Tag Archive for: parenting

Museum Revelations

I have decided that traditional museums are lost on children. I know there are “children’s” museums in every major city in the US, but I’m talking about the natural history museums with dinosaur bones and things that school children are herded to every year, lined up like pearls on a string, and ushered from room to quiet room while some adult desperately tries to engage their attention and keep them from swinging on the velvet ropes.

Two weeks ago, Eve and I were in Washington, DC with a dozen or so of her classmates for a Close Up Washington tour. [I couldn’t have loved this tour company more – if you haven’t heard of them, check it out. What a fantastic organization!] The kids had a pretty tightly packed schedule but since they were with Close Up teachers, I was free to peel off and do my own thing and catch up with them later.

Now, I’m certain that I visited my share of museums as a kid and what I really remember about them was being bored and restless.  The idea of a field trip was almost always better than the trip itself and I know for a fact that the part I enjoyed the most was the school bus ride with all of my friends to and from our destination.

As an adult, though, heading into the Smithsonian Natural History Museum was fan-freaking-tastic. There was a life-size elephant in the lobby. This guy stared out at me from his perch, daring me to guess what he was and read all about him.

The school children around me came in two sizes: 
  • middle-school-age and thrilled to be set free from their teachers for the moment, they ran around in giggling clots of girls texting each other pictures of boys they had taken on the sly (apparently these are called ‘stalker photos’ because the subject is some random boy from another school in another part of the US who just happens to be on your tour and he has no idea he is being photographed or talked about by tittering teenage girls), and 
  • elementary-age children with matching backpacks and water bottles with eyes like marbles and brains so overstimulated that they couldn’t even recall their own names (which may be why most of them were written in Sharpie on their backpacks).
[By the way, it may be the paranoid traveler in me, but doesn’t writing your child’s name – or having it stitched – on their personal belongings in plain sight make it easier for a freaky pedophile to coax your child over to them in a public area where they might be with a large group and, thus, not as closely supervised as you might think? Just an observation…]
I on the other hand, walked slowly but with purpose from exhibit to exhibit, reading plaques and shaking my head in wonder. I could have spent a week inside learning about the different species of bats and gaping at the Hope Diamond, standing in front of the hologram wall designed to show the structure of a crystal and marveling at the knobby skin on an egret’s toes.  The children swirled around me like waves, moving too quickly to absorb much of anything and eager for lunch.
Last week Bubba found himself in Germany on business and, with a couple of hours to kill, he decided to head to the Natural History Museum in Frankfurt. He texted me this photo
I had one of those moments where I had to remind myself to breathe. And it was then that I realized museums like this are completely lost on children. 
You see, up until a certain age, most children live in their own imaginations. Everything seems wondrous and amazing for many, many years. The first time a kid visits the beach, the waves seem magical. You can totally trick a kid into thinking that quarters can be extracted from their ears. Kids will believe almost anything because they haven’t been taught that most of the stuff they want to see and do and have are impossible. And so visiting a museum and seeing something like a T. Rex skeleton is cool, but it isn’t hard for them to imagine that something like that could (and maybe still does) wander around crushing things somewhere on the planet. 
As a pre-teen and teenager, kids have many other things on their minds like music and boyfriends/girlfriends, how to convince their parents they need a cell phone with unlimited text, etc.  They have no use for museums except as a way to get out of their classroom and socialize with friends on the bus.
As an adult, though, I have spent many, many years in the Realm of Things Possible and Doable. I am concerned, on a minute-by-minute basis, with what is necessary (food, sleep, walking the dog enough to avoid accidents in the house, laundry, getting children to sporting practices and events, paying bills) and weighing against that, what is actually possible in any given day.  I am not given to fantasy except as it relates to these things (having my insurance company suddenly call up and say, for example, “You know what? Your deductible is too high and we have noticed that it’s only May 1 and you have already had some very legitimate reasons to visit the doctor this year and these little nickel-and-dime lab fees and tests and follow up visits are killing you. Let us pick the rest of it up this year, okay?”).
So to walk in to a museum and see a stuffed African elephant is jolting. It stops me in my mental tracks and reminds me that there are wondrous things that exist outside of my ability to think about. Looking at that photo from Bubba made me recall that there was once something this enormous, this phenomenal, this astonishing that roamed the Earth. It gave me pause and opened the doorway to a place of speculation and wonder where I have not spent much time in the last four decades.  I was properly awed when I made my way through the Smithsonian museum and I believe I was in the minority.
I will be heading to museums more from now on, but I won’t be taking my children. I love them and I do hope that one day they, too, will discover how great museums are, but I have no desire to drag them in and spend precious time and energy convincing them or cajoling them into enjoying themselves. Nope, instead I will give myself the gift of going alone and remembering my imagination.  Because I need that more than those dang schoolkids. And I appreciate it more, too.  

