Posts tagged “trust

Durable Ribbons

Posted on September 19, 2011

Every once in a while I hesitate about a post. I learned a long time ago that some things, even though they are a part of my life, are not mine to tell. Still,  I’m pretty honest here, though there is an increasing awareness of how proprietary some of this is getting as the girls get bigger. Sometimes I write posts and delete them or just save them in draft form, catharsis without life on the internet. Other times I feel like I need to hit publish and put it out there. Discovering that you can’t teach something hurts. All the wonderful intentions I had to mold certain characteristics in our girls have slipped through my fingers like so much sand. Suddenly the time between…

+Read more

My Sweet Chaos

Posted on July 22, 2011

The girls are home. I cried while they were gone. A lot. I walked past their bedrooms trying not to get caught up in the twisted sheets and discarded clothes all wrapped up in their summery scent of cut grass, lake water and cheesey-snack dust. Then the first morning without them came and the room pulled me in. I ran my fingers along the blocks they’d connected. “Mom, did you see how we made rooms and how the ones sticking out by the planet come together and make a chair? You make chairs with blocks, so we did it like you. Do you love it most of all?” I stood inside the block kingdom and let the sunlight that had drawn me in wash…

+Read more

Lonely

Posted on June 28, 2011

I have three friends suffering right now. Their stories are all distinct, and in truth I don’t know the whole of any of them, but I know enough to see and hear that they are in pain. Family, self, struggle. We all have things that weigh upon us more heavily than they might others, but it’s in those shifts and varying colors that the true beauty of each of us lives. I find myself wishing I had just the right thing to say, the perfect gesture to make or the power to fix it. Instead I try to be steady in my presence. A few days ago I caught a glimpse of something in the sky that tickled at my subconscious. It felt like…

+Read more

Break My Stride

Posted on July 27, 2010

I thought parenting was humbling, the flashes of thinking I’d be able to do it all, the fantasies of avoiding the ruts, the memories of choices my parents made that I questioned. Six years on the doing side of parenting and I realize how often we have to react as opposed to decide, that even when we anticipate, prepare and account for every eventuality, something unexpected happens—a bill, an invite or an unintended slight. It is as if you are swimming in deep water and juggling balls and just as you find your groove the balls are spritzed with oil. You can touch them, maybe even latch on for a time, but before you know it, despite your best efforts, they slip from your…

+Read more

Maybe it will

Posted on May 29, 2010

We were gathered on the porch waiting for Sean to come home. My hair was dancing around my face in a neener-neener-it’s-humid halo and my feet were grubby and battered from puttering barefoot all morning. My arms were wrapped around my knees as I leaned back into the bench watching them. Three stair step heads, swinging tousled tresses out of pale, bright and dark blue eyes. They were swinging legs and arms every which way over the balustrade and making sounds of exuberance that exhausted and lifted me at once. A navy masked bird of some variety kept swooping low and alighting on the birdfeeder before dashing away as if the girls were giving chase. “Mama, why’s he go so fast like that?” Briar…

+Read more