Siren Song

I’m sitting—Surpriiiise! not at the beach— in the lone chair in my kitchen, my hair twisted up in sticky coils in my second attempt to make my gray dye stick (I'll update on that later, but whatever happens, we know the dye works on fingernails). I’ve got half a bagel in front of me, and now I’m debating if I even can stomach it.

A month or so ago, I wrote a blog that was vague and a little sideways and everything I hate when people write that way... that vague sense of humble superiority, the one that says, “I’m going through SO much and it sucks SO bad, and I want your sympathy but, sorryyyy, can’t tell you why.” I didn’t write it that way because it’s what I wanted. That’s not my writing “voice”, as we all unfortunately know. But at the time, there were things going on that weren’t definite, answers we were still waiting on, and fears I, in all honestly, did not want to give voice and shape and power to.
It’s been about six weeks now, and I have a few answers, although they aren’t what I’d prefer. At this point it seems that maybe giving voice and shape and power to it all doesn’t even matter, because it’s already there.


My stepdad is sick. He’s really, really sick. They’re throwing out terms like “mass on the pancreas”, “spots on the lungs are likely metastasized”, “keep him comfortable”. Bad things. Things you don’t want to hear doctors ever, ever say to you, and at the same time, part of me wants to reach out and hug the doctor, because my God, I can’t even imagine it being my job to constantly give these reports to terrified families.I’ve been blessed to have a stepdad I can truly, deeply love, whom my kids view as their grandfather, no caveats, no questions asked. The way my parents’ marriage ended almost 17 years ago has left its marks, that’s for damn sure. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t find a new normal, and we couldn’t create some love out of that chaotic explosion. And to bear witness to this, to yet another loss in my life, and, God help me, in my kids’ lives... it’s killing me. It’s the thing that keeps me awake at night, watching the ceiling fan spin around and around in the dark, wondering how am I supposed to tell them? Do I let them see him the way he is now, or let them remember the way he was and take away what is, in all likelihood, their chance to say goodbye? Do I ask them and let them decide? Are they even old enough to make that kind of decision? Why is this happening? I can’t bear it. I honestly feel like I can’t bear it.


Add to all of this something else I’ve only touched on here and there— Atleigh has struggled with anxiety and mood swings ever since the loss of Jeremy’s grandparents. Things got hard and kept getting harder ever since. Finally, after some bullying incidents at school and a disturbing drawing done during class by Atleigh, we’ve put her in therapy. And yes, I can hear a lot of you now, probably we should have gotten her into therapy sooner. We didn't know. We just didn't. And we aren't perfect. We made a mistake, and we're doing our best to combat that now. I'm grateful we've gotten her in to an amazing, faith-based local practice, where they work on healing as well as treating any issues that come up.
Emotionally reactionary.... that’s a phrase they used to describe her extremely volatile, up in the air emotional state, what they said to me as they told me they’d like her to undergo a psychiatric assessment. Out of all of my kids, she’s the one to whom I’m most terrified to tell this news about her grandfather. How do I do it? What do I say? How do we all handle the fallout together?

Jesus, this is hard to write out. Hard because it's vulnerable, it exposes me, it exposes her, it opens up a situation that strangers feel they can be experts on and give me advice about. But as usual, part of it is to let you know, you’re not alone. You’re NOT. I'm not alone either. We’re here in the trenches right next to each other. Maybe fighting a different battle, a different demon, with different weapons, but still together.


I’m so tired, friends. So, so tired. Even when I sleep, I’m tired. There’s a weight on me that feels like it can’t be lifted. The weight of grief, the weight of uncertainty, the weight of expectations and responsibility, the weight of disappointment, the weight of love. So heavy. So heavy.
There have been two things getting me through this week, which has been an especially hard week— two things that two of my brothers have said and given to me, complete unconscious of the gift they’ve offered. I suspect they’ll be getting me through a good many months.

This past Sunday, my brother Ben said in a prayer, completely randomly, completely without inkling of how hard it would hit me, “God, broaden their shoulders.” That was it. He prayed other things too, but after that I didn’t hear anything else. I immediately picked up my phone (yes, in the middle of a prayer, okay??) and typed into my notes is all caps

BROADEN MY SHOULDERS

Then I scrawled that same phrase at the top of the page of my notebook. Then I repeated it to myself every day, every hour, every minute of exhaustion, because. I can’t broaden my own shoulders. It can’t come from me. But my shoulders CAN be broadened. Even so, God. Even so. Broaden my shoulders.

