Tag Archives: teenagers

It all began on Hope Street

Posted on by under Hope and Place

Hope Street, 1998

I’m leaning over my daughter’s crib, daring to get my nose as close to her head as possible, in order to imbibe her baby fragrance.

Today, like any day with a two-month old, included its share of unhappy baby wails, new-mama exasperation, and waylaid plans. But since finding her thumb a week ago, my daughter has been a champion sleeper, granting some margin for gratitude, hope.

img_6032Heady with baby aura, I lower an ear, holding my breath so I can hear hers. It’s deep and slow, with a slight rattle in her throat. While listening, I’ve almost forgotten to breathe for myself, as if she could for both of us.

Straightening up, I take a long pull of oxygen that fills my body with a momentary energy. I marvel at the duplicity of motherhood. My daughter and I are always linked, but also separate. It’s a concept I’m just beginning to grasp—to grieve and also to welcome with a tinge of relief. The inner struggle of motherhood has already begun.

I gently place my hand on my baby’s silky head, fingers following the curve of her skull as if to cradle it, wondering what seeds lie sleeping in that head, waiting to unfurl and carry her from crib to bed and into the world.

My heart forms a wordless prayer—one that’s open-ended enough to remind me that my love and her autonomy are not mutually exclusive, not even now, while she depends on me for everything, my milk her only food.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Race Street, 2004

I’ve finished unpacking yet another box of kitchen miscellany, trying to find space in a half-sized kitchen for things I rarely use—a large funnel, a hard-boiled-egg slicer, a pastry cutter.

Trying to find room for the unessential seems to be a theme in my life as of late. Over the weekend, I moved into a duplex—half of a house, for half of a parenting team in possession of half of the books, furniture, and art.

Since the divorce, I feel less sad, but more overwhelmed. My two girls, just six and four, are so busy, full of thoughts and ideas, calls for help, emotions that require extra patience, consistency, and love, and I’m wasting time staring at the contents of my former kitchen, wondering if I’ll use a funnel in the next year.

Today, bedtime couldn’t have come soon enough. But now, two hours after singing one last song and flourishing one last “tickle-scratch” on each back, I miss them.

In their dim bedroom, I carefully step around boxes they were told to “unpack” after dinner. My earlier annoyance with the mess melts into understanding: Unpacking inspired play—happy reunions with toys they hadn’t seen for a week, opportunities to pretend being teachers and mamas who take on challenges, fix problems, and comfort hurts.

Standing by their bunk bed, taking in one sweet face then the other, I still feel the ache of missing them. Am I missing the babies and toddlers they were? Or is the missing in anticipation of the day these daughters, fully grown, will sleep under roofs other than mine?

I decide I’m missing the busy, silly, awake versions of my sleeping girls. And I’m tempted to wake them up, but I know better, so I kiss each girl’s temple and take myself to bed.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Oregon Street, 2011

Jason and I can’t keep our eyes open. So this is what it feels like to be old, we joke, setting down our books to move from the sofa up the stairs to bed.

For years we’ve been the last ones up each night at our house, but these days it’s a toss-up. Our oldest two girls are legitimate teenagers, at 15 and 13, with busy after-school schedules and stacks of homework crowding their evenings. Our youngest, at 11, is developing into a night owl—the one who’s forever begging to read “just one more chapter!”

On the landing at the top of the stairs, we begin our nighttime rounds, noting the knotted brow of our oldest, my stepdaughter, as she tackles advanced math, then calming the chatter of our middle-schooler, who somehow has several hours of life to update us on, even though we last talked less than an hour ago.

We gently scold the youngest for not turning off her light when we told her to, but night owls will be night owls. This is not our battle. I smooth her hair and hum the song I rocked her to each night as a baby.

In our own bed, Jason and I share a weary high five and a kiss before turning out our lights. We’ve completed another day of “doing our best” as parents, even though what’s “best” has become increasingly fuzzy.

All we know for sure is things are getting real. Before our eyes, all of the knowledge fragments we’ve dispensed along the way have become a collection of tools our children are ad-libbing with out in the world. Each bit of freedom and autonomy, while terrifying for us, is an opportunity for them to practice and learn. We can’t stop any of it—they’re already on their way.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Orchard Street, 2016

I set down my mug of rooibos, tucking a bookmark between pages so I can reach my phone, which just buzzed at me from the coffee table. It’s a text from my oldest daughter whose mind is fixed on the many plans she has for Thanksgiving break, her first week home since moving to college. Smiling, I thumb a response. She’s always had so many ideas and plans—they just keep getting bigger as she becomes more capable of making them happen on her own.

The oldest of our three is also off at college, pursuing a science degree and being a wise, steady support system for the students on her floor, where she serves as RA.

