...he's got the whole world in his hands...

I posted a photo to my social media accounts the other day.  A photo of my son, holding a dish with two waffle bowls stacked atop one another, with the comment "He's got the whole world in his hands..."  I'll ask his permission later, and paste it in if allowed.  

The waffle bowl maker is new to our household.  A Christmas gift.  An idyllic daydream of homemade gluten-free waffle bowls to hold fruit salads and ice cream sundaes, sparked by an ad in a weekly flier.  A "must have" that we didn't know we needed until we used it the first time. 

P.s.-It's the Dash Deluxe Waffle Bowl Maker, available at Bed Bath and Beyond. 
Okay, so first things first.... #notanad  #notasponsoredpost #shillfree

Now that we've cleared that up...

It's not about the waffle bowl maker...or the waffle bowl.  It's not about food at all.  

It's about that photo, and the comment I wrote with it.  "He's got the whole world in his hands..."

It got me thinking...about the words..."the whole world"..."in his hands"...  

We say of our children that they've:

"The world on a string"

"Endless possibilities"

"Limitless opportunities"

"Open doors"

We tell them that they can dare to dream.

But as I said, that photo got me thinking.  It reminded me, oddly enough, of a video that's gone viral (or at least I think it has) where a simple footrace becomes a lesson in privilege as those participants who don't meet certain criteria aren't permitted to move forward towards the goal.  They're all allowed to run, of course, when the buzzer sounds...but the starting point is different for each individual with a select few...a select privileged few...far closer to the finish line right from the start.  For those few, it won't take talent or strength or stamina to win.  For those few, it won't even take speed.  They're so close they can't help but stumble across the finish line far sooner than those left behind at the start.  And why?  Why are those few granted that privilege?  In the video, it's because of what they were born into.  A certain financial status.  A two-parent home.  A family history of educational achievement.  In other words...

Status. 

In the case of those privileged few, they were allowed to move closer to the finish line regardless of any achievement on their end, but rather because of things they had no control over.  Simply put, they were given a jumpstart by the mere accident of their birth.

In counterpoint, there were runners left behind.  Some all the way back at the initial start point.  They, too, were subject to the folly of rules that decided their fate based solely on circumstance.  Sure, they could still participate.  They could still give it their all.  They might even be the fastest runners that day.  But, barring some miraculous event, no matter their talents or strength or stamina, they could not win.  They couldn't make up in skill, the benefit of that jumpstart.  No matter their speed, they were too far behind to ever catch all the way up...too far behind to be able to overtake those privileged few...too far behind to have a fair chance...

Privilege has been on my mind lately.  Privilege and status and circumstance.

And worth.

Or, rather, the judgment of worthiness and what parameters define it.

It's been on my mind as I try to level the playing field in some small way, for two children whose circumstance...whose accident of birth...hasn't afforded them much, if any, privilege.

It's been on my mind as I try to come up with meaningful, beneficial ways to increase their privilege. 

It's been on my mind as I can't help but compare their opportunities, or lack thereof, to those my son has had simply because he was born to me.  

I think, as a mother, it's nigh on unavoidable to not feel the heart bleed a bit for children who don't have what you have been able to provide for yours.

And then I posted a cute photo with a twee comment and sparked a whole set of inter-related queries in my own mind.  Because...

It's not true.

He doesn't.

Regardless of his talent or strength or stamina.  Regardless of his skill.

Regardless of his daring to dream.

He doesn't have the world in his hands.

There are limits...on possibilities, on opportunities, on open doors...

Limits based solely on his circumstance.

Limitations, that not only slow his race but in some cases, completely impede it.

Limitations, that define the course of his life by whatever he is privileged enough to have been born into, be raised up in, learn or earn.  

Limitations that define the scope of his dreams around his circumstance.

Years ago, I told his middle school case manager that one of my biggest parenting goals was to make his world as big as possible.  I want him to experience as much of life as is possible.  I want him to see everything the world has to offer...new places, new faces, new stories...   I want to introduce him to the unfamiliar at every turn.  I want him to never feel limited by our finances or location or status.  I want for him to feel limitless.

I want for him to feel privileged despite his circumstance.

I want his dreams to be undefined...to be free...to grow so much bigger than the walls of the world we live in...so much bigger than the lines on the map that define where we've been...so much bigger than my bank account or my time or my knowledge and abilities and skills and creativity.

I want him to be privileged beyond the circumstance of having me for a mother.

