman has constructed it to be sound and for the best rowing experience in both still and choppy water.

This morning as we ran around the island, my daughter caught my son and hugged him long enough for me to get that second shoe on. We took that instant to stop, hug each other and laugh. I felt the prayer in my heart, “Thank you for this beautiful and easy moment that gives us momentum to glide through all the others.”

The Conditions of Creativity

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“Fill the paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth

The other night we had some friends over. In the raucous atmosphere of an audience after so many months without one, my kids were showing off. My toddler was falling off a bouncy horse over and over and when I went to video him on the fifth time through, I asked, “Did you do that on purpose?” and he turned to me and winked.

It has taken me five days to write about that one funny and wondrous moment of connection with a not-yet verbal human. For me, I need to write in the morning, when I am still fresh from sleep. I can’t write when taking care of my kids, I can’t write in the middle of the day when I’m in work mode, I can’t write at the end of the day when I’m completely worn out. I once heard an interview with the author Ursula Le Guin and she said something about writing whenever she could. Except when her kids were young because she said, “of course you can’t write when your kids are young.” My reaction at the time was, “Why not?”

But now I’m starting to understand three things about being in the thick of life. First, that the moments that I see into the depths of life are precious. Just because we love them doesn’t mean our loved ones can’t muddy our waters. Second, that I can’t be a participant and an observer at the same time. Like the danger of being behind a camera on vacation, seeing everything through a viewfinder with one eye closed instead of seeing the full experience, I can’t digest the meaning of whatever is happening at the moment without creating a barrier to whole-hearted participation. I have to process it later. And third, that the conditions of creativity must be right to write. Even though my kids are so much of the inspiration of living without reservation, the attention they require engages my head in a way that blocks the quiet presence of the heart behind my words.

So I’ve waited until I was clear before writing this to you. That I can do so feels like a miracle, having a free moment, finding some words and depth about how they come, and even to have a medium that allows me to connect with others. It feels a lot like that wink from my son, a small sign that we might truly be communicating. Hopefully the sacred flow of creativity stays open long enough for me to ring true for you.