Only our youngest still occupies one of the bedrooms upstairs. She’s now in possession of a driver’s license, along with the new level of autonomy it brings. After years of playing taxi, I’m still surprised when she arrives home on her own from her favorite cafe, as she does now. Plopping next to me on the sofa, she pulls the edge of my afghan across her lap, offering her back for a tickle-scratch before bed.

Kissing my daughter’s head as she says goodnight, I realize it’s time for me to think about bed, too. Just one more chapter.

As I turn another page, my phone interrupts with another text, this time from the bedroom above me.

Are you super busy or could you come play with my hair for a couple of minutes? I can’t sleep. And I miss you.

I miss her, too, I think, setting down my book, mid-chapter. I miss them all—even if they’re not mine to hold back, just to encourage forward. Switching off the lamps, I climb the stairs to my baby girl’s room.

We Are Sardines

Posted on by under Secret Places

In the quiet, we huddle together and scold those who speak too often or above a whisper. I shift my weight carefully on the old wooden floors of the closet that protest with creaks at even the slightest movement.

Eight of us have piled into the utility closet off of the church parlor and are waiting for the rest of the “sardines.” Every muscle in my body tightens with the anticipation of voices or movement from the other side of the door. The must of old choir robes mixed with the generic old church smell that gets trapped in between the pages of pew Bibles and hymnals is particularlyphoto-1442706722731-7284acc0a2d7 dense in our close quarters.

A paper palm frond tickles my elbow, the trunk of its tree standing tall in a bucket of cement. This prop is one of many artifacts left from Vacation Bible Schools and church events where the sanctuary was transformed into a tropical Island or the Sydney Olympic games, depending on what the Sunday School curriculum companies were pushing that year.

There are only so many spots in the church building that can fit all the sardines attending youth group on any given Wednesday night. Each hider imagines they will find the new, most secret of spots. Everyone ends up in the same rotation of hideouts: the closet with the Christmas pageant outfits and fake floral arrangements, somewhere under the pews in the choir loft, or this closet off the parlor where we wait now for the rest of the kids to find us.

Once I join the cloistered youth group members, the act of hiding alerts my dormant primal instincts to survive. We all become prehistoric cave people, sheltering ourselves from a wooly mammoth, and we communicate with grunts and nudges in the darkness of our enclosure. We are alert, ready for fight or flight, knowing that at any second we many be startled by someone looking for the group hiding spot.

There is no real threat among the signs for long passed rummage sales and supplies used for church coffee houses, but for the thirty minutes the game lasts, we are in mortal danger. In the dark, in the secret place, we belong to each other. We are at the mercy of the loudest sneeze or the kid who clumsily knocks something glass off of the shelf.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr: Le Luxographe

Photo Courtesy of Flickr: Le Luxographe

Next to me, a girl leans into her boyfriend, emboldened by the covering darkness and closeness  implied in the game of Sardines. One person finds a hiding place, and everyone who finds them must join the person in that spot. You win if nobody finds you, you lose if you’re the last one to find the group. In a couple of years, someone would wise up to the fact that shoving a bunch of horny teenagers into a small dark space wasn’t the best move  for promoting a culture of chastity and purity.

It’s very popular to bring your boyfriend to youth group. I had a grand total of one boyfriend during my middle school and high school years, and we were too shy to interlace fingers during the gathering time or to cuddle during movies at lock-ins. In the presence of my peers, my limbs and extremities became clumsy and sweaty, each finger unable to coordinate with its neighbor to reach out and show affection.

The boyfriends who came to youth group were often sullen, tall boys with baggy cargo pants and shirts silk-screened with bands whose faces were frozen in eternal screams. Some wore sweatshirts made from the material of Mexican blankets, while others had long hair that hung down over their eyes.

We were encouraged to bring our friends and boyfriends, an evangelism tactic as old as the tent meeting revivals held by our ancestors, or perhaps as old the four men who lowered their paralyzed friend to be healed by Jesus. All the same, friends and boyfriends were brought to church to hear the gospel or to play ultimate frisbee or to eat a shake made from a blended happy meal.

I often found excuses to slip away during the loud games that ended with youth group members accidentally putting their hands through windows or face planting on the cement floor. In these situations, I imagined that all eyes were on me, ready to notice the way my feet bowed out when I ran or the inevitable sweat circles under my armpits.

Sardines was the great equalizer.

We are in the dark, we are all the same, we must not make a sound. I am caught up in the energy of the game. In an era when I am most singled out and exposed, I am blissfully anonymous, another set of shadowed shoulders, a counted head as we wait for the next youth group member to join. All I needed to do was find my people, to wait and breathe, and be.

