On moving...

I love change, but I hate moving.

I like the idea of moving, the possibility of a new space, new home, new neighborhood.  I love the dreaming stage, the “what could it look like to be here” stage, the open ended part.  

I love everything right up to the point where I have to deal in the reality of getting myself and all my crap from one place to the next.  I get bogged down with those details, sidetracked by tangents (“oh my gosh!  How do I own this much crap? I need to purge all the things and completely re-examine my life”  “But wait, I don’t even know what the color scheme in the new place is going to be.  What if this doesn’t go?  Before I pack I need to redesign the new house and decide what I want it to look like so I even know what comes with.”  “Oh!  Every note I ever received in high school.  Obviously I need to read all these before I can pack them.”).  Way too quickly I’m overwhelmed by it all and can be found in the corner, drinking wine out of the bottle with a straw, wearing a motley assortment of clothing I was “trying on in an effort to determine if it’s me anymore.”  

It’s not good.

But, sometimes you gotta move.  Sometimes the new space fits you and your needs better than the old one.  Or you’ve gone through some internal changes that need to be reflected externally.  Or, circumstances just force your hand and bam, you’re in the midst of a move.

All of this is to say that, I’m moving.  Digitally, that is.  

A few months ago I wrote this post.  I challenged myself to wear rejection as a badge of honor, receipts that I took a risk and put myself out there.  This of course was also a challenge to, well, put myself out there.  At first, that looked like submitting pieces of my writing to different publications.  And in the process I added a few emails to my “rejection!” folder.  But since writing that post another project started worming its way out of the depths of my heart.  I’ve been putting myself out there in some really uncomfortable ways the past month or so and existing a bit as a walking, breathing vulnerability, all in service to this idea I’ve been tossing around for months.  

And so, the next step in my challenge to put myself and my work out there and get rejected, is to move my digital space to a new home.  One that suits the new work I’m doing and serves as a better home for my writing.  I won’t be posting at Barefoot Without a Cause anymore.  When I do post my writing, it will be in my new virtual home:

www.colleenkpowell.com

That’s also where you’ll be able to find details about my other project, one I’m very excited about and one that I nervously invite you to check out, once it’s up and running (I’m shooting for the beginning of January 2018).  At my new site, you’ll see there’s a place to submit your email to receive new posts in your inbox.  If you’ve done that in the past here at BWAC, I hope you’ll do it at the new site too.  Also you’ll see I’ve reposted my top 5 most read posts from this site, as well as everything I’ve posted here since May.  In terms of the blog aspect of the new website, I’m hoping it’s just a seamless extension of what I was doing (sporadically) here.  As for the other stuff…well, we’ll see how that goes.  :)  

I’ll keep Barefoot Without a Cause up as long as blogspot allows it, because some of the writing I’m most proud of exists here.  In the meantime, moving forward, you can find my writing here.

Thanks for following along so far, friends.  It’s meant so much to know even a few of you were reading my words here.  

Other Mothers

Ryann started Kindergarten this year.  It has been a much anticipated milestone in this house.  She has always loved school, loved the friends, loved the teachers and the learning.  She also super loved that all of her preschool classrooms had multiple toy phones.  I think the lack of toy phones is the only downside to Kindergarten.  

In our little tribe of “friends who have become a family of sorts” there are three other kiddos starting Kindergarten this year, too.  One in each family.  Each kid started “big school” at a different school last month.  Many months ago the moms dreamed up “Kindergarten dinner.”  We wanted to take these soon-to-be Kindergarteners out for a special dinner, just them and their moms, to celebrate this big milestone. 

A few weeks ago four moms and four five and six year olds met at Portillo’s for Kindergarten dinner.  We ordered hot dogs and hamburgers and chicken nuggets (and a few chopped salads) and moved a few tables together for our feast.  As we’d finalized our plans the week before I’d wondered if Portillo’s was the right choice.  Should we have done something more “sit-down” and grown up to celebrate the big occasion?  After watching their squirrelly excitement multiply with proximity to each other I knew we’d made the right call.  They may be "big kids" but they’re still unable to sit still when they all get together.  We gave each kid a chance to share about their schools and classrooms, what they loved, who they sat by, what the best part of the day was.  They excitedly found similarities in each other’s school lives (“I go to the library too!  You have recess??  Me too!”) and they all reported that they liked their teachers.  At the end of dinner there was a lot of coordinated hands in the circle “go teaming” to the shouts of Kindergarten!  (Five and six year olds are so funny!)  At some point in the meal they’d started planning the band they were going to form and, outside of Portillo's, the drive through line was treated to four raucous kindergarteners singing/playing four different songs on imaginary instruments.  I predict their first record will go platinum. 