The second strengthening came in the form of a few quotes from a story my youngest brother Isaac has been working on and shared with me. Actually, he shared the first chapter or so with me about two years ago, and I was so hooked I haven’t forgotten it since. I brought it up to him again earlier this week, and he shared it with me again, now new and improved with two whole chapters (HURRY UP, WILL YA IKE??). I won’t go into the whole plot, backstory, et al. Just a few short lines. The protagonist’s mother says to her, in the midst of hardship, war, gripping fear and gaping hunger,

“Hope is a song.... God’s favorite song, I think–beautiful when sung and played by His own grand choirs and orchestras, yes, but I think He likes it better still when you sing it.”

A few paragraphs down, there’s a reference to that first line about Hope, that says,

“Hope was a gateway to loss. God’s favorite song was that of a Siren.”

I don’t think I’ve ever, in my entire life, read anything that struck me quite so deeply. God’s favorite song is that of a Siren. According to mythology, once a person heard the song of the Siren, they chased it until they died. Until they dashed themselves upon the rocks. And isn’t that what Hope is? A Siren song that we so desperately need to grasp onto that we will dash ourselves upon the rocks again and again and again, in order to reach it? Maybe it’s a bit of that innate human selfishness we all have. We need that Hope. We’ll do anything to know a few lines of that song. Maybe we’re all a little greedy. Or maybe, God’s favorite song floats around us, in us, through us, waiting for us to recognize it and sing it with Him.

Broaden my shoulders. Hope. Broaden my shoulders. Hope.

Chasing each other around and around in my head, in my sleep, every day and night, every hour.
I’m tired. My shoulders feel thin. But I’m not without Hope. Dash me on the rocks, if that’s what it takes. I won’t be without Hope, I’ll be as greedy for it as I need to be. I’ll remember the song sung to me from the foundations of the earth and of my being and I’ll sing it back to the One who loves it best from me; I’ll allow my shoulders to be broadened, and I’ll be strong.

Rally Cap

[Bear with me, folks... my stream of consciousness may be even harder to follow tonight than it normally is.]

Back in February, I got the first tattoo in a black line half sleeve, that I’ll be adding on to as I’m able. 

The tattoo wraps around my lower bicep, just above my elbow, with a single dogwood bloom, to represent being a good ol’ Virginia girl (and also the first tree I ever learned to identify and love), and the Avett Brothers line from the song No Hard Feelings, “I have no enemies.”

The Avett album True Sadness released the summer of 2016, shortly after Jeremy’s Mema passed away. It took me about a week to get around to listening to it, right after what would have been her 84th birthday, and that particular song stopped me in my tracks. Literally: I was in the middle of cooking tacos for dinner, and I laid my head down on the counter, right next to the chopping block covered in onions and tomatoes, and I wept. I wept more than I can ever recall weeping with a song, and that’s saying something. 

The lyrics are:

When my body won't hold me anymore 

And it finally lets me free 

Will I be ready? 

When my feet won't walk another mile 

And my lips give their last kiss goodbye 

Will my hands be steady?

When I lay down my fears 

My hopes and my doubts 

The rings on my fingers 

And the keys to my house 

With no hard feelings

When the sun hangs low in the west 

And the light in my chest 

Won't be kept held at bay any longer 

When the jealousy fades away 

And it's ash and dust for cash and lust 

And it's just hallelujah 

And love in thoughts and love in the words 

Love in the songs they sing in the church 

And no hard feelings

Lord knows they haven't done 

Much good for anyone 

Kept me afraid and cold 

With so much to have and hold

When my body won't hold me anymore 

And it finally lets me free 

Where will I go? 

Will the trade winds take me south 

Through Georgia grain or tropical rain 

Or snow from the heavens?

