Goodbye 2018: thoughts as we bid it adieu

We returned home yesterday from Christmas with my family in Louisiana, and the trip, an unexpected 12+ hours, was utterly horrific. It involved everything from no available food to multiple missed flights, to gate agents closing the doors in my and the boys’ faces to a “customer service” representative behaving so badly that I ended up sobbing. We finally got home at midnight, and I slept fitfully.

Nonetheless, we are fortunate, and I hold that front and center. We’re home, safe, warm, and so loved. Several days ago, four generations of us played a spirited round of Hearts- Jack, Ol, me, my mom, my dad’s mom who turned 93 that very day. The next day, Mom and I brought flowers to Nanny’s grave. We rearranged the scattered rocks into the hearts shaped by Oliver years ago. Then I hugged my niece and nephew once more. We’re lucky.

As we close out 2018-Tom and I well-fed and Nutmeg purring next to us, the boys with our other nieces at my mother-in-law’s having the best time (they are such great cousins) and a slumber party- there is no way that I’ll make it to midnight. That’s fine.

I know I’ve not been in this space nearly as much this year as in past; I think that’s how things will remain, for a variety of reasons. In the meantime, I  thought I’d leave you with a few of my thoughts before one last episode of Killing Eve.

1. Thank you. From oldest to newest, those I’ve met through and because of Em-i-lis continue to make me feel so lucky. Eli, Amanda, Christine, Elan, Monika, and on and on. I love knowing you. I’m glad you’re out there.

2. Follow your heart and your inner voice. That sounds cheesy, especially this time of year, but what I mean is, trust yourself. If someone isn’t actually a good friend, leave or change the relationship. If you’ve always want to try something, do. If you want to meet someone or get to know them better, reach out. If you think some help might be positive, find it. Therapy is great.

3. Consider the difference between healthy competition and its ugly kin, toxic one-upping. If you’re a parent, please keep in mind what messages you share with your children. Don’t make their worth contingent on diminishing other kids’ value. Don’t snitch, don’t try to out, don’t compare. It’s ugly, it’s sad, it invalidates everything your child might be or is. It makes them see others as competition versus colleagues. It makes you, well, you figure it out. There’s room for all of us. There really is. Be the good. Please.

4. Politically, for those inclined, the fight is ahead of us. After Trump, we will need to heal. It will be hard and it’s going to take a very long time. Stand your ground but remain open. Relativism serves no one. If everything is offensive, nothing is. Some things are wrong. End of story. Others are based on perspective, worthy of discussion. For racism, for example, there is no room. It makes all of us less. For real, fact-based political discourse, there is all the room. It makes all of us better. Please consider your beliefs malleable. Those who act as drying concrete only serve to entrench polarization. Read. Be informed. Be willing to learn. Be willing to change if the facts suggest it worthy to do so. Stand for what is right.

5. Be kind. Be generous. Give. Serve. In any way, in all ways you can. Your family, neighbors, strangers, animals, the earth, those in dire need. I promise you that generosity feels so good. I know that most if not all of you know that. I’m just thinking about how kindness really goes such a long way, and how much so many need some right now.

6. Words matter. They impact and count, so be accurate, think before you speak, respond rather than react when you can. Try to steer clear of nuance’less thinking; little is black or white. 

Goodnight, be well, here’s to a 2019 that is truly better for all of us.

What we're loath to say

There are days in which the degree of highs and lows takes me clear by surprise. In my 40s, I increasingly rarely feel actual surprise. Disappointment? For sure. Disgust? Yep. A grim sort of foregone conclusion? Uh huh.

But outright surprise is harder to come by these days and is usually reserved for horrors like untimely death. Or the continued cancer of the current “president.” How that man gets grosser and grosser is truly astounding, but maybe that’s my naiveté and ever-hopefulness.

In any case, what I will say is that there are moments in which parenting cuts you off at the knees so brutally, so painfully, so egregiously, and so quickly that it takes your breath away. The method of harm, the size of the input force, is not directly correlated to the degree of issue or transgression; that, further, is part of the gasping pain.

I have largely stopped writing about parental challenges, recognizing that my boys, as they grow up, are more aware of what I do and share, more private and rightfully so, and more distinct as formed (forming) humans. Their voices are theirs; their lives belong to them. The space I have left as their mother, in terms of writing and public processing, is increasingly small. This is as it should be, in my opinion. What remains is MY experience as their mom, what I can capture as personal experience distinct from theirs.