To be undefined by what I have made of this life.  To be able to expand far past what I have been able to provide for him.

I want him to have a level playing field.  To have the same starting line.  To have the same chance.

I want it.

But it's not reality.

It's not attainable, just for the wanting...the wishing.

He's growing up, confined by the dollar amount in my bank account and the walls of our apartment and the symptoms of his autism and the experiences I am too afraid to pursue.  He's growing up, limited by me.

No matter how big I try to make his world, there's so much more out there beyond what I can provide for him or introduce him to or set him on the path of.

There's accident of birth and circumstance and status and privilege.  There are doors that he'll never even know are closed, because they're behind walls he'll never see over.

He knows something of privilege.

He knows that we are poor in comparison to some and rich in comparison to others.  He knows we help others often.  He knows sometimes we've needed help.

He has two friends whose status far exceed ours.  He's hung out with them at their homes and come home, both marveling and morose at the notion that our whole apartment could easily fit in a bathroom or walk-in closet or...

That what in his world must be treated as a rare indulgence is commonplace to them.

That what I must save up to be able to afford is an easy, pocket-change purchase to them.

He lives and attends school in an area steeped in status.  New money and mcMansions interspersed with upper-middle-class comforts.  Children raised by nannies.  Young people who, at 14 and 15, have a sense of entitlement that leaves little room for empathy or inclusion.

 He's been picked on for not wearing the trendy sneakers.  He's been made fun of because his gym shorts aren't a brand label.

He competes for gpa rankings and academic honours with students whose privilege affords them private tutors and testing practice.

They've never even seen his starting line, much less been there.

He knows something of privilege.

He knows well the accident of right-time/right-place that put a 3d printer in his workspace so he could jumpstart his dream business.

He knows the trips we've taken and items we've purchased and entertainments we've pursued.

He knows the security of a roof over his head, food on the table, clothes on his body, heat and hot water.  He knows the certainty of those clothes being clean and well-cared for and seasonally appropriate. He knows that he'll have shoes that fit properly and school supplies that serve his needs and medicines that assuage and prevent and heal.  He knows that he will not go hungry.

He knows the comfort of a mother who is always available to him.  The fearlessness that comes from having a parent who advocates for him at every turn.  The confidence that comes from her...me...always making him a priority.  

He knows something of privilege.

He hasn't been merciless to a parent strung out on drugs.  He hasn't been abandoned or neglected.  He's never been abused by a parent who struggles with emotional and mental disorders.   He hasn't been pulled from his home by CPS.  He hasn't worried that he'll lose his family.  He's never been concerned about when he'll get his next meal or if there will be clothing to wear or if he can sleep without being bitten by pests.  He doesn't have to fear eviction.

He knows that he is privileged.

And he knows that he is not.

He's got the whole world in his hands...the world he knows...the one I have painstakingly crafted and created for him.  He's got the world of my resources and abilities...of my circumstances in his hands.

But you and I both know that world is always, forever being defined and limited by others...by those whose privilege makes them feel they are entitled to judge his worth. 

I hope he dares to dream far beyond those judgments and those who make them.

I hope he skips past privilege and creates his own starting line.

I hope he never has to spend a moment 'catching up' to those who've been privileged enough to start out ahead...and if that isn't possible, I hope he's not exhausted by the race he started running before them.

And I hope that my efforts to afford those two children some privilege of their own will succeed. 

~Leanna

Permission, granted!

And, if you haven't seen it, here's the video that I mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBQx8FmOT_0&fbclid=IwAR0oMhI06SwG4Cp55JCzNucc5cYnlUqeXGdsQpaLGZb7lB_D6K_PZjbnEK0

...it can stay, I don't have to - part 2...

Remember that time I wrote about The Wall?

Well, I did what I set out to do.

I stopped it from being the focal point, and went ahead and worked my way around it.

In fact, I jumped right on  that task the following day.

(Ikea to the rescue!)

We took our measurements, noting just how much room it was taking up.  Carefully lining up the tape to see how far it protruded into our space.  Top to bottom.  Side to side.  Deepest crevice to sharpest point.  The rock wall just sat there, immovable and implacable.   Up close and personal...noting each inch...I saw its ugliness.  Gray and brown rocks of no consequence or complemement.  Some glossy.  Others lusterless.   Dusty film adhered to that sticky coating of time or humidity or sealant...indeterminate.  I felt the crumbling plaster holding it together.  I saw chips in its grim face...where someone else-sometime else...must have tried to move around it or past it, and come up short.  The crash of one solid object into another...unyielding.  Fracture lines crazed around those chips...a testament to both its lifelong strength and eventual weakness.  