Will I join with the ocean blue 

Or run into the Savior true 

And shake hands laughing 

And walk through the night 

Straight to the light 

Holding the love I've known in my life 

And no hard feelings

Lord knows they haven't done 

Much good for anyone 

Kept me afraid and cold 

With so much to have and hold 

Under the curving sky 

I'm finally learning why 

It matters for me and you 

To say it and mean it too 

For life and its loveliness 

And all of its ugliness 

Good as it's been to me 

I have no enemies 

I have no enemies 

I have no enemies 

I have no enemies

I hadn’t heard or felt anything so profound in longer than I could remember. If that song isn’t a hope filled capsule to stack with what’s important to you and find again later in life, I don’t know what is. I tattooed, “I have no enemies” on my arm as a reminder. A reminder that you can connect with, empathize with, and forgive pretty much everyone you come across. No one out there is my enemy; my biggest enemy is myself. I’m prone to self sabotage. Every year my New Years “resolution” is this (not so) simple phrase: Don’t self sabotage. 

Don’t see offense where none is meant to be given; or even if it is meant to be given, don't give it soil to root in. Don’t hold onto grudges that were never meant to be tangible, to be clasped tighter than intangible love and grace and mercy. Don’t read my own writing on the wall regarding other people. I have no enemies on this earth... except myself. It’s a constant reminder for me to maintain perspective. I haven’t learned it all yet. Who knows if I ever will? I have a difficult time separating other people’s actions in reference to how they affect me. Everything feels personal, because I’m a personal person. 

Today has been a cruddy, crappy, no good very bad day. I have a twitchy, tired headache from editing photos for nearly a dozen hours, and tense neck and shoulders from folding piles of laundry in between editing. I’m exhausted. I’m emotional. I got bad news today. I hate when people are cryptic about news, so I'm sorry about this particular cryptic reference, but in this case, it’s not my news to share. But it’s thrown me into a spiral, a never-ending drop, off a cliff I’ve clumsily, catastrophically tripped over, falling right back down to rocky ground I’ve had to navigate too many times.  I'm scared this time it will shatter me. And it’s too hard not to be selfish. It’s too hard not to say to myself, over and over, “I can’t do this again. I cannot. I can’t do it again.” But here I am, having to do it again. It’s like a lead blanket thrown over your shoulders, sinking you flat onto the floor, facedown, limbs and joints completely liquified and useless, unable to move. That’s what this feels like. 

Tonight, after an incredibly long day, I’m sitting at my safe place. The beach proper closes at sundown; as if the water stops working when the sun slips away, even though I can see the moon reflecting on the water perfectly well. 

It’s humid. It’s so humid here this week- maybe even more so than usual, which is saying a lot. Humidity doesn’t bother me. I’d rather be hot than cold. My hands feel tacky and grimy, the creases of my elbows are sticky and pulling away from each side of the crease slowly every time I bend my arms, my upper arm stubbornly clinging to my lower arm; my sinuses feel stuffed with cement and my hair is springing out of its ponytail in a riot of baby hairs; but I don’t care. I’m here. I can hear the water, I can breathe, I can smell the salt and brine, and I can write— as I usually do by the Bay. 

I can’t do this, friends. All of my wells of strength and support and self preservation were poured out like oil, like blood, the past too many years. The thought of trying to refill that well makes me feel so weak and drained. I feel like there’s a part of me, that hollow in your stomach, the physical reflection of your psyche- a correlation of mental and emotional pressure turned to physical panic- that is turning me inside out trying to produce a few more drops of faith and ferocity. I think I can literally feel it, flipping around, floundering, squeezing.

But what can I do? I can do nothing but rally. In baseball, there’s an event called a “two out rally”. I don’t know that they do it in the major leagues, but in little league, the boys punch their fists into their hats and turn them inside out, wearing them with the white lining showing. Their rally caps. They chant “TWO-OUT-RALL-YYY!!!” over and over. That chanting, the symbolism of those inside out caps, jolts them and hypes them up to a degree that no amount of full jugs of Gatorade and all the Double Bubble they can shove into their cheeks could ever do. A two out rally means something. It means hope. It means faith, it means a chance to FINISH THIS.

Maybe that’s what this inside out, anguished feeling really is. My two out rally. My time to punch my fist into my safe covering, and to hype myself up for a repetitive, brave, jacked up, faith-filled chant. Maybe it’s time to start chanting, maybe it’s time to repeat that I have no enemies, besides my own weaknesses and doubts. 

Bring on that last out. I’ll wear the inside outness, I’ll hype myself up, I’ll chant out the faith I don’t even feel yet, and I’ll rally. I can't hold back, I cannot allow "the light in my chest to be held at bay any longer", over some misguided sense of self preservation, a fortress against feeling. I’ll rally. 

