2023

Melancholy Or ….

On Halloween, I found myself awash in the mixture of my life. As I walked our little downtown’s streets, holding hands with a baby Elmo, I missed my dad with a well-worn, familiar ache. And I looked up to blue skies, and noticed an older gentleman sitting on a bench, holding up a Jack Russel Terrier to his face for a kiss. Golden leaves were falling, and with their descent came another landing truth – we have stepped into grief season.

November is here and with it comes a mixed melancholy of anticipatory grief and chosen celebration. While there are no safe months in grief, I think the reminders and triggers are easier to manage in the window from the day after Father’s Day to, well, maybe today.

We’re talking about smoked turkeys, and who will sit at what table, and how to juggle parties and planned celebrations. And in the busyness that tempts us to brush our feelings under the rug by the fire, are reminders of who won’t be there, gifts that won’t be given, memories of holidays gone-by. I suppose that’s the gift of getting older, the remembering mixed with the space for creating new things.

New neighbors to share soup with while juggling toddlers in costume. New freedom in ordering out rather than filling the counter with boxes of butter and bags of mini marshmallows. New high-chairs at the table and writing gift lists with entries including play food and puzzles. Old leaves fall, and we watch them release, letting them land to be crunched. And, still, there are old men smiling, and dogs waiting for kisses, and a toddler’s laughter takes up more space than we knew to allow.

And in the missing, I’ll add an apron of his to my outfit. Maybe I’ll pour his scotch as we take out boxes of food already prepared in our familiar kitchen, where he once stood bickering with my grandmother about which way was the right way to put a turkey in the oven. I’ll also be kind to myself when I realize, with new waves of small devastation, that they never set foot in my new kitchen.

Grief season is here and with it the choice to pick melancholy or create something new. A beautiful thing.

43 Months Ago

March 2020 was 43 months ago. We’re all impacted by the countless events that have happened since, and the fear of a virus rooted deep in me. The tendrils started with rumors of China, and I vividly remember the security agent trying to ask me if I’d traveled there when I was trying to get into Cuba. I didn’t understand her English, nor really, the impact of the question.

For 43 months, I avoided the virus, until this week, when I tested positive. I took three tests, just to be sure. When I called my mom to tell her, I started crying. I’m in quarantine, and I’m going to be fine. Sniffles and body aches are the result of vaccines and perhaps blind luck. I don’t know, trying to make since of why things unfold the way they do doesn’t really give me much to go on. My tears were out of fear for others, my baby, my mother, my husband. But too, for the 46 months worth of fear that layered inside of me in the shape of headlines, and collective loss, and a culture that makes sickness our own individual problems to be mended in literal isolation.

I hesitated to write about my experience because most of you, most of us, have already experienced this virus intimately. You’ve had the bug once or twice, or perhaps would rather forget about the terror when we watched Italy shut down, hospitals filled up, schools closed, people died. We all want to move on. But these markers of trauma linger, and in my facing a 43-month old fear, I had to weep.

It’s tempting to switch to platitudes, to the cliche phrases we use when life keeps happening. And a transition to hope or beauty feels weak here, like the wobbly little legs running around my house. With all of this found time, I’m discovering the old way of being in the world isn’t as satisfactory as it once was. Pre-baby, and during the years from 2020-2022, every week brought the choice to read all day, to binge watch some tv, to paint my nails without disruption, to write every week. And then, along came a baby and everything changed.

As the world moved forward, I turned inwards, moving to care taking, and with the pivot, came an elevated pace of tending to the needs of others. I haven’t read a book in months. But, on this bedspread in the upper corner of my house, I’m finishing novels. I’m painting my nails. I’m binge watching hours of television. While I isolate, I hear little steps and giggles, and a man I loved turned into a father attempting bedtime solo. I hear a toddler falling off beds and shouts of hooray and watch the lights turn on and off as days turn into nights. Friends are dropping soup on the stoop and texts come in and my husband I talked on the phone last night, like we did when we were dating. Perhaps the prior years taught me how to be alone. And these recent months, taught me I don’t have to be.

