Life’s Continuum

New year…  New goals…  New you…

There is all too often an assumption that life starts anew with each year.  Somehow we expect to break away from who we have been for far too long and start from scratch.  We forget that life doesn’t start over with a new year.  Old obligations, old habits, and who we are as people aren’t connected to an on and off switch.  Life runs with no pause button.

The older I get the more I realize that life doesn’t simply change overnight.  Sure, there are events that can make us feel as though it has.  Losing a loved one or a job can feel like the end of our world.  Life does move along though, it runs on a continuum.   What’s the mature, logical approach to setting goals in a new year?  Is there a purpose to make goals that coincide with a new year or is something we keep doing more out of habit than out of a desire to really make change?

Last spring I set out on a goal for a new me.  It wasn’t a new year’s resolution; it was just something I wanted for me.  It was small at first.  I saw a picture of myself and I hated the way I looked.  Honestly, I hated the way I felt in my skin every day.  Something sparked and slowly but surely over several months I found myself thirty pounds lighter and infinitely more confident.  I found myself happy.  It wasn’t an overnight change or just one thing.  Mostly – it wasn’t easy all this change.  It was hard work and a concentrated effort.  It was me choosing to embrace all the beauty the world placed before me and leave my mark on it.  It was me in the dirt learning how to grow food, teaching my children that the earth offers bounty if we work hard to make it a reality.  It was me getting up and DOING rather than talking.  And it was happiness.

A few months before the hands of time turned the page to a new year I found myself facing another life changing event.  Then two short weeks later I was faced with the reality that the change that was supposed to be happening wasn’t going to.  Life was placed in my womb and then fleetingly taken away.  I had two choices – anger and giving up; or acceptance and a decision to push forward no matter what and make the changes I wanted for myself.   I spent a few weeks wallowing in the self-pity and the despair.  I was angry with the world, disappointed in my body.  But then I was inspired to make even more changes.  I kept finding that when I let it, this big universe started revealing more wonders and more hope to me than I could’ve ever dreamed up on my own.  I was reminded that life is always fleeting and if we want to make something out of our short time here on this earth then we have to work for it.  There is never just one way to a goal.

Life is laid out before us as one big map with lots of roads that we can choose to travel down.  How far we go and how we get there is entirely up to us.  And that my friends, well that’s a beautiful journey just waiting to happen.

I Didn’t Marry My ‘First’ Love…And I’m Okay With That

I didn’t marry my first love…and I’m  okay with that.  It seems like a crazy thing to admit for a woman who is happily married with two children, but I’m admitting it because I think it’s important to remind people that real love stories are not like the movies or those novels we so love to engross ourselves in.  Real love happens over time, in ways we don’t often expect.  Real love often happens when we’ve given up and are on the precipice of an all-consuming darkness.

I love to hear a good love story.  A real love story.  One with lots of plot twists.  And you’ll hook me every single time if there is a point where it seems as if the ‘main characters’ won’t actually end up together.  For me, that’s the point of no return, I have to know what will happen after that.

I’ve loved love for as long as I can remember.  As a young teen, perhaps even a preteen, I dreamed of love.  I wanted so badly to be swept up in someone else.  I wanted someone to make me forget who I was and create a new life.  I wanted to be simply enveloped in love…  Always in a rush, always thinking too far ahead for my age, the idea of love bit me early and hard.  I wrote notebooks full of songs and stories about love.  The longing of it, the inevitable loss.  Those early years spent experimenting in ‘dates’ that only meant we held hands in school and wrote little notes back and forth were just the beginning of my journey to find what love truly is.

We aren’t born knowing true love, not true romantic love.  True love doesn’t even happen instantly…it takes years to develop.  It takes mistakes, forgiveness, and above all, compromise.  True love is not the moment your eyes locked with the person you decided to spent the rest of your life with.  True love is continuing to love that person even when they make you angry.  True love is fighting for that person, crying with that person, forging a life together when the world seems to want nothing more than to tear you both apart.

