Wisdom

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.

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. 

We Keep on Waiting (waiting)
Photo Courtesy of Unsplash

What a week to be 40 weeks pregnant. With recent news about Roe vs. Wade, and a growing child in my belly, I’m startled by jarring way America continues to treat women and children. We think we’ve come so far, and then we are yanked back to reality. I should stop scrolling headlines.

After a good doom scroll, this morning I googled “waiting song lyrics.” A few hits came up with songs that I knew. A few others had me turning over to Spotify to listen and see if the words resonated with where my spirit is these days.

In his song Waiting on the World to Change, John Mayer offers,
“Now we see everything that’s going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don’t have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change.”

In my reflections this morning, I recalled an African prayer shared at a recent ceremony I went to.

“Let us take care of our children, for they have a long way to go. Let us take care of our elders, for they have come a long way. Let us take care of those of us in between, for we are doing the work.” – African prayer

In carrying the next generation, I wonder what waiting on the world to change will look like for her. And if she, too, will have to carry signs that say, “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit.” I hope not.

This time last week I was sharing that we were on the slow road to childbirth, trusting and allowing baby to make a choice on when she will come in to the world. This week, I’m feeling a bit more antsy. Not yet annoyed, but instead surrendering to the mystery of waiting on a child. People keep texting me … “Any day now” and “You’re so close.” True, but any day could be two weeks, and close to the end, yes, but also, so close to a new beginning.

In his song The Waiting, Tom Petty offers,

“The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part.”

I’m relying on Tom to remember to take this experience on faith – there are greater forces at play than what I have control over when we let nature take over. As if nature needs me to let it do anything at all.

The third song writer to show up in my search results was The Rolling Stones. In their song, I Am Waiting, they share,

“I am waiting, I am waiting
Oh yeah, oh yeah
I am waiting, I am waiting,
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere

See it come along and
Don’t know where it’s from
Oh, yes you will find out.”

Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere is precisely what we’re waiting for. Spiritually, I have to have a bit of faith. Physically, we know where that somewhere is. And, I wonder who the little someone will be.

It’s odd waking up and wondering could today be the day our lives change forever? And then we go about making coffee and a peanut butter sandwich like any other Thursday. We sit down to work and we wait. This week, I’m seeking the beauty in the wondering, beauty in the mundane, and the beauty in a smudge of protein on a bit of bread. Beauty in waiting as the leaves green up, and rain soaks the ground, and ballads fill in the background noise that occupies this liminal space.

Waiting for someone ….

If You’re Happy and You Know It, Shout Hooray!

He chuckled as we sat around in a circle just outside of the kitchen. My knees kept bumping cold metal as they bounced nervously against the top of the table. I was anxious and I didn’t want to hear the truth in what he was laughing at.

“No month is safe,” he said.

“What do you mean?” my little heart whimpered, ” I thought we were heading out of the dark?”

He was years ahead of me in this journey of losing someone you love and while I nodded in agreement to his jovial nature, those four words sunk in deep.

Sitting around the table at grief group, my muscles tensed yet again, absorbing his chuckling blow.

A truth bomb.  Shit, I hate those.

This year we made it through the death-aversary, four birthdays, Father’s Day and even the 4th of July. We skipped our old family vacation and planned outdoor adventures. Summer, apparently, has come to a close.

It’s still August – although my brain keeps fast forwarding into the next calendar page and despite Starbuck’s efforts to launch fall preemptively, I’m craving September. I’m sitting in what I’d like to think is the safe season. July through September. Free of triggers and holidays, fewer milestones where the cut out of him missing isn’t supposed to be so obvious.

And yet, like he said, “there’s no safe month.”

For pre-season football has started, and we’re planning vacations, and their wedding anniversary lurks down the road, hiding two weeks before the Halloween decorations come out flailing their skeleton legs – thin, white, and wobbling about.

After that will come Thanksgiving and feasts at tables where he won’t sit and strained family relationships become more obvious.

No month is safe. Grief is an ever present partner that lingers. She’s big at times and smaller at others and in this respite time of early fall, she’s giving me one swift kick in the gut to say “Ha! I’m still here and if you look, he is too.”

I was at Target yesterday, stocking up on staples like soap and toothpaste (ps. Dr. Bronner’s toothpaste is silly expensive – but ya know…. the environment). As I was walking the aisles, wandering, hoping for sales racks, I happened upon two kids in their cart.