While reading a book all day will continue to be missed, mostly I just want to hug my little one. The old years are gone, and new ones unfold.

To hear little noises of family life, receive help, and let fears release, especially while in quarantine, are beautiful things.

Ball of Clay

I got my purple Patagonia coat out of the closet this morning. They call it a mid-layer coat – one intended for seasons of transition. A light jacket of sorts, not too puffy, one that serves as a trusted friend from September to November. I feel like I just hung it up to wait, back at the end of May.

This summer went fast. And with it were hot days, a few spent at the edge of a baby wading pool. Now, clouds are rolling in, and leaves are quivering, wondering what change awaits them.

I’m in that season too – of transition and wondering and closing different roles out. One phrase that mothers my age keep using is ‘carving out time.’ I get images of matrons using giant knives to widdle away pieces of time on their busy calendars – filled with obligations and responsibilities not of their own choosing. I stand, at the end of the line, with my post-partum hair re-growing, saying wait a minute – what if we didn’t have to work so hard to carve?

Instead, I’m reclaiming – closing doors and using my fingers to pry more space for myself into a day. Like a little kid sculpting a thumb clay pot, I hold the materials of my life, warming in my palms. I’m not sure what shape it will make.

In the show Working Mom’s, one of the characters attends pottery class for theraputic reasons. Each week she brings home a large ball of clay. “It soothes her” she says. But people want her to have created something by the time she’s ready to leave the class, and each week, she insists in returning to the big ball.

This is where I’m at, standing with the ball of clay.

Finding space to apply my fingerprints, in the doorway in my purple coat. A beautiful thing.

Marks and All

I started listening to a playlist on Spotify titled “Piano for Healing.” In the quiet moments, the melodies bring a bit of peace in the middle of a busy day. And allowing healing energy into my space is welcome as part of a routine.

Healing feels elusive at times – like you can’t quite wrap your arms around it’s finished point. This week baby got a bug bite right between her eyes. The bite swelled, causing her eyes to puff up and I tried calmly to reach out to a doctor – allowing only small moments of panic in this new venture of parenthood. She needed Benadryl, nothing serious, and within a few days, the swelling was gone, leaving only a tiny scab for her to pick at with her raggedy finger nails.

We got out the nail buffer and she seems to go about her days. And still, I think her once perfect baby skin has been disrupted by a mosquito or four. Our entrees into imperfection start young – our chances for suffering and the required healing abound. We move forward – marks remain.

This month I’ve been given the gift of Enneagram coaching with a colleague of mine who is getting certified in the tool. My primary style is a 6 – a loyal skeptic – personalities prone to preventative thinking, emotion, and planning ahead. The word skeptic brought up so many emotions for me – and I asked, in my session, is the root of our primary style a result of nature or nurture, or perhaps the soul work we are here to do on earth? In other words, my little childlike self was concerned, did I come out this way, a bit afraid of the world, or did the situations that life gave me make me a little more hesitant to fully step in the ring? I felt shame for being one who lives with doubt.

My colleague didn’t have an answer, and I’ve been wondering how in service of my own healing, I can use this skepticism to my benefit, rather than a paranoid weakness. In my report, they also said the opposite of doubt is moving towards faith – that skeptics like me can balance our internal anxiety with the turning over of our control. God grant me the serenity …

And in my healing, I unwrap my own fingers, tightly bound, and move them to my heart. My skin is tarnished too, marked with moles my baby likes to point out and pick at as she falls asleep in my arms. Healing is life work. Faith, a pursuit of beautiful things.

So for this week, in honoring my own healing, I raise up the beauty in Benadryl, in self-nurturing and the questions ones ask deep within. Beauty in saying there’s nothing to be ashamed about. Skepticism, too, can be a superpower. Beauty in a baby mouthing ‘mole’ and acceptance that our beautiful bodies tell our stories, marks and all.

