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Reaching Back
Do you ever try to reach deep into your memories and remember places and how you felt in them and what you were doing? I love looking far back and finding the small person for whom I now have so much more compassion, with the benefit of hindsight and years of growth. The older I get, the more similar to her I become. I’ve always mourned the loss of childhood, but now I’m finding I never did fully let it go. During childhood, magic was easy to access. A day dream was only a blink away. All the coming-of-age tales seem to hinge on loss of innocence, a character realizing…
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What Will You Be?
A friend was standing on the front stoop after picking up her son, and she thanked me for sharing my mid-life crisis post. She had been having similar conversations with friends, one of whom observed the ridiculousness of her own crisis when her high school junior was on the precipice life-defining choices. It struck me that I’ve never felt like I had arrived or become what I owed it to the world, my parents, God or the foundations that funded my education to become. At times I fear I’ve missed the window of becoming. But then I look at my children and remember I love them as they are, having…
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By a Thread
Nearly weekly I’m hearing of mother-friends in a similar season of life, with kids in elementary school or slated towards middle, heading back to their careers or starting off in new vocations. They are doing what is called “going back to work”. It must be relieving for them to no longer have to answer the question that everyone is thinking and some explicitly ask, “So what will you do now that the kids are in school?” I’ve witnessed this migration for a few years. Some friends blossom a hobby or side-gig into a successful small business, some increase their hours in a part-time job, and some head back to school…
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Doughton Park Camping 2018
How nearly every Blue Ridge Parkway adventure begins and ends: a stone arch We planned this trip three weeks out when we were looking to camp in Hanging Rock during an October weekend. Every single reservable campsite was booked for every single weekend in October. When I relayed this information to my friend Sarah, who had felt me out on whether we would want to try a joint family trip, she suggested checking out Doughton Park, which I had never heard of. This is a national park, and camping reservations can be made through recreation.gov. To our good fortune, there were still three or four spots still available. We grabbed…
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A Pruning of Personality
My house is gross, and it’s really only my fault. I chose to adopt two cats. I chose to buy my son two parakeets. I chose to have two kids. The vision of the piles of clutter often feels like a hot, thick vapor in my lungs, and it’s the reason I’m driven out into the yard where I can feel the breeze and watch things grow. However, at the end of the summer season, the veggie garden and perennial beds start to resemble the “cat room” of my house and provides little solace from the tasks I’m avoiding inside. The weeds and the rotten tomato vines pile up and…
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Dying Under the Radar
I’ve been tossing around this phrase “dying under the radar” for a few weeks now, and since having kids, I’ve towed the line of wanting to “fly under the radar” in all things – church, work, pottery, blogging, PTA and school volunteering-wise, and socially. The idea is that if I’m not seen, then there will be no expectations – no expectations by which I disappoint others, none to exceed that would raise new expectations of me, and nothing for which to be disappointed in others. I write that, and I’m not sure if that is truly my motivation, but I suspect somewhere on the journey I’ve felt too exposed and…