I still remember the way new love feels…I remember it because occasionally my husband and I still spend nights whispering under covers, giggling about things no one else would find funny, and tracing each other’s lips with our fingertips.  I still remember the spark you feel down your spine as his hand brushes your lower back.  The way goosebumps inch their way down your arms when he kisses the small of your neck…  I remember because it still happens.  Almost a decade later – he still makes me feel like I’m the most beautiful person he’s ever laid eyes on.  All those seemingly small things, those small reminders of new, fresh, exciting love are what make love true.

I’m not a believer in love at first sight, but I am a believer in knowing when there’s something special between two people.  I didn’t instantly love my husband when I met him.  I’ve never instantly loved anyone in my life except my two children.  Even with them, it took time to forge a bond.  However, it didn’t take me long to feel a connection with my husband when we met.  I couldn’t tell you what it was, even now, that drew me to him.  But it was there, it was heavy, and it tormented me day and night.  You see, our story is one of those stories full of plot twists.  I couldn’t write a more unbelievable story if I tried…and trust me, I have a passion for writing about love. It’s a story I’ll sit down to tell one day and it’ll leave you on the edge of your seat if you don’t know it all.  No one knows it all except he and I.  Our story has always been a bit of our secret and I’ve enjoyed that.

I’ll never be one of those people who can claim they married their high school sweetheart.  I’ll never proudly proclaim to teenage children that I’ve only ever had one real love or been with one person so they should wait for that one special person.  Nor would I want to.  I can tell you that I am thankful for every experience I’ve had to feel love and explore it.  I can tell you that finding the right person to love is not easy, but it can be an amazing ride.  There are different degrees of love, but anytime we open our hearts to another person we open ourselves up to learn.  We learn about ourselves and about what it takes to make a relationship work.  We learn what we do and don’t want in a partner.  We learn what we should and shouldn’t do for and to ourselves.  All the chances to love are also chances to grow.  Whether it’s a small first love that consists of nothing more than love notes, or a big life changing event that breaks us into a million pieces when it’s over…it’s love.  While love can end, what we felt in those moments does not change.  Therefore, I’m thankful.  I’m thankful to have grown and loved and lived.  And to have found my person – the one whose love for me and mine for him does not fade, but grows.  The love whose been there when I was at my worst and loved me harder.  Those are the ones we hold onto, those are the ones that are real.

I didn’t marry my first love…but I married my true love.  And in the grand scheme of life…true love is far more valuable than the first…

A Bit of Pretty

I’m a lover of cute clothes, converse in fifty colors and designs, fresh picked or growing flowers, bright eyeshadow, pretty hairpins, vintage items, and anything that makes me feel happy.  I’m convinced we all need a bit of pretty in our lives.  Luckily, it comes in many forms.

The last month of my life has been largely devoted to myself.  I know, I know, what a selfish concept for a woman with two young children.  But, it was necessary.  I wasn’t happy with myself and when you aren’t happy with you then you aren’t really happy with anything else.  I’ve done a lot of container gardening with my children and we planted some pretty flowers outside yesterday.  We planted a little curvy, waving line of sunflower seeds in the backyard that I’m hoping my children will LOVE when they start growing taller than they are over the next couple of months.

I even dug out my hair rollers and curling irons from their lonely spots in the back of the linen closet.  And… I’ve taken time to wear makeup more because it was always something I loved experimenting with.  My lovely, sweet, fantastically amazing husband (yes, he deserves all those adjectives) even took me out to dinner (just the two of us) and shopping for Mother’s Day.  I’ve been on a path to living a healthier lifestyle.  I don’t really want to call it a diet, because it really isn’t that.  It’s much more than that.  It’s been me learning how to eat healthy and enjoy exercise.  It’s been me taking care of myself instead of putting myself at the bottom of the list.  Less TV and internet, more…living.  It’s been lovely and I fully intend to make this way of living a permanent one.

