Summer Strife (or Seeing the Bigger Picture)

My kids are older now, I don’t write about them like I used to. It wasn’t some clear line that I drew, some milestone that I came to. It happened more organically than that. It’s not necessarily to preserve their privacy, though there certainly is that. It’s not even that the old adage appears to be right—bigger kids, bigger problems.  If pressed, I’d say that my writing has always been about me, and my own learning, growing, striving, and surrendering. In those early years, it was so twined up with those exact things of my kids that I couldn’t parse it apart.  Now, there’s more distance, and rightly, our paths are diverging.  And maybe it’s in this diverging that I find my hardest struggle.

This has been a tough summer.  I was so excited for the kids to get out of school, for us to have this wide expanse of time and space together. Naïve? Hopeful? I don’t know, but the reality has been far murkier than what I had envisioned. Which is also to say: real life.  

The dynamics this year within the siblings have been hard. Though they are each two years apart, the distance now between 10 and 12 is a wider gap that 12 and 14.  10 is still so very young in so many ways.  And 14 needs to strike out, to learn to have his own adventure, one that involves me less and less. 

Our daily reality is hard, really hard. The reality that though we are supposed to let them have room for boredom, in many cases that boredom doesn’t lead to creativity or entrepreneurship, but instead just to a boiled down atmosphere to fling insults at one another. (Lord of the Flies, anyone?). It’s hearing my voice say one more time to get off your phones.  Reality looks like the kids kicking the soccer ball around the house because it’s a thousand degrees with 100% humidity outside, until the ball hits one too many picture frames and I banish everyone to the basement. Reality is the exhaustion I feel at the end of day from all the out loud parenting. It’s the tiny heartbreak when the 14-year-old would rather goof off with his friends than enjoy one last beach day with me. None of this is unique to us—the bickering, the testing of boundaries—I’m certain, but it’s there and pokes my tender heart all the same. 

While it feels difficult to find perspective when I am so thickly in the trenches, there is a truth that is just as universally applicable now as when I’ve written about it before. This, too, shall pass. These difficult sibling dynamics, this weird atmosphere of summer strife. Fall will come, the kids will be a year older than last, entering into new grades, new phases. The thing that challenges me now won’t be the thing that challenges me always. Abrasions on my heart will heal over. What then can I learn from this season? Can I find moments of connection, of purpose, of beauty, even, in this hard? 

Maybe it’s when Renee wants to run an errand with me, sitting shotgun, dialing in the radio to the current pop tunes. Her gift to me is that I now can sing along with Dua Lipa and Lil Nas X (or that I even know who they are!).  Maybe it’s listening to Grant tell me about the weather report, showing me the clouds in the sky, giving me details about humidity and dew point. It’s playing Monopoly Deal with Griffin, his strategic mind kicking into gear, winning almost every single time. Is there beauty in watching family tv together, night after night, smushed into our sectional, arguing about blankets and who gets to hold the remote? I think there might just be.

The truth is—that’s why the melancholy. That’s why the tinge of sadness.  Because it is all fleeting, we have so few summers with these kids under our roof, and I just want it to be beautiful.  To Enjoy Every Moment. But I know, I know, that beautiful and broken live right next to each other, and are often even the same thing. It’s like when they were babies, and the grandmothers would coo, and say it all goes by so fast. Somehow, back then, I had the innate wisdom to know that I didn’t have to enjoy Every Minute, that there would be no scarcity of beauty, so instead to be easy with myself in the hard.  Somehow now, though, it’s like the timeline is condensed, and I can see the end coming, that I have forgotten my own mothering wisdom. Instead I have zoomed straight down that panicky road. In my own race to Cherish It All, to press it on my heart, I have forgotten the humanity of it all.  That everything, everything, is both—beautiful and broken, glorious and hard. Is there a space I can hold to be thankful for this shitty summer? Can I acknowledge this season of growth for the struggle that it is, and be gentle on myself for not loving every minute?  