The “F” Word Rears its Ugly Head Again

I was asked today how I think my daughters’ school views failure and I cringed.  I hate that word. It is so full of rot and worms and gut-wrenching stink.  The first thing I did was to reframe the conversation in terms of mistakes, and then I dug in deeper.

I don’t know where we as a society got the notion that mistakes aren’t allowed, or at least that only mistakes of a certain type are allowed.  I remember teachers handing papers back to me with a final grade written on them in red ink at the top and feeling either defeated or elated depending on the score (which I rapidly translated from a number score to a letter grade in my head, don’t you know).  I remember accepting that this was the way it was. You get one chance to take that test or write that essay and the grade you get is the grade you get.  But that isn’t real life, is it?  And it certainly isn’t a reasonable expectation. I think if we asked, no parent or school official or teacher would say that they expect their students to come in, sit through a lecture, absorb everything the teacher says, and perform perfectly on an exam. Desire? Yes. Expect? No. Schools are for learning, and learning simply can’t happen without missteps.

Last year, Eve had a math teacher who expected the girls to turn in corrections on their math homework.  If it was clear to him that they hadn’t quite understood or mastered the content by the looks of their math papers, he would return them to the girls and ask them to rework the problems they had answered incorrectly.  He offered to stay in at lunch or after school to pore over the papers with students who just hadn’t quite figured it out yet because his goal was that each of his students truly learn the material he was teaching. He didn’t have a bell curve he was working toward.  He wasn’t compelled by some external drive to “get through” a certain amount of material. He wanted these girls to understand what he was teaching and he lived it every day.

How often do we get “corrections” in life? Everywhere, I’d say.  Just because I try out a new recipe one night and it bombs, my family doesn’t ‘fire’ me from cooking anymore.  I’m not branded a failure in the kitchen and asked not to return.  Life is about reworking problems, looking back to see where we went wrong and making it a little better next time.  Unfortunately, I think we don’t offer our kids that much slack at school.  So many students are frantic to turn in perfect papers that they stay up all night tweaking every last detail or resort to buying someone else’s work to turn in. They take round after round of pre-SAT tests in order to increase their scores as much as possible before applying to colleges.  They give up on themselves if they can’t master a particular subject, or if they can’t master school itself.  We are doing them a disservice if we continue to send them the message that there is only one way to learn and if they don’t figure it out, they’re doomed.

One of the biggest reasons I love the school my daughters attend is that the teachers embrace mistakes. They expect mistakes. They encourage the girls to step outside of their comfort zone and try things they are afraid of just to see what happens.  Yes, they have high academic standards, but those standards revolve around comprehension and utilization of the material they are taught, not regurgitating memorized material on a test or being at the top of the bell curve.  Their teachers believe that one of the biggest components of learning is not knowing. I mean, honestly, isn’t that the only prerequisite for learning? That you don’t already know?  In this equation, effort and resilience are the most important traits a student can have, and given that those characteristics are vital to the rest of their lives as well, don’t we want to instill them in our kids instead of some completely unattainable ideal of perfection?

Do We Have to Call It ‘Sex Ed?’

I have written about Sex Ed before, both its importance and the fact that I believe we are doing families and students a disservice by calling it that.

Last week the girls’ school held a combined Parent/Student Education night for 7th and 8th graders and their families, led by one of the science teachers and the health/nutrition/fitness teacher.  The idea was to talk to the group as a whole to begin with, then break them up into two groups (Students and Parents) to talk for a bit and formulate a list of questions for the other group, and finally bring them all back together to discuss some of the issues.  Eve was greatly relieved that Bubba was out of town and we were unable to join the discussion at school but I was, frankly, quite disappointed.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t rub my hands together in gleeful anticipation of talking to my daughters about their sexuality, especially given the fact that they both seem patently uncomfortable with the subject.  I was disappointed because, like most things, I believe that the more baby steps we can take, the easier it will get over time.  I am not a proponent of the ‘shock’ therapy that one educator I know engages in (among other tactics, she has the girls shout the word, “penis!” at the top of their lungs repeatedly to desensitize them to it).  I’m not against it, but it simply isn’t my style.

I was very happy to see an email from one of the instructors a few days after the program with an attached document containing both the student-generated and parent-generated lists of questions from that evening.  I forwarded it on to Eve and asked her to pick three questions she wanted to ask me. I would do the same and after dinner we headed out to take a walk.  She wasn’t thrilled.