My reason for sharing all this is a hope that it will inspire other women to do the same.  To find that something, those somethings, that make YOU feel pretty inside and out.  It could be taking time to start reading again, painting, gardening, cooking…just living.  Whatever it is that makes you feel alive, do it and let go of the excuses as to why you can’t.

We so easily leave behind little parts of ourselves every single year.  Maybe the piano lessons had to go when you got the promotion, the tennis went with the birth of your second child… We get busy with work, children, and all those other obligations that slowly take away little pieces of who we used to be.  Life is about change and change can be a very good thing, but I sincerely believe we need to keep a part of who we once ‘were’ to stay happy.  We have to understand what parts of our being are integral to our happiness and feed them; let them thrive.

Spiritual nourishment comes in many forms.  For some it’s religion, for others it takes on a whole other being.  I’m an artistic soul at heart.  I have always found comfort in some form of art – music, writing, anything that lets me express myself.  Creativity is my outlet, the thing that comes in and heals my wounds.  It gives me strength and hope.  Without it, I start to feel caged and pent-up.  I start to lose who I am and I retreat.  I’m also a highly emotional person so I react strongly to the loss of something. We all react in some way.  Whether it seems small or large, it’s important to give yourself the outlet that YOU need.  It’s also important to allow the other people in your life their outlet.

The latter of those two, I’m pretty bad at.  While my husband and I have many things in common, there are things that we each love and the other has no interest in.  I hate sports….always have.  I’m not too crazy about superheroes and comics either.  My husband loves them all, but isn’t into gardening, sewing, writing, or most of my artistic endeavors.  We find common ground in music and travel.  I am really horrible at letting him have his time to enjoy the things I don’t love so much.  It is something I am promising myself to try better at.  Luckily, my sons provide sidekicks for BOTH of our interests as they love anything we do.  They bring us together.  They’re happy to try it all and I should take a cue from them.  Who knows what you might really enjoy if you give it a shot.

Whatever your ‘bit of pretty’ is, try it.  Immerse yourself in it and indulge the part of living that makes you feel whole and complete.  Our lives really aren’t that long and with so much to experience in this world each of us deserve to fully enjoy it.

The Best Years of Your Life

While in highschool, I remember being told over and over to enjoy it because these years would be the best years of my life…And inside I always screamed, “God, I hope not.”  Luckily, everyone that told me that was wrong.

Sure, there are aspects of my overall childhood that were amazing.  Playing was my job.  That in itself is just an amazing thing.  Highlights that I always remember fondly:

• Frozen cherry Kool-Aid in recycled Coke bottles.  Thank you Granny for that perfect summer treat.  I still crave these if I’ve been working outside or if I’ve been swimming.
• My sister and I playing school in my Pa’s hay barn.  There wasn’t much as magical as seeing hay stacked up to the ceiling and stacking other bales to climb upon it.
• Bean snapping day week.  Buckets and buckets of beans to be stringed and snapped.  My Granny and Granny Ollie (my great-grandmother) all gathered around the kitchen table working on those beans.
• Playing volleyball with my grandparent’s house.  Always being told not to hit the windows, but not being told to stop it.
• Mama letting me play grocery store as we put away all the groceries every week.  Not fussing as I took my time to ‘scan’ each item and put it away.
• Hours spent on our swing set.  I still remember Mama putting it together.  Showing her how I could ‘skin a cat’ on the bars AND from the top of the swing set.
• Playing tag with Mama, quickly turning around to go the opposite way to catch her as she exclaimed, “You’re so smart.”
• Middle school sleepovers full of candy, Teen magazine, Backstreet Boys, and ‘N Sync.
• School dances where no one wanted to dance at first, someone ended up crying in the bathroom, and then we actually danced and never wanted to stop.
• Fall festivals and helping put them together.
• Innocent first kisses and hand holding.
• Trips with friends to skating rinks and the movies.
• Friday night football games.

So, yes, childhood was awesome.  And even some of those high school years weren’t that bad.  But the best?  Nope.  I think I’m living my best right here.