 

Tankini

Posted on by under Gender & Place

I’m flat on my back, soaking up the luxuriousness that is Day One of vacation. My beach towel is freshly laundered and fluffy, my skin free of sunburn, and my bag packed with iced tea, still-crunchy Cheez-Its, and some deliciously unpretentious books.

Version 2For awhile it feels good to just lie here, relearning how to do nothing, but soon I begin to contemplate rolling onto my stomach to crack open a book. To roll over or not to roll over? That is the sort of question you face on a true vacation.

It’s not like shifting from back to tummy is such an ordeal, but it does involve a certain amount of resolve and strategic sand resituating. The butt-shaped hollow I created with a horizontal booty-shake when I first stretched out on my towel will need to be filled in with some sand, while new, boob-shaped divots—much harder to get positioned just right—will be called for. But that iced tea does sound good…

I decide to go for it. One, two, three…I engage and shift muscle and bones, my loose belly coming along for the ride, lagging just a split second behind the rest of me, as it does. Settling myself face down, with a wiggle of my hips to reposition the sand, I say a silent prayer of thanks for whomever invented the tankini.

Since having babies, the tankini has been my swimsuit of choice. The concept is simple, yet genius: the ease of a two-piece in wet-swimsuit-bathroom-scenarios, with the coverage of a one-piece for stretch-mark-riddled tummies.

It’s been nearly two decades since my body underwent the enormous transformation that resulted in the birth of my first daughter, and I’m just beginning to accept that no amount of cocoa butter or yoga or time will erase the marks pregnancy left behind. Time, in fact, seems to be hurting, not helping.

I suspect I’m not alone in this predicament. What else could have inspired and sustained the existence of the sensible tankini? At least the one I’m wearing is somewhat hip—chocolate brown with a sexy halter style top and retro ruching at the hips. Most importantly, I feel comfortable in it, even while rolling from back to tummy, where I now lie, popping Cheez-Its into my mouth.

I look over at my teenage daughters with their bikini-clad, impossibly toned skin, and wonder, “Did I really look like that 30 years ago?” I’ve earned my age, of course—I don’t expect to look 16 again, and I certainly don’t want to be 16. But there is a small tug in me—part vain, part nostalgic—that wishes I was wearing a bikini rather than its modest cousin.

My enlightened daughters tell me what many of you are thinking: I can and should wear whatever I want. It’s a topic that even gets my youngest daughter a bit worked up, and my firstborn goes so far as to proclaim, “You would look so cute in a bikini!”

I love how liberated and affirming my girls are—much more so than I was at their age. I grew up in the 80s, an era of many thin models and very few voices questioning the cultural expectations being set in the pages of teen magazines. Body shaming was both everywhere and nowhere—everywhere in the air we breathed, but also nowhere because “body shaming” wasn’t a phrase anyone used. As a teen, I didn’t hear voices of opposition, calling it what it was.

Now, in my middle age, I’m as troubled by my faint desire to wear a bikini as I am by my hesitation to boldly wear whatever I damn well please. What does it all mean? I suppose it means at least two things: my desire to wear a bikini isn’t all that strong, and being a woman at the beach is a complex thing.

My daughters give me hope, though, for a new generation of women. I marvel at their comfort level, both with their bodies and in standing up for issues. As I watch them get up off their towels to go test the temperature of the lake, I muse, “Where did these amazing girls come from?”

Oh, right: from my puckered belly. It all comes full circle.

That there’s a link between my pregnancies and my stretched-out tummy is no secret, but for years I had somehow isolated the two realities in my mind. That all changed the day I casually complained about my saggy skin to a friend, who suggested plastic surgery.

My anger was immediate, and with it came a burst of clarity: The physical record of my childbearing was not a “flaw” to glibly erase!

Ironically, it was the realization that I could take surgical measures that led me to accept my belly as it is, not as culture dictates it should be. I began to see the excess skin below my belly button, and the rays of scars emanating around it, as a history—a Curriculum Vitae of my body’s experiences and job descriptions: the once-home of my babies, the still-home of my aging self.

That doesn’t mean I’m rushing out to buy a bikini. I’m just feeling a fondness for what is tucked comfortably beneath this trusty spandex: the stretchy first-home to two remarkable young women, whose bodies are on their own journeys. Toned skin and flat stomachs are just the beginning.

I look over at my daughters, reading books on their own towels, and decide to turn myself over once again, taking with me my pouchy, ribboned skin: this record of miracles.

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Kristin bio YAH

Safe and Sound

Posted on by under Sound & Place

Packing tape rips, the sound raging through the telephone wire, threatening to undo my best attempts not to yell in order to be heard.

“Will you please stop for a minute?” I whisper in a saccharine tone. (I read somewhere if one lowers her voice during a conflict, the other person will listen better.) Tom keeps on clinking and ripping. I imagine his shoulders hunched over a desk, counting hundreds of buffalo nickels. My heart softens. “Call me tomorrow!” I yell. “I love you!”

