Blink of an Eye

"Enjoy this time - it will go by in the blink of an eye".  I remember hearing with a snarl - this statement seemingly on infinite loop - infant children dripping from my appendages and dragging the months out like groundhog day.  So many blinks came and went and still there I was turning around my sensible car in the morning to get stealthy food and spit up off of my work clothes.  It seemed possibly the longest blink of an eye in all of history.

Yet all of the sudden I find myself flipping through albums, looking behind with fondness and ahead with the terror of childhood's end in sight.  And I wonder when time stopped dragging like it once did, when time instead became a race. We live on both sides of this crazy coin - we want more time with our kids but wish summer break would end.  We anticipate birthdays with joy and can't wait until the ruckus settles.   I realized just this past winter break as I was looking forward to its end just as I had its beginning, that I have made a grave error.  That I have focused my life on the wrong part of the plea "Enjoy this time - it will go by in the blink of an eye".  I have focused on the time and too often forgotten the enjoyment.  

We people hate to age but we do.  Our kids get pimples and then go to college.  We want to resist and deny and lengthen.  We Americans had 14.6 million plastic surgeries last year to hide time's passage.  We believe so firmly that we can slow time that sometimes we chase it instead of embracing it.   

I used to color my hair and loved it.  I had stripes, platinum, burgundy, copper, coffee, colored from the salon, the grocery store, really whatever—you name it, I’ve sported it.  In the last two years I have quit.  An intentional try at acceptance and acknowledgement of the passage of time.  I have four kids.  They are becoming teenagers.  And me, I am running around trying to hide grey as soon as it pops up just minutes after I implore my kids to accept themselves.  My dash to color over the passage of time was stripping me of the space to enjoy the time.  

And so it is that I redouble my efforts to truly enjoy the passage of time and to do away with my own diseased desperation to keep it from ticking.  I redouble my efforts to accept time and to reject my resentment of it.  I redouble my efforts to live happily and authentically knowing that perhaps I can't stall time but I can revel in its passage.  Because while their childhood is achingly short it is a gift that I want to give back to them, so that when they are adults and they blink their eyes they don't see a rush or a hustle to cram life into limited minutes but they see the happy sighs, breezy snuggles, mindless trampoline bounces, the laughs and the hugs, and they stop a minute, slow down, and try to give that gift again to their children.

I Can Justify It

Hit me with anything.  I can justify it.   Seriously.  We need a giant TV to save our family’s eyesight and to enhance our meaningful movie viewing opportunities.  Also we don’t need a giant TV because we don’t really use it that much and there are many better uses for the money.  Go ahead – try me.  Give me something outrageous.  A 3^rd puppy?  You got it.  We need a 3^rd puppy because one dog is older and one day will be dead so eventually we will just have two and that will be less sad than one.  But we don’t need a 3^rd puppy because we already have a house with 11 beating hearts and 12 is stretching the boundaries of insanity.  Impressive, right?

I’m not sure if I have always had this amazing skill or if it has come as part of the package labeled “welcome to parenthood” but I am the self proclaimed justification   master.  There is only one problem with this brand of wizardry.  Being capable of justifying anything in the entire world means that you are totally wrong much of the time.   Did you realize that being a grown up meant that you’d be wrong a whole lot of the time?  Not because you weren’t smart or were ill prepared, just because it turns out there isn’t really a “right”…?

Let me illuminate with a simple example.   My house needs to be painted.  That is really really expensive.  And I don’t really really have the money for it.  I know that in a year when it’s spring again and the carpenter bees and rain have had their ways with the exterior of my home it will just be a worse and more costly.  But I think… people go for decades without painting their house.  Mine isn’t close to that bad.  I’d rather use the money to take a vacation that my kids will remember forever and will build our family rather than paint a house that could be painted anytime.  See that?  I’m not painting the house, you know that’s true.  And that is probably a terrible decision. 

But what happens when the decisions have more weight than a rotted board of siding?  If you are a parent you know what I mean.  Everything is something important.  We just chose a high school for my daughter.  My pro and con list was a joke – every school could enhance her life and every school could jeopardize her future.  Every school was a great bargain in some ways and every school was way too expensive.  I could justify pretty much any option.   But decisions must be made, priorities must be created, judgement and restraint must be exercised. 