In this little Kindergarten cohort there are two boys and two girls.  Finn and Grayson were born just a few days apart in August.  Nine months later Ryann was born and six weeks after that came Caroline.  I’ve known their moms since high school, but it was when these guys were babies that our tribe fully came together and we started meeting intentionally and regularly.  Charity and her family had just moved back to the area and Kelly and her family came into the fold all around the same time.  For the whole of Ry’s life she has known these three women.  Finn, Grayson and Caroline have been her constant playmates.  They’ve celebrated each of her birthdays, she knows the ins and outs of all their homes and their families.  Outside of her siblings, these are the kids that are closest to her, her people.  And their moms are her second moms.  She knows Lauren will pick her up and give her the biggest hug when she sees her, Charity will stop everything to hear about her day and Kelly will cheer her on in whatever she does.  

At one point in the dinner Charity told the kids she was really excited that there were four amazing kids going out into the world to be brave and kind and loving and that we wanted to mark that with our little celebration.  I added that I wanted each of them to know that there are four moms here who love each of them so much and who will be cheering them all on every step of the way as they go out into the world. 

There’s been lots said about the need for a village.  Jen Hatmaker calls them “bonus moms” in her new book and writes a more beautiful tribute to them than I ever could.  Whatever you want to call it, a tribe, a village, bonus moms, second mothers, the experience of other people loving and caring about my kids has changed me and shaped my kids lives in incredible ways.  I am so incredibly thankful for these women in my kids lives.  Thankful that I get to be in their kids lives.

At the dinner we decided that this would be a tradition for the (many) kids we have coming up behind these four.  (Between the four families we have 12 kids…so far.)  This is the only year that each of us have a kid starting kindergarten, but we decided that in the future all four moms will attend the Kindergarten Dinner, even if we don’t have a kindergartener that year.  Because we want all our kids to know that all the moms care about them deeply, that we’re here for them, that we’re cheering them on, rooting for them, eager to celebrate their successes and help pick them up after the losses.  These kids have a tribe and I’m so happy to be a part of it.    

A Few Good Books: August

It’s the middle of the month so I’m linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy to share what I read last month.  I read some good stuff in August!

Here’s the lineup:

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker

One: Unity in a Divided World by Deirdre Riggs

The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda

The Polygamist’s Daughter by Anna LeBaron

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

The Best:

read this immediately

Hands down "Homegoing" was the best thing I read this month.  This book was…. I don’t even know if I have the words to properly explain its significance.  It follows the lineage of two sisters in Africa starting at the beginning of the slave trade.  Each chapter gives a snapshot of the next generation, going back and forth between families.  There is a helpful family tree at the beginning of the book that I referred back to constantly.  It is so beautifully and powerfully written.  Each character could have sustained an entire novel, but the fact that we only got what is essentially a short story peek into their lives just made me want more.  Gyasi did an incredible job of tying each generations story together so that you felt like you got resolution to each character’s life.  It was in incredibly ingenious set up and the execution was perfect.  It’s a powerful, powerful story that needs to be on everyone’s “to read” list.

worth it 100%

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t eagerly anticipating this one like I have of Hatmaker’s books in the past.  I loved Jen’s books “Seven” and “Interrupted" and I’ve been a long time reader of her blog, but her last book “For the Love” fell kind of flat for me so I figured I’d get around to “Of Mess and Moxie” whenever.  I wasn’t on the pre-ordering rush.  But after hearing a podcast interview with Jen about the book my interest was piqued and her pre-order incentives were decent so I went ahead and pre-ordered it a few days before it came out.  It came to my door on a Tuesday and I think I’d finished it in two days.  It is classic Hatmaker, honest, funny, thought-provoking.  There was something different about this one though.  She’s been through the ringer over the last year with in the big “Christian Industry” and the book reveals a depth and groundedness that I haven’t seen with her.  She’s been refined and I found her to be even wiser and bolder, my favorite combination.  I shared essays with Tommy, returned to a few later and am still thinking about some.  I couldn’t recommend this one more highly.