I saw its ugliness.

And didn't care.

Already, just by measuring it, I had rendered it defunct.

The Wall-In the Living Room-With the Measuring Tape.

I win! (Remember the game 'Clue'?)

We sprinted in the homestretch, down the corridors of Ikea.  Rounding each corner with purpose.  Eyeing up each shelf and cabinet...debating dimensions...focusing first on form, then on function.

Finally settling our sights on the one.  The Brusali cabinet, in white...

Discussed. Dissected. Decided.

Done.

Home we came with his new cabinet, my new office drawers (and more than a few other bits and pieces, because...Ikea?!?) and a concrete plan: he to organize, I to assemble.

It's fixed now.  The Wall.  Fixed in the spayed/neutered sense of the word.  Its there...sort of...but completely overshadowed.  There, but unnoticed.

The cabinet pulls the room together.  Brings order to the space.  Closed doors hide his toolboxes and supplies.  Shelves bear the weight of education...binders and files and textbooks organized, just so.   And high up on the top shelf, his current favourite Transformers hold court.

(The rest are banished to storage bins until we move!)

The room makes sense now.  It's ready for the life that happens in it.

The Wall is stopped.  I took it's place and made space from it...space for him.  

***The Wall is still there.  The Wall is still ugly.  But somehow, remarkably, it's nigh on invisible behind the sensible and serviceable piece that now stands before it...behind the life I built beyond it.

~Leanna

...here for the highs and the lows and the highschool...

We waited for the bus to arrive this morning, on this first day of a new school year.

We waited, and walked, and talked.

I'd forgotten our tradition, you see. The one where I read to him from "The Hardy Boys".  We've been inching our way through the series since kindergarten, a chapter or so per day as we pace back and forth in the heat of early fall ~ the crisp cool of autumn ~ the thin, breath-stealing chill of winter ~ and so on.  Some days we're running late and I barely get in a sentence before the bus squeals to a stop.  Others it's a chapter and then some, words rushing by as my watch ticks off the minutes and we wonder if the driver forgot us.

I'll remember tomorrow, no doubt. I've already laid a fresh new book out next to the door, so I can't miss it.  Now I just have to figure out where I "cleaned up and organized" away our bookmarks to, and I'll be good to go!

At any rate, this morning I forgot.  So instead of reading and listening, we walked in an ever-widening circle, talking our way through his first-day jitters and all the empty platitudes of encouragement that I could only hope he wouldn't actually need to rely on but put breath and sound to anyway.  He let me ramble on about all the new coming his way today, interrupting to redirect the conversation to his latest design ideas.   I interrupted right back, steering us into the "call me...email me...google hangout me" if anything goes wrong.   

I looked up at him in the middle of our conversation. Looked all the way up...all 6'4" from my 5'8" vantage and thought to myself "what a marvel it is to have raised up this young man who I look up to!" and I must have smiled at the thought because he asked me why I was smiling. 

I said this:

"Because I have been the lucky one."

I.  Have been.  The lucky one.

I, alone...have been the wingwoman ~ the ride along ~ the plus one ~ the teammate ~ the encourager ~ the consoler ~ the counsel giver ~ the rage receiver ~ the advocate ~ the single solitary only parent.  

The mother.

The lucky one.

Here through the lows, and here for the highs.  Here for the jeers and tears and hugs.  Here for the meltdowns that left scars on my shins.  Here for the 3am sleepwalking and the night terrors that fed my insomnia.  Here for the homework headaches and the teacher tribulations.   The sensory calamities, the volume catastrophes and the sleepless nights.  Here for every single hug and every single smile and every single laugh...every honest, gut-jiggling, jaw-cracking laugh.  Here for the parenting.  Here for the motherhood.  The one lucky enough to be here.

I've been here all along.

I haven't missed a thing.

He starts high school today. 

And I am overjoyed and heartbroken, in awe and nerve-wracked....I am all those things that all we mothers are on the first days of every new chapter.  I am full of memory, of everything that's come before.

I will spend my day missing him, trying to distract myself with work. I will wonder if he's found a familiar face or a quiet space.  I'll be preoccupied by concerns and worries and nerves.  I'll miss him.

And he?

