Pause

I had my last (very stubborn) wisdom tooth out yesterday. Yes, know I 'should' have had them out when I was 18 or so, but that's just not what happened for me. And, as the Chinese proverb goes "The best day to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best day is today." Soon enough, this will be 20 years ago! This whole event, however, gave me what I am calling a pause. I had to be under general anesthesia, you see, and although I have successfully managed general anesthesia several times before in my life, there was still that little worry in the back of my mind that somehow I wouldn't wake up. I know it's unlikely, but still I had to sign about 8 pieces of paper acknowledging that 'in severe cases, death' could happen. Thankfully, I only had about 10 days to worry about all of these things and, being me, I got some things in order. I made sure there was food in the house for Shaun to cook and a double batch of pancakes made so that the girls could fend for themselves for breakfast and make their own lunches for a couple of days. I also got the laundry done, the kitchen cleaned and the floors swept. I re-did the chalkboard in our entryway. You know, the important things (he he.) But then, as I was saying good night to the girls on Sunday evening, I just lingered a little longer than normal and told them all of the reasons I love them. I know, I know, it's crazy, right? It's just a 20 minute procedure and then life. Well, I've always been one to be prepared, so, why not this time too, I guess. It made me feel better anyway. So, finally I'm hunkered down in the chair and given the drugs. Man, that stuff works like a charm. I swear I was out before the last syringe hit the trash. Then, I woke up and was wheeled down to Shaun's waiting car and away we went. Yesterday is kind of a blur, in and out of sleep, ice packs, murmuring girls, mushy food and lots of pills. Heavy duty pain killers make me dizzy, nauseous and generally icky, thank heavens there is no chance of addiction for me. But yesterday, as I lay on the couch, fairly unable to move, I took a pause. It's like life was so focused on the surgery that once it happened, there is a little blank space afterward. Similar to rebooting a computer, it takes a moment for it to come back on. And even today, as I rest at home with absolutely no agenda except self care and healing, life is slowly regaining it's former speed. Tomorrow, I'm sure I'll hear the screeching as I get back to full speed. A bunch of jumbled sounds, waiting like a damned up river to flow again. But for now, I sit on the couch, watch some documentaries without too much mental attention required and drift in and out of sleep.

Ten Years!

Somehow my Malia has turned 10. Ten feels big. Ten feels different. Ten feels like change and growth and the beginning of something new. She's excited about the double digits and her newly published book. I'm looking through the last 10 years like pages in a photo album. She's growing and changing and being. I'm trying (and mostly not quite making it) so hard to stay a step ahead of her. A step? At this point it's like a .001 of a second. Mostly likely she'll pass me by the end of the day. Today. She is stepping out of her child self and into a whole new level. She's looking at the world with her own eyes and her own thoughts and her own ideas. I'm happy to just be watching her for a moment. She's normally a pretty even keeled person. It's hard to rile her up about much of anything, but when the box arrived with 20 copies of her very own book, she was excited. As she sat there, touching each book, flipping through page after page of her own words, I was over come. At first, sure, it was pride that washed over me. Pride that she worked day after day after day on this work and stuck with the story for an entire year. Next came relief that I was able to help her make it all happen. Trying to find a book printer that would do it justice and not drain her college fund (although maybe if she starts selling these books, she'll pay her own way! Ha!) was not as easy as I wanted it to be. But we got it all done and it's printed and totally fitting that she is releasing it out into the world on her 10th birthday. I have always wanted to help my kids feel like they could do anything they put their minds to and I am pretty sure Malia is feeling that right now. I only wish I could bottle this moment and keep it for her struggles ahead. Sigh, a mother's view.

Through this entire process, Malia has been such an inspiration to me as well. She plugs away at the keyboard (yup, the whole thing was typed into a Google Doc) hour after hour. She sometimes gasps in the middle of dinner, or a walk, or as we cuddle up each night before sleep. Her eyes get big and she says, "Just a minute, Mom, I need to write something down." Or "Wait, I just got an idea flood...can you hand me that pencil, please?" This is her thing. This is who she is and what she does constantly. Her published story started out slowly, certainly a short story, talked about with her good friends at recess, lunch and every spare moment at school. Then, it grew and changed and grew and then changed again. I finally enlisted the help of her former teacher to help edit the thing as I didn't feel I was the right person to help her. It changed some more and got a little more streamlined. And still, hour after hour she pounded away at the keyboard and found out more things about her characters. She still worked on other stories as well, but her focus never wavered. I finally found a website that would print it, so we ordered one and she edited the whole thing again. Then she had me read it out loud to her as she needed to make sure it sounded good too. Finally, the last edits were made and box with 20 copies arrived last night. Ever so gently cutting the tape across the top of the box, she carefully opened it without any damage to the treasure inside. Her baby. Her creativity and all of her hard work. This girl is persistent to the nth degree. And now she has a book!