this cover conveys zero about the book itself

Another surprise this month was “The Almost Sisters.”  It was on a bunch of “Best Summer Reading Lists” but the cover was such a turn off for me that I kept avoiding it.  Then, a book store owner I follow on Instagram, Annie B. Jones posted about it mentioning that the cover didn’t really fit the book so I added it to my library hold list.  When I finally got it I’d forgotten all about Annie’s post and once again found myself so turned off by the cover that it sat on my desk for a week before I finally picked it up.  I’m so glad I did!  It was a delightful story.  I loved the main character and the world in which she lived.  It’s a story that takes place in the South is one part family drama, one part murder mystery and one part “woman at a crossroads.”  Don’t let the cover (which truly makes absolutely no sense to both the plot and tone of the story) turn you off.

The Rest:

Deirdre Riggs’ One: Unity in a Divided World is a beautiful look at how we can be unity and peace makers in this modern era which seems so divisive.  I really enjoyed it and hope to entice a few others to read it so I can talk to them about it.  The Perfect Stranger is a mystery/thriller in the vein of Gone Girl et all.  I liked this one better than Miranda’s previous book “All the Missing Girls.”  Anna LeBaron is the daughter of an infamous polygamous cult leader and this memoir, The Polygamist's Daughter, documents her life within the cult and her escape from it.  Weird fact about me-I'm fascinated by polygamous cults.  I don’t know why, but I will read any and all cult memoirs.  LeBaron’s story is fascinating and heartbreaking, but if you’re going to read a polygamous cult memoir I’d read The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner (who happens, weirdly, to be LeBaron’s cousin, though they didn’t know that until both their memoirs had come out).

That's what I've got this month friends!  What are you reading?

Rejection!

I was at the farm when I got the email, which is remarkable in that my reception at the farm is always spotty so I don't usually bother checking much.  When I saw the sender and the subject title (re: your submission) my heart leapt and I rushed to open it, praying the few bars I had would be enough for the content to load.  It was and as I scanned over the words of the message I found myself smiling despite what those words said.  It was a rejection letter.  My first rejection letter.

Well, to be clear this wasn’t my first rejection letter of all time.  I’ve received plenty of those.  In fact, there were a few weeks in 2001 when I received a string of rejection letters from almost every college I applied to.  Even the mailman started giving me sympathetic looks as I hopefully awaited his arrival.  This email was my first rejection letter for a writing submission.  And while outwardly I received that solid, unmistakable “no,” inside I was warm and even unmistakably happy.  

I’d thought about submitting pieces to magazines and online publications forever.  I’d toy with the essay contest for Real Simple each month, spend an inordinate amount of time researching “how and where to submit writing samples," think about what I’d write and where I’d submit it, sometimes actually start said submission but never, ever did I actually write, edit, finish and submit any of my writing.  

I don’t even remember exactly what was the catalyst for this submission.  For months I’d been circling the 15th in my calendar each month as a reminder that this was the deadline for submissions to a particular online magazine.  Each and every month the 15th would pass and I would fail to send anything, worried that whatever I’d been working on wasn’t quite “right” for their site.  I do remember, when I finally did finish something, thinking, this may not be quite what they’re looking for, but screw it.  Send it anyway.  And before I had a chance to overthink it or back out, I did.

And, a few weeks later I heard back from them.  The response to my very attempt at the sacred act of “putting yourself out there” in this area of my life was a resounding (but very kind and polite) no.

And so, in the face of that first rejection I became surprised at the overriding emotion of… pride.  I wasn’t upset at being told “thanks, but no thanks.”  Instead I was proud that I’d had the courage to follow through and submit something in the first place.  Instead of deleting that email, dejected, I smiled a little to myself and saved that sucker, proof that I’d been brave and vulnerable and lived to tell the tale.

In his memoir “On Writing” author Stephen King writes about how he used to stick all of his rejection letters to a nail in his wall and that by the age of 14 he’d had to upgrade to a spike because the nail could no longer support the weight of all those letters.  By the age of fourteen he’d had the courage to submit enough work that a nail couldn’t hold all the proof of his chutzpah!  I marveled over this story when I read it and committed to racking up at least a few more rejection emails.

