Lean In

I spent the whole day today with the littlest Quinn.  My forever baby because she will be my last.  The thing about baby number two for me is that she taught me how to lean in.  She was, and is, my Heartbreak Hill.  She came and I fully surrendered to the uphill battle of motherhood.  She stripped away the last of the should be's and will be's and can do's I had clung to in defining myself and left me with right now and just because and gone too fast.  Mamahood.  It's hard and slow but yet I can't explain why the time slips by like sand in my hands.  At times it moves more like honey on glass,  its progression is slow until the sweetness cascades over fingers that were too tight upon the glass to begin with.

My first baby came and she is all kinds of passion, rising up and crashing low and eyes that are always measuring, always calculating.  But I see myself so much in her that at times I feel I am reasoning with a younger version of myself.  The familiarity is soft and kind and envelopes our relationship like a well-worn blanket.  I meet and measure her needs because they have always been anticipated, in rhythm with my own steps.  And then came you my tiny, beautiful Heartbreak Hill.  The grade of your infancy was an easy slope from the beginning, almost masking the hard work necessary to plow forward with two instead of one.  I often look up and see you ahead of us, your pace steady and constant with humor in your eyes and light in your step.  You are at once a miracle of love and patience and energy.

You made me lean in.  You, possessor of your father's expressions, you are the complimentary tide that has completed the ebb and flow of our family.  You are not the mirror image of me, but an honest reflection of what I needed most.  You see baby, as human beings we are always, always, more alike than we are different.  Our waves crest but our greatest loves know when to pull us back.  They are our completion.

Progress

The first progress report came today.  When I was younger, progress reports and report cards were always good days.  Days where I knew, just knew, that the neat rows of good grades would show my parents just how very much I was worth loving.  They loved me regardless, of course.  Their love was and is still not, offered with contingencies.  But I never had any trouble building my own,  So this first one came, tucked in an unassuming envelope in the already tattered pre-school folder and it just felt so. loaded.  Heavy with expectations and beginnings and way back whens and memories.  All of it so unexpected and maybe not so unexpected.  It was slightly paralyzing to open, as if the misstep of preschool feet could bring the whole castle crashing down.

Such a heavy burden carried by the little smattering of pre-school can-do's, almost can-do's and somedays.  So many expectations, regrets, pride, pressure and illusions wrapped up in a slip of paper carried by an angel in a pink backpack.  Her future and my past swirling together like two of her water colors, drifting together until the two hues collide and inevitably become one.

I don't need a report on progress.  I don't need a paper to tell me my baby still needs to feel the weight of her mother next to her before she falls asleep.  That she is cautious and reserved in who she chooses to unleash her lovely, lovely light upon.  That once she does choose to love and trust that it comes in willful, passionate torrents of ideas and songs and games.  That she is just as fierce in her convictions as her mama but her emotions still run free like a cresting river settling over those she loves while her mother has learned how to temper her tides.  That she is at times hiding shyness and softness behind stern eyes and quivering lips.

She will learn to read, she will learn to write.  She will inevitably begin to quiet, to sit, to be still, to observe, listen.  Despite every desperate step to prevent it, she will at some point believe that approval is necessary and comes tied to appearances, grades and scores.  She will test her self worth as a woman time and time again against such measures, such endless, endless measures.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that 'to be yourself in a world that is trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment'.  She will try so hard at times to be something other than what she was created to be.  Progress is ultimately finding your way back to your most honest self.

My little girl's preschool progress report is not a measure of who she is and who she will be.  Above all, she is loved.  And the greatest test of her self worth will be her ability to accept and give love.  Without reservation, or judgement.  Nobody is going to deliver that to her in a manila envelope.

I See You

There are those moments when it seems like the little girl you are and the woman you will be collide.  And I see you, baby.

The Problem With Perfect

I've been hard on myself lately.  Really hard.  It's not anything new.  I feel it creeping up, the pressure, and I know I need to go easier, softer, that there is no prize for perfection.  But still.  The problem with being a perfectionist, type-A, whatever the label, is that the goal you are pushing so hard for doesn't exist.  It's an illusion created in your mind that ignites an inner critic that is impossible to please.  Being enough is never enough.  Give your 3 year-old a donut on the way to school?  Really should be more careful with her health.  Inviting friends over for dinner?  The state of this house is an embarrassment.  Last minute dinner with your husband?  As if you should really be seen in public looking the way you do right now.

I spent the ride to the apple orchard today listening to the unrelenting internal dialogue.  Waves of everything I do wrong washing away everything I do right.

That inner critic is at once like nails on a chalk board and a familiar friend.  I can't anymore turn it off as I could change my eye color.  It's a part of who I am, maybe not my best part, but still a big one, and if there is one thing I am learning in this life, it's that ignoring any part of yourself, diminishing your parts and your make up, serves no purpose.  Learning to love yourself means seeing yourself stripped bare and loving the messy, broken parts with the same intensity instilled in the love offered to the easier, softer ones.  Maybe even with more intensity.  Because forgiving inwards holds the same amount of grace as forgiving outwards.

I can't stop the critique,  I'm not really even sure I know how to make my inner voice softer, kinder.  It's a work in progress, like every other part of learning and growing.  I know I don't want my girls to hear their inner voice rise to the pitch of perfectionism.  I know I can't guide them to soft voices with a narrative riddled with self-loathing and judgement for failing to make an impossible mark.  It's hard to shake it off and get back to being present in my own life, their lives.

I'm learning.  I know that the best way forward sometimes is simply to show up, and keep doing, keep creating, keep loving.  Eventually, the loving always quiets the critic.  Loving, like laughter, heals.  Giving honest love and accepting it back only happens in the absolute absence of perfection.  I'm not there yet, but I am pushing forward past the illusion, to the soft, yielding place where the critics fall silent.  I watched my babies run through the orchard today, selecting their fruit with no weight given towards perfection.  Smooth, perfect skins never offering the guarantee of sweet fruit.

Hard

Today was just hard.  Sometimes the waves of parenting are unrelenting.  They crash and slam against the rocky ledges you spent years shoring up to ensure your own survival.  I can't count the number of times today I cringed at the sounds of my own voice.  The nagging in it, the pitch, the frantic crisis of missing diddys and bubbas.  The curt threatening of beloved toys being snatched from you for the littlest of infractions.  The exhaustion of it.  The honest exhaustion of it.  The exhaustion.

Your daddy works hard my loves.  He works honest, hard, long days.  Sometimes I admire them and sometimes I resent them.  There are even times I envy them.  56 renditions into 'Tomorrow' (The theme song of the musical Annie and your first true obsession Harps) and I am begging for a nap to overcome you so I can drift into some desperate solitude.  Sometimes loves, it is hard to untangle the sound of my own voice from the chaos of loving and caring for you.

I rushed you to your tub tonight.  I remember a woman once telling me when you have a crab to put it in water and I look forward to the calm that comes from your tubs.   Tonight it didn't work.  An hour later and we were still a mess of little bodies struggling to find rest, your mama running the next day's routines over and over in my head.  It doesn't always need to work loves. and you don't need to always have answers.  Sometimes a good bath and a little contemplation is just that.

The Fall Cleansing

I've always found the fall cleansing.  Fresh starts come with cooler air.  We're settling into new routines around here, stretching and growing with each school morning, the drop of backpacks in the afternoon and little girls who never stop exploring.

Adventure can be found without traveling very far when you're little.  Walks with Daddy, fall leaves, pink hair for breast cancer awareness and that cleansing fall air.