The list of questions ranged from things like “Do you trust me?” and “What kind of boyfriend do you want me to have?” to the distinctly more squirm-worthy ones such as “How old were you when you first had sex?” and “What is molestation?” and “Does it smell when you ‘do it’?”  Predictably, Eve chose three pretty tame ones.  I let her start, but said we would alternate who asked and who answered.

I tend to give thesis-length answers, but I tried to be as concise as possible so she would remain interested and engaged in the conversation and it was fairly genial.  My first two questions were softballs, but the last one was more pointed.  Of course, when we were within a block of home, the real meat of the discussion came up and we were able to talk about date rape and how to determine if other people are trustworthy in certain situations.  We extended our stroll a bit to accommodate.

As we headed across the deck for the back door, I told her that I’d like us to do this twice a month or so until we’ve exhausted the questions on both lists.

“Mom! Some of those questions….I don’t want to do this all the time! Why do we have to?”

I know she’s embarrassed.  I know she thinks she knows more than she does.  I know she would probably rather get this information from her friends – despite the fact that they don’t know as much as they think they do, either.  But what I’m looking for here is to establish a rapport between us that doesn’t treat her sexuality as uncomfortable or shameful.  I don’t want to know details of her consensual experimentations with boys (when she finally has them, hopefully at a developmentally appropriate time) and I have no intention of sharing intimate details of my sex life with her. We aren’t BFFs. But I do want to make sure that if she ever has a question about whether or not it’s the right time for her to start experimenting or how to obtain reliable birth control or if she needs to tell me something difficult that she isn’t proud of, that she feels comfortable coming to me because we have proven ourselves able to talk about it calmly and with respect for each other.

So many of the questions on those lists had more to do with figuring out your own values and understanding your own boundaries and comfort zones than they did with anything else.  It is precisely for this reason that I think calling the classes “Sex Ed” unnecessarily creates the illusion that the material is all about intercourse and other intimate sex acts.  In my experience, it is so much more about knowing the mechanics of your own body, learning about how hormonal changes affect different aspects of your life, and figuring out how to make good choices that fit within your own personal comfort level.  Imagine if everyone were able to access information about how to take care of themselves in every aspect – physically, emotionally, spiritually – and to practice thinking critically about why certain choices were better or worse than others.  Don’t we want that for all our children? Spouses?  Parents? And just like with any other subject, additional perspectives can only add to understanding which is why it is important to me that my girls are able to discuss the material with me, uncomfortable or not.

…And the Livin’ is Easy

I went walking with a friend (I’ll call her Sunny) today who is feeling at a crossroads.  A year ago, she and her husband decided to simplify their lives a great deal by pulling their kids out of private schools, renting out their lovely home, and moving to a neighborhood where the public schools would serve her children well.

The kids have thrived and are thrilled with their new schools and their new friends and their new community.  It helps that they are within 15 minutes’ drive from most of their old friends, but they don’t seem to miss the old school or their old haunts in the least.

My friend’s husband has since taken a new job which requires him to travel a great deal, but  he enjoys it and their marriage is strong enough to weather the time apart.

For now, Sunny is a stay-at-home mom, running her household, fixing her children healthy meals and available to help with homework.  She has interviewed for a few jobs in her field but nothing has stuck yet, since it is important to her to find one that has enough flexibility for her to remain present for her kids.

Last month, they decided that this experiment had worked well enough to warrant selling their house and it sold in five days.  They are renting a home in their new neighborhood until June and when I asked her, “What next?” she paused before admitting she didn’t know.  They could move back east, closer to her family and her aging parents, or they could look for a house to buy in their new neighborhood.  I pushed a little more, probing to see what she wanted to do, and she began a verbal pro/con list of all the options.  Then she sat back in her chair and sighed.

“Honestly, Kari, – and the kids and I talk about this all the time – it’s just so easy to be here. The kids are happy at school. They have friends. I don’t have to work, for now, and their dad is happy with his job. The schools are great, the people are great, everything is within walking distance and life is just…easy.”

Her face was a mixture of guilt and embarrassment as she admitted all of this to me.

I smiled and thought about what a lovely, lovely turn of events this is.  Why should life be hard?  Of course, it is sometimes, and for some people more than others, but often I think we make it too hard on ourselves without realizing that we are.  Their conscious decision a year ago was to simplify. And it seems that it worked.  Good for them.  I hope they revel in it. I hope that it feels safe and comforting.  I can’t say that there was ever a time in my childhood that felt “easy,” and I hope she knows what a gift she’s giving to her kids by letting them experience that.  It won’t last forever, but while it’s here, I’ll celebrate it with her.

