Brave, Anyway

Tag: mom

  • City Management

    City Management

    I manage a city. I manage a city, and I have every job within the city.

    When things go awry with my children or their friends, or even with kids at school they don’t really know, I am on the other end of the 9-1-1 call. My job is to ask just enough questions to assess risk and recommend action, but not upset the balance so much that they don’t call again because I overreacted to their call for help.

    Sometimes there’s a fire and I can show my girls how they can extinguish it. Sometimes there’s a fire and I need to put it out for them. Sometimes I know without a second thought that a fire will eventually die out without causing any damage, and I just let that issue smolder. Sometimes the fire in our lives is 4-alarm and requires multiple trucks and stations – family and neighbors and helpers.

    I restore the peace as children disagree. Issuing citations and enforcing time out periods, in hopes of deterring bad behavior. I also investigate friends that seem to not be good influences.

    I fix booboos of all kinds on everything from knees to hearts. Jumping into ambulances and speeding off with lights and sirens to get help when basic triage isn’t working.

    I clean up spills and overflows and experiments. Slime. Paint. Markers. Sharpies. Lotion potions. Cat throw-up. Marshmallow explosions in the microwave.

    I am the collector of garbage. Everything from candy wrappers to an entire box of tissues used during a make-up lesson. I am also the one who sweeps up after all the emotional messes created by others – the hurt and anger and pain that children hide until they can get home, when it all comes pouring out on the parent they trust to love them and be there for them no matter how much they melt down.

    I am the provider of water, earlier in my career called upon as a way to delay bedtime and later in my career called upon for a glass of water even if a child is physically closer to the kitchen but cannot possibly get up off the couch.

    Just like Miss Utility, my children call on me when digging into things. They need help carefully navigating all the wires and pipes that could cause pain and really hurt them.

    I am one central office in the municipal center that grants or denies permits for all things. Painting a new color in a bedroom, sleepovers, extended bed times, bowling with boys, favorite cute shorts on 50 degree days.

    I am aware of all children in proximity to my children and constantly keeping track of who has been on antibiotics at least 24 hours without a fever, who around us isn’t vaccinated, and who has food allergies.

    I oversee transportation. Bus rides to school, rides to and from activities. I arrange more than just the transport of people but also all that is needed for the “thing” – a backpack, a suitcase, a musical instrument, a bathing suit, a sports physical form, a costume, or simply just a brush and make-up.

    I am a 9-1-1 operator, a firefighter, a police officer, an EMT, a member of the HAZMAT team, and a sanitation worker. I am public utilities, the public health inspector, VDOT, and even Animal Control.

    I am a Mom.

    Some days my city runs more smoothly than others. Some days there are no fires or traffic. Some days I know a storm is coming and I can batten down all the hatches and protect the city. Some days an unexpected yet utterly predictable earthquake strikes, plunging our city into darkness – and then I spend days managing the anxiety and realizations brought on by the event and its aftershocks.

    Some days I think I need more focus on city planning and other days I think I need more focus on emergency services. Balance is the key, I guess, and that’s constantly a work in progress – for any Mom and in any city.

    I don’t think Pete Buttigieg really has a chance at becoming the President, but I love this summary of his: In local government, it’s very clear to your customers – your citizens – whether or not you’re delivering. Either that pothole gets filled in, or it doesn’t. The results are very much on display, and that creates a very healthy pressure to innovate.

    It’s Monday in my city, the beginning of the last week of summer. The week for final back-to-school preparations, annual vaccinations, water balloon fights, and beginning to rein in our desire to sleep in. Next week my city will change again as school buses fill the roads and schedules change. It’s time for change and it’s time for innovation. That means it’s time for granting more space and showing more trust in smart girls who are growing and maturing, it means fixing some potholes here and there, and it even means constructing some new roads.

    It’s time to double down on the brave.

    Brave parenting. Brave city management. Brave new paths.

    This is one of my favorite pictures of my house – the hub of my little city. My neighbor took this picture on the night of the super moon in January 2018. I love, love, love that it looks like a giant star of light hovering above our home…a giant light hovering above my city. It’s one of my reminders that darkness did not and does not defeat light.

  • There Is Only One Me

    There Is Only One Me

    There is only one me.

    I say it all the time in my head when there’s just too much. I occasionally say it out loud when multiple people are talking to me at the same time.

    There is only one me. I can only be in one meeting at a time, in one place at a time, in one conversation at a time, at one kid activity at a time.

