by bsquared5@aol.com | Aug 29, 2016 | Thoughts
My oldest went sky diving a few weeks ago. She took off with a group of friends and jumped out of a perfectly good plane while, 2 hours away, her dad and I checked our phones nervously for news of a safe landing.
This is par for the parenting game. About three seconds after I became a parent, every cell in my being zeroed in on the safety of that little bundle. And about three seconds after that, my kids seemed to delight in finding new ways to hurt themselves.
I did all the right stuff–electrical outlet covers, car seats, a lock on the chemicals under the sink, talks about strangers, the internet, drugs and alcohol, driving skills, and safe sex. Still, they found ways to get broken arms, ding the car, and make asinine choices. From their first steps (right into the edge of the coffee table) to the scraped elbows from the epic wreck on the bicycle, 90% of parenting felt like I was chasing them around with bubble wrap, which they’d fling off and set fire to.
I put my 3-month-old down for a nap once, grabbed the baby monitor and went to our unfinished upstairs to paint some window frames. My husband came home for lunch that day, poked his head up to say hello, then left a short time later. When I heard the baby stirring on the monitor, I headed down to get her and discovered he’d locked the door, which was always our habit. I was trapped, the baby out of reach with no one around, no phone.
Panic! I calculated how many bones would break if I jumped out the second story window. Tried throwing myself into the door to break it down. (It doesn’t work like it does in the movies.) Everyone else in the cul de sac was at work, except… A solitary teen aged boy was playing basketball several doors down. I screamed at him, hanging out the window and waving my arms like an insane person until he came over, let himself into my house, and freed me from my prison. (Clearly, his parents had not taught him about Stranger Danger.)
This same child locked herself in her room as a toddler, and I sat on the other side of the door, our fingers touching underneath, frantically fumbling with the skeleton key. There is nothing so agonizing to a parent as being helpless to reach a child who needs you.
Ask any parent of a chronically ill child, watching as they’re wheeled to yet another procedure. Or the parents denied access to their adopted child month after month while foreign governments sift through red tape. Divorced parents who share custody with an irresponsible or abusive ex. Parents of deployed soldiers. It’s all part of the package, except, eager to reproduce, none of us ever reads the fine print.
A friend who recently dropped off her kid at college lamented to me that she couldn’t stop worrying about something happening and not being able to get to her daughter. I get it. My own is scheduled to study abroad next semester and I’ll admit to feeling similar twinges, especially after Paris, Brussels, and Nice hit the news cycle. But that’s fear talking. And fear is not the Boss of me. “Love is what we’re born with,” says Marianne Williamson. “Fear is what we learn here.”
Parenting is nothing if not risk. From the time they’re born, we perform a kind of catch and release with our hearts. It’s a tight-wire balancing act: keep them close, send them out; swoop in to rescue, let them learn to fall. The end goal is, after all, to work ourselves out of a job.
https://youtu.be/he3zaola7YE
Full disclosure: I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when we rode our bikes miles from home (sans helmets) and drank straight from the garden hose The surgeon general was barely even a thing. I’m in favor of running barefoot, grabbing mane on a galloping horse, climbing trees, and “Swing higher, Daddy!”
Yes, there are moments of panic and anguish as a parent, times when you can’t protect your child or prevent every misstep. Did we really believe it would all be giggles and lollipops? We can’t fetishize safety because of a world that feeds off fear like it’s sugar. When did failure became the new F-word? Failure is the only way forward.
The flip-side of risk is where the good stuff hides out. The flip side of risk is connection, creativity, a life with flourish. Sometime, we have to let go of the back of the bike and quit running along behind. I’m too old for that noise, for one thing. And parenting was never supposed to be about my fear–it’s about their launch.
by bsquared5@aol.com | Jan 2, 2016 | Thoughts
It’s the second day of January. The carpet is still full of fallen pine needles, a straggler Christmas card just arrived in the mail, and the Christmas clearance section at Target is best described as “there appears to have been a struggle.” Two aisles over, cascades of pink and red hearts festoon the shelves. Valentine’s Day is 6 weeks away, yet the decor screams, “Let’s MOVE, people!”
2016 has barely begun and I’m already feeling the push of what’s next, hearing the faint scritch, scritch of anxiety scratching to be let in. Not this year. The 40’s have been described as the rush hour of life. We are busy with careers, tugged between growing children and aging parents, spread thin trying to maintain marriages, friendships, and waistlines. We run the treadmill, literally and figuratively, dealing with life in broad shallow strokes with little time to stop and dive deep.
My word for this year is savor. On Christmas morning, my sister’s family wakes gradually, enjoys a nice breakfast, and then opens presents one by one throughout the day. It’s not unusual for me to call late in the afternoon to wish them a Merry Christmas, asking if the kids liked what we sent. “Oh, we haven’t gotten to them yet!” she’ll say. “It’s not even dinner time!” I’m incredulous. At my house, we wake early, pillage the stockings, and whip through the bounty like Tasmanian devils. We are usually napping again shortly after lunch from the exhaustion of it all. This year, we reined in the frenzy and took our time, pausing to watch the pouring rain as it flooded the yard. It was a welcome change.
Maybe it’s a symptom of unfettered youth, this rushing on to what’s next. My ambitious and eager college student daughter is not even halfway through a semester before she’s planning the next. Every step is planned and scheduled, from semesters abroad to internships that may lead to post-graduation employment. She focuses on what’s around the corner, imagining life will be more exciting, stable, or less stressful when—. I tell her to slow down and enjoy where she is, but the truth is a couple of misty decades ago I did the same. I couldn’t wait to be an adult, unleashed and independent. I would have adventures and embark on a life that was, above all, interesting, the opposite of ordinary and everything I imagined my mother’s was. Life would start to be grand when I graduated, got a job, got married, once we had children, once they were out of diapers, once the business took off, once…
Now, a little further down the road, I see. The ordinary minutes of the ordinary days and years have blown by, consumed by something like 27,000 meals, 4,000 loads of laundry, and 14,000 diaper changes. Wiping the counters, feeding the pets, filling the gas tank, helping with school projects, taxiing to and from practices, church services, and friends’ houses. Teaching the littles how to write their names, ride a bike, drive. Reading The Seven Silly Eaters for the 85th time, wiping tears from scraped knees and broken hearts, gritting my teeth from a slammed door or the virtual door of headphones and a cellphone. Beach sand in our shoes, doctor visits, braces, and pet burials. Ordinary days. Not quite the world-changing adventure I’d imagined at 20, but an adventure, I think, just the same.
Truly, some of those days it was a struggle just to make it to the other side of morning. Many of them I wished for what was next because stories and diapers and teenaged angst were sometimes, honestly, less than riveting. Naptime, bedtime, date night. Now I just wish my mother were still here so I could tell her I get it. This is the adventure. This is the interesting. This was it all along. The sticky kisses, unshaven husband, car trouble, health scares, and bounced checks. Even the frustrations, hurry, and hurt. This is what my mother and my sweet friends who have left too soon no longer get to savor. This is what they clung so hard to and fought to stay for.
Savor means to taste and enjoy completely, which can only be done without hurry, without looking to the next bite before finishing the first. Always looking for what’s next, what we imagine to be our sav-i-or, reverses the natural order of things. It makes the foreground, the background, and we miss the gift of what’s now. If we deliberately, on purpose, slow down and take the “i” out of the equation, the “I” that worries and chafes, we are left with savor.
I no longer seek the elusive unicorn of what’s next, or better, or more exciting around the corner. Bob Marley’s “Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright” is my current theme song. It’s the second day of January. Forget that vague holiday in February and enjoy today. May 2016 unveil your ordinary.