Why I Choose to Parent my Teen Conspicuously

Forain – The Tightrope Walker

Monday morning I went for a walk with two friends who are mothers.  As it often does, talk fairly quickly turned to our teenage daughters and the triumphs and challenges we are facing right now.  We took turns talking about and listening to each others’ unique perspectives and it felt good to be in the company of others whose values are similar and who may have fresh ideas for looking at sticky situations.

I was struck by how incredibly important parents are to children as they go through the early teen years.   Despite the fact that Eve is more interested in spending hours alone in her room (well, not digitally ‘alone,’) and she maintains that she has her own ideas about everything and my opinions aren’t always welcome, I know she is still looking to Bubba and me for a baseline.  She is in the throes of determining her own personality, her own values, and finding her unique path for the near future, and I have to respect that, but her frame of reference is us.  I can see her picking and choosing which pieces of me to absorb or eschew, shrinking away into her own space and crafting her world view from the bits and pieces she has decided are important.  She is watching the way that Bubba and I move through the world, how we react to lack of control, how we prioritize, how we act in community with others (or not).  We are the starting point from which she jumps and our role is so important in giving her something to either emulate or discard, something to react to.

One of my girlfriends was lamenting the fact that her teenager has such a negative view of her own life.  “She has clothes, food, a roof over her head. She doesn’t have parents who scream at each other all the time or kick her out of the house. How hard could her life be?”  We all laughed in that way you laugh when you know you’re all sitting in the same stew pot together.

We kicked around the notion that, in order to differentiate themselves and individuate (their most important developmental ‘job’ right now as teenagers), they have to craft some kind of backstory that justifies defiance, a pushing away. They have to have something to push off of in order to propel themselves out into the world with less fear and trepidation.  It is so much easier to push off when you’re angry or defiant than it is when you’re reluctant to leave.

There is such a strong temptation to take that “backstory” personally.  I have found myself more than once, mouth open, words tumbling out to justify or defend or belittle the “hardships” Eve has built up in her mind.  If she is listening, all I am doing is giving her ammunition in those moments.  When I’m feeling particularly disparaged by her, it is incredibly tempting to check out and let her spend hours alone in her room texting her friends, not invite her to play a game with the family or walk the dog with me or sit and do her homework in the kitchen while I make dinner.  
And then I remember what it was like to be a teenager who didn’t have parents that were available.  I remember feeling adrift much of the time, as though I was making choices about who I would be in a vacuum and ultimately, wondering why it even mattered.  It is hard to deny or embrace something that isn’t actually there.  In the moments when one of my parents was around, even if I felt they were being perfectly horrible, at least it gave me something to decide NOT to be, some solid ground on which to put my feet as I leapt in the opposite direction.
Even though I suspect Eve would say in a very brave voice that she doesn’t “need” us as much anymore, I think that the things for which we are necessary are simply different than they were in the past.  I am entirely convinced that our presence as role models in her life, however quiet and unobtrusive it may be at times, is incredibly vital to her sense of who she is now and who she may become over time.  I don’t expect or even want her to emulate either of us to the exclusion of her own burgeoning personality, but consistent availability to her, emotionally and physically, may just be the thing she needs in order to feel safe about trying on new personalities.  It may be both the bedrock and the safety net she needs to set her compass by.  

Until

One of the saddest words I think I ever learned is “until.”

Last week I sat on an airplane, one row behind a father and his two sons, ages 5 and 4, and listened to their excited chatter. Neither of the boys had ever been on a plane before and they couldn’t wait for this lumbering giant to reach the end of the runway and whisper up and off the ground.  Both of them squealed in tandem at the slight lift under the plane’s wheels and the younger one hollered, “We’re flying!” as his dad shushed him and looked around apologetically to everyone else on board.

Across the aisle from me was a young couple with a nine-month old. The baby’s mother sat down, handed the little girl to her father and pulled out a giant container of disinfecting wipes. She apologized to the stranger (Bubba) sitting next to her as she swiped down every surface within reach of the baby – the armrests, seat belt buckles, backs of the seat in front of her, everyone’s trays (inside and out), the wall and window next to them.  I smiled and closed my eyes, imagining the days filled with splashing in the pool, digging in the sand, slathering sunscreen on over and over and trying to keep her hat on.  I remembered those days of fighting for naps in a hotel room and falling in to bed at night, the TV too low for us to even hear it lest we wake our kids up, too tired for sex, the bathtub full of grit and wet swimsuits.

I was always waiting “until”
            my kids were old enough to modulate their own voices for the comfort of others around them
            they could bathe themselves and fall asleep without rocking or pleading
            the girls could entertain themselves on an airplane

Listening to those squeals of joy I realized how much “until” kept me from the now, stunted the joy of today, gave me hope for “until” but didn’t let me revel in the moment.