This terrain is less charted with regards to the “mommy blog” and pediatric spheres. Sure, you have a general sense of tweendom, but each tween is such a unique being, interplaying in such specific ways with their hormones, family, peers, school, classes, personal struggles, interests, identities, and so forth. What you can expect at 12 years is infinitely more complicated, generally speaking, that what you can expect at 12 months. Perhaps this is actually what makes parenting adolescents so vexing: each of us is always dealing with a new challenge.

I’m actually not much interested, tonight, in delving into research or generalizations. What I am is tired and furious and in love and sad and over it. And tomorrow looms. And that stops for nothing.

What I want to say but am sometimes shy to say; what I think so many of us want to say but are loath to for a variety of reasons that irk the shit out of me, is that sometimes this whole parenting gig just sucks. It sucks and blows so hard that it takes my breath away and renders me speechless and pissed.

It leaves me having spent all day making a special meal to find myself standing in my pjs with the show I’d been wanting to watch all day on pause because a note from a teacher just came about a missed assignment that was now a zero and suddenly, everyone is screaming and in tears. Is someone kidding? It’s both real and absurd. It’s the complete opposite of how I envisioned tonight and so very much wanted it to be.

At the end of the day, the gumbo was one of the best I’ve made, and the fighting and crying probably made us closer, and that show isn’t that good anyway. But still. It all felt so damn fraught and not remotely easy and also not remotely efficient or timely, and seriously, WTF?

The gumbo was loved and there is more for tomorrow. The banjo was played, and lovingly so. The paper will be better, but still a deserved zero. The book remains forgotten at school for another damn day. The Bach on the piano is being studiously avoided. The wine bottle is less full. We are all tired. And maybe this is the best of family, and the worst, and real life. But sometimes I sure wish it was easier.

Thoughts and musings and miscellany

I met with a student this morning; seeing her always makes me happy. All of my students do. I love teenagers that aren’t mine. I say that without knowing of course, being that my boys are not yet teens. But if moods are an indicator, and if moods get worse as teen years advance and if all my friends relay accurate information, well, then, I maintain that I love spending time with teenagers that aren’t mine.

In any case, I am so grateful that I took the plunge and started Elucido. Through it I’ve met some really wonderful people, and it feels enormously good and fulfilling to do something beyond parenting. Something that utilizes my education and skills in a broader way; something through which I earn money; something through which I enlarge my community and can give back.

Earlier today, this popped up in my Facebook feed, a memory from three years ago:

Stunning, isn’t it. Thank you, Roger Cohen. (This was in one of his columns in the New York Times.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately- those we are born into, grow up with and in, choose, make, opt out of and away from. Those we participate in directly and indirectly, in real life and online. I feel lucky to be part of many communities. Through them and in them I feel tethered to life and the world. I feel a duty to them. Not in a drafted, forcible sense, but in a compassionate obligatory way. I think that’s what holds society together. It’s stewardship. Connection. Loving thy neighbor, if you will.

I see this sort of intermutual care in so many of my communities. Meal Trains, a call for cards to a recently separated friend, acts of goodness in honor of a child gone too soon, candles lit by agnostics in houses of worship on behalf of believers in need, neighbors driving neighbors to the train, people boosting each other up left and right, from near and far.

We need this love, more of it. We need it for the people we know who are scared or hurting, who are sick or divorcing, burying a child or having one. We need it for elders who live alone, for neighbors who lose beloved pets, for those who are stressed about finances, for those who struggle with mental unhealth and benefit from stigma not at all. We need it for our brothers and sisters of any sexual orientation or religious belief or cultural heritage.

And yet for all of this beauty I do witness, I am equally struck by the appalling intolerance and bigotry and outright celebration of lies that is as pronounced. Where compassion knits people together, ugliness rips the threads that bind. Why do so many still opt for the latter?

I am deeply sorry for all who hurt. But for the life of me I cannot figure out where lying and making lynching jokes (Cindy Hyde-Smith) and cheating to win (Brian Kemp as one of many examples) and extolling Christian virtues while excusing the complete abdication of them in your leaders gets us. I know this sounds naive. But the bar for decency seems to be getting lower and lower. Or maybe it’s a divide between what constitutes decency? What decency is worth?

I read this excellent article this morning and urge you to do the same. “Why Is Being Held Accountable So Terrifying Under Patriarchy?” Is it about accountability? About white male dominance? Is it simply about being right and wanting what you want?

Can we, instead of rightness and winning, seek diligence and discipline? Can we seek to honor truth and effectiveness, discarding falsehoods of all kinds? Can we make the gestures? Can we perhaps look to connection and tolerance, rather than walls and guns, as ways to keep bad things, bad luck as Cohen may have called it, at bay?