I’ve been married to a traveling man for thirty years. Like a peddler whose wares hang on hooks from a wagon, Tom’s road-1208298_1280wares are coins which he buys and sells from his briefcase, filling it during the day. When he is racking up miles on asphalt, his office is a hotel room. Every evening he organizes and boxes the day’s purchases for shipping to customers. When he checks in in the evening, I try not to be annoyed by clinks of silver dollar on silver dollar as they drop into plastic holders. After all, he’s settled in, safe and sound.

 *   *   *   *

When he was away working, in the early years of our marriage, before we had internet, cell phones, or caller ID, but we had two small children, I listened for the phone to ring, carrying his voice to me. Call times varied according to where he was: I’m at the Red Roof Inn in Fargo. Our back and forth:

How was your day?

And how was your day?

What did the kids do today?

Taekwondo, homework, and oh, I put a drop of soap on Kendall’s tongue because he called Barbara a penis. Of course, she probably taunted him.

When Tom heard my laughter on the other end, he relaxed. Alexander Graham Bell’s invention helped keep our marriage together in our early child-rearing days, creating moments of intimacy in the ordinary when we were miles apart.

*   *   *   *

It’s 12;30 a.m. on a Saturday night. Tom is out-of-town. I am wide awake in bed, fanning the bodice of my cotton nightgown, trying to recover from a hot, humid day. Add a layer of anxiety from mothering two teenagers; I begin a conversation with myself.

Did I tell Barbara to call me when she leaves her friend’s house…

Cautious and compliant, Barbara will drive home, glancing through her rear-view window to be sure no stranger is following her, but I still want to hear “I’m on my way home.” Sometimes she positions herself in a taekwondo pose and pops a high kick reminding me that she almost earned a black belt.

The quick chirp of Barbara’s car alarm pierces the night. She closes the side door with a gentle nudge. Floorboards creak. The kitchen water faucet turns on, then off. I know she will open the refrigerator door looking for a snack to satisfy her tummy before a good night’s sleep. Her feet tread quiet and quick up the stairs to her room.

My inner monologue turns to Kendall.

Did I remember to pray: God watch over my boy—as if God would not keep Kendall safe if I forgot? Did I tell him to follow the speed limit?

A train whistles in the distance, and I worry that Kendall will pull too close to the tracks, and the train will derail.

Boom ba Boom ba Boom ba. I hear and almost feel Kendall approaching our driveway, heavy bass blaring—beautiful music to a mother’s ears. I inhale and exhale like an expectant mother in a Lamaze class. He needs to turn that thing down when he enters our neighborhood.

Our side door opens. Hinges squeak. Slam.

My man-child lumbers down the hallway with his size 14 sneakers slapping the floor. A looming presence stops at my bedroom door: “Mama, I’m home. Are you awake?”

“Yes, I’m awake.”

*   *   *   *

“I am 56 years old. I am not an old woman,” I say to Tom. “You bought me a safe car, and I can wield this cane like an old woman fighting off a purse snatcher.”

He worries about me. I have physical challenges, and he likes to be my knight in shining armor, but I insist that I have to do as much as I am able.

“Please text me or call me when you get home,” he says with concern, “and I’ll text you when I get settled at my hotel.”

I meet my sister for dinner, something we rarely do. Our menus remain untouched on the table while we begin chatting, catching up, talking over one another, finally stopping to give the server our orders. Diners at the table next to us smile when I choke on laughter as my sister and I reminisce about old boyfriends: the good, the bald, and the portly. Struggling to recover my manners, I avoid eye contact with my sister lest high-pitched giggles conquer me again.

We are the last to leave the restaurant, carrying our conversation out the door.

“We closed the place down,” I say with a merry grin. “Let’s promise one another to do this more often.”

The evening has flown by. I pull out my phone and text Tom.

Home soon. Love L

Back home, I settle under a quilt, with a full belly and heavy eyes. Grown and gone, my children are never far from my mind, but I don’t worry as much when I’m not expecting them to come home.

Instead of listening for a key in the lock or booming bass paving our driveway, my ears and heart are more open to God’s voice. He and I have a history together, and those nights I waited up, wondering, worrying, God heard, God answered.

My phone on the nightstand vibrates and scoots, awakening me from the edge of sleep. I knock my glasses off the nightstand, grope blindly for the phone, and bring it close to my eyes.

I’m in for the night

Safe and sound  Love T keys-233368_1280

 

 

Lisa bio YAH

 

Three Years as “Mom”

Posted on by under Finding Place

If you’ve never picked up your life and moved hundreds of miles away to a place where you know no one, I highly recommend it.