“Until” is never satisfied, never still, never accepting or grateful or full of equanimity.

I can so clearly remember the myriad times I thought to myself, “I can’t wait until…” as I looked at other families longingly.  I know I didn’t speed up time, but I do know that I missed fully appreciating some of the moments of exploration and the dawning of new understandings as they happened for my girls because I was focused on getting past this stage (whatever it was).

Maybe after today I can hear myself thinking those words and stop.  Maybe I can breathe instead and look around – take stock of where I am and how grateful I am to be here. Now.

Shedding Her Skin

Lola is comfortable in her own skin. Emotionally. By that, I mean to say that she is quirky, irreverent, and more than a little bit unique and she is perfectly okay with that. She has no desire to change the core of her personality to better fit anyone else’s idea of how she ought to dress or what she should find funny and she generally celebrates the ways in which she sees the world differently from most people.

She is occasionally terrifically uncomfortable in her own skin physically.  She struggles with sensory perceptions in ways that I can’t possibly understand but have learned to recognize. She hates the volume of sound in a movie theater. She is overwhelmed by the lights and sounds and smells and people offering her samples at Costco. She is very particular about the kinds of clothing she is willing to wear and can be a little obsessive about making things “even.”

Over the years she has taught herself ways to accommodate and/or avoid the things that drive her batty and in many cases she has challenged herself to endure some very uncomfortable situations in an effort to desensitize herself.  She has come a very long way in learning to tolerate things that were once unthinkable but a few sticking points remain.

She is terribly susceptible to motion sickness (but in one shining example of her courage and willingness to not let it diminish her experiences, she went on a three-day sailing trip with her class early in the school year and had a fabulous time despite some bouts with nausea).

She also struggles with transitions.  I have written about this before, especially with respect to the transition out of the school year and into the summer and vice versa.  We generally have a few days of teeth-grinding frustration before she can settle in to the new phase she has entered and it generally takes me by surprise despite the fact that it happens every year.

And so I ought to have considered that when Bubba and I decided to spring a surprise vacation on the girls for their mid-winter break.  We planned the week in Hawaii with glee, whispering and snickering together about the major secret we were keeping.  We orchestrated everything without them getting suspicious – arranging for the dog to be boarded and someone to housesit for us and yet another friend to hamster-sit – and the night before we were to leave we told them to pack their bags. We were heading to one of their favorite places for nine days and they had better dig out shorts and tanks and swimsuits.

They were ecstatic and so were we. We had managed to pull of an enormous coup!  What fun.

And it has been, but by Day 3, Lola was a little on edge. She had spent two full days jettisoning herself between the ocean and the pool, lying in the sunshine reading and going for walks on the beach with Eve. Bubba and I were enjoying our newfound freedom now that the girls were responsible enough to go off together for a few hours at a time and we were soaking up every lazy moment.

As is their ritual, Bubba and Eve woke before sunrise and headed out for a beach walk together.  Lola and I lazily made our way into our swimsuits and promised to join them shortly.  And that’s when it hit. First, Lola complained that her hair wouldn’t stay down and she was clearly agitated.  I rolled my eyes, dropped the beach bag and wet a washcloth thoroughly to plaster it down.

“As soon as it dries it’s going to stick up all over again!” she yelled.  I shushed her, worried that she had just woken up the neighbors.  She stomped her foot.

Then the strings on her bikini bottom made an “uncomfortable lump” underneath her shorts and she tugged and fussed and picked at it as enormous tears formed in her eyes.  I shifted from one foot to the next, shushing her again so she wouldn’t bug the neighbors.

“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE NEIGHBORS!” she shouted and I found myself at a crossroads.  Mentally cataloguing the morning’s catastrophes, from itchy, sandy flip flops to hair disasters to sunburned shoulders to this, I realized what this was.  My friend Michelle’s words appeared in my head:

Where there is (bad) behavior, there is pain.


Oh, yeah. This had all the earmarks of a classic SPD meltdown.  Each of these petty things would normally not phase her. She wasn’t trying to be difficult. She was hurting.

I put down my bag again and joined her on the bed where she was face down, sobbing with spine-shaking gulps.

“I think that this might be what it looks like to be uncomfortable in your own skin. Do you think so?”  I kissed her on the top of her head.  She nodded emphatically.

“I-i-i don’t know what to dooooo,” she wailed pathetically and my heart broke open a little.  For the moment, I could completely forget about whether Eve and Bubba were getting impatient with us. I had to help her.

“I’m sorry we sprung this trip on you and I know you want to enjoy it.  I think that you are growing up a lot right now and maybe you’re a little too big to be in this skin anymore.  You think?”