    There is only one me to process the plans and ideas and tests needed from the orthodontist and the dentists and the pediatricians and the special doctors and the guidance counselors and the therapists and the gymnastics coaches and the teachers and the tutors.

    There is only one me to make sure there’s breakfast and lunch and dinner and bread and milk and granola bars and yogurt and chips and brownies.

    There is only one me to monitor friends and social media usage and potential bad influences and Cadbury Egg intake and dresses that have gotten too short. Only one me to make sure the chorus outfit is clean on the right day.

    There is only one me to navigate the that’s unfair and the that’s mine accusations that all siblings of all ages for all time have shouted. There is only one me to say stop touching her or you didn’t ask permission to be in her room. There is only one me to set my jaw and say do not make me pull this car over.

    There is only one me to talk through bad dreams at 2 am. Only one me to provide reassurance, going to the bathroom with the door open and the light on so a kiddo having a hard day doesn’t feel like I’m too far away or not still listening to a detailed story.

    There is only one me to answer hard questions in the moment.

    There is only one me to pick up the pieces after the selfishness of others. Only one me to help them navigate all their emotions. Only one me to be the daily consistent force that cannot let them down. Only one me to be the one they can take everything out on, because I’m the safe one, and they can do that without fear of loss.

    There is only one me to put them first, in every way and in all things.

    There is only one me to kiss booboos and bandage scrapes. Only one me to hold hands while nurses do blood draws and scary new doctors do exams.

    There is only one me to check that everyone made it on the right bus at the right time, and made it home at the right time, or to a program or an activity or a game at the right time.

    There is only one me to make sure backpacks and binders have all the right papers signed and all the right homework in them.

    There is only one me to show them how to set boundaries and that sometimes decisions come with consequences.

    There is only one me to see the moments when they really need a boost of confidence and the encouragement to believe in themselves. Only one me to make sure I see it and they get it.

    There is only one me to talk to them about God and take them to church and show them the benefits and difficulties of a life lived based on core principles.

    There is only one me to teach them and show them that true happiness is found when we can live in such a way that we can be proud of ourselves, knowing we have integrity when no one is looking.

    There is only one me who can show them that when people let us down, which is inevitable, we can still be happy and have lives that we love.

    There is only one me after they go to sleep, working hard to reign in my horror and frustration that people drink, play, laugh, post selfies and talk about love and happiness while children spent the week at doctor appointments. When children see that hypocrisy and selfishness for themselves, there’s only one me to say I don’t have an explanation and it’s tone-deaf and it’s wrong.

    There is only one me to teach them that forgiveness benefits us, even if others don’t deserve it and even if it benefits them and their narrative.

    There is only one me responsible if I make the wrong call about everything from their health care to shirts that show midriff. Only one me to fret at the end of long days that I’m not doing a very good job at all.

    There is only one me. Only one me who sometimes gets stuck in a pity party. Only one me who sometimes gets caught up in a panic about getting it all done and the weight of it all.

    There is only one me who can give them a happy, healthy Momma.

    There is only one me, constantly thankful for Papa Ted and Grammy and Papa. Constantly thankful for my sister. Constantly thankful for my neighbors and friends who love my girls and have hugs and encouragement for them and me at just the right time.

    There is only one me thankful every day that I get to be the Mom of Ella and Audrey. Thankful even for days of extreme ups and downs with everything from doctor appointments to strawberry picking to silly shoe shopping to arguments in the car to cartwheels in Sams Club.

    The truth is, there has always been only one me. There is only one me, and I am more than enough. There is only one me, and I am human and make mistakes. There is only one me, and I will apologize and fix it when I do. There is only one me, and I got this.

    There is only one me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  • April Fool’s Birthday Girl

    Fourteen years ago, in the middle of the night, I was doing the exact same thing as I am right at this moment: laying in bed with my daughter just a few feet away, marveling about her.

    Ella was born not long after midnight, on April 1. After all the post-delivery chaos of Apgar scores and examinations and congratulations, everyone went home and I was alone in a dimly lit hospital room with Ella. I had a daughter, a little swaddled baby making faint sighing noises in her sleep. I was a mother, and it was really just remarkable and unbelievable that a life had come from me. We were a team now, me and this little being with giant blue eyes that had seemed to look all around my face when I whispered to her. We were a team and that little girl should have been terrified because the Mom on her team had absolutely no idea how to care for a baby or what she was doing.

