Thank you for your childhood

One of my very favorite books from my youth is "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. It provokes considerable thought about social structure, rights, and identity. I'm always struck by how much this book causes me to cling to my free will and expression of emotions but also conjures the surfacing of a guilty craving for simplicity that has a price tag we can't match.

The society in this book functions under a very specific set of principles - precision of language, daily dream sharing, pills to suppress "stirrings", and adherence to the rules of the life assignment given at the ceremony of the Elevens. At this ceremony, as the youth transition into their lifelong work, they are told "thank you for your childhood". It is both a genuine acknowledgment of their youth but also a shift into greater contributions to society.

In both The Giver and real life, we often view adulthood as being more than childhood and measure children on a scale of achieving "adultness" (for more on this, I recommend Emily Plank's Discovering the Culture of Childhood). But what if that's not quite right? What if childhood is more and adulthood is simply the unfortunate letting go of the gifts of childhood that we justify with productivity, money, and adult responsibilities?

Children bring endless amounts of joy to our lives with their playfulness, their easy sense of humor, and the delight they find in the simplest moments. They aren't as bound to schedules, time, and responsibilities. The are free from judgement and anger-fueled grudges. They are guided by biological cues, close relationships, curiosity, and simply what feels good.

What if childhood isn't merely to prepare us for adulthood? What if our youngest years are the peak of our lives?

I was thinking about this a lot today as I was watching my sons play. My oldest spent over three hours playing in the snow. Periodically coming in to ask for dinosaurs, and spray bottles with colored water, and helicopters, and the list goes on. He never asked what time it was and never got tired or cold. His play isn't unlike most children, but it is certainly unlike the way I structure my day - tasks, timelines, guilt over procrastination, and so forth. And I started to think of all the things my sons' childhood bring to my life for which I'm extremely grateful.

To my young sons, thank you for filling my life with laughter, for asking me questions that make me learn something new everyday, for your energy that drives me to try and keep up, for the late night wake-ups that remind me of the deep connection we share and how fleeting and precious these moments can be. Thank you for prioritizing play over cleanliness, for sharing your made up stories so I can be a brief guest in your imaginary world, and for making me pause and give notice to things I'd otherwise overlook. Thank you for being unapologetically you, for sharing your perspective with the world, and for making each moment better just by being you.

I know, without question, my life is better because of their presence in my life. The daily reminder that childhood is important, valid, and precious as it's own phase of life, not simply in preparation for the next one. And by embracing their "childness" without comparison to "adultness" my life is richer, more magical, and for a short time, I'm brought back to my own precious childhood.

My dear sons, a million thanks. Thank you for these gifts. Thank you for your childhood.

I hate Christmas

I catch a lot of heat for this. I work with children, therefore I should love all things that other people think are "fun". I have two children therefore I should love bringing the "joy of Christmas" into their lives. And who hates Christmas?!

Bah humbug. Scrooge they call me.

But no one ever asks why I hate it.

I didn't always hate Christmas. When I was little, I kinda loved Christmas. It was always filled with love and smiles and the people that were most important to me. We went to church and it was the only time my dad ever came with us. He cooked a big breakfast and the smell of bacon filled the house. I can still hear the sound of my Grandpa's deep, melodic voice singing Christmas hymns in church even though he passed away almost a decade ago. Of course, there was an occasional argument when my sister got a present that I really wanted or when we made my mom late for church. But for the most part, it was a pretty happy day in our house.

Like millions of children, Christmas changed when my parents got divorced. Alternating years between them deprived us of a tradition to look forward to. For years, Christmas with my dad was in a hotel and there was almost always no restaurants open to eat at. It was always tense when my parents made the hand-off of the goods - us, the children. As if we were a product to be delivered as opposed to tiny important people to be loved and embraced. My dad remarried but my mom never did. So any time we were with my dad, I worried about my mom being alone. My mom struggled to make ends meet and I always felt bad for her that she could never give us as much as she wanted to or as much as my dad did. All the excitement of Christmas turned into disappointment. And Christmas became, not something to look forward to, but something to survive.

This all sounds familiar, right? A story literally millions of children could tell.