Decisions, priorities, judgement, restraint?  Yep.  That’s the stuff that this parenting gig is made of.  Don’t let anyone tell you differently.  It’s not really diapers and ballet lessons – that’s the simple stuff.  It’s research and learning and listing and deciding.  It’s choosing a path, walking the path, and making hard tradeoffs to stay on that path.  Because even though you and I, especially I, can justify pretty much anything; you and I, especially I, know that every single choice is right and every single choice is wrong.  

And  so what do we parent types do?  We debate and discuss and list and then we close our eyes and freefall into decision after decision, trying to look like we knew just what we were doing - hoping that we have done what was best, hoping it “all works out in the end”.   Justify as we may, we will never really know.   And this weakness, this never knowing, this ability to justify anything and sit with our hands wrung and fingers and toes crossed, is why we each raise our kids differently.  I like to assume that everyone can justify just like I can – and I have no idea what goes into anyone’s choices.  So as crazy as mine look to you, yours look to me – so be content, be confident and justify away, I won’t judge – I know it’s all a shot in the dark. 

Equal But Opposite Reaction

I had a discussion with my teenage child in the car this morning about the good ol' days.  About what it was like to literally have nothing to do.  I don’t mean wishing that you could do something that you weren't allowed to do like play on a computer or watch a show or text your friends, I mean literally sitting on a stump in the woods looking at tree bark with no idea what could come next.  She was, in her own words, "flabbergasted that this could happen to a person".  

I continued this review of my life's apparently banal history by sharing that the songs on the radio that we hear now are completely shocking. Granted, our songs were shocking to our parents and our slow dances were much too close for parents who had pioneered dances that resembled swimming.  But have you heard the radio?  If not you should know that songs have the word SEX actually IN them plus more.  Again, this teen couldn’t fathom what type of songs ours might have been, ones that didn’t describe intimate sexy stuff in detail.  What good might those be?  Where's the fun?

We talked a bit (it is a very long drive) about how this whole parenting digital children thing is overwhelming – that while I can guess at the right things to do, like spying and managing time and using computers in public spaces, I don’t actually know for sure that these are the right things.   "Maybe you should buy a handbook" she said.  "Who would write the handbook – no one knows the answers" I said.  Cause it's true -  we are all muddling through this together anxiously awaiting the day that the handbook is published.

All of this discussion left her at carpool walking away from the car hysterical laughing at my sad electronic free childhood and amazed at the concept that a tape player could be in a car.  As for me I felt sort of antique.  I turned to the internet for answers to discover that among all of that information, there are very few answers.  For every article about limiting screen time there is one about the value of time spent learning to navigate the digital world.  I just read an article about why a messy bedroom is good for kids and then right below it... yep, an article about why it’s important for kids to learn to keep a tidy room. 

So we navigate in little worried parenting silos and toss opinions and new research around over coffees to validate our best guesses but basically we just do our best, follow our gut, find inspirational quotes, hope that we aren’t messing it all up.  Because we are writing the handbook and doing the research… right now and how bizarre that right this moment there aren’t really right or wrong answers.  The opportunity sounds awesome, right?  The risk sounds terrifying too – that every single parental approach that I can think of I can also discover an opposite approach that has some shards of merit. 

I guess this is the handbook-less generation that we have but sometimes I wish there was a roadmap away from nasty song lyrics and backlit screens and into the boring days of stump sitting and bark staring, it sure seems simple about now.

Simplicity

I am engaged in a war with you, top-lists.  Whether you are "Top 39 World Destinations" or "Top 7 Ways to Make Lunchbox Art" I work hard and consistently fail at my efforts to not read you.  And I work hard to not write you.  Because you are overly simplistic and don't capture the complexity of real life on this planet.

But you are so so fun.  Like the quiz I don't mean to take, sometimes I read your simple listings with attractive bolds and italics.  And like the quiz that is sometimes so accurate, your simple lists are sometimes kind of true and once in a blue moon - enlightening.  

