all in a year

In order to welcome in 2013 I feel as though I need to look 2012 in the eyes, mano a mano, see who is left standing.  Like so many people I know, I’ve been eager to say good riddance to 2012.  For our family it was a tough year, through big and small hardships.  But as Mark and I were recalling our year, the blessings began to stand apart.  I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the goodness where it was.  So, a non-exhaustive list of some of 2012′s highlights:

• Our family got bigger.   (Of course, this is my absolute favorite thing that happened in 2012).
• My sister turned 30, and we (well, mostly Mike) threw the world’s greatest surprise party. Ever. Seriously.  And I got a surprise visit from Caroline, all the way from England.  Seriously.
• Mark and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary.
• Going to a(nother) Dar Williams concert, together as a family, outside in Bryn Mawr, on a beautiful June evening.  The little ones danced, and listened to the music.  We all laughed together as a bug flew up Dar’s nose and she had to stop mid-song – the Middlest still talks about it!
• All by myself, going to Emily’s graduation from high school – the car ride on that early summer night, alone, windows down; the roar of the football stadium, the feeling of all at once being 18 again and never being 18 again, for being glad to be part of Emily’s tribe.
• Mark started running again, in earnest.  He ran in a handful of races, and felt good about it.  He tried a few “adventure” races and discovered that the added element of having to cross creeks and run along balance beams adds a new dimension of fun.
• Major projects that have forever been our home improvement list were finally checked off.  Knock down sunporch - check! Cut wall from kitchen to family room in half – check!  After talking about these major things forever it feels unbelievable that not just one, but TWO of them got done this year.
• We’ve been outside, lots: hiking, playing in the dirt, the mud, the water, the sand, the snow.  And this is always a highlight.  ‘nough said.
• My sister and I learned how to can.  We “put up” peach preserves and applesauce, and I think I speak for the both of us that, though it had a steeper-than-I-expected learning curve, it’s not hard and we’ll do plenty more of it.  Also, I’m getting pretty good at making bread.
• The Middlest started school for the first time, and hasn’t looked back since (to no surprise of mine).
• My college roommate and her family came to visit.  What a cool thing to watch our kids play together!  And  we had real, good grown up time after the little one’s bedtimes, around the fire pit outside, and talk is full and deep.  Funny to think back to freshman year in North…
• And more college friends: traveling to Western PA/West Virginia was a beautiful trip.  What made it even better was sharing the weekend with dear friends from college and their families, and the best part was witnessing the marriage of Samantha and Nathaniel.  There was so much about this weekend that make it truly unforgettable – the splendor of the weather, the community that came together for Samantha and Nathaniel (that we got to be a part of!), a house shared by three families numbering six adults and seven kids, and never a dull moment.
• On a quiet Sunday evening, while Tobin was making a peanut butter sandwich, Mike asked her to marry him.  It is with such joy that we anticipate Mike wholeheartedly becoming part of our family in the coming year.
• We had a three (ok, maybe four) hour cousin reunion.  We played wiffle ball, we ate sandwiches, we walked and talked and laughed.  Kids ran around barefoot.  We all stretch from East Coast to West, and we’re getting pretty good a this whole speed-cousining thing.
• There have been ordinary moments of beauty, too numerous to count, too full of life to not be noted.  Some I’ve written about: here, here and here.  Some I’ve let just lived into it, writing it into the wrinkles of my brain alone.
• I experienced growth that is only resultant after the burning pull that comes from being stretched beyond myself – my comfort zone, beyond the edges of what I thought I knew to be my capabilities.  There were moments of blazing glory that wouldn’t have, couldn’t have been mine without being challenged to the core.  Like a good hard workout.
• I’m beginning to find my stride with my words.  I’m learning how to bring my voice from inside my head to out into this world, here – for me to remember, for you to receive.

Even through the hardships of 2012, even through the heartbreak, the sadness, the brokenness, the struggle, there has been immense joy and blessings.  Take that, 2012, clearly I am the winner afterall.

object lesson: doc martens, smarties and grace

I did not blend in in high school.  That’s not to say that I was left out – I wasn’t.  I circled my way around in friends, and was involved in all sorts of things.  What I mean to say is that I stood out – I was different.  This was mostly my own doing.  Somewhere along the line it became easier to be different than to be the same. Don’t laud me with praise for clinging to some ideal, upholding some sense of integrity, because that wasn’t it.  Mostly, I was busy trying on all sorts of hats, and figuring out which one I liked best. I was following the beat to my own drum, with a rhythm that kept changing.