I'll rally.

The Teenage Years

When Ashton was an infant, he had reflux to a horrifying degree. I’m talking so much puke that there would be a reverse silhouette (I guess that would just be an outline?) of my body on the wall when he burped over my shoulder. I carried full sized bath towels and multiple changes of clothing for both of us at all times.

One night, when he was about 10 days old, I couldn’t get him to stop crying. All night, I nursed him, rocked him, bounced him, patted him, and still he cried. I ended up lying on the couch, shirtless, Ashton nestled in the crook of my arm, skin to skin, with him screaming relentlessly against my chest. I sobbed with him, finally half shouting, “What do you want from me?? I’m not even wearing a ****ing shirt!!!” 

In that moment, I thought to myself, “It can’t possibly get worse than this.”

When I brought a newborn Chloe home from the hospital, Ashton had managed to contract double pink eye in the two days I was gone. Try telling a 2 year old that he can’t come in contact with Mommy or the new baby, all while trying to nurse said baby, and recover from giving birth, and comfort the 2 year old who feels miserable— at my ground zero as a mother of two. 

I told myself, “It can’t get harder than it is now.”

When Atleigh was born in a home that we had outgrown before we’d even moved in, to a family that was taken completely by surprise by baby number three, I suddenly had more children than I had hands. Those early months are a haze, punctuated by sleepless nights, an ER worthy bout of strep, and trying (and often failing) to figure out those dang sling carriers with the double rings, because baby number three could not stand to be set down, could not handle not being in the middle of everything that was going on at all times, and nine years later still has the most chronic case of FOMO I’ve ever seen. She would only ever let me face her outward where she could see everything. 

I said to myself, “I couldn’t be any more exhausted than I am with three kids under four. It’s all downhill coasting from here.”

And for several years, it was. We found a rhythm, I learned to not take myself seriously, and we carried on. 

Until about three years ago. When Ashton hit the preteen years. A year later, Chloe joined him across that line in the sand, the line that divides them against me and leaves me wringing my hands, a hairsbreadth away from the babies I nursed and coddled and cuddled, knowing that I can’t cross that line no matter how much I want to. 

And all of my metaphorical shoulder rubs and head petting, telling myself it couldn’t get worse than the infant and toddler years, were a cruel cosmic joke that came back to mock me everyday. 

Nothing— nothing— could have prepared me for the teenage years. So many mothers told me it would get easier: the toddler years wouldn’t last forever. They were right. Those years don’t last forever. But most days I’d pay good money to go back to those sleepless nights and the potty training and the fermented juice cups under the couch and the trying to keep them from accidental grievous injury everyday of their little lives. 

Being a mom of infants and toddlers is exhausting. Don’t get me wrong. I honor all you moms who are in the trenches I’ve clawed my way out of. But it’s a physical exhaustion. We’re tired. All the time. ALL the time. We’d give our kingdom for a full night’s sleep; we’d settle for a nap. 

Being the mom of two teenagers and a tween is exhausting on a level I never could have comprehended in those years I was sleep deprived, begging for reprieve. I’m exhausted in a way that no mother who has been in my shoes could have prepared me for. It’s a mental exhaustion, as opposed to physical exhaustion, and I’d take waking up four times a night with an infant over this almost any day.

It’s bone deep. It’s soul deep. It bows your head and hunches your shoulders and it turns you inside out with worry and weariness. It exposes all those ugly, weak spots in you, and it leaves you raw and shivering and wondering how, how, HOW, could that obnoxious, cheeky, clever little angel I hugged mere years ago turn into this. Could somehow embody all the worst parts of me, bleed it out, and shove it right back in my face? How? When? Why?

Nothing has made me weaker, nothing has made me question who I am as a person, and Who God thinks He is, like raising a bunch of teens. 

I’m tired, y’all. I’m so tired. I’m tired of being pushed against at every turn, argued with and questioned and huffed at. No amount of discipline sticks, no amount of reasoning gets through their thick heads— seriously, do their skulls get thicker when they hit twelve?? I may as well be trying to communicate with a cinder block, and honestly I’d probably get through to that more easily than I can to my kids. 