At 26, I was burnt-out on teaching after only three years, uncertain of what my future looked like, and my always-dreaming-of-new-places heart was ready to take a leap.  I got on the computer. After a few hours on google, I applied for three jobs, got an interview for one, and within a few months  had whittled the contents of my apartment down into what would fit into a small SUV– rented, one-way, from Atlanta to Chicago.

I moved into a 125 year old house that came with the job, a short walk from the shores of Lake Michigan.  Already living in the house were three other adults and eight teenagers. The easiest way to explain my new job is that I worked for a nonprofit boarding school. I was one of four “house moms” to a group of smart, dedicated, and brave young women who made the choice as 7th, 8th, or 9th graders to live mostly away from their families in order to make their education a priority.  In many ways, the people in that house lived as a family.

My favorite parts of the job were easily things like waking up  a little earlier on cold mornings so the kids had cups of tea or hot chocolate to take with them to the school. I would often stand just inside the front door and say good-bye, shivering against the cold Chicago wind, as they walked out the door with smiles on their faces and gloved-hands clutching mugs. The highlight of the day was almost always dinner. At least four nights a week we gathered around the extra long dining room table and there was a chorus of “please pass the . . .” as dinner plates were filled and then stories from the day began.

Our dining room table, set for a Christmas Party.

Our dining room table, set for a Christmas Party.

One late spring day one of “my” kids came home to say that she needed to take fruit to a school function the next week. The morning of the event I pulled out a fruit platter with oranges and kiwi and grapes and strawberries arranged in an alternating, symmetrical color pattern. She looked at the tray and then back at me and said, “Did you buy this?”

“No. I made it last night.”

“Wow. It’s so pretty! Thank you!”

When I was a kid, the thing that I most wanted was to be a mom. There were a few years in college where my life seemed to  moving towards my dream of  “get married young and start a family.” While that didn’t happen, my desire to be a mom remained. But there, with fruit tray in hand, I realized something.  It was a simple moment in the midst of a life that included dishes and laundry and “turn down that music” and checking on homework and a million things that were very mom-like, but it was that moment when I knew that I had found my place. Somehow, my always-wanted-to-be-a-mom heart was getting to live its dreams.

At the beginning of November I was back in Chicago for a few short days as part of a work trip. I drove past the old house and paused for just a few moments, giving thanks for what I learned those three years and have continued to live out since: I am a person who wants to make spaces safe and welcoming. That is a passion and a desire that can be lived out no matter if anyone calls me “mom” or not.

***

Nicole bio YAH

Together, Undefined

Posted on by under Together in Place

It was 8 pm on my daughter’s 15th birthday, and I remained a Mama on a Mission, gearing up for the home stretch.

The mission, of course, was making my daughter feel as special and loved as possible—a mission that’s more challenging, I’ve discovered, when your children are teenagers and less likely to buy into the enthusiasm in your voice as you sell them on some random idea: Bowling would be a fun birthday treat! If my daughter had her way we’d be seeing Broadway shows in New York for her birthday, but in reality I had less to work with.

By 8 pm on this particular birthday, we had already completed our typical activities: a mother-daughter outing (which in this case involved a new ear piercing); a birthday dinner at the restaurant of her choice, with the seven people who make up her immediate family (mom, dad, sister, stepmom, half-brother, stepdad, step-sister); and finally dessert and presents back at home. My now-15-year-old already had a big party with friends the night before, so now what?

“Do you want to go anywhere?” I asked.

“No, I just want to be home,” she said, smiling contentedly.

“Should we rent a movie?” I suggested. “Or play a game?” I know very well that games are not her favorite pastime, but I couldn’t help myself. In my family experience, both as a child and an adult, this is what you do when you’re together: You play games. Sitting around a table covered with the pieces of a game is my family’s quintessential definition of togetherness.

“No, I just want to be home and do whatever,” she said, a trace of exasperation edging into her voice. “I’ve had an amazing birthday! Can’t we all just be here but do our own things?”

As an extrovert, I (not for the first time) had to pause and forcibly wrap my head around this less structured version of “Together.” I could see my other daughter re-calibrating as well, as we tried to imagine that the birthday girl’s idea of a fun birthday might not look exactly like our plans for her. After all, we were there to serve! To entertain! To focus all of our time and energies on HER! And she wanted to go up to her room and try out the new guitar pedal she just unwrapped? We had to let that sink in.

“Well…OK. If you’re sure,” I said.

She was, of course, sure.

6647530355_0233217d07_zAs the sounds of reverberating electric guitar and my daughter’s pure voice serenaded us through the ceiling, the rest of us looked at each other in somewhat sheepish agreement: Let’s play a game. In her own way, she was right there with us.