    I wasn’t a child who’d dreamed of being a Mommy. I wasn’t a teenager who’d babysat to make extra money. I wasn’t a person who held other people’s babies. In the more than three decades of my life prior to Ella’s birth, I’m not sure if I held any baby other than my nephew – and that was always supervised by people who knew what they were doing. My poor kid had a Mom with a very short resume. I’d gone to a class to learn how to breathe consistently during her birth process, I’d learned in that class that I had to always always always hold and support her neck and head, I’d read a couple of books about babies and I’d even read ahead in the infamous What to Expect the First Year manual, and a nurse maybe 30 minutes prior showed me how to give her a bath. At any Mom company on the planet, I would not get the job.

    Ella is 14 years old today. So the good news is that despite my lack of qualifications and preparedness, I did manage to keep her alive. Although I’m not sure that’s really much of an accomplishment. What you learn as your child ages and as you have multiple children is that they’re built pretty tough and I could have probably better utilized my countless hours fretting about things like possible milk or nut or bee allergies, could she get botulism if honey was simply nearby, when to switch from car seats to booster seats, and even if french fries with pointed ends could be too stabby in her mouth.

    The real fretting settles in later, and seems especially heightened at this stage. The real question to fret over is am I guiding her toward being a good person? Or maybe it’s could her life be better if I did something differently? Or maybe it’s have I laid a solid moral foundation? Or maybe it’s am I properly protecting her from bad stuff and bad people? Or maybe it’s am I properly preparing her to inevitably face bad stuff and bad people? Or maybe it’s am I setting a proper example? Or maybe it’s have I prepared her to say no and yes at the proper times?

    There is no end to the things I can fret about, and sometimes I just get exasperated with all the fretting I cannot seem to relinquish and I think I should have stuck to raising cats – I am certain I can do that! And yet I must explore all these questions and constantly assess and reassess what’s missing and what’s off and what’s right and what’s wrong. I have to do that because I’m a Mom, and because my greatest responsibility and privilege is to be her Mom. No other responsibility or people or thoughts or desires or work are more important than her and Audrey, or than what I need to do as a Mom.

    I’ve never been one of those people that wanted to throw their kids giant birthday celebrations every year. It’s exhausting to plan and host those events and it’s exhausting to take your kids to them throughout the school year. Last year we had a party because Ella was finally a teenager and because I wanted to bring her joy in a time of confusion and sadness and anger. And so until about a week ago I’d expected to have a quiet birthday with her this year. She started talking about having a friend or two over and then another friend and then another, and then it was going to need to be different people on different nights and I found myself panicking at the thought of having very little time to prepare. And just as all the panic was at its peak, I realized that Ella has only four birthdays left in her official childhood. Four. Four is nothing. A tiny number. How could there possibly be only four childhood birthdays remaining?

    So we celebrated. We had two sleepovers, two cakes and a set of cupcakes, stacks of facial scrubs and masks, trampoline jumping way after bed time, shopping with gal pals at the mall, singing at Olive Garden, and countless pieces of candy. I’m exhausted and my house is even messier than the mess it was last week. I have a recycle bin full of empty pizza boxes, a basket full of laundry, a trash can full of makeup wipes and KitKat wrappers, and a Momma heart full of gratitude.

    I am grateful for Ella, a young lady who’s lovely inside and out. A kind and thoughtful friend. A super smart math whiz. A talented singer and actor and gymnast. A child of God who prays about everything, from the need for guidance about big issues to finding her phone charger. A young lady full of empathy and the desire to care for people who struggle. She may not keep her room clean, but she will take money out of her own wallet for CHKD or to feed the homeless or to buy a treat for a friend who’s feeling down.

    I am grateful for the village of people in her life. I am grateful for the choices she’s now making about what kind of people to add to her village – I may have made the initial choices about who surrounded her, but she’s old enough to make her own choices about those things now, and she’s choosing well. And I am grateful that she’s such a wonderful young person despite all my flaws and mess ups.

    In the stillness of night tonight, in a dimly lit room just like on our first night, I laid quietly by myself and prayed for sweet Ella. No matter what she may encounter in her life I want her to know deep inside and beyond a shadow of a doubt – or as my Dad would say “that she knows that she knows that she knows” – that she is loved beyond measure and that it is a privilege to be her Mom. I pray that she would love life and be filled with joy. I pray that she would get into the college she wants and have the career that she wants and get the life partner that’s just right for her and that she will keep her priorities straight. I pray that when she’s happy or sad or mad or has messed up or done something great, she will always want to call her Mom. And I pray that I will always have discernment about how to pray for her and how to guide her and how to be a blessing to her.