A thousand nights of sleeping clean through, a car sans car seats, a recycling bin full of sippy cups and lids, a wasteland of a living room (and bedroom, and kitchen, and bathroom) strewn from wall to wall with Matchbox cars and Barbies and sandals and Carter’s pajamas, all the toddler tantrums in Christendom were not enough to prepare me for the mental and emotional wasteland that I’m in now. The constant battle of wills. The role reversal, going from toddlers tugging on my shirt to beg for my attention— craving it, needing it, prizing it— to me knocking on a bedroom door, craving, needing, prizing one scrap of insight into their days, into their world. Any tears of physical exhaustion that I wept a dozen years ago have long since been eclipsed by the tears of mental weariness that I keep hidden, that I cry in the bathroom where they can’t see, that roll down my temples some nights after they’re asleep and it’s just me, me, me and my memories of those obnoxious angels that used to be mine. 

But don’t despair, Mamas. 

One: We are surrounded by a great and mighty cloud of witnesses, of mamas, parents who have gone before, who have walked and staggered and crawled through the minefield, the wasteland of being a mother to humans straddling the dimensions between childhood and adulthood. 

Two: Speaking of no comparison— that first gassy smile from your newborn, that first babbled “mamamamama” pales— pales— in comparison to a genuine smile from your teen, a voluntary, albeit mumbled, “love you” from a creature who, lets face it, at this age doesn’t love a whole lot. In those moments when you feel like if you have to face one more day of these brass heavens they build against you, you might just vomit from the sheer stress of it, if something doesn’t give soon— those are the moments when they look at you, really look at you, and smile. And those smiles, sneaking out from the corners of their faces where the baby still lurks, hidden and angular.... somedays, the sun rises and sets on those smiles. 

Three: There is a camaraderie with my teens that I treasure above most things; that I store up in my heart for those days when the brass heavens bruise me and make me feel broken, and that keep me tiptoeing through the minefield, knowing, knowing, KNOWING, that this is just a season. This won’t last forever. And someday... someday my babies will be back, but better than ever, because they’ve made it through their own personal teenage minefields, and I’ve been waiting for them on the other side; holding my hands out to them the way I did when they took their first steps, cheering them on, calling out warnings and encouragement, believing they can do it and will be the stronger for it. 

Take heart, parents of teens. We’ll be stronger too. 

Courage, Dear Heart

I'm writing this on my very, very badly cracked phone screen. In all my years of having cell phones, I've never cracked a screen. I feel lesser, somehow. Like I've lost a piece of my pride. And while you'd probably think it would be more sensible to type on my computer or even my iPad, my spoiled millennial thumbs can only handle an iPhone screen now, cracked or no. 

This blog is going to be a hodge podge of my thoughts. Believe it or not, I've been physically writing in a journal occasionally over the last few months. All of these thoughts are to do with my most recent "disconnect" which I've written about before. It's a bad one. A long and dark one. And I've brought it on myself, but by naming it and accepting it, I'm hoping to finally force myself out of it. Bear with me as I try to string together what may seem like a long line of non-cohesive thoughts. (Apparently, incohesive and uncohesive are not words? I must have made that up.)

April 1, 2016

Atleigh is lying next to me in bed, while Jeremy is working late. I just realized she sleeps exactly the same way I do: one knee drawn up to her chest, her other leg kicked out behind her. The fan is making her hair sway, ever so slightly. I should not be letting her sleep here tonight. And yet I am, because I'm depressed and lonely. 

It's a frightful juxtaposition, this loneliness. A cosmic April Fool's joke. I fall into these disconnects and I want nothing more than to be alone; yet I crave the human interaction even as I crave the solitude. Grasp and grapple. Catch and release. 

I read somewhere once, on a Myers-Briggs test, that Jesus was an INFP, like I am. I don't know how accurate that is; as far as I know, Jesus never took the Myers-Briggs test. But I can't help but feel that He probably often felt the way I feel now. Wrestling with His need for solitude, reconciling it with His human nature that needs other humans. How exhausted He must have constantly been! It's no wonder He disappeared into the desert, climbed hills and hid out in ships' holds. And yet, He chose people. He chose interaction.

Did he really need the disciples to help Him with His work? Surely the Son of God, the one who raised the dead, could have managed to the spread the word and feed the crowds on His own heavenly strength.  But He didn't. He chose interdependent relationships. Tiresome, hurtful, confusing, disappointing. He chose that, to live out His father's words of, "It's not good for man to be alone."