Maybe it’s even leaning into the separation that’s happening, embracing my own self, apart from the kids.  It’s taking the time to forge out on my own hikes, in my own wilderness space, even when the kids don’t want to come. It’s buying the tickets to the concert, leaving the kids behind, Mark and I enjoying the company of friends and good live music. It’s starting a new book club, making time for connection and meaning in my own circle. It’s going to bed at a time that feels reasonable to me, letting the kids come in and kiss me goodnight when they are on their way.  New rhythms—surrendering to new growth. 

I’m reminded of another year when I again felt the strain of summer wear me down. The funny thing about that is when I look back at the photo album of that year, I’m not left with the impression of struggle. The pictures, though highlights only of course, show a story that is more nuanced, one that strikes out towards growth and striving. One that is about a family learning how to be human alongside one another, the backdrops changing along the way. 

Maybe that is how I need to think about this summer: less of the nitty gritty details, and more about the panoramic. Has there been growth, striving, surrendering this summer?  Absolutely. And perhaps that is why it is so painful. Growth cannot happen without the struggle.

This, too, shall pass. 

There is Work to Be Done

There was this trip we took last year, to a place up in the mountains. I was struck by this really big, really old barn across the way. It was run down, now, neglected, fallen into disrepair. Truly dilapidated, it was a patchwork of color, networked and layered through. Wood, discolored by the elements, was meshed with other materials. Each generation imposed changes, most I’m assuming necessitated by time’s wear. One addition after the next, meeting some new need at the time, fixing some falling apart piece, band-aiding it back together. Until it was left, neglected, to fall into disrepair. Until someone walked away, the damage too big to mitigate, too expensive to fix. Too dangerous to step foot into. Now, it looms forlornly over a field, next to a road, for someone like me to imagine about. Something about it still makes me shiver, not for any ghostly reason, but more because it seems to have touch a nerve.

Last summer, we joked that the trees were taking back the neighborhood. A few pretty significant ones in our small sphere came crashing down. There was the one down at the neighbors, a huge oak that had been reaching out of the hillside. After the crash, we hiked up that hillside to take a peak, and wouldn’t you know? In its growth it had spliced itself, rotting away from the inside until that sunny summer day when it landed on their shed. But we did what good neighbors do – we got to work. Mark with the chain saw, the kids and I piling twigs and branches on the side of the yard. They rented a chipper, and cleaned up the mess.

It happened to us next, a few weeks later, though just a portion of a tree instead of a full one. In the middle of the night, a splinter, a crack. A boom as the branch made connection with the power lines. The next morning, get to work. Familiar with our jobs this time, we’re becoming pros. Cut, move, pile.

A tree falls, it’s so disruptive, such an obvious mess that there is no hesitation but to get to work. To lay aside the plans for the day, and bustle about tending to this new need. But what about the things that are more gradual–the barn that gets patched and mended through the ages? The messes that we have just lived with, gotten used to? The door in the basement that mostly closes, some of the time. The one light in the kitchen that keeps flickering. The trim that needs painting, the holes that need spackling. It all takes work, takes resources. Like that barn, care needs to be taken to see the need and fix it, keep disrepair at bay.

I turn very inward at this time of year. It seems counter intuitive, I suppose, the opposite of what should be happening. All around me, there are signs of awakening, yawning and stretching of sunshine and wildlife; things left untouched seeking attention again. But my birthday is soon, nudging me into reflection, and then there is just something about Spring itself that reminds me – there is work to be done. My eyes see the debris and clutter of the winter that needs to be cleaned up, cleaned out. Now is as good of time as any.

What of mine needs tending to, is looking for care? In my family, in my relationships? In myself, my dreams? My heart and soul? Can I look at these places in my life and see where I’ve become complacent, gotten used to the way things are? What is the cost of doing the work? Do I have it to spare? How do I keep things from falling into disrepair?

Recently, I’ve been drawn to mushrooms. Aesthetically, I mean (and I guess metaphorically, too), collecting photos of them. Out on my hikes, in the starkness of the winter landscape, they have become easier for me to notice. Pieces of art, they catch my eye. Wild and beautiful. But what a mushroom is doing, really, is decomposing something else, something already dead. That mushroom, beautiful and wild, is making life out of death.