I may have been known for a few things, including my choice of footwear.  Sometimes it was just the mismatching socks worn with a pair of kicks, but often it was the hand painted canvas shoes that drew some attention.  Most memorable, and treasured, for me is the pair of colorfully flowered Doc Martens that reached half way up my calf and tied with one blue and one green lace. They were just tough enough, softened with floral femininity.  These shoes became a trademark.  No one else had these shoes, and I wore them loudly, with everything.

Another thing that remains faithful in my memory of high school is skiing.  Our school, thought not particularly close to any mountains, yet was always offering ski trips, big and small.  I saved up my babysitting dollars, and my friends and I  sat on those buses, as they navigated tight turns on small mountains roads, more often than not.  Not a lot makes any one of these trips stand alone, and looking back now they are hazy years of getting my ski legs and buttressing my courage to aim myself down black diamonds ever larger in size and challenge.

After a long afternoon of the round and round of chair lifts and ski runs, thighs tight and cheeks tingling with a hot-cold, I trudged back inside the ski lodge, thunking my way to the locker room, in the robotic movements dictated by ski boots.  The warm, wet air from inside that ski lodge softened my nose, and snot oozed its way from my nose to my upper lip. My friends and I, always looking to pinch a penny, cheap in the way teenagers are, refused to fork up the buck fifty or whatever it was for a bright orange key and a locker.  Instead, as was our habit, we hoisted our bags of day clothes on top of the locker bays.  Now, coming off the mountain, ready for a comfy sweatshirt and walkable shoes for my feet, I swung my ski bag back down off the ledge.  I noticed it almost immediately: my boots, my floral Doc Martens, are weighty shoes.  They lend heft to a bag that is otherwise filled with cotton clothes.  But this bag had no heft, not anymore.  My shoes were gone.

What followed next was a mess of tears, histrionics of teenage proportion.  I came home on that bus deflated, still walking like a ski robot.  I felt like someone had stolen a part of me.  These weren’t just an expensive pair of Nikes.  To me, these boots were one of a kind, and so much of how I understood myself was wrapped up in those shoes.  Some other person was going to wear those shoes, now.  Out there, in that great world, someone else was walking around in my size 6 floral Doc Martens.

At home, I expected an earful about being responsible.  I was certain that I this was going to be one of those life lessons, a teaching moment about making choices and respecting my belongings.  If I had just put my coins in the locker, shoved my bag in and locked it up tight, then I would still have my beloved boots.  I braced myself for the lecture, and though heart sick, understood I would get no sympathy.

I did learn a life lesson that day, but it wasn’t the one I expected.  The words are vague, the specifics unclear, but the lesson I learned that day was about grace.  Pure, undeserving, grace.  You see, I didn’t get the lecture; I didn’t get the “I told you so,” or the “you should know better.”  What I got was a new pair of boots: another brightly colored pair of floral Doc Martens, paid for entirely by my parents, and lovingly gifted to me, for no other reason than they loved me, and understood my hurt.

Some might accuse my parents of missing a crucial lesson, causing me to be still more careless.  Some might accuse me of being a bit too attached to the finer things of this world, and missing the point, ’cause after all stuff is just stuff.  I will tell you this: that other stuff is in there, too, but what I learned that day was a far greater lesson.

Recently, I dug through the bottom of my closet and pulled out my boots.  The flowers are worn away on the toes, the leather forever creased around the ankles, but they are comfortable in a way that only 15 year old shoes can be. Though they are not the most convenient shoe for this running-out-the-door-with-three-small-ones-in-tow-mama, I’ve been taking the time to lace them up, threaded to one hole less than the top, wrap that lace around the ankle before securing it with a double knot, just like I did in high school.  These boots have attitude, even now.

And these boots are a physical reminder to me, too, of the grace that I have received, the grace that I can so freely give.  Just like when my sister is hanging out with our kids, and is doling out Smarties, untwisting the crinkly plastic with the kids circled ’round, and she reaches out to place a few into each hand.  The Eldest, his eyes betraying his desire and disappointment, as he tells his aunt truthfully: “But I didn’t eat a good dinner.”  As she deposits a few Smarties in his palm, he is learning about that same abundant grace.