It's not good.

Not, "it's not possible" or "it's wrong", or "it's not healthy". 

It's not good. It's not God's intended best. 

I can choose isolation, absolutely. God knows lately I've wanted to. When relationships that I've poured my heart and soul into begin to feel like a barren wasteland, and I'm futilely watering parched earth at my own expense, I want to give up. 

When I've spent week after week interacting with strangers, attempting to make the small talk that I am so woefully inept at, I want to hide. 

When I'm battling it out with my kids day after day, never a moment's peace or solitude, I want to retreat. 

People are hard work. 

Relationships, the care and cultivation of them, are hard work. But it doesn't mean they aren't worth it. And it's not good for me to be alone. 

Tonight, after a long few days of struggling with a heavy weight of feeling discouraged and unmotivated, I took myself to the beach. As soon as my mother in law came to take the girls to church, I gathered my things, put on my oversized beach hat, and made my way to the bay. And I wrote. 

I'm sitting out at the beach and the wind is blowing hard in my ears. It smells salty and feels sticky and sounds louder than I thought it would, with the cries of the gulls and the shrieks of all the high school kids celebrating the end of another school year. All in all, it's making me smile more genuinely than anything has in months, it seems. 

There's a girl with hip tattoos that I feel sure she'll regret, and a couple of young children who just came close to me and pretended to be stuck in the sand. 

And I'm sitting here on the low concrete wall, pausing every so often to look around me, to see my shadow stretching out long and lean in front of me as the sun sets at my back. 

And I'm crying. 

I'm wondering how I've gotten into this place of isolation again. A few weeks off- that's what I wanted. What I'm sure I needed. But at some point it shifted into what it is right now, a heaviness and a weakness to move. 

And I think of the joy I had wrested- seemingly from the hands of the enemy himself- this past year. 

I think of the roots I have planted, willingly and unwillingly. 

I think of the niches I have carved for myself, knowingly and unknowingly.

And even just thinking of it, writing it, makes me tired. I've let myself lose the ground I fought so hard to gain. I've slid down into a valley, and looking up to where I was is daunting. 

I am not brave. 

I am tired. 

But right now I'm thinking of Narnia. And I'm thinking of how every time I read those books, no matter how old I am, something new speaks to me. Bravery in danger. Hope in hopelessness. Adventure in unknown. I'm reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader right now, and I just sailed with the Narnians out of the Dark Island. I'm thinking of their terror in the darkness- that fear that they would never get out. That lost and hopeless feeling. 

And Lucy did all she could when she "leant her head on the edge of the fighting top and whispered, 'Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.'

"The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little- a very, very little- better. 'After all, nothing has really happened to us yet,' she thought."

Their fear wasn't even anything tangible. It was unexplainable, untouchable, unable to be argued against for its very vagueness. Just nameless darkness. In that moment of terror, all Lucy could do was cry out to the only One who could help her- she feared even her brother and her friends in that moment. And even when she called His name, the darkness did not grow less. She only felt a very little better.

Yet it was a step. A tiny step, an arguably pointless step. But it was only after she called that help came. The whisper of, "Courage, dear heart," meant only for her ears, came when she named her fear and spoke over it. 

So this is me. Speaking from my tired, dark place. Naming my darkness and calling for help. Hearing and accepting that whisper of 

Courage, Dear Heart. 

I'm leaving that Dark Island behind. If you've been living there, too- trapped in a nameless, wordless place, if you need some courage, come with me. There's plenty to go around. Let's do this together. After all, it's not good for us to be alone. 

How I Spent My Summer

I've been taking a little break from writing the last month or so. Not that I'm such an extreme blogger that it made a big difference. I've tried to guilt myself into it a few times. But the truth is, it was nice not having to constantly phrase our days into words. 

We've spent our summer living through a lot of last little firsts. I wrote about some of that at the beginning, but experiencing them firsthand has been different than I thought it would be. Easier and harder. 