The most amazing thing about this entire process, the thing that has most fascinated me anyway, is that she never once asked if anyone else would like it. She's giving out copies like water, signing them with incredible pride without batting an eye. I want that kind of ... what, naivete? Panache? Confidence? Whatever it is, I want it. The other interesting thing I felt today was a little bit of my own childhood through my mother's eyes. I felt her big smile and shining eyes as Malia handed the book to her teacher this morning. Sometimes this mother's pride is a moment I feel more connected to her, as a mother, and some of those moments I feel like I understand her on a much deeper level. This motherhood thing, 10 years in, is pretty great.

In a word

What's in a word? What meaning do we attach to words, or do we really attach any meaning at all? In my rose colored version of history, our words meant much more, held more weight. It was a compliment to say that someone was a man 'of his word.' and so much of society was based upon spoken words. But somewhere along the way, we got less formal and now words are just to placate. So much of our conversation is just boiler plate language we have repeated over and over and now it's nearly meaningless. "How are you?" 'Fine, you?" "Me, good. Busy, you know!" Then we have people in public life saying whatever they want to grab a headline with absolutely no consequence. It doesn't matter that these statements are mean spirited, ugly and outright lies. While I am grateful for the chance to be able to express my sentiments and say things to other people that might have been considered inappropriate under Victorian era etiquette, I can't help but think we have swung a little too far in the other direction. We want friends and family to feel nice and happy so we twist things every so slightly to give our excuses (or maybe ourselves) more clout. We say we have plans when we just want to go home and be alone or appointments when it's really just meeting a different friend for coffee or knowingly double-book and then cancel later instead of just saying no. That always acceptable "too busy!" becomes something much closer to 'no.' All of these little, seemingly innocent, not-quite-the-truth-but-not-quite-a-lie statements start to add up, are accepted by all and slowly, but ever so steadily we chip away at the meaning of our words. Soon enough, perhaps now, we don't know what to think as we simply cannot believe what people say. I know it's much worse right now, due to the theatrics, mud-slinging and childish behavior precipitated by the election, but it isn't only mainstream media and political candidates that gloss over the truth. It's all of us, all of the time. I recently read 'Lying' by Sam Harris and was delighted by his insistence that telling the truth matters. Our words matter. This is why I write, because our words matter.

Awesome: causing feelings of fear and wonder, causing feelings of awe, extremely good. 
When Shaun and I were looking out over the city of Manhattan from the Top of the Rock last fall to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, the view was awesome, in every sense of the word. But to say that, the most perfect and appropriate word for the situation, didn't come close to what I felt. "Awesome' has been overused in such underwhelming situations for so very long, it doesn't actually mean it's meaning anymore. Awesome has been eroded down to now mean something closer to neat or nice. I realize this is all part of the evolution of language and there are other words that fill in, are invented or borrowed from other languages to build our vocabulary back up, but still, It pains me to see real, meaningful and perfect words thrown around in such casual and insufficient ways. This is why I write, because our words matter!

Tradition

We were camping at Turquoise Lake, near Leadville, CO over the weekend, as we normally do. My husband's parents and two other families have been going to the same spot for over 30 years now. I started going on this annual trip just after we started dating, 14 years ago. It was already a long standing thing for them, and I felt it upon arrival. The original campers, Grandparents at this point, all pull into their spots with incredible ease and familiarity. As the kids grew up and had their own families, the number of sites has grown and now there are bunches of us, gathered around the same campfires every year. It takes a few years for something to feel like a tradition. Sometimes it happens accidentally and sometimes it takes a lot of work to keep it up. But at some point, it just becomes part of our fabric. Turquoise Lake is like that for me. As we pull off of I-70 and head up high into the Rockies, something else seems to take over. The scenery up there is dramatic, both beautiful and horrific at the same time. The mining from the past century has definitely left scars on the mountains and we will never see its original beauty. But, strangely, the waste ponds are brushed with so many different colors and the bald mountain sides cut so deeply, it is unlike anywhere I have been. The air is thin and I feel small, a tiny drop upon this harsh landscape. Nature at it's finest and man at his worst, all wrapped up into a 10 mile stretch of highway. We skirt the edge of town, stop at Safeway for some ice for our cooler and head out to the campground. The same trucks and trailers, same faces waiting for our arrival. As the girls jump out of the car and run to say hello to everyone, we see how much other kids have grown and changed and what new additions there may be. This year there was an additional kiddo and a newly married couple. There were 10 kids, from 15 months to 13 years and a smattering of parents and all six of the original campers. We all share conversation, play games, gather around the campfire and huddle under cover to get out of the rain. We can almost hear the clouds sail by above us and watch the squirrels grab anything they can and dash up the towering trees. Camp robbing jays come closer and closer to scraps thrown from the 15 month old's grubby hands and we are together. Some people fly fish down the road, some fish at the lake. The kids play in the dirt, climb on rocks and build sand castles on the beach. We have been in shorts and bundled up as the year's first snow flakes fall around us. We watch out for turning leaves and note the water level of the lake. We take the same walks along the same trails that we have done now for years. This tradition is worn and comfortable and easy. It is also new and different each year as no one of us is the same as we were at our last visit. It is a tradition I am so very thankful to be a part of.