He will be himself. Wholly himself, just as he always is.  As his autism frees him up to be.  Brave and bold.  Secure in his sense of self.  Determined to use all the strategies he's learned to cope with the noise and the crowd and the pace and the newness of it all.

He will be overwhelmed, but he won't let it show.  He will be curious, but keep his questions silent.  He will squeeze himself down into a small version of himself and try to blend in, unseen and unnoticed.  He will shut down and shut out and shut off.  He will cope, to the best of his ability. 

And when he comes home, I will be here, as I always am...smile on face, arms wide open...

And he will wait until the bus pulls round the corner and we are far beyond the sightline of the other kids  to rush into those arms and tell me, as he has every day of every year..."I missed you."

~Leanna

...the Freshman, 15...

It started with a facebook post, yesterday...

My alarm chimed at 4:30am ("Never Enough" from The Greatest Showman as a riff on my lack of sleep) and I groped around in the dark, desperate to silence it.  The book I had given up on just an hour or so prior took a nosedive off my nightstand and Katja Noel (she of the 9 lives and counting) scowled at me from the nest she'd made between my knees.  "Shhh!", I hissed at her and the book and the carpet and alarm.  She gave me "the look": the rolled eyes/eyebrow scowl that only teenage girls and cats (and teenage girl cats) can do, and allowed me to untangle myself from her bed. 

Remarkably, I made it from bed to kitchen with nary a misstep.  Remarkable, when you take into consideration that the floor is a veritable minefield of Transformers, Transformers pieces, and all those incomprehensibly sharp little discards of my in-house design engineer's scratch builds.  

(And this after...yes, after...cleaning it all up mid-afternoon the day before.)

Now, where was I?

Ah, yes, the kitchen.  4:35am-ish...

...where I stood in front of an open refrigerator in a complete fog...contemplating lasagna.

Yes, lasagna.

And cake.

More specifically, cheesecake.

Trying my damndest to remember the ingredients.

Then the fog cleared a bit and my brain woke up and remembered...

Breakfast. 

(Not lasagna or cheesecake, sadly.)

 

Coffee made...ouch, too hot, from reheating...the handle of my mug leaving a red mark on my finger.

Into the kitchen proper then....ingredients out, utensils ready, food prep underway.

While this and then that were frying and boiling, quick scroll through the phone for updates and emails. Silent groan at the inbox. Sip...calm...repeat. Fresh press of coffee, tea to steep, OJ plus probiotics whisked (ugh), water. Plating food, cutting fruit, tray ready. 

The phone gave off a warning buzz...vibrating a second before alarm #2 went off.  This one...audio clip from a Transformers soundtrack, with its own name: "the son also rises". 

(I name my alarms.  I'm quirky like that.)

I raise the lights from dark to dim and gently pull the cover from his face.  Whisper my good morning, then repeat it...louder by degrees.  He grimaces, eyes still closed.  Frown lines in the brow.  Slants open eyelids and clutches his bedding to him, burying his face in Henry Raccoon.  Something...some indistinguishable utterance...all consonants, I think.

"Good morning, love."

He's annoyed at my chipper...growls a "why are you being so cheerful?" in my direction, so I drop the pretense and hand over his coffee.

Breakfast...refills...shower...alarms every two minutes as I knock on the bathroom door signaling him to move on to the next step: soak, soap, rinse, shampoo, rinse, face, rinse, etc... Double check that the clothes are laid out-had to spend 1/2 hour last night going over options. Knock...2 minutes...knock...2 minutes...knock...

Finally the squeal of the water turning off and the "I love you, Mami" as he comes out. It's a question, not a statement.

"I love you, Mami?"

Meant to elicit the same response... 

I love you more. I love you the most. 

Not possible. Possible.

Not probable. Probable.

Inconceivable. Conceivable.

Incomprehensible. Prehensibibibi-bibbidy-bobbity-boo-I-Love-You!

 

I wash the breakfast dishes while he gets ready. Print out a second copy of today's schedule and write in the class name, room and teacher next to each time slot. Tear the house apart looking for his keyfob: the one that has a pill dispenser for his rescue remedy and another for his earplugs. MIA!!! Why didn't I do this last night?  Where did I hide all my replacements?  Wait...one last spot I didn't look...Found it! (Pat myself on the back for being a genius...ha!)  Onto the table it goes.  Check the list, then check it twice...Santa style?  