Folks, none of us is deserving.  I’m wearing my boots and passing out Smarties of grace.

notes for my teenage self

With graduation at the fingertips of many, here are some thoughts:

Hey you.  I get it, I do.  Everything is so intense, and the things that aren’t get jazzed up to make them so. Sometimes I still feel it.  Feel like I’m in high school, feel like I’m that funky sprite dancing down long corridors, mostly too loud, sometimes too quiet, never tied down.   But what I’ve lost in funk I’ve gained in perspective.  I have distance from everything that felt so burning.

Here’s what I can tell you:  life is more nuanced than you can see it for now.  The gray far outweighs the black and white.  I know, now you need to cast those shadows, draw those lines in order to carefully, safely break through the cocoon and into the world, but give it time.  Every one has a story.  Learn to listen for it. Explore the gray: but know that all actions have reactions.  These can be unpredictable and not always fairly applied, but for every choice there is a consequence.  Some things can’t be undone.  Know that you’ll screw it up.  Be kind to yourself.

The memories grow fuzzy but you’ll have strong feelings attached to the blur.  Proms were never as much fun or as drama-filled as everyone hoped or feared.  It was just another thing to do.  The pictures you’ll have when you squeeze your eyes shut and throw yourself back are of soccer games, and car rides.  Of football games, and bus rides.  Of freedom that comes with new legs, new friends, new faith. Of crossing the bridge into town to eat greasy french fries at the local pizza joint.  Of water ice and lying in prickly grass, sun on your face.  You’ll remember every word to those songs, still, years and years later.  You’ll smile and turn it up loud when it plays through the car radio, and you’ll be right back in that moment again.

Hold your friends loosely.  You’ll be surprised at the ways you all will go, and you’ll be proud to have been part of their stories.  Many will weave themselves back into yours.  And there are others that are friends in spaces and places.  This doesn’t make them any less true.

Those hurts that feel so stingy and so immediate become less so, with time.  It still hurts now, yes.  There is no solace in the waiting.  But that seven page handwritten letter that a friend gave you, listing the disappointments?  The wisdom gleaned from this was not in the content of the letter but in letting it wash over you.  Not surprisingly, this friendship didn’t last, and you didn’t mourn it long.  Others are truer, wiser, kinder and you learn to seek out these qualities in the ones you share you soul with.

Speaking of soul sharing: be kind to that boy who drives you too fast in his car, the one that makes your belly all bubbly and causes you to say things without thinking.  The one who makes the five hour drive to upstate New York to visit you, countless times and in the wee hours.  He takes a knee, ask for the future.  He grows man-hands and works harder than any one you’ve ever known.  He loves, and gives, and loves some more, and together you go far.  He dials down his expectations, you learn that he far surpasses yours.  And he still makes your belly all bubbly.

Don’t worry: it may seem like everyone has it all figured out.  They spell their plans A, B, C, but what I can tell you is mostly nobody accounts for the Qs, or the Ns,  or the Xs.  Don’t let that throw you: stick it out, follow through, and eventually you’ll get where you want to go.  And you’ll have better stories for the telling.  Here’s what I would say:  do the thing that you’re scared of doing.  Choose to major in English, even though it seems silly, and you’ll have to take a foreign language.  You’ll see yourself reflected in words.

Don’t always be nice, but be kind.  Nice doesn’t bother anybody, doesn’t ask questions — ask away.  But be kind in the asking, be kind in receiving the answers.  Be kind always.  The seeds of your words and actions may not be reaped for years.  Likewise, lavishly give grace.

Yes, life gets harder, but easier, too.  The scope narrows.  Things gather weight and speed, so the pull of momentum is strong.  Don’t be afraid to stop and adjust your course.  There is no hurry.  No prizes for getting there (wherever that is) first.  Time seems to be something to bank on. It’s yours to fill.

And don’t forget that funky sprite is in there always.  The one who doesn’t care what people think.  The one with the mismatched socks.  The one who knows her own insides.  You’ll need the reminder, because sometimes it can be hard to recognize her.  She’ll dress differently, sound softer.  But ask her to dance every once in a while.

Peace.