As I got older, I became aware of the broader tensions that Christmas brought in our society. Not everyone celebrates Christmas causing the religions and values of many people to be overlooked at this time of year. Many families go into debt to "show" their love for other people. Some children get big elaborate gifts from Santa, some children get nothing. Well-meaning parents often use "Santa" as a bribe or a threat to get their children to behave. More recently, the "elf on the shelf" brings an added "big brother" layer to the month but also the competitive layer for parents to outdo each other with creative and clever setups for the mischievous elf and then post them on social media. Balancing family events and family conflicts is complicated and stressful.

And for those of us that don't love Christmas, we are bombarded with decorations, music, and social pressure for two whole months. It is well known that this time of year is hard for many people as they mourn loved ones that have passed or they mourn relationships that are struggling. Or they struggle to pay the bills and buy gifts and keep up with all of the social pressures and unrealistic expectations. This is a peak time for depression, anxiety, and suicide.

I hate that Christmas never felt like it looked in the movies.
I hate that Christmas was a bargaining tool to manipulate behavior.
I hate that Christmas was more often disappointing than not.
I hate that Christmas hurts.
I hate that I can't bring back all the Christmas's that felt good.

Sometimes I even hate that I hate Christmas.

But most of all, I hate that I feel like I'm not allowed to.

So, if you hate Christmas too, that's ok.

And if you know someone that hates Christmas, make space for them to hate it. They likely have their reasons and it's not your role to try and change their mind.

Thank you for correcting me

What is it about our human nature that wants us to be right? Ego? Arrogance? Confirmation bias? What is at stake for us when someone is giving us feedback? Are our relationships so flimsy? Our identities so fragile that we can't accept a nudge back on the right path? And at what point in our lives are any of us so absolutely right that it would warrant us to be caught off guard by someone having more accurate information than we have?

When it comes to being corrected, while I often can take feedback well when I'm anticipating it, I struggle more when I'm not seeking it out. In which case, I have three basic responses (all of which seem to be unnecessarily protecting my fragile sense of self):

I'm right, you're wrong. I'm an expert. I'm almost always right so it would make sense that I'm right this time too. Wow, if that isn't some murky logic! It makes sense that we would talk about things we know well. I'm certainly not going to speak on a topic that I know nothing about (fantasy football, soccer, hunting, heating and cooling systems... the list goes on). So when I do speak, it's usually because I'm confident that I know what I'm talking about. But that confidence is exaggerated to think that there might not be a moment my expertise could be corrected.

Your rightness doesn't interest me. Whatever detail you're pointing out is insignificant, or I'm going to at least pretend it is to continue protecting my unstable ego. This is probably the most common response and possibly the most unfair. I could be taking the wrong route to a friend's house and if my partner corrects me I brush him off  as though I can't be bothered with the safest, fastest, most efficient route. I'm much more concerned with staying on the path of "I'm always right". There are times it's a wonder that anyone can even fit in the car with this level of ego-centrism sucking up all the oxygen.

I get defensive. And sometimes I place the blame on other people.  This was all the information I had to work with so not my fault that I didn't know better. True or not, I can tell you from experience, this is not a relationship building approach. Of course it's uncomfortable when someone else's actions or complacency impacts the impression people have of us. But that doesn't require combativeness to sort through.

Don't I sound like a delightful person to be around?!

So, I'm working on this. Attempting to approach everything with the possibility that there may be a nugget of information, another perspective, someone else's truth that could complete my interpretation of a situation. It moves me to pause and instead of resorting to one of my three responses, instead I think, "How can I hold this information with mine?" And I breathe. That's it. Because more often than not, people are trying to be helpful. And what someone is giving to me isn't discrediting what I know, it's merely adding to it and I'm genuinely grateful. And then I can, with authenticity, say to the person in front of me, "thank you for correcting me".

We’re supposed to

“He’s not the guy I used to know.”

“She’s not the woman I married.”

“I feel like I don’t even know them anymore.”

“We’re not that close anymore, she’s changed so much.”

“I’m not who I was back then, we just don’t have as much in common anymore.”

We often describe relationships as failing or struggling because someone or both people have changed. As if we could go through life, experiencing something new in every hour of every day and somehow remain the same. We change because we are supposed to. It’s unfair and unrealistic to expect someone to stay exactly who they were when you met them. Unfair to them and unfair to you. You’re denying yourself of the evolving greatness of who they are becoming.