I asked her whether she wanted to picture herself as a snail who had outgrown its shell or a snake who needed to shed its old skin.  She chose snail.  And I had her close her eyes and breathe deeply three times.

“Picture yourself as a snail.  Your shell can be any color you want and when you look next to you, you see a different, bigger shell.  Take a minute to create that bigger shell in your mind’s eye. What colors does it have? What is its shape? Is it smooth or spiky? Long and lean or tall and round?  Don’t tell me. Just picture it in your mind.  Now take a moment to feel what it feels like to be in your current, small shell.  It’s a little too tight and restrictive, isn’t it?  I want you to take a deep breath in and when you let that breath all the way out, your old shell is just going to pop right off your back and roll to the side.  When it does, I want you to look at it and silently thank it for protecting you all this time.  Be grateful for all it was for you and let it know that it was important, but that you don’t need it anymore.  Now, before you turn your attention to the new shell, I want you to focus on how great it feels to be out of the old one.  It’s a little scary because you’re pretty vulnerable, but you’re safe for now.  Just take some deep, deep breaths and stretch your self out into this new, open space with each exhale.  When you’re ready, slip into your new beautiful shell and feel the cool, smooth inside that was made just for you.  Take a moment to wiggle around in it and orient yourself.  Feel how it’s not too heavy for your back and it feels expansive and comfortable.  When you are ready, thank the new shell for being there and open your eyes.”

Lola sat up slowly and looked at me with a grin.  “Thanks, Mom. I just needed to stretch my spirit.”

She got up, pulled a loose skirt over her bikini bottoms, slipped her feet into her flip flops and held out her hand.

Times like that are an important reminder for me that it is so much more vital to take the time and address how we feel when we’re feeling it than to try and shove those uncomfortable emotions out of sight.  It took maybe three minutes to interrupt her obvious physical discomfort and turn it around and it was more than worth it.  Maybe next time she’ll be able to do it herself. Maybe I’ll have to help a few more times before she’s got it down.  I’m just grateful to have been given the gift of being her mom for now because I’m learning just as much as she is about what it takes to be sensitive in the world.

Author Interview: Carrie Wilson Link

When it first came out, I wrote about my friend Carrie’s book “Wil of God.”  I have since had the distinct pleasure of devouring this lovely, luminous story of Carrie’s parenting journey and wanted to follow up with her in more depth about writing and her life as Wil’s mom.

The official description of the book on Amazon reads:

“Structured around the Four Noble Truths, WIL OF GOD takes you on the spiritual journey of a mother who has one idea for her life, and is handed the exact opposite. Wil comes into the world crying and doesn’t stop for eighteen months, forcing her to abandon her plans for the perfect life. She must embrace the one she is handed: The mother of a boy with relentless needs, and his perfect, endless ability to love.”


 Here goes:


When and why
did you start writing? 
I started playing
around with writing, sort of pre-blog stuff, eight years ago. I took my first
memoir writing class seven years ago, and started my blog at that time.
Why publish
it?
I felt compelled to
write this story and share it. While writing it, my prayer was always that it
would fall into the hands of those that needed to read it – for whatever
reasons. I assumed it would fall into the hands of special needs moms, mostly,
but you know what they say about assuming!
That being said,
there are probably 1000 pages “on the cutting room floor.” A lot of what I
wrote I just needed to write, but
didn’t need to publish.
 Does Wil know
what the book is about? How does he feel?
Wil knows all about
the book and is proud of it. He calls it “our” book. He asked his Grandma
recently, “Did you read our book?” He’s helped me deliver it places and in a
few cases, people have wanted him to sign it for them. That tickles him. By the
same token, he’s pretty nonplussed by the whole thing. One day my friend said,
“Your mom is writing a book about you, Wil, and it’s going to be published
soon!” His response was, “Well, I’ve got news, too! Wednesday is a Thursday
schedule, and Thursday is a Wednesday schedule!”
What was the
hardest part of writing this book? Any major revelations in the process?
The hardest part of
writing it was making myself write it. I fought with myself throughout. I was
full of doubt but knew I had to persist. Some parts of it wrote themselves,
other parts I just had to force myself through. It was brutal going through old
journals to get the facts, especially those early years. It triggered many a
PTSD episode!
What triggers
or reminds you to tap into your intuition?
Oh, good question!
Sometimes I literally am just gifted with a downloaded “piece” or “scene.” I
know I have to go to the keyboard immediately and just let it out. I LOVE when
that happens, and those places in the book remain my favorite. They never were
edited, they remain first draft. I guess to answer your question, history
reminds me to tap into my intuition, I’ve always been rewarded by doing so.
Has the
acknowledgment of Wil’s gifts prompted you to see other people differently? Did
it allow you to see your daughter’s gifts more clearly? Did it change your
perspective on the talented and gifted kids you used to teach?
Absolutely! I see
everyone and every thing differently! I am so grateful I’m not as judgmental as
I used to be, and much more patient. It has allowed me to see my daughter’s
gifts more clearly, and now that she’s in college and almost nineteen, I see
her gifts not just as a girl, but as the woman she’s becoming. I see her wisdom
and depth that she may have always had, but which has certainly grown as a
result of being Wil’s sister.
At first I thought
it terribly ironic that I ever taught Talented and Gifted. Now, I see that it
was great training ground for advocating for kids that are beyond the norm –
whatever that is. Having taught TAG and now all my years in special ed, I’ve
thrown out definitions and uses for “intelligence.” We all have gifts, we all
have talents. Period.
What’s next
for you?