I Am 'Back'

As I mentioned in my last post, it has been four years since I last blogged. It has really been four years since I felt anything like control in my life, which is hard. No matter how much I understand there is little that I do actually control, I am just one of those people who needs it. I need to be organized and I need to have time and energy to clear my brain. I'm an introvert, to the core introvert. I know, I know, we're a trendy breed right now, but I've been an introvert my whole life. I'm glad to see the mainstream finally realizing that there are many more of us than our societal founders thought, and we actually do bring a lot to the table. But, we're not going to force it on anyone and sometimes we won't even say anything unless we're asked. Now, I hear my family not stifling their very loud coughs of disagreement, but I'm different 'out there.' It takes a while for me to volunteer information, time or energy in situations that are new to me. But, once I'm in, I'm pretty much all in. So, for the last four years, I have been biding my time, I guess. Recovering, so to speak, from not having a moment to myself until my girls went to school ... for years! Then, as a reaction to this newfound time without the girls, I jumped into elementary school with both feet. I started out being in each classroom for 2 hours per week. Then, my wonderful 88 year old grandmother moved here from California and I started spending a lot of time with her as well. Helping her settle into a new life with four seasons, in a place where she too was surrounded by people. She has her own apartment, but her community is a busy place and, like me, she was slow to jump in. She has been a wonderful addition to my own and my family's life. We see her often and the girls have developed a relationship with her that is truly priceless. They are also getting to know old people in a way so uncommon in life today. I am so very grateful for this time we share. However, all of this has taken me away from being me. My anxiety went through the roof and I tried meditation, reading, counseling and finally medication. The medication helped instantly and I am so very glad I gave it a chance. Sometimes that is just the way we need to go. I was at the time and remain convinced that if I were a hermit far from society and responsibility of any kind, I could kick anxiety out the window and over the next mountain in no time. But we all know that isn't even close to reality, so meds to the rescue. While they did really turned the tide and helped immensely, I wasn't without some nasty side effects (like insomnia ... really!?!),so I got off for a couple years and then eventually, last fall, I had to get back on again. Again, it was a switch. The constant boiling that I felt in my chest disappeared and I could plan and think and live without such a high level of panic. Unfortunately, the side effects came back with full force and I kind of felt like I was moving through life in slow motion. I've always been a highly motivated, driven and productive person and all of a sudden, I realized that I was none of those things anymore. I did just enough to keep my family afloat and that's it. I stopped sewing and slowed even my work outs to a snail's pace. Around this time, I read "Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body" by Jo Marchant. Talk about an awakening! This book confirmed everything I used to believe about myself was true (ever since I willed myself out of being ticklish as a child, I knew my mind was powerful!) And backed by science! All of a sudden I could see the toll both anxiety and the medication were having on me and my life. It dulled me, sure it made me calm down and not worry about a serious stock market crash every single day, or that my husband wouldn't come home from work every single night, or that my girls were still alive in their beds, but it also chopped off the top of that wave where I was energetic, productive and excited about doing things that made me happy. So, I slowly weaned myself off of the meds (a truly horrible process that I really never want to repeat) and started to think about what makes me, me. What is it that I am at my very core, not the mother/wife/friend/sister/daughter piece, but the who am I piece. Quite quickly, I came to the conclusion that what makes me, me is all the crazy! It is all of the driven, intense and productive things that make other people exhausted. I realize not everyone is like this and thank heavens that's true. But I am. And it is what makes me happy! This is not to say that I run around like a chicken without a head 24 hours a day, I'm an introvert for goodness's sake! I need alone time. I need slow, easy time with my whole family and with just my loving and incredibly patient husband. For maybe the first time since we had the girls, I think I'm back. I think I lost my voice, my self, my juju. But maybe I've found it now.

What makes you, you?

Ponder on,
Hannah