    Happy Birthday, Brave Girl. I love that you are 14 and still call me Mommy, even when your friends are around. In exchange, I will no longer publicly chase you to smother those perfect cheeks with kisses.

    Picture submitted by and approved by Ella.

  • The Stormiest Part of the Storm

    Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Earthquakes. Landslides. Fires. Volcanic eruptions. Diagnoses. Divorces. Death of loved one. Car accidents. Addiction. A child in trouble. War. Oppression. Terrorism.

    There are so many kinds of storms.

    People think I’m crazy for living in a place that’s prone to hurricanes. But I think it’s significantly more crazy to live in a place that’s prone to earthquakes. You don’t even know those are coming! Don’t even get me started on the level of crazy I think San Francisco folk have to be to leave their cars in potential cement death traps like parking garages. That’s just stupid C-R-A-Z-Y.

    With Florence headed toward the east coast, I’ve been thinking a lot about storms this week – storms we can prepare for versus storms we can’t. And what is the definition of storm, really? Is it just anything that is unsettling? Webster tells us storms can be a variety of things.

    • a disturbance of the atmosphere marked by wind and usually by rain, snow, hail, sleet, or thunder and lightning
    • a disturbed or agitated state, such as storms of emotion
    • a heavy discharge of objects, such as missiles
    • a tumultuous outburst
    • a violent assault on a defended position

    Perhaps the biggest storm of this week has been me. I am disturbed and in an agitated state and I have had outbursts. For the first time in two decades, I am facing a storm of weather that has the potential to greatly impact people I love and I have no one to rely on but me. No one to make decisions with. No one to second guess my logic or bounce ideas off of. No one to double check my list of to dos. If I make a bad decision about evacuating or don’t get enough food or water, people I love could really be impacted and it will solely be my responsibility and my fault. And that burden feels large.

    And you know what’s really silly? I have always really relied mostly on me because that’s just how I am, even when someone is standing next to me. Even if I had someone else in this house right now to bounce ideas off of and check my to dos, I would go with my gut on what to do and then blame myself if something went wrong. I’m a planner and I’m an organizer and I know that’s not everyone’s thing – and because I’m a little neurotic about lists and spreadsheets and planning (maybe more than a little neurotic), if something is missed or goes really awry, I am serious about going back through my checklist to figure out what the heck I was thinking.

    The one thing all storms have in common, I’ve decided, is that we truly can’t plan for them and they all kind of suck. OK that’s two things. Storms we don’t know are coming feel like a punch in the gut and that’s awful. But storms we can see looming on the horizon cause so much anxiety and stress that I think the knowing and waiting is actually the stormiest part of the storm. Is one kind of storm really any better than the other?

    We tend to define and even categorize whole time periods of our lives by storms. Life before a heart attack. Life after the death of loved one. Life before a job ended. Life after someone makes it to the other side of an addiction. Life before “the war.” Life after 9/11. Today is September 11, and with looking at just a few images I am easily transported right back to that day of surprise and uncertainty and overwhelming sadness. All of our lives have changed since that day – everything from our country’s foreign policy to air travel to our sense of overall safety within our borders.

    I tend to think of storms as an occasional small thing in the big scheme of things, but the truth is that storms are actually a pretty substantial part of all of our lives – and how we handle them and what we learn from them (or not) impacts the remainder of each of our lives greatly. One of the biggest lessons for me, and actually one of the great things about storms, is the way people come together to help and support one another. We see the worst of people in storms and we see the best of people in storms. Look for the helpers, Mr. Rogers would always say. Helpers are first responders, and helpers are family and neighbors and friends and teachers and doctors and nurses and counselors and people from Starbucks that we kinda know but not really, and even complete strangers.

    I allowed myself to get sucked into a pity party for a bit today. Because I forgot for a bit that it’s also my job to be a helper in a storm – to be a sister and a daughter and a neighbor and a company leader and a friend. I probably can’t get your generator working (God Bless Mark from Starbucks who helped me!), but I can call a friend who lives alone to make sure they have a plan and enough medicine.

    I allowed myself to get sucked into a pity party for a bit today, because I forgot for a bit that one of my jobs as a helper and as a Mom is to project calm and not add chaos. And in a moment of divine intervention at just the right moment today, I came across this gem – and I literally laughed out loud as I thought it might be easier for God to hush the waves of the sea than it is to still the Storm that is sometimes me.

    IMG_E5528

  • Brave Girls ARE the storm.