He's ready-ish...still teeth to brush (sensory processing dysfunction, anyone?) and hair to brush (ditto).  I have him squat down so I can reach the top.  Put the brush away and close the cabinet, giving myself the once over in the mirror and frowning.  How is there sleep in my eyes when I didn't sleep?

Alarm #3 calls from wherever I last left my phone.  The "Tokyo Ghoul remix" elicits a grin from him. The alarm name, "Beginning of the end", gets me a pair of rolled eyes.

We grab the stack I've put together by the door: pad, pen, glasses case, key fob, water bottle...walk down the driveway and contemplate: the meaning of life, the fear of navigating new hallways, and the ongoing existence of the same kids who bullied him for the past 9 years.   I check my phone far too frequently...noting every passing minute past the scheduled bus stop time. Worrying that he's been skipped. It's happened before.  Worrying that we got the time wrong.  Hasn't happened yet.  He chatters on about his latest design ideas, filling the empty morning with sound to drown out his nervousness. I run through my checklist mentally, then verbally. Step by step directions for him.

Brakes squeal as the bus pulls up across the street. I grab his hand...motherhood 101 makes me firmly grip him and say "look both ways" as though he's still a toddler.  He lets me get away with it, or maybe doesn't even notice.  No "Mooooooom...I'm 15/too old for this/etc..."  We make our way across, aware of the annoyed drivers stopped in their morning commute.  Aware that we are, momentarily, a spectacle.  He puts one foot on the bottom step, then turns..quickly...to peck me on the cheek...before disappearing into the shadows of the bus.   I feel the warmth his face left on mine.  The driver mumbles at me...something about when and where to expect him later on. I smile, nod, wave...walk hurriedly back across the street to wave and smile as the bus pulls away.   Wondering if it's ok, my waving.  Wondering if someone else is laughing at him because I'm waving.  My hand finally drops...sagging....my smile drops, too. I feel...empty...

One foot in front of the other...I walk...1/2 mile down, 1/2 mile back. The world is quiet. Just my footsteps on this stretch of road.   I see the golden glow of morning sun on the leaves and grasses. I stop and wait a while, watching a cardinal in the bush as he watches me.

I see a doe in the distance, back by the tree line...with her young one.   I see my shadow on the road and remember when his barely came up to my knee. My arms itch for a moment, the way they used to when he was a baby and I missed him while at work.

I touch my cheek, that spot where he pecked me goodbye.

I wish time would stop.  Would spin in reverse.  Let me live it again...longer, deeper.

He'll be home, soon enough. And I've things to do before the bus returns. Back up the drive and in to the house.  Picking up the bits and pieces of a busy morning.  Log in to my work-site while I refill my coffee. All the while my head is with him...my heart is with him. He leaves, and I split in two...

He'll be home, soon enough. With a list of things we've yet to buy. Teacher pages.  Supplies needed. Ideas he's had. Drawings he's scribbled while there. 

15.

Today.

At Freshmen Orientation.

15, and on to high school.

And my arms itch at the thought.

If I close my eyes he's a baby again.  What wonder!

...a toddler...a kindergartner...a 6th grader...a guest speaker at Rutgers...

If I close my eyes, he's all the boys he's been before, all the boys I've loved so.

And when I open them...he's all the ones he's yet to become.

He'll be home, soon enough.  Orientation but a 3 hour day.  I'll be there at the bus stop, waiting. 

He'll come home...different, changed, grown.  Some new information learned and processed.  Some new experience filed away in that computer of a brain of his.

The mantle of Freshman secure on his shoulders. 

~Leanna

...it can stay, I don't have to...

        I am a compulsive mover.
        Self-diagnosed, but nonetheless true.
        I tire of my surroundings quickly.  I'm never wholly pleased with the way things are.  I constantly find myself picking things up and putting them down elsewhere...
        arranging...worrying on...then rearranging...
        Dishes, knick-knacks, furniture...nothing is safe or secure in my sightline.  If I could move the walls themselves, I likely would...and often!

       I've never understood how people can tolerate the static.  How they bring into their homes a piece of furniture or a decorative item and determinedly, decisively choose the very spot where it will live out the rest of its life.    And they dust it, or polish it, or vacuum around it and never once wonder if it might be happier...might be more comfortable...might be more pleasing....might be more useful...elsewhere.

         Maybe in that corner instead of this one?  Or up on that shelf, if this moved over and that was taken down?  Or....or...or???