The key to making any relationship - be it a friendship, romance, colleague, or family - thrive over time is figuring out how to grow and change together. Or at the very least take a step back and make space for growth to occur, paying attention to the newness with respect and curiosity. Or as 38 Special said, “Hold on loosely, but don’t let go.” The magic is loving someone enough to not hold them back, to love them through the process of living.

In my 14 year relationship with my partner, the gradual changes have been easy. I don’t party nearly as much as or as hard as I used to and that tapered off over time. He is much more progressive in his thinking than when we met but that too was an evolution over time. The sudden changes are harder to accommodate. Like when I found out he’d been listening to Christian music, or when I abruptly went and got multiple new tattoos. My partner is much more skilled at letting me stretch different parts of me and see what fits. I have a greater tendency to say things like, “You’ve never listened to Christian music before, why now?”

But then I think of this little cartoon I found and the value of make space for people to continuously figure out who they are and who they want to be. And to acknowledge that his new hobby doesn’t take anything away from who we are as a couple. In our partnership and as individuals, we are not fixed, not in the way we look or the way we think, not in the way that we feel or act. And that’s a good thing. Every new experience should contribute to an ever-developing sense and performance of who we are.

So of course we’ve changed. We’re supposed to.

Flashback Friday: The dream

Flashback Friday

The most vivid dream I've ever had from the active subconscious of my teenage self...

I woke calmly close to four o'clock in the morning. A thick silence filled my 11-year-old house. Through the darkness I crept down the stairs I knew by heart. I saw the silhouette of my mother standing silent, blankly staring out our front window.

Without approaching the window, I stepped out into the bitter night. The rain splashed on my warm skin and a sharp wind whipped around me. There in the rain-flooded yard stood a familiar man amidst a mess of our possessions.

He appeared to be aware of my presence but made no attempt to acknowledge me. Thunder shook the siding on my house and lightning lit up the sky. He didn't even flinch. In fact he remained motionless for what seemed like forever.

In the silence, I took a good look at the man I had called my father for nineteen years. He looked the same as he had when he left six years before. His shiny black hair was full but neatly trimmed. On his nose rested his thick, black-framed glasses. He was comfortably dressed and he held his 6'3'' frame with confidence.

After forever passed, he picked up and held in front of him a rug he and my mother had owned all of their 22 years together. He held it high and stared at it as if it were something sacred. For a moment, I thought he was going to tear it in two. Instead, he lay it carefully on the ground in front of him.

From a garbage bag to his right, he pulled out two objects. One, a pole that extended to be 30 or 40 feet long. The other was something I had never seen before. I held my breath as he raised his eyes to mine. His sparkling hazel eyes, identical to mine, now appeared cold and black. He seemed to look right through me. I don't think he even knew who I was.

"If this doesn't work, you will finish for me." His powerful voice I had grown to both resent and love rang loud in my ears. A sharp blade landed at my feet and I backed into the corner of my porch. I was frozen with fear and confusion.

Despite my terror, my body managed to shake and tremble at its own will. I stole a quick glance at my mother in the window to see that she had yet to move and remained expressionless. I slowly turned my head back to my father to see him move in calculated, controlled motions.

He raised the unfamiliar object to his mouth and it extended one foot to his left and six feet to his right. On the long end there were hundreds of tiny, reflective mirrors covering a platform the size of a pizza box. He reached for the long pole and raised it high above his head in both hands, dropping to his knees.

Once again the thunder rattled through the walls of my childhood home. I closed my eyes to block out the event unfolding before me. The lightning flashed and electricity surged through my father, illuminating the whole street and brightening even the backs of my eyelids.

He didn't scream or even groan as the powerful current raced through his body, boiling his blood and ending his life.

I heard his body fall to the grass with a soft thump and the pole tinkered to the sidewalk. The rain stopped and the wind settled. One of the tiny mirrors shifted as it settled, reflecting back to me the unchanged, blank expression of my mother.

A strange courage arose in me. I brought myself to my feet and approached my lifeless father. I bent down close to his face. The cold air swirling around us sent a chill up my spin. I blew him a kiss and allowed him to step out of my life one last time.