July Mountain Escape

Perhaps I ought to change the name of the blog to 26 Beautiful Things. While it lacks a certain ring, it’s a more accurate depiction of what I’m capable of lately. Finding time to allow my fingers to type freely, without agenda, seems sparse. I know, I know … you make time for what you prioritize. And Instagram gets too much thumb action, rather than the clacking of keys on a keyboard. Instead of justifying a social media habit, I’ll allow my butt in seat, fingers on the keyboard, with my mind focused for just a few minutes on a lunch break to bring another musing to life.

Last week, while on vacation, I found my rhythms shifting again. To drive west, in late July or early August, is etched into my being. Each summer, my family would pack up the Subaru with bags and bikes and coolers filled with too much food for a week in the San Juan Mountains. Despite that tradition leaving when Dad did, I still want a mountain escape each year.

So, we packed up the truck with bags and coolers, and instead of bikes, strapped a stroller into the trunk. With a baby in the backseat, we rode to a different mountain town. The scenery was unfamiliar, as I hadn’t ventured to our destination before. As someone else drove, I could feel a wrongness in my bones. This isn’t where we usually go, my body seemed to be saying.

Of course, we ended up where we’d intended – it was me who had shifted. Our schedule was oriented around nap time, and while we attempted to enjoy cocktails at dinner, I found myself up and down, holding pinkies with a toddler as she said “hi” to everyone sitting around us. Vacation with a one year old looks different. The ice cream we got was at an old soda fountain on the corner of main street, not in the rusty old grocery story on the side of a dirt road.

At night, after putting baby to sleep in my bed, I’d lay next to her and watch her breathe. As the sun set, I’d stay put, with a white down comforter adding weight to my being. I listened as the fan oscillated back and forth, and often fell asleep before nine. Going to sleep in a cool, dark room is a beautiful thing.

In my resting came a level of acceptance I’m still growing into. Things change, this we know, and our routines and rhythms of childhood pulse within us. During the trip, my baby got to explore a different main street, experienced new parks, and dunked her diaper clad butt into the river, splashing as her Pamper’s dry-fit soaked up a significant amount of the Yampa. She doesn’t know the routine or the turns and winds of the road. It’s unclear if this mountain town will be her summer remembering; we’re just getting started. I’m the one who has grown up.

After our time was up, we cleaned up the Airbnb, placing the gold antlers back onto the coffee table. I sat in the back of the truck, and watched the scenery roll by, aching for my dad. The mountains have burned, the rivers are full, these new roads are unfamiliar. Even our wilderness has changed.

Who I get to travel with though, very beautiful. So, here’s to the journey, new bends in the road, and different things in the trunk. Each trip is a beautiful thing.

Roots and Wings

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When you live in a community for over twenty years, your roots go deep. Mine seep into the backyard porch, winding up the garden trellises and trickle into the kitchen of the house I grew up, past the old, rickety table my dad built into the garage and rest on white wicker bar stools.

When I stand at the island in the kitchen at my mother’s house, I always notice white. The worn white countertops contrast the bright blues and yellows she chose for the walls. Theses colors are the backdrop to my teenage years. The wicker chairs, leaning against the the back of the island, held my tennis bag in high school, and steadied me when my plans for private liberal arts school didn’t go as planned. They watched as my college boyfriend came and went on the weekends, stood present when I came upstairs and told my parents we were talking of getting engaged. They held me up the day Dad died, and sitting wasn’t an option.

I didn’t imagine still using the surface as part of my daily routine in my thirties. What was once filled with school forms, permission slips, a snack or two for me, now holds the Tupperware, rinsed bottles, and grubby pouches covered in the day’s leftover snack for my toddler.

On a summer evening last week, I stood again, at the island, and noticed the white. This time, the surface was covered in take-out boxes and a bag filled with stained baby clothes. We gathered to eat in the rush of a busy week, and I balanced the baby on my hip, trying to get my small family ready to go from Mom’s house back to ours – the drive now so familiar I could walk it in my sleep.

Baby is learning songs now, using her hands to sign “more” when the song we’ve selected isn’t what she had in mind. Playing DJ, she kept us guessing until we got to just the right song. Dylan paired our horrible accompaniment of our voices with Spotify and played “Here Comes the Sun” as we sang along.