*   *   *   *   *

While I probably wouldn’t choose “alone in my room” as a way to spend my birthday evening, upon a bit more reflection I realized that I know a thing or two about this desire my daughter often has: to be together yet alone.

Since February 2002, after nearly a decade of working in populated office settings, I’ve worked essentially alone, as a writer. When I was in the process of deciding whether to take the leap and start my own business, my biggest fear wasn’t Will I have enough clients? or Will I make enough money? It was this: Will I be able to work alone?

Not only am I social—someone who is energized by being in the mix, having people to go to lunch with, and feeling connected to others who are dealing with the same bosses and projects—but I’m also most creative in collaborative settings. In other words, I worried not just that I would be lonely working by myself, but also that the very skills I was selling might fall flat if there weren’t people around to bounce ideas off of and provide critique.

I decided to take the leap anyway, and was lucky enough to discover that technology was my safety net. It was the growing availability of wireless Internet, in particular, that prevented me from gradually slipping away from myself, sitting day after day at the desk in the corner of my living room. Wireless Internet meant I could take my laptop—all that really comprised my “office”—to my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, where I could be together yet alone.

photo (3)In that coffee shop, I learned it was the mere presence of bodies and voices—being surrounded by activity and the gears of many brains thinking and creating—that I craved more than anything else. In the unnatural silence of my empty home I felt slightly on-edge and easily distractible, but the buzzing white noise of the café allowed me to dive into my work and ride a stream of creative flow for hours.

There’s simply something powerful—at once comforting and freeing—about being autonomous yet in community, whether that community is family or strangers at a café. It’s an experience that carries a certain rightness and balance: In a single moment and place, it acknowledges and respects both our “sameness” as humans and our “difference” as individuals.

Ultimately, both identity and empathy are strengthened through that single form of togetherness. When I think of it that way, I can see what a wonderful gift it was to give my teenage daughter on her birthday—and what a wonderful reminder it was for her to share with me.

*   *   *   *   *

Photo of the game “Carcassonne” by Aslakr. Coffee shop photo by Kristin Tennant.

Baby Season

Posted on by under Season & Place

I dreamed last night that I had a brand-new baby girl.

The dream wasn’t all snuggles and coos—it definitely included some bizarre elements, as dreams do. I was, for instance, somehow surprised by the arrival of this baby, even though it seemed clear in the dream that I had given birth to her, not adopted or found her wrapped in blankets in a cardboard box on my doorstep. My level of surprise about the baby was palpable in the dream, but I knew enough to hide my astonishment from others. I calmly went along caring for her and showing her off to friends as if I, too, had been expecting her all along.

Because I wasn’t actually expecting this baby, Dream Me had to improvise a bit to get her properly clothed and geared up. A significant scene in the dream involved me pulling big plastic bins off a top shelf in an enormous closet to look through the clothes my two real-life daughters wore as newborns.

One such bin exists in a (much smaller) closet in my waking life. It’s filled with the tiny shoes, Easter dresses, and footed pajamas deemed Most Special, along with handmade gifts like the pale blue cardigan my grandmother knitted for my firstborn, with its kitty-cat buttons and row of silhouetted white cats along the border. But in real life, I haven’t looked through that bin for probably a decade—not since that moment when I somehow knew my baby days were over, prompting me to sort all the little clothes into two piles: items to pass along to friends having babies, and favorite treasures to carefully pack away and keep.

When I woke from the dream, I was filled with longing, love, and loss. This might not seem at all surprising to most people, but it completely surprised me. I have never been a woman who longs for babies.

Of course, an entire season of my life was devoted to babies. It’s a season I treasure and wouldn’t trade for the world, but mostly because it is a necessary season for all who want to have children who will some day not be babies. The Baby Season was simply the first stage of parenting—the inevitable season leading to all of the seasons that follow.

*   *   *   *   *

Every parent, if they’re being honest, will admit to having favorite (and least favorite) seasons of parenting. Yet somehow I’ve always felt guilty for not being baby-crazy. It’s almost as if not getting the “uterus aches” that other women talk about when they see newborns knocks your womanhood status down several notches and calls your maternal instincts into question.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved my own babies fiercely. (For those of us who are not “baby people,” our own babies defy that category). But I don’t remember thinking “I never want them to grow up!” I loved the experience of nursing my babies (and I did nurse them each for about 13 months—does that earn me extra credit?), but I don’t recall a heart-rending pull as my babies began to rely less on my milk, eventually weaning without a fuss.

Instead, I was happy to see them grow into unique little personalities, with opinions and relationships and senses of humor. I loved watching them develop friendships and put feelings into words as toddlers, then problem-solve, create, and become more independent as they ventured through their preschool years.