I have the right to be uncomfortable

My 6yo son attends a public school and when I was picking him up one day, I overheard a few older children having a discussion and while I missed the general context of the conversation, I heard one girl say, “I have the right to be uncomfortable.” 

This struck me as profound in several ways. First, it is incredibly empowering for a young girl to talk about her rights and with such assertion. Second, I started to think about what right she was talking about. Simply the concept of recognizing that we all have strong emotions and sometimes they aren’t clean cut and uncomfortable is the best way to describe how we are feeling. 

I started to think about why making space for discomfort is so important. It’s a holding space for sorting through emotions. A space to disagree with the norm. An honest reflection of discontent with an idea or circumstance in front of us. A chance to say, “this doesn’t work for me.” It demands that people around us consider our confidence in questioning the status quo. We don’t have to take what is simply because it is presented to us. We can push back and let the world know that we aren’t ok with how things are. We don’t have to solve what is but we can say, “hold it right there, I’m having some feelings about this.” 

And when a small child says something this profound, I think of hope. For the future of change, careful consideration, and challenging the agenda. 

I didn’t feel uncomfortable in that moment. Instead I felt an overwhelming comfort in the notion that the future recognizes the opportunity that lies within declaring, “I have the right to be uncomfortable.” 

You don’t see me

Do you really SEE the people in your life? Do you let people see YOU? 

Thinking back to my years of being single and having several short, mostly unsatisfying relationships, I’ve often thought, how did that not work out? I’m awesome, other people seem to think that person is awesome, surely we couldn’t be anything but awesome together! 

I was reckless and careless - with myself and others. There was one man in particular that I had a physical relationship with but nothing more. We agreed it wasn’t going anywhere but I toggled between apathy and heartache. I knew I had feelings for him but I also knew I could never be with him. And that felt really confusing. Despite the significant amount of time together and our strong physical connection, he couldn’t see ME. He was respectful and polite and took me on nice dates but no matter how much time we spent together, there was always an indescribable distance between us. I never felt like myself around him and sometimes it felt like that was because I didn't want him to see me and other times it felt like he was never even going to try. Our relationship was purely physical, he didn't need or want to see me. And ultimately, this is why our "relationship" ended. Why was I trusting my body with someone that either didn't care enough to try and see me fully for who I was -or- that I didn't trust to let fully see me? Unfortunately for him, this revelation came at an inconvenient time - on Valentine's Day, mid-thrust after a lovely date. It was over. Right then and I pushed him off and told him he had to leave. I simply said, "I can't do this. You don't see me." I knew in that moment and this moment now that all of it had to do with issues within myself I had to work on, right down to the decision to "date" someone who didn't bother to see me. 

This was an unfortunate pattern for me. I had a very calculated way of doling out vulnerability - I could be physically vulnerable with someone but closed off my emotions. Or the opposite, I could have a deep emotional/intellectual connection but couldn’t also be physically intimate. Failed relationship after failed relationship. That is until I met my husband. I broke all of my rules and I let him see me. Physically naked, mentally naked, emotionally naked. He was it, he actually saw ME. Because I let him. And he didn’t look the other way or try to change me. It was so new and so wonderful for me to just simply be seen. But it also felt like a giant scary risk. If someone could fully see ME, they could fully leave ME. 13 years later, that risk is still there, at any moment he could decide that I am too much, too flawed, too broken, too messy. And walk away. That risk has always been there and always will be. But if I hadn't let him see me, I would've been equally unsatisfied as I was in all my other relationships. The gamble wasn't any less, I just decided by not putting it all on the table I was actually losing more.

So I started practicing this more in my life. With friendships, with work partnerships, and even with strangers. I show up as me, fully, wholly, imperfectly ME. There are still relationships that don't work, that have that same marked distance and feel disingenuous. But when I stopped calculating vulnerability and just showed up as me, when it didn't work, I knew it wasn't because I wasn't showing up. Sometimes it means they didn't show up, or didn't try, or didn't need me in their life, or we just weren't the right fit. But it became a lot easier to find the right moment to part ways and simply say, "You don't see me". But definitively not because I didn't allow them to.