I now have a file, nested under Personal in my complex and numerous gmail label system, entitled “rejections!” It looks just like that, too, with the ! serving as a reminder that these emails are exciting!  They are not rejections, but rather marks of your daring, your chance taking, your “putting it out there-ness”!  Collect them happily because it means you are trying.  In 2018 I just may set a goal for myself to receive a certain number of those emails.

This is easy to say, at the beginning of this journey.  When that file has accumulated hundreds of “thanks, but no thanks” emails, I may not be so cheerful about my rejection epiphany.  Be careful what you wish for and all that jazz.

But I am careful about what I’m wishing for.  I’m wishing to be brave and bold.  I’m wishing to follow through on long held dreams.  I’m wishing to show up and do the work for the work’s sake.  I’m wishing to put myself out there a bit more, to dare and chance and dream.  And so if all I end up with is an email file filled with receipts that I tried and took a risk I will still have gotten what I wished for.

And so, fellow dreamers, this one is for you.  Could we do this?  Can we wear letters of rejection as badges of honor, a testament to our bravery?  Can we face the fear and celebrate when we survive that of which we were so afraid?  What are your "rejection letters" and how can you flip the script on them?  

Let’s do this, friends.  Make your own rejections! pile and let them stack up, smiling with each one.  Follow in the footsteps of Stephen King and really rack ‘em up, high-fiving your chutzpah along the way.  Let’s try something, be brave, put ourselves out there and fail.  And then let’s happily get up and try again. 

A Few Good Books: June and July

Oh hey there.  It's been a minute hasn't it?  July was basically a blur of airports and adventures and laundry and repacking for more adventures (so basically it was my favorite month ever :) ).  I will say my reading has taken a hit this summer.  There are so many children around right now.  And there are so many adventures to be had.  So I got a bit less read in July and I’m not on track to change that in August.  But a bunch of what I did read was awesome.  And the rest wasn’t terrible.  

Since I missed posting about my June reading in July I’m going to cover the best of June and July today.  As always, I’m linking up to Modern Mrs. Darcy’s monthly quick lit post.

Here’s the rundown of June and July:

June

Almost Missed You by Jessica Strawser

Underground Airlines by Ben H Winters

The Dry by Jane Harper

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Talking as Fast as I Can by Lauren Graham

Every Wild Heart by Meg Donahue

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

July

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

A year of Living Danishly by Helen Russel

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I See You by Clare Mackintosh

The Best:

The premise of Underground Airlines is that the civil war never happened and slavery still exists in modern day America in four states, known as the hard four.  It was so uncomfortable and, frankly, unsettling to see our modern day government systems and conveniences within the back drop of slavery.  The book follows a black slave catcher who is on the hunt for an escaped slave, trying to infiltrate an abolitionist group along the way.  The story itself is riveting, fast paced, and intense but it was the premise itself and the ease of which slavery could still exist in this modern world that haunted me.  I couldn’t stop thinking about this one and recognizing the ways our laws and systems still protect other injustices.

Lincoln in the Bardo was one of the buzzed about books and when I heard that the audiobook included an all star cast (featuring prominently my favorite couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally) I knew I wanted to listen to this one.  It took me a beat to get into this book, it was so outside the norms of literature in many ways, but I love what Saunders did.  It’s part play, part novel, part history lesson, poetic and beautiful.  It explores the period of time after Abraham Lincoln’s son dies, imagining him encountering the spirit of his dead son in this middle place between life and death.  I’d highly recommend the audiobook, but you may need a copy of the physical book nearby at first to understand exactly what’s going on (I did).

This is How it Always Is was one that a number of people with fabulous taste had been recommending on line or in person.  I’m so glad I read it.  I think this may be a good book to go into with very little knowledge about the story so all I will say is that its characters are so beautifully and realistically drawn, the unravelling of the story so honestly and powerfully revealed and the interpersonal dynamics among the family members so authentic and loving that I felt like I knew these people and I was a friend on their journey with them.  It made me think, lay down assumptions and grew my empathy, just like all good books should.