No idea! I can’t
wait to find out, though, and am surprised and pleased that I’m feeling okay
about not knowing, and excited to see! I am letting it be “organic.” I don’t
want to push anything nor force anything, but am open to all the signs and
nudges from beyond!
and now some
fun questions from James Lipton’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio:”
What is your
favorite word? Love.
What is your
least favorite word? The R-word.
What is your
favorite sound? The sound of
silence.
What is your
least favorite sound? This
god-awful throaty, guttural, humming sound Wil makes when he’s un-medicated.

Thanks so much, Carrie!  

“Wil of God” is available on Amazon in paperback and electronic versions. Click through to get your copy today!  

Some Weeks are a Wild Ride

I like to say that I love roller coasters.  There is some truth to that statement, but it isn’t that simple in all reality.  I love the idea of roller coasters. I love that they exist and I love remembering the times I have ridden roller coasters.  But I don’t like to look at them too closely. Especially the wooden roller coasters that go two stories high. I don’t want to see any peeling paint or splintering wood and I don’t particularly want to examine the construction.  Maybe that’s why Space Mountain is my all-time favorite roller coaster, because I can ride it entirely in the dark.  I can’t anticipate whether the next thing coming is a dip or a turn or an enormous drop, I can just sit back in the saturated darkness and ride.  I can’t see if there is a loose bolt or an inexperienced-looking ride operator.

Last  Monday I woke up and found myself standing in line. It was my turn next, to sit down, strap in, and take off and, true to form, I was both excited and a little bit nauseous, wondering what I had been thinking when I got in line for this upcoming week.  Fraught with anxiety and excitement and the entire spectrum of emotions in between, for several days I was unable to do much more than watch the passing scenery and confront each emotion and situation as it hurtled toward me.  In the end, I know I will walk away with shaky knees and a sense of accomplishment and a smile a mile wide.

I am glad that I wasn’t given any opportunity to stop the ride and step off because I am not sure I would have opted to get back on after a brief time-out. The expectation that I will simply see this all through to the end is a rather comforting one. Somehow, it doesn’t require anything of me other than my presence and that is enough.

The highlights have come in a big way. Katy Hutchison came to speak to the students and staff at Eve and Lola’s school on Thursday, delivering a presentation that left us all breathless after an hour. She talked about synergy (positive and negative) and personal responsibility, group dynamics and tragedy, forgiveness and restorative justice and provided a jumping off point for our community to begin having conversations about the way we interact with each other when things get hard.  She is an incredibly generous, dynamic, authentic person for whom I am incredibly grateful.

Lola is embarking on a courageous adventure this weekend with many of her schoolmates that will be a test of her resilience in many ways.  It helps that Eve will be along for the trip, and I am excited to hear about the weekend when I pick them up on Monday. That said, in the quiet moments, I wonder if she is homesick or sad and I fervently hope that she is too busy to be either. The neighborhood has been shrouded in fog for going on three solid days now and the oppressive grey mist has set the trees to dripping. I can’t help but feel that when I pick the girls up on Monday it will magically lift.

I am headed to Portland on Tuesday for the book launch of “Get Out of My Crotch,” the book for which I wrote a chapter about reproductive rights.  I am thrilled to be an actual published writer and so looking forward to meeting some of the other people who share this passion with me.  I also get an entire night in a hotel to myself in one of my favorite cities on the planet, which is pretty cool. But I’m nervous about meeting the other writers, all of whom are more accomplished than I, and I’m sad about leaving the girls less than 24 hours after their return home.

CB, the injured dog, is feeling a lot better on his cocktail of anti-inflammatories, pain killers and antibiotics and is driving me insane with his pleading for walks every couple of hours.  Unfortunately, the specialist who read his x-rays believes that a spot on his bone is either cancer or a deep bone infection – neither of which are an easy fix.  Sorting out the options and trying to understand the ramifications has been difficult even as I am nudged by his wet nose and reminded that, for now, he is here and he wants attention.