The older sister, probably five or six, sat in the front basket, her legs dangling between the cut-out holes as she showed her younger brother the hand gestures needed for this moment’s activities.

His hair was sticking up in the back and his tiny-toothed smile caught my eye as he repeated his sister, “If you’re happy and you know it, shout hooray!”

He threw his little hands in the air, arms shooting out of a dinosaur t-shirt into his mother’s space with enthusiasm.

Fits of giggles erupted and they started again.

“If you’re happy and you know it, shout hooray!”

Hooray!

Some days, I can’t fathom how it has been over two years since he died. Or that I hope to live 57 more years without him. Or that other people I love will kick the bucket too – I won’t know when or how and thank God for that.

What I do know, and what I can fathom, is I want to be like that little boy – tucked in a gentle embrace of a loving guide who shows me how to do the appropriate hand gestures in these never-safe months.

God and sure, Dad, are tapping on my shoulders, saying look around, there’s much to be happy for. Shout hooray!

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Photo by Kyle Johnson on Unsplash

So here’s to hooray for this weeks beautiful, beautiful things:

Target – I made it out of there with spending $96.48 – for those of you who know the Target rules – if you get a cart, plan to spend $100.

Sunsets at softball games

Clients who send you care packages just because

Other people who get it – the ones walking and wandering and hoping for reprieve.

Crunchy apples with almond butter,

Puppy breath,

Honest, authentic, brave sharers of personal truth,

Dr. Bronners,

and for carts with leg holes and the wisdom the little ones give.

Hooray!

 

 

 

 

I am Enough

“It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine.” – Eeyore

I need this reminder today. It has been cloudy and raining for the last seven days. Now here comes a Colorado privilege rant – ie. We haven’t seen the sun for over a week, and we are stressed out about the implications of hovering gloom in the mist and the wet. I know that a large portion of the country lives in this guck all the time. Not me. I need my sunglasses for 300 days of the year. As my alarm went off and the obnoxious beep, beep, beep roused me into a Monday, I opened my eyes and thought SUN! Light was shining in from the windows, and dancing along the wall as I awoke. I suppose it is a miracle, really, to be thankful for the sun. Thankful, as my yoga teacher always says, for the beautiful gift of another day to breathe.

I thought of Eeyore this week, as doom and gloom never seems far off – right? The what if messages, and the I’m not good enoughs and fears of what could be can consume us and eat us alive. I was talking this week with Dylan about how I need to be nicer to myself – in my thoughts, and in my actions towards my own perceptions of myself. My mom wants a tattoo that says, “I am enough.” I’m not brave enough to get that tattooed on my body, but I am brave enough to start saying that to myself over and over again. This week, I think that message is satisfying to me as I settle into a slower paced job, without as many every day demands.

That message is satisfying to me as I watch my family dynamic change and the formation of a “we” in a marriage continues to develop. That message is satisfying to me as I try to problem solve or scrimp and save to compete with the big achievers – the homeowners, the grad students, the young parents that I am not. Whew (I don’t want those things yet. No, not really.)

This week, I had the privilege of having family dinner with my parents and Dylan. After sharing a meal, we turned on the music and my mom screamed, “Dance Party!” Entertainment factor – huge! Watching my parents move their hips to “Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars, with me in my bright blue yoga pants and Dylan moving his head in full force – the joy was flowing. I felt filled with immense beauty in the very nature of having the ability to stand with people I love and tap into a dance.  I’m learning that it is the cultivation of these fun moments that make my life worth living. My career feels unsure, owning a home because that means stability to others feels insincere, finding worth in checking things off my master to-do list is not where I am going to feel content. The beauty, instead, is in the cultivation of joy at my own hands. Or choosing to participate in the joy that others have created – there is contentment to be found there as well.

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This weekend I got to partake in two Mother’s Day celebrations and am thankful for the wonderful feminine legacy that has been created by my mom, and now my mother-in-law. I am thrilled to be able to stand, to hug, to bask in the presence of women who have made me, and the ones I love who we are today. Thank you – Christine and Cathy – for setting such a high bar for what it means to beautifully experience life as it comes, and love in the midst of uncertainty. For teaching me to turn my head to the sun, and to dance.

Biscotti: None

Essie Nail Polish: Bass Fiddle

Stay tuned for an exciting announcement on Friday, May 15