Growing up in Florida I never had occasion to ice skate, but like many kids in my genre of coolness, I often went to the skating rink. I couldn’t skate backward or couples skate (well, maybe I could have but no one asked me to). Still, I loved skating under the disco lights to the music of bands like Queen, The Bee Gees, and Gloria Gaynor. It made me feel as if I was going places even if it was only in an endless circle.
Decades later, I sometimes still feel like I’m going in an endless circle. Only it doesn’t feel as cool anymore.
This feels especially true in parenting. Loops and loops around the carpool lane; circular conversations that make my head spin; and the ongoing dream-killing of telling my precious children no.
No, and no, and H-E-double hockey sticks no. Circle and repeat. Sometimes I would go to bed feeling dizzy and drained and very much unlike Gloria Gaynor whose anthem “I Will Survive” obviously doesn’t apply to parents of teenagers. It was about as much fun as tripping on my roller skate shoelaces and falling on the seat of my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans knowing that I would be sitting out the couple’s slow skate yet again.
I had not skated in decades until one Christmas several years ago. We took our kids overseas for their first time; landing in London early Christmas day. We attended a beautiful mass that morning at Westminster Cathedral and roamed the city’s cold and quiet streets all afternoon. That evening we went to an open-air Christmas Market in Hyde Park. They had giant paper mâché art, games, rides, roasted chestnuts, yummy-smelling confections, and vendors who sold fake Burberry scarves. It was magical.
They also had ice skating.
I was surprised when my son agreed to ice skate with me. My son, who so often seemed distant, so annoyed with my attempts to cajole conversation, and so frustratingly far away from the easy carefree boy I once knew so well, said he would skate. I could end the story here because I feel certain his willingness to skate with his mama was a Christmas miracle. Read more
Every October the word spooky rises like a ghost to the forefront of my vocabulary. Its a month-long torment to my family that brings me uncanny delight. I draw the word out like the two vowels are careening around a hairpin turn until they crash into each other with a high-pitched yelp. It’s about as much fun as my middle-aged self can muster without inducing a medical event.
Parenting is a weird gig. Just when you think you have figured out one stage in your child’s development, they morph into a more perplexing one. By the time they become teenagers, a once pivotal milestone like potty training seems almost trivial. After all, what’s a little pee on the kitchen floor among family?
I’ve never journaled much because I figured if I wrote down my most vulnerable thoughts they would eventually be used to commit me into a sanitarium where I would spend the rest of my days eating green Jell-O wondering how full life could have been if I only used my Holly Hobbie journal to draw pictures of cats instead of depictions of insanity.
There is something about a new year with its ambitious resolutions, exuberant plans, and fresh start folly that leaves me feeling flat instead of fiery. It just feels exhausting to think about all the bettering that becomes gospel at the start of a new year. Self-improvement that encompasses everything from eating and exercise to ordering priorities and organizing closets. Am I the only one who feels like a hero just for taking a shower?
I didn’t grow up with social media. I handwrote notes on notebook paper and folded them into small squares to pass to my friends. I took a picture with cameras that didn’t make phone calls and it was months before I bothered to get the film developed. I didn’t take 10 iterations of the same pose because film was expensive. I just smiled and said “cheese” and that was that.
I can’t help but shake that feeling a new year brings that I’m supposed to “do better,” “improve,” or “make it count.” Bold directives that remind me of the anxious anticipation of waiting for my turn in a grade school relay race. Messages that don’t make me want to run as much as they make me want to run away.
We all have a story and often we are afraid to tell it. It’s the part of us that doesn’t come up in our social media feeds or in casual conversation. I get that. I don’t tell all of mine. All any of us can do is share what we are comfortable with and hope whoever we trust doesn’t use it to cause pain. Most of us have already experienced enough of that.
Reality can be absurd.
It’s the Fall of my son’s senior year in high school. The seeds we planted in the blind enthusiasm of grade school, protected from the ambivalence of middle school, and fertilized with a hearty mix of encouragement and extracurriculars through the high school years have culminated into a small crop of college applications, deadlines, and gut-wrenching decisions. Our mailbox is jammed with colorful college brochures, inviting postcards, and glossy magazines that clearly explain the absurd-cost of college. For months, we’ve binged on the propaganda. We’ve made our list. We’ve pared down our list. We’ve reevaluated and we’ve changed it – sometimes all in one day. At times, motivations and decisions seemed logical, and, just as often, the experience has felt more like a diagnosis of insanity than a direction to begin anew.