Chloe has learned to doggy paddle a little this summer. Little things like that always shock me for some reason. It's another step away from babyhood, another little leap to the next phase in our world. I've been watching her- more than any summer before. I've watched her grow so tall. Her kneecaps are starting to stick out the way mine did. In spite of that, she carries herself so gracefully, back straight, shoulders back, chin up. She is regal. She's my little Audrey Hepburn. She is gracious and kind, thoughtful, charismatic. I'm seeing little signs of girlhood stealing over her, overshadowing her childlike features. Chloe has always been wise beyond her years. She has keen insights that sometimes pop out and surprise everyone but herself. I want to wrap myself around her, to shield her from the traumas of middle school, mean girls, boyfriends. I want her eyes to remain as clear and unclouded as they are now, I want her smile to be as joyous, her step to be as light. I know I can't do that for her. But God has equipped my Chloe with a grace I can't begin to grasp. Chloe's name means "green shoot"; in essence, new life. Fresh air. Pure light. She is springtime and autumn. She is the shift in our paradigms and perceptions. And she carries that with her, in her knobby knees, in her freckled face, in her stubborn, strong chin. This summer has just been the first of revelations for me, watching her grow so dramatically. 

Atleigh, of course, is my last round of firsts. This has been a particularly nostalgic summer for me in that aspect. The other night at bedtime, she called me into her room to tell me her tooth was bothering her. It turns out it's loose. Her first loose tooth. My last first loose tooth. These last firsts have rushed upon me one after another, weighing on me too heavy to bear some days. Even recently, at her eye exam, she sat in the chair by herself for the first time, not even asking to sit on my lap. In a few weeks will be our last first day of kindergarten. 

And Ashton's last first day of elementary school. We also lived through Ashton's first- and last- week of football practice. An elbow injury took him out of the running in the first week. The elbow is recovering, as is his ego, and we've signed him up for fall ball instead. 

For the last year, he and I have been diligently working our way through Harry Potter's adventures. Last summer saw us through the first four books like wildfire, staying up into the wee smalls, sometimes even reading until the sun came up, until my voice gave out and I wasn't sure if my eyes were even open as I read. If there is one thing I know I've done right as a mother, it is this. Maybe not the all-nighters, although those don't bother me personally. The memories. The nights camping out on the porch, long after the rest of the house was asleep, the movie scores playing softly in the background. The crazy British accents (And yes. I've read the whole series aloud to him in the accent): Dobby's squeaky voice and Hagrid's low rumble. Ron's whimper and Hermione's scolding. Recreating these worlds in our own. Teaching him that as long as he can open a book, as long as he can use his imagination, that there is nothing that can stop him. He'll never have to be bored. Never have to feel alone. Never be at a loss for words or lessons or inspiration. 

A few weeks ago we started the final book. We rushed through the sixth book in mere weeks, but starting The Deathly Hallows was hard for me. When Ashton would ask me every night to read to him, I would hesitate. Some nights I put him off. One night, I finally told him the truth. "I don't want it to end!" I said. "You don't understand, Bubba. When this is all over, that's it. It's done. We can't go back. We'll never have this first time again. I'll miss it. I'll miss our late nights and our secret jokes and our time together. What will we do when we're all done?!" His answer struck me. He merely smiled his sweet smile at me, the one that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners, the one he's been giving me since he was just a few weeks old. "Well, Mom," he said, "then we'll just have to read them to Chloe. Then to Atleigh. We don't have to stop here. We can keep going. It doesn't have to be the last time." And that wisdom, coming from a boy of ten, taught me more in that minute than anything else has all summer. 

While part of me is so ready for these changes, another part of me is trying to grasp onto these moments and drag them to a stop. They're slipping through my fingers, like sand, like water, like summer sunshine itself. All these years- nearly eleven of them- I should have been stockpiling these days, savoring them, hoarding them to study and remember and pore over like a miser when they're all over. And yet... And yet they don't have to be all over. When these last firsts are over, well then, we'll just start again. 

The truth is, there will always be little things to mourn. There will always be bittersweet moments to try and hold onto. Watching your last baby walk into her first class. Seeing your daughter grow from child to young woman before your eyes. Having your son teach you life lessons that perhaps you should have already known but blinded yourself to. All of these things have hit me like little punches in the heart. Little bruising blows that make me feel like pieces of me are breaking off, only to be replaced with more firsts that will eventually be lasts. That's what life is. That's what living is. And that's how I spent my summer. 

{{Summer Photo Dump}}

Some of these are from my iPhone, some are from my Nikon, in no particular order. Bear with me; there's a lot of them. If you see yourself in these photos, thank you for being a part of our summer and our memories.