        I wonder, as I sit down to write this, if it's my imagination that is the root of my compulsion.  My imagination that fills up the walls with possibilities.  My imagination that says "if ever this, then...." and tries to predict the arrangement based on all the foreseeable variables.

         Perhaps instead, it's my inner discontent.  Perhaps its an attempt to right the view when it's the viewer that is distorted. Perhaps the shuffle of stuff is nothing more than the sloughing off of what isn't working out.

         Or maybe, simply, it's just that I crave change.  That I want to grow and adapt without stagnating.  That I  want my very surroundings to reflect every new piece of information...every new interaction...every new sight, as it gets added to my story.

        Stop.  Redirect.  This wasn't what I sat down to write.  The "reasons why" wasn't the topic I had in mind.  I didn't mean to expound on the causes.

        It was the wall.
        It was the wall, this morning, that I looked at and furrowed my brow at...and, quite possibly, harrumphed at.
        It was the wall.

        The wall of rock that splits in half one side of the livingroom in our current home-base.  It's...decorative, I suppose.  I don't know that for sure.  Perhaps it's structural or load bearing or any number of other things I can't possibly understand.  But I think it's simply decorative.  Dark stones, stacked atop and amidst, sticky with some old attempt at shellacking.  Dusty, if you get close enough.  No matter how many times or ways I try to clean it, the dust just gathers there and I've never found the right tool to cleanse all the nooks and crannies.

        The wall just...is.  Glaringly so.  It's there...so solid and substantial that it can't be avoided.

        The Wall.

        See?  Bold and imposing and completely, wholly immoveable.  Even on the page.

        So here I am, this self-diagnosed compulsive mover, who rearranges the furniture every time that stressors bubble up.  Here I am, pushing and pulling and shoving and grunting...exercising and exorcising the irritation out.  This, no longer here.  That, no longer there.  Wait...no...maybe...no...  Scrap it all and start again.  Sweat the situation right on out of existence and flop onto the floor, ears ringing with the racing pulse and gasping breaths.
        Here I am, the mover and shaker of all the things...and there is the wall.

        The wall won't move.  The wall won't be shifted, ever so slightly, into the corner.  The wall won't be picked up and put where I want it.   The wall just is.

        And I have met my match.  Or so it seems.

        In all the years we've lived here I've never been able to sort it.  It's there.  And I'm here.  And everything gets rearranged around it.

       And for some reason, inexplicable to even me, I've never once been able to just...cover it.

       Even on the rare occasions when I've temporarily put a piece of furniture in front of it, it's still held sway.  It's still been the focal point and the furniture a mere interruption.

         So there I stood this morning, brow furrowed...coffee mug in hand...growl vibrating in my throat.  I stared at that wall.  I willed it out of existence.  I blinked and wished it to melt right down to the carpet.  Opened my eyes and there it still was.  The Wall.   I took a breath and felt my shoulders straighten.

         I decided.  Right then.  Right there.  Just like that...a shoulder shrug and I decided.

        Ignore it.

        Pretend it's invisible.  Pretend it's insubstantial.  Pretend it's irrelevant.

        Ikea, here I come.

        I've a boy who's growing faster than I can keep track of.  His physical body expanding upward and outward as his intellect grows exponentially.  I've a boy whose interests need substance, whose dreams need space to be realized.  I've a boy whose stuff needs room.  And that wall is in my way.

        So I'm bulldozing it out of my existence.  It can sit there all...substantial.  All...solid.   All...unmoving.  That's fine. I'll just move around it.  I'll just ignore it and put what needs to be in front of what is and just like that, stop it from being.  Stop it from stopping me.

        That wall has got to go.  I need that space for him.  And I aim to have it!

        *Sometime it really is just about the wall.
        **Sometimes, the wall is the one I accidently built with other peoples' expectations.

~Leanna

   

...the nerve...

        I remember a time when a blank page was all I needed to set myself free.  Words and scribbles and scrawls would flow out.  Curlicue trees or wisps of fire filling the margins when the words got stuck in traffic.  But soon enough, no matter the clutter in my mind, that page would be full to overflowing and I would feel the relief of having written it out.  

        

        I find myself wondering, as I sit in front of a blank screen if that's part of the problem.  Screen substituted for page.  Keyboard tapping instead of ball point scrawling.  Not a free form margin to be found to keep the fingers active while the mind puzzles out the language barrier between heart and soul. 