Here comes the sun (Doo-d-doo-doo)
Here comes the sun
And I say, “It’s alright”

Baby clapped, her smile big enough to see the newly emerging front teeth she is sprouting. And in that moment, I leaned against the wicker stool once more, roots sinking deeper into the worn wood floors of my youth.

[Verse 1]
Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here

As we sang, both Dad’s presence and absence became magnified in the moment. Seven years is a long time for someone to be absent.

[Chorus]
Here comes the sun (Doo-d-doo-doo)
Here comes the sun
And I say, “It’s alright”

Perhaps he was blessing our post-dinner rush. It’s alright.

We’ve got roots, and they keep me coming back to the place where I grew. Now baby grows there, too.

[Verse 2]
Little darling, the smile’s returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here

We’re smiling. And there’s a new face at the countertop. She’s given us wings. I hope she’ll grow her roots here too. What a beautiful thing.

Lady Luck

Grab the two piece out of the closet. Little lemons swimming in a backdrop of blue on stretchy fabric take a bit of attention and care to tug over a one-year-old’s head. By the time my friend showed me how to use swim diapers and we applied sunscreen and found the sun hat and water shoes, I was tired. After we arrived at the neighborhood pool, only a block away from my house, I laid out the towel on the grass and turned to set the baby down while gathering more of the things.

In my turning back, I noticed a small ladybug crawling up near us, moving slowly while moseying about the new terrain of a worn beach towel. In a brief second, lady luck reminded me how lucky I am to have a little one to share in the delight of a summer afternoon.

We splashed. My quads hurt from squatting in a pool filled only with eighteen inches of water. Baby found new confidence in a new space, and I, worthiness in a community space as a new mother.

The lady bug reminded me of the magic in ordinary afternoons. Beauty in baby toes covered in used swim shoes and knees ruffed up by the bottom of a tiny pool. Beauty in the wrestling out of clothes and into wet sleeves and in the lingering smell of sunscreen when the afternoon sun dips and play time turns to nap time.

I want to be present for the lady bugs and all of the beautiful things it takes to get us to where they are – out there in the grass, moseying about.

Keep Pedaling

On a rare afternoon not sprinkled with rain, I found myself walking the loop behind our small office. As I circled south back towards an afternoon of meetings, I heard a woman and a companion cycling behind me. 

“Keep pedaling”, the woman encouraged on repeat. “You’re almost to the top of the hill. You need the momentum to get to the top.”

I walked, they pedaled, and I kept my face forward, anticipating a small child to pass me before I reached my office again. 

Instead, I heard the woman again, saying, “Keep pedaling, you’re almost there!”

As I crested the small hill, my feet hitting grass instead of pavement, I turned, expecting a little boy to be within reach. Instead, a young man with different challenges was pausing on a trike to catch his breath. 

I smiled at the caregiver, and turned again to finish my loop. I was surprised by the story I was creating behind me. Something I imagined was entirely different, and in the difference was delight. 

We all need encouragement as we pedal up our hills. We all need tools designed to help us succeed. And we all need someone guiding us, reminding us that one more pedal, one more push, can help us get to the top.

This year has been one of transformation. I’m seeing things in ways I hadn’t before. Motherhood has given me a new perspective on the ways our world expects us to operate. I care less about outcomes and more about the journey. 

I’m now passionate about the pace at which we move and the space where we allow ourselves time to pull of the trail and catch our breath. I care more about the types of encouragement we give and the unique ways we learn to ride the bike than what’s at the top of the hill. 

In my learning, I’ve also been privileged to go through a transformational coaching program and I graduate at the end of June. If you’re looking for a new partner to join you in whatever transition is bringing you, let’s have a conversation. 

I can remind you to keep pedaling, and that what you strive for at the top of the hill is important, but how you travel, and when you pause to take a breath is just as nurturing. 

Getting on the bike is the brave thing. Welcoming encouragement from others; just as beautiful. And a mid-day afternoon reminder that it’s how you travel, rather than where you end up, beautiful too. 

