You, Me, and Grace

I haven't intended to only blog when I do my "Photo Dump", but so far, that's how it's worked out. And I'm learning- at least I think I am; I hope I am- learning to give myself a little grace. I'm not usually the type for New Year's resolutions, words of the year, all that. I feel like it's just me giving myself so many more opportunities to fail, to disappoint. Disappoint myself, and others.

If I had to pick a resolution and a word, maybe I would choose Grace. Like the great commandments, all the other resolutions would hang on that word. Grace, grace, grace, in everything I do. Grace for my husband, when he deliberately drives me crazy (And oh yes. He does. Twelve years have taught him where all my buttons are, and when to push them). Grace for my kids, when they fall short, as they so often do, as so often kids- humans- do. Grace for the people that hurt me, whether intentionally or otherwise. And more than anything, more than any of these things I've just listed: Grace for myself. Oh God, how I long to give myself some grace. Some wiggle room, to make mistakes and recover, to fall and get back up. I hold myself to these tight, rigid lines. Don't set a toe over it. That's a mistake. It's like those games we used to play as kids. All the cushions, everything on the floor was an island. The carpet was molten lava, alligators, sharks. My whole life feels like I'm balancing on the edge of a couch cushion, trying not to fall prey to the carpet full of sharks. And instead of striving to hold myself to the standard, I give up and topple over, accepting defeat as my certain fate. I'm not the only one. You must be out there, too. How about, instead of toppling, we clasp each other tight and save each other from falling? How about we cheer each other on, be each others' biggest fan? How about, instead of staring at our blank, black ceilings every night, going over and over and over in our minds all the ways we missed it today: Shouldn't have done this, should have done that, and why did I have to lose it with my kids AGAIN? Why did I ignore that load of laundry AGAIN? How about, instead of all that, we lie down with grace? Grace as our pillow, grace as our blanket, grace as the blank, black ceiling over our heads, the ceiling that absolutely holds no records of our wrongs. Oh, doesn't it make the hope well up in your tired soul? Mine just leaped. Deep calling to deep, in the roar of this waterfall that I've created for myself, this wall of tons of pounds of water that beats me down to nothing, that catches me in its whirlpools and spins me head over heels until I feel like I'll never find my way upright again. This is what I long for, and have never fully managed to extend to myself, although I can extend it to another in a heartbeat. Grace.

Tonight we are getting snow. The kids have gone out to play in it no less than three times, each time coming in after 20 minutes talking about how cold they are. My little Virginia Peninsula kids love the novelty of the snow but maybe not the extended reality. Cold is cold. They come in with red noses and cheeks, asking me to peel their gloves from their chapped, numb hands. Stand in front of the gas heater and shiver and shudder and grin and talk about the next time they'll go out. I love snow, from inside. I do not like it from outside. I don't like being cold, I don't like being cold and wet, and I don't like being cold, wet, and having to clean up the muddy, slushy mess that they drag in with them. But I remember loving it when I was their age, my mom tying empty bread bags over our feet and hands before we went out to keep our socks dry. Around here, our snowmen are full of twigs and bits of dried grass, as the snow usually doesn't get deep enough to roll up pure white. But the kids have talked of nothing else all night, this snowman they'll build tomorrow. They went out at midnight to scope out their surroundings, decide on the best locale and rushed back in to make sure we had at least one carrot for a nose.

Basketball has consumed our life lately. Basketball, basketball, basketball. Ashton started at the end of last year, and now has games and practices at least four nights a week. Jeremy is talking about getting him signed up for baseball. And after that, football. I don't know if I'm cut out to be a sports mom. I like my evenings, being a night owl, and having them monopolized so often is draining. Tonight was a welcome reprieve from the basketball wheel, since the snow prevented the game. We're huddled in the Box House, the heat blasting on every 20 minutes or so. I'm sitting in bed propped up against a pillow, one leg tucked under me and the other sticking out from under the blanket. This is scientifically proven to moderate body temperature, right? Jeremy is beside me watching a movie with his wireless headphones on, and the kids are tucked away in their rooms, ostensibly to go to bed, but I know they're relishing the unexpected break from school, by reading books and playing video games. I'm letting them. I may not always win the Mom of the Year award, but I know to sometimes let them have their cake and eat it too.

This night is an embodiment of grace. Little breaks to fill in the cracks that constant busyness creates. Little gifts to the kids who wish for snow all year long. Little grace, little staying in nights, little memories that turn out to be not so little. On a night like this, it's easy for me to see grace all around me. To reach out and touch it, grasp it, pull it close to my chest and feel it there, heavy and warm and safe.

So let's do this for each other. When we can't see the grace for ourselves, too weak or tired or disgusted to grope for it, let's be that warm weight for each other. Let me bring you that grace, wrap it around you like a blanket, point you to that blank slate of a ceiling that you would otherwise be staring at in despair. Let me make this my resolution, if I have any at all: to show you how to give yourself grace. And you, in turn, can show it to me.