        For a while there, my writing was confined to the tangible page...my words stuck between the covers of a journal.  It seems, when I look back through the post scroll here, that I jump track frequently and let this blog sit, empty, when there's too much to clean up or organize or pack away...emotionally.   I, as the writer, have the benefit of being able to bounce back and forth between blog and journal to see that my timeline is uninterrupted.  But here on the screen, the seasons of my discontent play out in huge gaps of empty space...empty days~weeks~months...when nothing finds its way to this space.  

        I think there are apology posts.  I don't feel like opening up another window to scroll through and check.  But I think they are there, one or two at least.  The "hey, I'm still here....checking back in" words of someone who feels guilty and neglectful at having taken the time to deal with things in her own time, in her own way.

        This morning I woke up in a mood, a distinctive mood...a dream not quite run its course before my eyes opened.  I woke  up wondering when and how and where I had lost so much of myself.  

        I used to sing.
        I used to dance.
        I used to act.
     
        I used to move through my days in music and passion and creativity.  No matter the weather, my home sparkled inside with song, the music filling up the vacant corners where the things that should have been...weren't.  Music filled the empty space and made of our impoverished means, a substantial existence.  The walls were covered in art, and photos of things that caught my eye.  My son's early paintings from school competing for space with thrifted textiles and postcards from abroad.  I liked the quirk of it all.  The chaos.  The constant flow of energy that all that colour and texture created.  And through that space I danced.  My legs stretching to an arabesque in the kitchen or pirouetting the plates to the table, much to my then-toddler's delight.  Life was...something to enhance.   A show where the presentation mattered more than the substance.  Where the music and dance and drama made more of what little we had and we felt rich, indeed.

        I woke up this morning in a mood and felt my legs stretch out, my toes flexing out to twinkle.  I sat up and stood, shoulders rolling back...neck stretching side to side and pinging in pain...and rose to demi-pointe.  Felt the burn in my arches as they curved and froze, locked in a position short of the flexibility they once had.   Felt the quiver in my calves as long-sleeping muscles tried to spring back.  Felt the crack in ankle as rusty joints gave way.

        Felt, in that moment too, the disappointment and disgust of an aging body that hasn't been "kept up" and the sudden, firm resolve to "set things right".

        So I got up, fully.  Grabbed my robe and flicked off the a.c.  Marched into the kitchen to set the pitcher to boil and prepped our mugs.  I stretched in the kitchen as well, arching my back and feeling the little pops of tension, suddenly angry and not just annoyed at how stiff and tense I am.  Frustrated to feel the solid wall of restricted movement.  Feeling like the Tin Man, in need of a good oiling.  And knowing, full well, that so much of what's lost to time is gone forever.  That inevitable depressor on all good intentions of knowing that they aren't wholly-fully-totally achievable.  Knowing that my body will never spring back the way it did at 20.  Never contort as it could at 30.

        But I shook it off.  Made the coffee, letting my body sway to the music in my head as I puttered about the kitchen and waited for my son to wake.  Turning the music on when he finally stirred and reminding him, with a smile, that we used to always have music in the mornings.  He just nodded his assent...an acknowledgement of "Yes...that's how it was...and how it should be again" and grabbed for his mug.

         And I thought, in that moment, all's well that begins well.

         I thought, as he slunk back to the livingroom with his coffee and his book and his blanket, that I had hit the reset button.  That I had activated a "fresh start" of sorts.

        I thought I was me again.  The "used to" me...that sang and danced and acted and created and for whom a new day was the blank page for a new adventure.

        I thought I'd had a breakthrough.

        Until I sat down with my second cup of coffee and I put my headphones on and clicked through the screen saver to the blank page where the cursor blinked my creativity into oblivion and I sat, counting the seconds along with that cursor...1....2....blink....4....

       All the words turn into dust.  A mess of thoughts and emotions that can't possibly be sorted through.  Just...leftovers...refuse....garbage to be tidied up and disposed of.

        Is it really the creativity that's missing now?  Or is it maybe, just maybe, the recklessness?  The bravado of youth.  The carelessness that allows for free-flowing thought.  Is it my creativity that has been suffocated, or my nerve?

        I think now, again, of the music and the night last week when I shoved all the furniture back to the walls and let it burn through me.  Of the fiery energy that took hold and of the way the whole of me sparked and sparkled as my barriers came down and the music and the movement blasted right through all the responsibility~logic rigidity that holds me together.  I think of that night and I want it back.  I want that feeling and that freedom and that fulfillment.