Somehow I knew, when I stood facing this week that it would be a wild ride. Even Monday I saw this roller coaster looming as I stood in line to get on it feeling slightly ill and wondering why I chose all of this.  Despite that, I also knew somewhere in the recesses of my brain that it would be worth it to get on and strap in. I will do my best to experience and cherish every moment, but I would be lying if I didn’t say I was looking forward to getting home next Wednesday, stepping off for a bit, and taking a nice quiet seat on a bench in this vast amusement park.

Choosing My Own Memories

I had the opportunity to spend a day watching my nieces over the holiday break. Eve, Lola and I arrived ready to entertain two incredibly active four-year-olds for a few hours while their parents headed to the science center for the King Tut exhibit.  I was excited to share my homemade play-dough recipe with them, adding essential oils and food coloring to make it even better.  Since we don’t live near these lovely little fairies, I don’t often get to exercise my toddler-parenting chops and Eve and Lola have far outgrown needing me to design their entertainment.

We had a ball, breaking out all sorts of non-traditional tools like frosting tips and turkey timers and the girls loved playing with grapefruit and cinnamon-scented dough.  They were little angels, sharing all of the colors and giggling at each others’ creations, and Eve and Lola were the sweetest big cousins, letting them experiment and stepping in to help whenever asked.

We took a break for cornbread with honey and then decided to go for a walk since the sun was shining for a short while.  Lola designed a scavenger hunt list of things we needed to look for on our stroll and when the little ones got chilly we sneaked into a corner cafe for a cup of hot cocoa to warm up.  Nobody got cranky or cried. Nobody spilled their cocoa or whined for more.  It was idyllic.

When we got back to the house, one of the girls wanted to resume playing with the dough and the other one dragged Eve off to play hide and seek.  I merely supervised until the girls wanted me to chase them.  Each toddler had a “big girl” to protect her so that when I got close to catching one of them, they were swooped to safety by either Eve or Lola.  We ran around the house for fifteen minutes or so and then Lola got distracted by the doorbell.  Without her protector, one of the girls got truly frightened as I jogged after her and she dashed under the table, crying.  I felt horrible, remembering how fully immersed children can get in imaginary games and assured her I wouldn’t “get” her.  Fortunately, Lola returned to save her from the monster and all was well within minutes.

We played a board game together and took some silly photos, but I couldn’t shake the picture in my mind of the stark fear on my poor niece’s face.  I wondered idly whether she would remember it vividly when she looked back on our day together.

There was no mention of the incident over the next few days (or upon her parents’ return), and I found myself hoping she erased it from her memory altogether.  Reflecting on my own childhood memories, I wonder how many frightening things I filed away that may have been so inconsequential.  I am reminded of the wholly subjective nature of memory often – all it takes is a conversation with my siblings to see that we each remember certain events in a radically different way.  My memories of that day will be fond because I was afforded an opportunity to interact with my nieces in a way I don’t often get to and we did things together that were vastly different from the kinds of things they normally do.  I also got to see Eve and Lola in a very different light than I normally do; as big-girl role models and caring cousins.  But what if the fear my niece felt was powerful enough to imprint a stronger memory in her brain than the pleasure of the scavenger hunt and the play-dough?  What if the cafe and the games don’t measure up to the raw emotion she felt as I chased her? I can’t argue with her memory or the way she felt any more than someone from my past could change what I believe happened on any particular day in my life.  It is said that memories are influenced by emotion and I can attest to the fact that I am more prone to recall incidents I have imbued with negative emotions than those that simply left me feeling content or peaceful.  Perhaps the trick is to place some sort of emphasis or exclamation point on the pleasant memories and, over time, they will come to weigh as much as the unhappy ones.

I also think it is helpful to exercise our attention to the positive in our lives.  I know that when I started my daily gratitude practice, over time I was more likely to notice things in my daily life that I was grateful for.  From the beginning of time, fear was a tool we used to keep us alive, but now that I no longer have to worry about being eaten by a saber-tooth tiger while I’m out for a walk, I can choose to notice the sunshine on my face and the pattern the ice crystals make in the puddle on the sidewalk and reflect on how at ease I feel.  I can revel in the taking of a clear, deep breath after a week of coughing and sniffling or savor the way my tea tastes when it has steeped to just the right strength.

I don’t want to manipulate my nieces’ impressions of our day together, nor am I concerned that either of them was affected by the momentary fear during our game.  I am simply grateful that I was given the chance to see them (and my daughters) through a different lens for a few hours and to have gotten the reminder that I can choose which memories to accent in my own mind.