So maybe it's a love-hate kind of thing.  I hate you because I realize, when I secretly sneak a peek at you, that you raise up a little snag of irritation in me.  Because I have  believe with childlike innocence that a simple path always exists.  Until lately that is, when the simple top-ten-able path got lost among the forest of life drama. And you little lists remind me of that loss.  But I love you, lists, because you come with a little drop of hope - hope that perhaps my life can someday again be distilled into some brief, pithy, witty mini-compendium.  

One fateful rainy day I decided to swallow my list-disdain and give it a try.  I started with a title.  I called it "27 Tricks to a Mellow Life, Happy Marriage, Close Knit Family with Special Needs Kids on a Shoestring!"  That was the working title of course.  But the title perhaps should have indicated the future of my awesome top-list. I knew of course that my topic should be a smaller more bite sized nugget-of-a-topic but believe it or not, I don't have one.  Life is so interwoven, such a complex web that most of the simpler top-lists I could dream up just contained ideas that were boring and flat. 

Marriage, kids, schools, cars, money... It's the sticky stuff that being a grown-up is made of and finding the simple beauty in it all is the trick of all tricks.  But I know that it's there, around every next corner, that sneaky trick to simplicity dwells.  The simplicity is in not allowing ourselves to descend into the rote slogging that our days could be.  The simplicity is doing our best to make meaningful lives. The simplicity is finding the happy moments to celebrate.  

Well, I guess there's my whopping top 3 list. I bolded it in case you missed it and I still love/hate the top lists, that's why I didn't put any numbers on this list. I just can't quite believe that among the urgent and demanding cacophony of cars honking, technology beeping and kids poking, "Top 103 Ways To Calm A Child Screaming In Target" will help me sort it all out, but I'm not giving up on true simplicity or a meaningfully pithy path to enlightenment...  just yet.  

Gifting in a Time of Plenty

8 happy nights of Hanukkah. To spare your busy holiday brains I'll hit you with the math. That's 32 gifts if you are into that kind of gifting and if you have four kids. Which I am and which I do.

To be clear I am into giving kids gifts 8 nights in a row. The kids, however, don't really care that much. No kid can ever come up with a list or any kind of things that they really want. A nice to have here and there and an occasional oo-ah over something in a catalogue is the kind of help I have in selecting thirty two items.

So either my kids have no imagination or their desires are completely sated. I like to think, since they still play swords in the yard, that their imaginations are in tact and they just happen to be satisfied with what they have. They don't have all of the newest and fanciest stuff either, they just seem to have enough. Which means that, in theory, I should count myself lucky and should't get all wound up about “what to get them for Hanukkah”- am I right here? But I DO.

Because, and here's the crazy - I really want them to want something, anything. I wanted a winter coat for hanukkah once so much that I hid in the racks snuggling it. In like 7th grade. I want them to want something so that I can delight them if it's within our means but also so that they know the anticipation and hope of wanting something and a tinge of disappointment if its not within our means. But alas I can't make them want something - no matter how many glossy magazines I shove under their noses with color coded pens for circling their fondest desires.

So, in the end, we do weird themes like "fancy chocolate bar night" or "name plate for your door night" or the ever thrilling "I donated to your favorite charity night" or "toys I hate but you love night". We do a family swap night. Before you know it eight nights of fun have passed and we are at Target for warm hoodie when a small voice comes over to me holding an adorable toy item and says “can I get this”?

And it is in that very moment that I annually realize (and annually forget) that the fun of surprises and gifts and wanting and disappointing aren't just about the holidays.  They are about the every single day - and the vast abundance of lessons that we have to impart through gift giving - hope and delight and disappointment and respect for others who have less - those lessons are for the whole year, not just for holidays and birthdays.   And then I always realize that maybe I should stick with the lesson the kids are trying so so hard to teach me - we have enough, it's plenty.

Since this years largely unrequested gifts are already here and ready though, please remind me that I am committed to the "we have enough" theme night... next year.

Dressing Them Up

Holidays.  And plane flights.  And dances.  All used to be occasions to dress up fancy style.  Right?  Don't you remember that?  Well those days are gone.  Popcorn is now allowed in regular non-movie theaters and that signals to me, the end of the uncomfortable children's clothing requirement.