        I want to shrug off the mantle of everything everyone seems to think I should be and just be me.  I want my son to know me...the me that I was and still am...the me that is drowning under the waves made of not wanting to make waves.   Its as though I'm drowning in reverse.  My body safe and dry and going about the business of being all that I'm supposed to be while only my eyes are below the surface, endlessly gazing at all I used to be.
     
        And there she is.  There I am.  The me of 16 and 20 and 21 and 24.  The student and the explorer and the new-wife and the new-mother.  There she is again.  The girl and the woman who danced through her days and sang out her feelings.   The "animated conversationalist" in the spotlight of a high-school dinner, when a friend loudly declared just that....pointing right at her, as she tried to melt into the floor.

        There she is.  In her 20s.  Spinning out inside her head, desperately trying to stay above water as her marriage implodes and her life...thoughtfully planned and carefully wished...blinks right out of existence.  There she is.  Bruised and battered and broken.  Silent and still.  Not daring to make a noise or jostle the delicate balance for fear that more bad things will find her.

        There she is.  Wholly immersed in motherhood.  Going through the motions on everyone else's behalf.  The employee.  The chaperone.  The advocate.  Fueled by the needs of others.  Ignoring her own.  There she is, that woman in her 30s.

        There she is.
        But where am I?

        Right here.  I found myself.  Right here, under the surface.  These two eyes that can see through all the form and function and formality.  These eyes that focus on the way the notes dance across the staff and the way the feet bend and flex.  These eyes that see all the words that were, and all the words still stuck inside.

        And I blink.  1....2...blink...4....  I blink along with the cursor.  Trying to clear my field of vision.  I bend and twist and stretch in my chair, feeling the sharp twinges of pain as stiff joints and lax muscles try to obey me.   I hear the click of my fingers on the keyboard and wonder what's flowing out onto the screen.  I'm curious to read it now...to see what makeshift sentences my brain constructed while I was listening to the music....

~Leanna

...made the list, now checking it twice...

        Way back at the beginning of March I posted here about planning for the year ahead.  And here we are, 5 months into it at the start of August.  Seems as good a time as any to check back in and see where we're at and....maybe more importantly...remind me of everything I forgot!

15 for 15:

1. Finish setting up his new business
2. Fill up the calender:
1. Zip-Lining
2. Hiking 
3. Camping (err...maybe in a cabin???)
4. Spontaneous road trip
5. Canoeing, or rafting, or tubing, or all three!
6. Work on that ice-skating!
7. Fishing or crabbing, or both
8. Use the library passes to check out new museums
9. Take the train to a new destination
10. See a Broadway show
11. Rock climbing
12. Roller coasters!
13. Water slides!
14. Biking
15. Take a class together
3. Let him teach me how to 3D design
4. Collaborate on some advocacy pieces, written and/or filmed
5. Switch out the nightly tv episode for a game at least twice a week
6. Take a walk together every day, no matter the weather. (Coats? Umbrellas? Flashlights?  Good to go!)
7. Cook dinner together once a week
8. Let him make breakfast once a week
9. Stay overnight at a hotel just to use the pool and order room service
10. Volunteer together
11. Build a piece of furniture together
12. Try geocaching
13. Try our hand (and eye co-ordination) at golf
14. Waste a day playing arcade games
15. Put him in charge for a week in the summer: have him pick the groceries, plan the meals, choose the activities!  Don't forget to be a good sport...even if he forgets that you NEED coffee!

         Ooof...well, there's the proof.  Not quite up to "goals" level, now is it.  Granted, we've kept busy with things not on this list but to see it all in front of me is a bit overwhelming.  Mom-guilt triggered, as I think back on days when we should have~could have~would have done more...

        But then again, there's so much more to it, isn't there?  So many little things not on this list that we've done and enjoyed.  So many moments not represented here that have filled up our days.

        I look at this list and see the big-ticket items...the trips and the amusements and the things that aren't free...and they are all still sitting there...un-done.  

        And I'll be honest.  That makes me nervous. 

        Anxious.

        Guilty.  

        It makes me feel like I'm failing at something...at motherhood.

        So I have to take a breath, and reassess, and remind myself of all the things we have done....all the small adventures and explorations, all the new discoveries and learning, all the experiences.  

        I have to value the things we've done more than the things yet to be done.

        In other words, I have to stop comparing my "done list" to my "to-do list" because...

"Comparison is the thief of joy"-Roosevelt

~Leanna