Why?  Because I’m watching my children do all those things that I loved so much to do.  I see the joy in their eyes when I say we’re going to grandma’s.  I see the love of discovering the world and the carefree abandon as they play.  Through them, I see a return to innocence.  I see them live in worlds where they don’t know wrong can happen.

As my children grow, part of me aches for my babies.  I long for them to be so tiny that I can hold them in a little ball at my chest.  I also beam with pride at the people they are becoming.  Each, “Thank you,” “Excuse me,” “Let me help you…” leaves me happy that they are learning what I have tried to teach them.  I am excited for school, sleepovers, school sports, dances, and fall festivals.  I am terrified of first dates and learner’s permits.   I know that while I sit at home digging through old photos, they’ll be having the same fun and making similar memories as those that I did.  And if I’m lucky, and I do my job as their parent well, they’ll come home and share at least a small snippet with me.

The best years of your life won’t be the nine you spend in elementary and middle school.  They won’t be the four you spend in high school, or the four in college.  The best years of your life will be the eighteen you spend raising each child.

A whole world traverses across those eighteen years.  You watch the birth, the development, and the discovery of every single basic part of life we know.  You’ll see love, heartbreak, defeat, and triumph.  You’ll offer support, courage, camaraderie…love.

This stage of my life may not be the richest, the calmest, or the most put together but make no mistake it is the best.  I am reaping the richest rewards I will ever know and it is thanks to being their mother.

Judgment

Pile of Crumbs

This morning I was racing my children to finish sweeping the floor before they finished their breakfast.  The kids won.  My oldest was happy to have some morning TV time, but my youngest was hot on my trail – blanket in tow.

He followed me throughout the kitchen, pulling that worn blue blanket through my trash pile half a dozen times.  I kept sweeping the same trash as he kept ‘helping’.  And that small lesson in patience got me thinking…

How often in life do we keep cleaning up the same pile of crumbs?  How many times do we start a fight over something we should’ve just let go?  We keep rehashing past mistakes, going over what could have been.  One of the hardest lessons to learn is that we can’t go back – just let it go.  Instead of sweeping the trash into the bin, we leave it out for someone else to step in.  My one-year-old knew that I was supposed to throw the trash away.  He toddled behind me with a dust pan ready to help.  But I, supposedly wiser, wanted to get it all in one pile first.  Why do something more than once if you can tackle it as one bigger task?  Why, because it’s easier and less likely that someone else will come behind you and mess up what you’ve already accomplished.  He was right – I was wrong.

We don’t always have to have it all together before we make a move.  Not all of our mistakes are going to fit in one nice, neat pile ready to be dealt with at once and thrown away.  Life is messy and we have to live it right now, not wait until it all comes together.  If we keep waiting for everything to fall into place, we’ll look back and realize that life was already happening while we chose to watch it go by.  There isn’t a pause button for getting to where we want to go.  We have to face life as it comes at us piece by piece.

It’s amazing what the world can teach us if we sit back and listen.  From a one-year-old and his blanket to a wish to become more than what we are.  The higher powers speak to us – we just have to learn to listen and follow their time line instead of our own.

The Measure of Success

A few days ago I had a conversation with someone who I haven’t seen in almost ten years.  The customary questions were asked – how was I, what was I up to.    The take away from the conversation was a little awkward.  They were surprised by the direction my life had gone.

My grandmother would’ve probably told you my desire was to engross myself in having a family early on.  I spent my days at her house while my mother was at work.  She watched me play with dolls, ‘cook’ meals, and help clean.  Those were things I genuinely enjoyed doing as a child.  I also loved books, balls, playing outside.  But my dolls – the ‘real’ ones not any small Barbies – those were what I enjoyed.

I went through many answers to the proverbial “What do you want to be when you grow up?”.  Answers ranged from mom, psychologist, OB/GYN, daycare teacher, writer, music video director…  And being the romantic that I am, I often dreamed of marriage.  I had my wedding ring designed (on paper) by the time I was thirteen.  I had lists of baby names by age eleven.  But one thing remained constant, I continued to write.  I continued to engross myself in music and stories.  And I loved the idea of love.