So we don't have dress up clothes.  Like in the house.  On top of that we have a bevy of sensory issues meaning that crocs are literally the only shoes that will grace 4 of 8 feet in our house.  This should be fine in the year 2014 and for the most part it is.  OK in the winter we add socks and happen to live in a warm climate.  Otherwise crocs work.  But for most legitimately fancy occasions we are the ones showing up with boys in mortifying arrays of t-shirts and athletic bottoms.

So a bat mitzvah of ours happened last year and the athletic gear (by the way they don't do sports, just look like it) came to a screeching halt.  We sat each young sir down and had a long discussion about what clothes might possibly be acceptable.  They weren't just resistant, they refused.  Shoes without holes, shirts with sleeves, pants with zippers.  These foreign items were rejected again and again.  So, desperate, I went online and the items magically appeared at our front door where we had to all take deep breaths and face them.

Our boys are not toddlers, mind you - they are tweens.  They understand logic and the idea of dress clothes and occasions requiring showers shouldn't be a mind bender for them.  They tried the clothes on grudgingly and miserably. The looked like a million bucks from the neck down and like they needed to be admitted to the ER from neck up. Day after day these clothes hung, looming like a threat in the distance.  And their coordinating compromise of a shoe, chucks, sat nearby.  Eventually they wore them and tore them off as soon as possible.  But if you see the pictures you can easily note the discomfort in their sweet little boy eyes.

And all of this drama really made me wonder what kind of massive disservice I had done my boys by not shoehorning them into stiff and uncomfortable clothes prior to this date.  If I had put them in toddler suits with bowties they may have been both adorable and more accepting of formal fashion.  Even if I had forced a khaki or a jean they could still be successful in a business casual future.  Yet, zippers and buttons are a true annoyance and I still can't make myself force it - even knowing as I do that this lackadaisical slice of parenthood will likely limit their careers prospects.

The responsibilities of parenthood are plentiful and substantial - penny loafers I didn't think would rank as high as, it turns out, they and their formal comrades do.  Apparently I have fated my boys to become entrepreneurial internet millionaires working from a coffee shop or scrub sporting doctors.  Dangit - well, at least they are happy and comfie.

Elusive Resilience

I once wrote a blog post a hundred years ago about kids’ resilience.  I said that I don’t think kids are resilient as touted, they are just not emotionally mature enough to be upset about the things that we think they should be upset about.  And I stand by that… it’s stood the test of time. 

My oldest child has lived in 7 houses in only two cities in her tender 13 years.  And we are just about to hop to an 8^th.  A huge consideration in making this house change has been this jaw dropping numerical situation.  She’s not a military kid or anything, just a regular child of divorce and re-marriage.   And she used to love the adventure of a new house.  Now she looks forward to this move being the final one.   She doesn’t even want to travel.  She just wants to sit still in her own walls and settle in.  She was never resilient.  She changed easily but she was little and everything is an adventure when you are little. 

I have four dyslexic kids.  The world doesn’t make sense to them in the crisp way that it does to others.  Letters swim and dance and frustrate.  And their youthful selves become pleasers, comedians, class clowns.  But over time that morphs into a sharp hatred for reading, an anger at school, a fear of certain failure.  They hit a turning point.  And take on a new persona – not a happy go lucky kid but an aire of sorrow and self loathing.  Not because their resilience wore off, incidentally, but just because they woke up one day sick and tired of weaving words and learned that the world just won’t be easy for them.   And the loss of that normalcy has created more pain, more therapy bills and has proven to me that resilience is indeed a mythical creature because it shouldn’t be something that wears off – real resilience should be forever. 

Resilience isn’t something that kids have because they are kids.  It’s something that kids grow into because their parents gave it to them.  Whether through hardship or tough love, resilience is grown, and learning how to carve adversity into strength is the ultimate learning challenge.   Maybe not the simplest trait to nurture but suddenly resilience is, to me, the greatest hallmark of burgeouning adulthood – that we can be flexible and responsible and adaptive. 

Small kids may be have a limited emotional repertoire that masquerades as resilience but ultimately to grow little people into big people who are patient, accepting and kind… well, that, ladies and gentlemen, is the ultimate feat of parenthood.