A warm November day, beachside, with friends from school, friends from baseball, family, family friends, and friends that have been there all along. All showering my boy with love. So grateful for this kid and all who love him. And the weather. Today was perfect.
Dear Hooper,
The days, they say, can be so long – filled with chaos and shuffling and rushed lunch packing – and yet the years, they warn, go so fast. It’s how everyone said it would be only our story is ours and ours alone. I remind you often that I dreamed of you before I had you. It was always you I longed for. And today, you turn nine. NINE.
You wore your overalls to school backwards this week because you thought it was cool. You’re confident and self-aware. Loving your time alone, you’re often the first to rise. You do your homework independently and get annoyed when I forget to sign it, irritated that I need a reminder. You love to make people laugh and aspire to be the class clown.
You have great social awareness and ask all the hard questions; questions about your Papa and I’s divorce, questions about politics, questions about why things are the way they are. I don’t have all the answers and I’m honest with you about that. I hope you never stop asking and never stop searching.
Stay courageous. Stay inquisitive. Stay confident. And stay rooted in yourself.
There is no honor so great as being your mom. Happy Birthday, my love. My light. My constant reminder to stay centered and continue my own growth. You are my inspiration. My reason. I love you.
Mom
Read this, and couldn’t relate more: When a family is steeped in denial, the person who is trying to say that “the emperor has no clothes on” is generally viewed negatively by those who are not willing to see what’s really going on.
Today I stand confidently in my own truth. Before I welcomed the opinions of others that didn’t live my same experience and so it was like trying to look out a window that was constantly being washed with shaving cream; clouded by confusion, misinformation, manipulation, and / or denial of others. It’s taken me a while to learn to trust myself and my gut and now that I’m there I can’t believe I spent so long allowing others to clean my windows.
Oftentimes one of the kids will come up to me, frustrated and whiny about something they can’t pull apart or remove from whatever it is they’re trying to remove it from. I watch them try with all their might; the kind of frustration and might that more-times-than-not results in the damn thing being broken rather than set free. I was reminded of this this morning when I was emptying the dishwasher and I couldn’t get a lid to one of Sonny’s sippy cups out. The lip of it was stuck on some prong and I quickly realized that no matter how hard I pulled, it wasn’t going to separate. Pulling harder was not the answer and would have actually led to the lid and / or the rack breaking. It’s like having your fingers stuck in a chinese finger and the desperation to be free makes you pull all the much harder and as you’re pulling harder you’re simultaneously spending whatever was left of your patience and patience is soon traded for panic. I always tell the kids, if what you’re doing isn’t working, maybe there’s another way; a better way, an easier way.
As I turned the lid of the sippy cup to dislodge it from the prong it was caught on, I realized that oftentimes tugging at something gets you nowhere. That sometimes the answer is an about face, a turn in the other direction.
Filed under: ordinary life happenings that remind me I’m on the right track.