{{Weekly Photo Dump}}

Car Ride Conversations

"My friend at school says she's rich." This is how our morning car ride to school starts, Chloe making this announcement in a voice half awed, half accusatory. Ashton huffs, his usual wiser than the world reaction. "Please. That doesn't mean anything. One thousand dollars to her might be rich." Chloe asks, in her high, clear voice- she is so naive, so sweet: "Well, what is rich?" Ashton sagely replies, "Like a billionaire. Or a trillionaire." Obviously Ashton has lofty ideas of wealth. I'm reminded of Marianne from Sense & Sensibility, telling her sister that her "competence" is the same number as Elinor's wealth. All I can think is how rich I would feel with one thousand dollars in my bank account. If wealth is relative, poverty certainly is too. I don't really wish for more. We have a roof over our heads, food in our stomachs, clothes on our backs. A vehicle to drive instead of resorting to public transportation. These are all things I'm grateful for, and try not to take for granted. Most times, we have more than we need. But I never wanted my kids to have the childhood I did. The kind that encompasses stressed out parents and scraping the bottom of the barrel for bills, the kind where we drive by the houses and they imagine aloud what it would be like to live in one. It is a nose pressed against the glass childhood. But Chloe, while she wistfully says she would like to have a thousand dollars so we can have two bathrooms, is never discontent. She loves life, she loves simplicity, and she is simple about it. She doesn't wish for more of things we can buy. She is so different from me in so many ways that sometimes I wonder where she came from. She sees good in everything, in everyone. I worry about her sometimes. I worry about her being hurt because she believes everything everyone says. She can't perceive when someone is mistreating her because she simply cannot process it. She is rare, so rare. I don't want whatever magic dust the fairies sprinkled on her when she was a baby to be rubbed off by the world. But Chloe, she would rub it off on purpose, if it meant others got to share in it.

On the way to get the older kids from school, Atleigh talks my ear off. Her conversation varies from day to day, but it is always imaginative. A few months ago, right before Halloween, I took her into a Halloween store looking for costumes. It was a mistake. In her defense, the place was creepy. Flashing lights, talking statues, creepy zombies and clowns and children. She melted down and I had to carry her out, kicking and screaming. She stood outside the store and shivered and sobbed, and I felt terrible. The store clerk brought me the costume I was trying to get her to try on, and let her try it on outside on the sidewalk. And brought her M&M's, which Atleigh took without making eye contact. For weeks afterward, every time we drove by the store, she would talk about her terror. Randomly throughout the day, she would ask me if we would have to go there again. Her trauma seeped through her bones, into her everyday conversations, and I felt it seep into me with a heavy guilt. But at least she was processing it aloud, talking it through. Atleigh is braver than she thinks, so brave that she doesn't even realize how brave she is. Today, on our way to the school, she was telling me that whenever Ashton tries to scare her, she just tells him, "Stop! I'll punch you!" She accompanies this with her little snort wheeze laugh. It's a unique sound, a little like Ernie from Sesame Street's chuckle, and a derisive sound in the back of her throat, like she's laughing at herself. Then she says to me, "I think, next year, if we go to the Halloween store, I'll be braver. Those things scared me, but I know they weren't real. Next time, I'll just say, 'I'll punch you!'" Again with her laugh. She says it in passing, but it strikes me profoundly. Obviously, I will never take her back to that store. But her willingness, even at 5, to face her fears, sticks to me like a sand burr in my sock. It rankles a little. Am I brave enough to face my fears, to stand up and say to them, "I'll punch you!"? The answer is one I don't like to admit. I'm not good at being brave. Bravery is hard. It requires something of me, an effort that is exhausting. I don't like stepping out in the open, making myself vulnerable. And while Atleigh knows the things she feared weren't real, do I know that about mine? Can I separate them from myself and look at them with the reckless courage of a child, and order them to stop? Adult fears are not physical things, scary zombies and loud noises and flashing lights. They are deep, insidious beings that wrap themselves into our very marrow, become part of who we are, baggage we carry with us from childhood, adolescence, adulthood- thus, they are harder to define.

Tonight on the way to basketball practice, Ashton talks to me about the world's strongest men, his social studies test, how far he has gotten in The Hobbit. He is older than himself. He talks to me as a peer, not as a parent to child. Sometimes I don't know what to make of this. He walks such a fine line. Sometimes he fits into the adult world so seamlessly, that I have to remind him he is not one of us. When schisms happen in the house and he tries to stand on my side, against his sisters, I have to remind him- while I am always on his team, he is not always on mine. It is not us against them. He is on their side. Their rules are his rules, their rewards are his. One time he tried to convince me he was "third in charge", that he was "kind of a parent". Since he was older than the girls, since he is next oldest after me, that made him "a little bit of a parent". It took me thirty minutes to make him understand that this was not the case. This is not how we work. I'm still not completely sure I convinced him.
As we get out of the car to walk to the gym, I string my arm along his shoulders, and wonder when he got so tall that my arm doesn't have to reach down anymore. He comes up almost to my chin now, and in a few more years, may outstretch me completely. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for him to not be my little blond haired boy anymore. I'm not ready for him to think he hates me, that he knows more than me, that I am old and uncool. I hope and pray that it won't come to that, but Ashton and I are so alike that it seems impossible for us to not butt heads. Last week, while we were lying on his bed reading, a bag of popcorn between us, I said to him that there might come a day in a few years where he thinks he can't stand me. I told him that in those moments, to remember how we are now, and to remind himself that we will be that way again. To just push through and know that one day, we'll be friends, and it will be even better than it is now. We'll understand each other more, we'll have whittled away some of our weaknesses, and built up our strengths. I love that I can talk to him like this, and that he understands me. I never have to dumb down what I say to him.

These car ride conversations... they take place in short spaces, little cracks in time that weave a web through our everyday life. They forge stepping stones for us to cross on, cross over from one phase of our life into another. I'd like to think that they're teaching moments for my kids, but more often than not, it's the other way around. Chloe's sweet selflessness, Atleigh's bravery, Ashton's stories of his day, they're all moments that I absorb and think of long after they've forgotten them. They don't even realize the weight their words have, and therefore they do not have to be careful with them. They toss them around confidently, never having to doubt themselves, their place in their world. I want to keep them that way. I want to drive forever, to let them keep talking, to let them keep changing me.

-M

{{Weekly Photo Dump}}

(Unfortunately, in no particular order- Blogger photo uploader leaves much to be desired: Birthdays and sleepovers, basketball and library time, plus a good bit of Neville)