By some standards, I married early.  I knew real love when I found it and I knew that we were meant to be together.  I have often thought myself an old soul.  I’ve sought out the company of people older than myself more often than not.  And I have nearly my whole life felt as though I was born into the wrong era.

When I was younger, I was often made to feel shame when I would say I wanted something simple with my life.  Did I not have dreams?  Did I not want more?  Did I not know there was no money in simply ‘being a wife and a mother’.  I knew. I didn’t care.  I did also dream of writing songs, books, maybe even movies.  Those are dreams that will also win you eye rolls when spoken aloud.  Do I live in the clouds?  Do I not realize that I could do more?

For a while, I tried to live out the dreams that others said I would be good at.  I considered becoming a daycare teacher and I only had a few credit hours left to complete that degree.  But I didn’t enjoy it.  I made good grades and I loved children, but I wanted my own.  Not to care for someone else’s.  I explored other career and college paths, pushing writing further and further away.  I always came back to it.  On sleepless nights or days full of tears, the keyboard or pen and paper were my old familiar friends.  I am not happy if I have been away from writing for a few days.  It has become a part of who I am.

My encounter ended with, “Well are you happy?”  And I could answer yes without question.  Yes, I am tired some days and no one likes to deal with toddler tantrums and poop.  But, to watch my children grow, to share with them nature’s wonders, kitchen magic, and life’s simple joys – that is more than happiness, that is bliss.  To fall into the arms of the man I proclaimed was my one and only almost a decade ago.  To feel as in love with him now as I did then – that’s success.  That is love, that is happiness, that is life.

I don’t have a fancy job, car, or huge home.  I have a job full of hard work and steeped in much reward – mother.  I drive a mini-van that is full of giggles when my children’s favorite songs come on the radio.  I have dodged cheerios and chicken nuggets while driving said minivan.  Our home is perfect for us.  It holds memories of painting, bringing home our children, late nights with friends. Meals prepared with love and experimentation.  A fresh spring or fall breeze wafting through the windows…

Not everyone’s success is measured by the degrees they hold or the money they obtain.  Some of us just wanted a secure family to love and to nurture.  Yes, my husband works.  And yes, we need money to live.  I understand that.  But it isn’t all there is to life.

At the end of the day what matters is the impact we’ve made on each other and what memories we leave behind.  Money will be gone.  But life’s lessons, love, support, memories…those will remain.  And in those, I am rich.

Learn From Your Past

What I Want for Valentine’s Day

I fondly remember the first Valentine’s Day my husband and I were together.  Flowers delivered to me at work, a dinner date, and an amazing night.  Without fail I received flowers to brighten my desk every year I worked outside of our home before we had children.

Our first Valentine’s Day as parents I wasn’t ready to leave our three-month old with a sitter so he brought dinner home to me.  I remember him coming home with two boxes of chocolates for a pregnant me and our toddler the next year.  Last year, with an infant, a toddler, and a job hunt in full swing, we didn’t really celebrate.

So, this year, with two toddlers who I’m more than ready to leave with a sitter, what do I want?  Candy, flowers, jewelry, dinner out?  Nope.  I want my husband.  I want his attention, no TV, no tantrums from the kids, no computers, tablets, phones, or iPods.  No distractions. I just want to be his girlfriend again instead of his overly tired wife.

I want to talk until we’ve giggled, cried, laughed, and dreamed.  I want to flip through songs (ok, maybe the iPod can stay!) and say, “Oh, remember when we saw them at ….”.  I want those songs to make us feel what we felt when we first heard them.  To remember the auditory clues of a life that has brought us to where we are.