That’s the trick of it, isn’t it? To know what to let die, and what to work hard to keep alive. The barn, the tree, the job, the dream. To discern what trees are rotted out, threatening to come crashing down, ready to nurture something new. To see clearly where the dust has gradually settled, to notice those places—the hobbies, the homes–that need to be blown clear of the clutter, to grab some boards and nails to shore them up again. What friendships need tending, what habits need to be turned to soil.

Coming back to that barn, I wonder more about the story there. Who owned the barn? What led up to the point of walking away? And who was there watching it gradually cover with ivy and moss, the wood planks soften under time? Another truth, another life starts to reveal itself, one where instead of the work falling on one set of shoulders, someone is there to offer some nails, someone else to lend a hand, a hammer, a loan? Because though there is work–yes there is always work–we are not, I am not, alone. Just like when that tree came down at the neighbors, and we didn’t think twice about assessing the situation and pitching in. It’s just what you do. And this, perhaps, is the the deeper, starker truth that I’m left with–that when I dig in to the business of clearing the cobwebs from my heart, and tending to the things that need tending, I know that there are folks that will come alongside me, bring a bucket and a mop, provide the speakers and the soundtrack. Teach me how to patch a wall, help me figure out what to throw away, what can be repurposed.

And in the end, this hard work will keep the disrepair at bay.

What is It?

Renee stops to peer at tiny flowers, almost hidden in the underbrush. It’s mid April, and things are just beginning to wake back up, to yawn and stretch.

“What are these?” she asks, pointing at small white petals. I pull the dog back, retrace my steps to where Renee is crouched low.  “Hmm, I don’t know,” I shrug my shoulders, content to keep going. But she wants me to take a picture, to document it, and then later investigate it more. So I do, thankful for her curiosity, wondering when mine stopped.

Sometimes I blame Google, or Siri, or Alexa, or whatever brand of robot there is. Questions arise and answers present themselves readily, easily. There is so much we can know, with so little effort. Mostly, my feeling is to shrug it off, to ask them to pause in the wondering, in the unknowing. And certainly, there is good in that of course. Good in knowing that we don’t have to have all the answers all the time. Good in using our own thinking, our own imagination, to wonder at a problem, or consider the possibilities.

But now, especially in such a time of uncertainty, a time of changing variables and shifting scenarios, it feels good to be able to label something. To take that picture back home, look it up, to name it. To know how it grows, where it grows.

On our way back up that trail, the same trail we had descended already, something catches Griffin’s eye, off to the side of the trail. At first, the kids think it is a gourd, which makes me laugh. Like a pumpkin, a squash? But that’s what they say. Gently kicking it with my toe, I uncover more of it. Bone. Jawline, teeth. A skull. But whose? Mark snaps a picture.  Back at home, he’ll set his phone on the table, iPad next to it, to compare images from a quick google search. Nothing looks exactly right, but we’ll have some hunches.

We send the picture off to Grandpa Jack, knowing he’ll have an idea. I can’t remember now, if he did, if he helped us nail down what creature we’d seen. But I do know that it started a new game, a game of identifying, of naming and knowing. Each evening now Grandpa Jack sends a picture of a new skull, something from his collection. Sometimes he’ll give a clue, other times the answer is clear in the size, the shape, the things we already know about animals. He starts with skulls, then moves to tracks. The goal is always the same: to name the creature.

I wonder about naming this thing, right here, that we are experiencing. I wonder about knowing it, identifying each of these moments, this history in the making. I wonder how I can take a picture of it, to see it for what it is. I want to investigate it – for its depth and focus and clarity and shadows. And then maybe I can name it, know it.  To maybe, even, understand it.

The lines to get into the grocery store, each person six feet apart, each with a face mask. The arrows marking the safe direction down the aisles. The plastic barrier between cashier and customer. The wariness with which we approach each other. The vocabulary that didn’t exist for us six weeks ago – curbside, contactless, social distance. The near empty highway. The chalk drawings on sidewalks and driveways. Signs of solidarity. Honking cars, friends passing by, signaling a knowing, a caring.