    Brave Girls ARE the storm.

    Urban Dictionary has some very interesting – and some pretty hilarious – definitions for family.

    • It’s not necessarily about who’s blood you have, or who you’re forced to spend the holidays with. It’s about people you love and they love you back.
    • A bunch of people who hate each other and eat dinner together.
    • People you love who love you back, not necessarily blood or biological, but you trust them and they trust you, and they take care of you and you take care of them.
    • People who get into your business.
    • Family is not defined by shared DNA. It is defined by the people who love you as much as you love them; they are the ones you call and the ones who will never let you fall. They are the ones you trust with everything and anything, and you know that you will never let each other down.

    I lucked out big time in the family department. I grew up in a household with parents who loved me, who worked hard to provide for us, and who spent their time with us and their energy on us. I came home from school to parents who asked me about my day and then we all sat down to dinner together every night. My Dad is a prankster who can make Grace seem longer than any Catholic mass, my sister is a donut thief, and my Mom has a super-secret personal Scrabble dictionary that allows her to spell balloon with one L and win by 142 points.

    My family isn’t perfect, but we love each other unconditionally. We are a unit, we can trust each other, we can count on each other, and perhaps most importantly we are ourselves with each other.

    It never once occurred to me that my girls would not have that family unit – that home with Mom and Dad and those secret inside jokes and shared experiences only the 4 of you know. That complete trust in their parents and that freedom to be themselves at any and all times. And more than everything else that I’ve fretted about and worried about and been sad about in the last 8 months combined, I have mourned that.

    I have mourned that my girls will not have the family unit they should have.

    The family unit they deserve.

    Frankly, it really pisses me off because it was stolen from them. It was stolen from them by people who made very selfish choices and thought nothing of the impact their decisions and behavior would have on two innocent children. But as the anger has subsided a bit, I’ve thought a lot about the fact that roughly half of all marriages end in divorce and so at least half of our nation’s children grow up without that intact family unit. Why is that? How does that happen? Is it that people in our time have turned away from faith, that we’ve normalized divorce on TV, we play too many video games or spend too much time on our phones, we’ve sexualized everything on all kinds of media, or we’re smoking pot legally in all kinds of states? The list of possibilities seems endless, and yet it seems like none of those things are it.

    And so I began to wonder…if we don’t come from a “whole” family unit or our family unit is broken in some way, do we really value family as much as others? Because how can you really know what you missed out on when you never had it?

    And are you then more likely to grow up and enter into relationships which are more likely to end in divorce? Statistically speaking, you can find numbers to support the Yes and the No sides of that question. But as I’ve rolled all of these things around in my head over and over and over again, I’ve started to think that I am not sure that people who are raised in a “whole” family unit and people who are raised in a “broken” family can even really understand the life of the other. And if that’s true, can someone from a “broken” home really even grasp what people and children will miss out on if they don’t grow up in a “whole” family unit? Maybe not?

    Maybe not.

    Maybe. Not.

    And if that maybe not is true, then I can’t be as angry about something that people don’t even have the ability to understand. It’s like being mad at someone for not understanding Spanish when they have never read or heard Spanish before. And suddenly my sail has less angry wind in it.

    That’s how this process works – the divorce/grief healing process. It’s a repeated assessment of an angry wind in your sail, until one day you’ve been through all the reasons for angry winds and all the angry is gone.

    Brave girls don’t run from those reasons. Brave girls think about those reasons one by one. I can do that. Brave girls get through all of the reasons for the anger and then the anger is gone. I’m not there yet.

    My aunt and my cousins visited us this weekend. I absolutely love time with family. I love sitting and talking for hours. I love overeating and telling old stories and taking photos and laughing at bathroom jokes. I love getting to know the children of my first cousins – the girls I was so excited to see each Christmas that I would stand at my Mama’s front window and count cars until theirs pulled into the driveway. They have children now – boys who are almost grown – who love history and games, who have jobs, who are kind and thoughtful, and who giggled with my daughters in a pew at the back of my church. I love that we worshipped together.

    We are a unit. We have shared DNA running through all of us. I may no longer be able to give my girls a “traditional” home with a Mom and Dad and board games after dinner. But I can give them family who love them and who they love back. Family with whom they have shared experiences. Family with whom they can look at angry waves and stand surrounded by angry waters as they feel angry winds hit their faces. Family that makes them feel so loved, they can face that anger and then turn away from the chaos and smile.

    “Fate whispers to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the storm.”

    The warrior whispers back, “I am the storm.”