During my daughters’ elementary school years, I was forever fascinated by the glimpses of myself and other family members I saw in my girls, and was equally fascinated by the many facets of them that seemed to crystalize out of nowhere. And the ways my two children are different from each other—two girls created from the very same gene pool!—has never ceased throughout the years to be amazing, refreshing, and challenging all at once.

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Today my daughters are 17 and 14, both in high school. There’s no doubt I’m in a different season of parenting. Along the way I’ve loved many of the stages—six and 18 months were ages I savored, along with their preschool and mid-elementary years—but I have to say the particular season we’re in is one of my favorites. It’s also possibly the hardest (teenage girls!). And it has occurred to me several times that those two opposing feelings—the love and joy as well as the stress and challenges—are in fact intimately bound together. Everything is intense, on both ends of the spectrum. Preparing girls to go into the world as women, sure of who they are and what they are capable of, is no small task. It’s both exciting and difficult, like all of the best adventures.

And as I consider last night’s dream, I’m also realizing how very bittersweet this season is—much more so than I want (or have the time and emotional space) to admit in the day to day. It’s more bittersweet than weaning my babies, or packing their tiny shoes away into plastic bins.

Yes, as parents we’ve been preparing our daughters for independence all along, but these are the years when it gets real—not only in how their experiences and our conversations will prepare them for what’s next, but also in the ways “what’s next” will impact me. I can begin to envision a time when our household won’t strain at the seams to contain the whirlwind of kinetic energy that exists between 6:45 and 7:45 each morning; when the pile of shoes by the front door will diminish in number as well as colorful variety; and when the dishwasher won’t be packed full after a single family dinner with everyone at the table.

photoIt’s true, I’ve never wished my daughters could remain captured in a state of babyhood. But they are still my babies. No matter how grownup they become, they’ll still embody all of the love and longing of the seasons we’ve been through. And as we rush through these final years of childhood, the baby in my dreams reminds me that it’s OK to pause—to long to bundle them into footed jammies and enfold in my arms.

 

Learning from Ms. Norman

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

At my first school the kids called me “Freedom Writer.”

Who you got for English? Freedom Writer.

That is pretty much all you need to know. If you know they called me Freedom Writer you know that they were black and poor and I was white and young. You know that we both swallowed the lie that a young white woman can save a whole generation.

My students don’t call me Freedom Writer anymore. It isn’t just because I’m older. I now work at an upper-middle-class school and they just call me Ms. Norman.

Teaching is one of the only professions where no one uses a first name, at least at any school I’ve ever worked at. Generally, the adults in my building even refer to each other as Mr. or Ms., for continuity’s sake, which means most of the kids don’t even know our first names.

Very occasionally, a student will see me in public and call out my name. I know before I see who is shouting that they are my student. Just hearing someone shout “Hey, Ms. Norman” puts me immediately into teacher mode, even in the middle of the grocery store.

I like Ms. Norman. I like my classroom and I like who I am in it. I have carefully curated the furniture (spray painted funky colors) and the posters (MLK, Mother Theresa, Ghandi), just as I have carefully curated the persona that is Ms. Norman. In fact, sometimes I wish Abby could be a little more like her. Ms. Norman is always in charge. Abby, not so much. Ms. Norman may not always have the answers, but she knows where to find them. Abby doesn’t even know the right questions to ask half the time. Ms. Norman takes no crap, not from anyone. Ms. Norman handles her business so well that she only has to write an office referral for discipline once a year. Abby takes a lot more crap and does way more freaking-out-about than handling of the business.

I know exactly who I am in my classroom, and my students know what to expect. I will yell a little when you turn in a paper late, but I will let you turn it in. I will just give you a dirty look for saying a swear word, but I will not tolerate you saying unkind things to the other students. My classroom speaks to this. I have a giant hand-painted sign where you would expect the clock to hang that says BE KIND. My bean-bag chairs speak to my desire for kids to be comfortable in my room. My giant piles speak to my general disorganization. Even that flaw Ms. Norman is comfortable with.

After almost ten years in the classroom, I am considering trying my hand at something else. I am not sure quite yet if this is a phase, or if I really am ready to leave. As I contemplate the possibility of not being a teacher anymore I think about how there won’t be a place to hang the posters I have so carefully picked and laminated. What in the world will I do with eight bean-bag chairs?

Without a classroom, I also wonder what will happen to Ms. Norman. Will I ever need to be able to shout down 35 kids in 15 seconds or less? Will I maintain the ability to simultaneously read a passage aloud and confiscate a cell phone? Will I remember all the dirty jokes in Romeo and Juliet or be able to recite whole pieces of Of Mice and Men without looking? These are all things Ms. Norman does very well.

I have been surprised at how lost I feel even thinking about leaving the classroom, the loss that I feel, the uncertainty. Can the best parts of Ms. Norman, of myself, live on if there is no classroom for her to reside, no plaque with her name, telling the world she belongs here?