My phone buzzes, a text picture on the screen. A photo of a book my sister just bought, a small pocket guide to trees in our region. Beautiful color pictures, detailed descriptions, all in service of helping her know what she sees on her walks around her neighborhood, her drive to the grocery store.  She, too, feels a pull to name, to know.

This moment: the trilling cacophony of backyard birds, the hum of the street, the sting of cool breeze through the crack in the window. This moment: peace. The clench of my jaw, the kink in my neck, the softness of my belly. This moment: anxiety. The next moment: stillness. And again: chaos. Identify, name, know.

Everything is harder now, like trying to run through Jello. There is mental exhaustion in doing the things that used to be simple, mindless. But it’s slower, too, and quieter.

Know this moment: the one where we return again and again to the solace of the natural spaces. A place of refuge for me, always, but now even more so in these troubled times.  It’s different, but the same. It’s casing the parking lot, counting cars before committing to a hike at any particular trail. It’s trying even harder to find ourselves off the beaten path.  But it’s still the same things on the path: spring peepers, who’s sound signals the beginning of spring, year after year. Vultures, soaring above the trees. Fiddlehead ferns, their small beauty uncurling quietly near my steps.

We’re building new routines, finding a new familiar, seeking to understand a little more about this concrete and tangible world we live in, where nature continues to be our bedrock, bearing witness to our human strife. It’s still the same things it always been – the trees, the stretch of sky, the hard rock solid in the earth. These things hold true and familiar.

me and a dog, in the woods

It’s been probably two years now since I committed to hiking a few times a week. (Probably been that long, too, since I’ve done much writing in earnest). All by myself, mostly. We’ve always been a hiking family, hitting the trails with the kids since they were very little, first in baby carriers, then on their own feet. But this is different, this is just for me. Mark is a runner, and for a tiny bit I tried to be a runner, too. Not with him, of course, because he is fast, but on my own, on the trails like he did. I committed myself to it though, thinking that I just needed to get used to it, or work harder at it, get better at it, and then I would like it. But I never did. I am not a runner.

In that period when I tried to be a runner, I learned a few things about myself. I like to be outside. Scratch that, I need to be outside. I am a better version of me when I can breathe fresh air, hopefully see the sunshine, get some natural vitamin D. When I can move my body, and feel it tethered to the earth, a connection with the sky. Ok, maybe I didn’t learn this things fresh and new, because I’m pretty sure I knew them already. But somehow I learned the importance of these things, of owning them and making them mine. I’m a better version of me with the lens of nature, this big world, on my eyes. Hiking gets me there.

Our family got a new dog this past weekend. Like most things in life, this felt complicated, but simple. The timing felt crazy, but right. River, who used to be Tigger (but who I’m also not convinced is River) seems to fit right in with our family. A big piece of the dog puzzle was that I was ready for a hiking buddy. Though Maggie hiked with us often as a family, in her later years it was just too much for her. I left her home when I was carving this new routine for myself.  Now, River is just the right one to join me.

I usually go to the the same nature preserve to hike. It’s super convenient, just mere minutes drive from my house, and even better, close to many of the errands that I run. There is a strong network of trails, and I pick and choose depending on how much time I have, and how much of a hill I want to tackle. There is beauty, too–a wide creek, tiny streams, old ruins, views. Turtles, bald eagles, frogs, herons, vultures, squirrels, deer–they have all captured my attention over the years.

Taking the thinking and decision making out of where to go has streamlined my routine. But the simplicity of this has now turned into more. It’s turned into a lesson in constancy and change, the movement of time, in forces of nature, of my place in things. It’s a meditation, an eyeopening to the striking-ness of what is around me. What catches my eye? Just last week I saw a barred owl, it’s call startling me out of my headphones.

By hiking the same trails, week after week, I have watched the seasons change, leaf my leaf. We have had so much rain this year, and I’ve watched as the runoff has etched away the ground. Pelting rain has exposed a big tube that was buried, originally in an attempt to direct the tiny streams finding their way down the hill to the creek. Now water runs all around it, the tube sitting extraneously in the middle.