The Myth of Bouncing Back

Sitting at the dinner table this weekend, Dylan and I were asking, “What the heck did we do last Memorial Day?” Was our house up for sale yet? Had we just been released from an unexpected visit to the NICU? We couldn’t remember. Time and sleepless nights has a way of erasing the days that were painful to live.

By now, people are asking if I’ve recovered from baby’s first year. I’m not sure you recover from the addition of a child into your family. Like all major life transitions, I don’t thinking bouncing back is an option.

I made a loaf of focaccia this morning that turned out perfectly. Crispy bottom, a soft spring in a chew, with coarse grains of salt sprinkled on top. I sliced a square and made the perfect sandwich, munching away at my desk while working from home.

The bread had a bounce to it that made me smile.

The balls in her tiny ball pit bounce when she launches herself, face-first, into the foam pit.

Her toes bounce as she tries to master walking with a bow-legged gait.

I bounce her on my knees and in my arms, through sleep regressions and teething.

I bounce in the kitchen, trying to cook dinner one handed as a new toddler asks for crackers with a scream.

I haven’t bounced back. And, it’s not just about the return to pre-pregnancy jeans.

Folks are asking me when we’ll do it again – create another child – and I don’t have an answer there yet.

I’m too busy bouncing in between work and play and her room and my bed and on the floor on my knees and crawling quickly up the stairs. I’m bouncing to catch up, bending to put my hair into a messy ponytail that moves with me, bouncing forward.

May the forward motion be beautiful, rather than asking me to hop back to a version of me that no longer exists – pant size or not.

A “Life is Beautiful” Friend

I was invited to a ladies lunch this past weekend. The invite called together women to celebrate, with gratitude, for showing up for the hostess during a difficult season in her life. She welcomed fifteen or so of us into a small cafe for a meal and connection with strangers. I was nervous to go. Not being one for meeting new people, I coaxed myself into going out, tucked my messy hair into a bun, and drove to the luncheon.

Before we shared a meal, the hostess went around the room introducing each of her guests with a heartfelt message about how they were able to care for her as she cared for her mom, who was losing the battle of dementia. In her thoughtful reflection, she called me her, “life is beautiful” friend, and was grateful for my keen understanding of the pain we go through as humans. She shared that I reminded her, in a time of darkness, perhaps, grief is part of the beauty too.

I felt seen, in that room of strangers, in a way I haven’t for quite awhile. There’s a magic that happens when strangers become vulnerable and when the threads of loss and life and the mess of the middle connect us. By the time she went around the circle, the hostess’ friends were weeping. To be seen, to be a part of the struggle, to value friendship, surrender, and the power of asking for and receiving help is just such a gift. I was floored by the intentionality in celebrating relationship and in saying thank you for the people who carry you through.

A few weeks ago, I found myself home sick. Holding my baby, we watched Mary Poppins as we both recovered from a first family bout of a stomach flu. An infant’s attention span is short. Mary Poppins is long. But I tried to introduce her to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and dancing penguins and stepping in time on the rooftops of London.

I found myself asking where did this desire for good stem from? Where did the grown woman who longs for beautiful things develop her keen awareness for the power of a change of perspective? Mary taught me to turn ordinary into magic. To seek delightful things and to harness the giggles found in the absurd. Harriet the Spy taught me to watch and look just a little bit longer, for humans have complex layers and we probably ought to write about them. And, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle taught me you can have a chandelier on your floor for a fire place and stairs that work in reverse. Pippy Longstocking reminded me to befriend the imaginary creatures and dress as your heart leads you and go on adventures, even in your backyard. Characters who were close to home, willing to observe, and make note of the magic burrowed into my heart, and my way of being in the world.

I’m thankful for the stories that turned me into a seeker of good and a believer in magical things. And I’m grateful, for the women who continue to nurture me in this lifelong pursuit. To be called out as a “life is beautiful” friend stunned me a bit. Yes, the searching is in my essence. And in these virtual pages my journey continues. Thank you, readers, for being my life is beautiful friends, as well.