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Abby“Learning from Ms. Norman” was written by Abby Norman. Abby lives and loves in the city of Atlanta. She swears a lot more than you would think for a public school teacher and mother of two under three. She can’t help that she loves all words. She believes in champagne for celebrating everyday life, laughing until her stomach hurts and telling the truth, even when it is hard, maybe especially then. You can find her blogging at accidentaldevotional and tweeting at @accidentaldevo. Abby loves all kinds of Girl Scout cookies and literally burning lies in her backyard fire pit.

Hunting

Posted on by under Home & Place

We were armed, of course—with a very rational checklist, like all house-hunters are.

It looked something like this:

– Four bedrooms (we have three daughters and lots of house guests)

– At least two full bathrooms, including one of the main floor (did I mention three daughters?)

– A spacious kitchen with lots of counter space (Jason and I usually cook together—there’s often a daughter and a dog in the mix, too)

– A dedicated space for me to work (I work from home, which had always meant carving out a cramped corner of the living room)

– Closets! (Closets, closets, closets! Our current house had not a single closet or pantry on the entire first floor—and did I mention three daughters? And backpacks, soccer shin guards, volleyballs, a cello, and more pairs of shoes, boots, and muddy cleats than I could count?)

– A hang-out space of some sort (as our daughters grew into teenagers, we wanted to be sure they regularly invited friends)

– A fireplace (for those cozy, picturesque evenings together as a family)

– A front porch (I have always considered this a must for a house)

– A location in our current neighborhood (walking distance to the girls’ schools, cafes, the library, the farmers’ market, etc.)

Oh, and there was one must-not-have: NO black walnut tree. We’d had enough of the squirrel colony that congregated in the backyard of our current house, and enough of the curses we uttered each time our current tree dropped its ample harvest on our roof, cars, and patio furniture.

In general, we thought our checklist was perfectly reasonable. And we weren’t in a huge hurry to find something—we had already survived two years as a newly-formed family of five in the house I had purchased for three (as a single mom, just months before I met Jason). We were just “keeping our eyes out.”

Each year, for about three years, we went to see a handful of houses. Some met the requirements on our checklist, but were just too expensive. Others had a significant flaw (or two)—a visible bulging in the foundation; a tiny, unworkable living room (but lots of space everywhere else); terrible kitchens (without any hope for feasible remodel plans); a shared driveway or no garage.

There were also a couple of houses that could have worked, but were somehow just “off.” I began to differentiate “house-hunting,” which requires being armed with a list and a realtor, from “home-hunting,” which calls for a fully-loaded gut (and a refusal to buy into the optimism gushing from the realtor’s mouth).

With each visit to a new listing, the hope that buoyed us as the realtor unlocked the front door, quickly deflated. And with each disappointment, we returned to our cozy home determined to find ways to make it work. Trips to IKEA resulted in more storage, and a remodel of the basement added a second bathroom and a fourth bedroom, so two of our girls no longer had to share. After three years of “keeping an eye out” for houses, we simply stopped.

house4saleAnd then, one February day in 2013, I was walking the dog and saw a new For Sale sign. Even from the sidewalk, something about the house spoke to me—to my gut, as cheesy as that sounds.

As it turns out, it was The One—even though it didn’t meet all of the requirements on our ever-so-rational checklist. There were two full bathrooms, but no bathroom of any sort of the first floor (this is apparently a cost of loving 100-year-old houses). There was a beautiful sunroom with built-in bookshelves and three walls of windows, which has become my dream office, but no front porch. The kitchen was workable, but not nearly as spacious as we had hoped for during our house hunting. And there was a wood-burning fireplace, as advertised in the listing, but during the inspection we discovered that it wasn’t a working fireplace and couldn’t actually be fixed to become one, short of completely rebuilding the chimney.

homecomingdinner2013Yes, there are four bedrooms and plenty of beautiful closets, and the location is perfect. Even more importantly, much of what we envisioned for our new home has become a reality—less clutter, more space for family and friends to be together, the ability to host big meals (that first fall we did a Homecoming dinner for our daughter and 22 of her friends and a chili cook-off for 50+). And as a family, we’ve enjoyed two cozy winters of together time, gathered by the fire—the people we bought the house from installed a gas fireplace (not our original ideal, but it sure has made it easy to light a fire every evening rather than just every-so-often).

In short, this is our home and it has been just right from the beginning, regardless what our list said. Even that first summer, when we realized that big tree in the backyard was—you guessed it—a black walnut (this is a danger of buying a house in February and not being an expert in tree bark identification), we had to laugh as we grumbled. After all, we had been home-hunting, not house-hunting.