I’ve also seen how so much stays the same, stays dependable.

Winter is probably my favorite time to hike. It can feel so quiet, like it’s all mine. River, the new dog,  and I took to the trails today, his second adventure out with me. It snowed a few inches yesterday, but the sun was strong and warm today, making for thick layers of mud and slush. We took our time, careful not to slip and slide down the steep parts. He kept pace with me, a good hiking partner, stopping only occasionally with an investigative sniff. It was quiet, with the exception of the dripping from the trees tinkling on the crusts of snow. The snow makes the trees standout, stark and lanky against the milky backdrop of snow. Maybe our silhouettes stood out, too.

There are things in my life that feel big, momentous.  These next three weeks shift to full throttle, packing up the house that I grew up in, the house my mother has lived in for forty years. While she is not moving far geographically, this feels like a seismic move. My mind, and heart, feel the weight of many big and small things, the changing needs of my kids, my marriage, myself. In the woods, on the trails, my mind comes back again to the lessons I’m always learning–lessons about time, the enormity of this big, long life; about the specificity of small things.

 

 

 

 

Things to Write About

I want to write about the turtles.  Griffin and I were out on our afternoon walk yesterday,  stooped by the side of the pond.  When I picked my head up, there they were.  Three turtles sunning on some rocks across the pond from us. We walked closer, spooked two of them into the water, but watched the one old geezer for a while.  We sat quiet and still, hoping that the other two might come back.  Eventually we got up, brushed the damp grass from our legs, and marched back to the car.  That last turtle hardly moved to notice us. I want to write about this, to think about it and remember it.

I want to write about Renee getting her ears pierced. She knows it, too, and keeps asking, “Mama, did you write about me yet?” Oh, girl. I want to write about her bravery, her courage, her choice.  It’s been probably nine months in the works, this idea of pierced ears.  She’s been scared, aware of the hurt, the logistics of this thing.  She researched, asking friend after friend about their experiences.  And then she decided she was ready.  That morning, she cried at the pierce.  Then it was over.  It’s already taken the form of a story, much like the stories Renee’s friends shared with her, like the stories the women in the piercing shop told.  I want to write about the bigger picture, about choosing hard things, about Renee being fearfully fearless.

I want to write about Kindergarten Kickoff.  Griffin, the youngest of my gang, is getting ready for school kindergarten.  The school does a nice job of transitioning the little ones, giving them lots of opportunities to see the school, meet the teachers, see the classrooms.  But it’s still just a waiting game of time, and he has just three short weeks left of preschool.  It’s been a heart tug as each of my kids has made this slow climb, but it’s especially emotional with him, my last.  I want to write about this very mixed time, this holding tight and then feeling suffocated; this letting go and feeling unmoored.

I want to write about spring break, about those magic moments when all three kids are gelling.  I want to write about the privilege I have to bear witness to this.  I want to write about hosting an Easter celebration, about gathering family in my space. I want to write about the slack line, about balance. I want to write, again, about following the kids into the freedom of fun.  I want to write about the chainsaw, about yard work, about investing in our house, our home, our family.

I want to write about the weird weather, the indecisiveness of this season.  Sunny and hot, then chilly and damp, and back again.  Dressing in layers, ready to peel each off in response to whatever the day may bring. I want to remember how the forsythia started to bloom early this year, then took a beating when we got a dumping of snow.  They continue to stretch forth, bigger and thicker every year despite, but the yellow bloomed less fully this year.  I’m drawn to the sunshine, outside almost always, and so very susceptible to the darkening mood that comes with the clouds, the rain. I want to remember this discomfort – the ambivalence even in this landscape around me.

These are mostly just notes to me. I want to write about all of this, to come back to each of these things that strike something in my heart.  Big swooping life changing things, and tiny small heart-pauses.  And I will, I’ll come back around to these things, mine them for deeper, more polished treasures.  But here’s where I’m leaving my little scribbles for now.