I want to let go of the hang-ups I’ve picked up as a mother.  To remember that this man doesn’t care if my stomach now has a pathway of stretch marks.  He helped create the babies that left those marks and he was there when they came into this world.  He has walked moonlit halls with those babies knowing he had to go to work in just hours and his wife needed those couple hours of sleep to get through another day of spit-up, diapers, and tears.  He doesn’t care that I wear a size or two larger than I did on our first Valentine’s.  My hair, my waist, my hips…they’re familiar territory now.  In his eyes, I’m no different now than I was then.  Except I am the mother to his children, I am his wife…I’m no different, but I am more.

I want to remember not to nag.  That it doesn’t really matter who forgot to clean up after the kids had dinner.  That while I swept, fed, diapered all day, he worked to bring money into our home.  He worked for our future just as I did.  No blame or ‘who did more’.  I want to remember that this man has seen me at my worst and I him.  He has seen me deliriously happy and has worked hard to make that happen.  He has seen me lose, cry, triumph, laugh, be sick…We have held each other in happiness and sorrow.

What do I want for Valentine’s Day?  Just him.  In all that he does and all that he is…We’re not special or extraordinary people, but we have created a love that transcends who and what we are.  We are more together than we will ever be apart.

Five Ways to be a Better Parent

Parenting is hard.  It is rewarding, exhausting, fun, heart-breaking…it the best and hardest thing you may ever do.

I often find myself in the thick of it – not necessarily enjoying a lot of what’s going on.  It’s easy to get caught up in the changing diapers, fielding tantrums, and sibling bickering.  When you feel like those are the only things you do, you forget to enjoy the discoveries and the joy of simple things like a first trip to the movies.  We’re all thrown into parenting without a handbook and we all have to learn our own lessons and our own philosophies as parents.  Here are five things I strive to do to enjoy parenting.

1. Be present.  Set aside worry and rush while you are interacting with your kids.  If they ask for you to read to them while you are in the middle of laundry, let the laundry wait five minutes.  If your child is asking for your attention, they often need it.  They can take part in folding laundry when the book is read and you’ll be demonstrating to them that sometimes we need to put others needs above our own.
2. Stop yelling.  Ah, yes.  This one, it’s hard for me.  I have a temper and I have to work hard at patience.  Sometimes yelling happens before I even realize I’ve done it.  When you start to feel yourself getting angry, just breath.  Picture your child as the innocent little baby who you brought home from the hospital and realize that whatever it is they have done, it’s probably not that bad.  Calmly explain what they did wrong and why they shouldn’t do it.  Yelling does nothing to improve a situation and much to agitate it.
3. Don’t make empty threats.  I think most of us do it at one point or another.  “If you don’t stop that by the time I count to three I’m going to….”.  And how often do you follow through?  If you don’t, your child knows there is no real incentive to stop or change behavior.  It’s much the same as yelling as it doesn’t accomplish much.  I have toddlers and have seen demonstration and redirection go further than threats of taking away a toy, TV, or a special trip.  Children are young, sometimes they don’t even comprehend the idea of taking something in the future away.
4. Teach by doing.  Our children emulate us from very, very early on.  They learn by watching us, not by listening and doing what we say.  Especially if what we say contradicts what we do.  Want your kids to eat healthy?  Eat healthy yourself.  Want them to be polite?  Share?  Kind?  DO IT YOURSELF.  Both of my children love to copy what my spouse and I do.  Sometimes I stand hidden in the doorway of their play room and just watch.  I’ve seen baby dolls being properly diapered and fed.  I’ve seen and overheard superheros sharing toys and asking each other if they need some help.  I’ve had five course play food meals prepared and served to me.  And I have many times witnessed one rough and tumble boy stop to hug his rough and tumble brother who got hurt.  I’ve seen “I’m sorry” unprompted.  And THAT is rewarding and encouraging that we are doing something right.
5. Have fun.  By far, the most important thing about being a parent.  Have fun and enjoy your children.  Don’t stress out about the money or what you think you’re not doing well enough.  Anytime we enjoy what we do, we’re better at it.  Get down, dirty, and right smack in the middle of parenting.  Make mud pies, cover the living room floor in blocks, get more paint on you than the canvas.  Enjoy them. Have fun with them.  And all the rest just sort of falls into place.