I’d had Hillbilly Elegy on my list for a long time but kept avoiding it for some strange reason.  I’m sorry that I did, because this was a beautiful story that I couldn’t put down.  Vance tells his life story with such love and care for the people and place that raised him without denying the complicated and conflicting aspects of them both.  As a reader you can disagree with the characters he draws while still loving them fiercely as Vance did.  It helped me understand large areas of our country that I’ve been wrestling with lately.  I very much appreciated and respected the way Vance told this story; he honored the best of his community while still calling out the worst, doing so in a way that set him firmly within the community, not as an outsider pointing fingers at a problem.  His voice and leadership is remarkable and I hope we hear more from him.

The Hate U Give will definitely be on my best books of the year list.  I am obsessed with this story.  The characters in this are so incredibly and authentically written that I found myself so sad to leave them when I got to the last page.  I read this book in about two days.  Main character Starr is a teenage girl who walks in two worlds, the upper class white community of her private prep school and the urban, black, more impoverished community she lives in.  She finds herself thrown in the national spotlight and drawn to activism when she witnesses her unarmed friend shot by a cop.  The story is relevant, nuanced, and engrossing.  It’s technically YA, but this should be required reading for everyone.  I can’t recommend it more highly or enthusiastically.

Almost Missed You was an engrossing tale about a husband who disappears with his son, leaving behind a wife to unravel the secrets he’d been keeping about his past.  The Dry was a really good murder mystery set in the Australian outback.  Talking as Fast as I Can is Lauren Graham’s memoir about her career with a focus on her time shooting the Gilmore Girls reboot.  Graham is a pretty good writer (did you know she has a fiction novel out??) and I super enjoyed this peak behind the scenes of one of my favorite shows.  Every Wild Heart follows a mother and her teenaged daughter in this equal parts mystery and love story.  It was an easy, fast read that tied up a little too neatly at the end.  Into the Water is the newest work from The Girl on the Train writer Paula Hawkins.  It was a great story and definitely in the same vein of Girl on the Train, but not earth shattering.  I’ll probably give A Year of Living Danishly its own post because I have a lot of thoughts on this one.  A british woman moves to Denmark with her husband and spends the year trying to discover why the Danish are considered the happiest people in the world.  I See You is another new one out by the author of I Let You Go, a novel who's surprise twist had me gasping out loud.  This was another great psychological thriller that had me turning the pages as fast as I could.

That's a lot of words about two months of reading (so much for Quick Lit!).  I can't wait to hear what you've been reading!

A God Thing

I’m a bit of a skeptic at heart when it comes to “God signs.”  That phrase alone makes me cringe (along with its sibling “God thing”) and I have always had a hard time claiming with any amount of certainty that something was a sign or word from God.  

I used to think this was an indication of one of my many shortcomings.  If I just had more faith I could speak confidently of what I knew God was trying to communicate.  If I was a better Christian, God would make himself known more clearly.  If I read the bible/prayed/fasted/devoted myself more, I could use language of certainty.  If only I was more, then those “God signs” would be real.

Sometimes I still believe this.

But I’ve also been around long enough to see how people manipulate these signs from God.  How they speak with such certainty about things that are not certain.  How their “God signs” were often things that they wanted to see or happen. Or to serve as proof of their very “in-ness.”  We Christians are very good at speaking what we want to believe as though it were sound truth.

If I have to err on either side of this conundrum I think I would rather err on the side of skeptic.  I don’t want to be cynical, but I’d rather not feel like everything must be a sign from God in order for it to warrant merit.  And also, if I’m being real honest here, I’m just not confident enough to say with any amount of certainty that something is from God.  Maybe that reveals a weak faith, or maybe wisdom from years of witnessing the voice of God sound an awful lot like whoever is speaking on His behalf.  Probably a little of both.  

And yet still I feel like maybe the spirit is nudging me to be more open to naming God’s work.  Maybe I can acknowledge deep in my heart movement I hope to be of God.

I have two red headed babies.  They have the kind of red hair that stops people in their tracks.  It is truly beautiful hair.  Everyone always asks, “Where on earth does it come from?”  My husband and I are both brunettes through and through.  Neither of us has the fair complexion or ginger roots that would naturally be inclined to produce such vivid red hair on a kid.

For a long time I would answer that question with a simple “my side of the family.”  This is certainly true; my dad, sister and brother all have heads of different shades of ginger.

But I’m never telling my whole truth when I answer this question.  What I want to say when people inquire about their red hair is much more vulnerable.  I want to say, “I think their hair comes from my dad.  I think it’s a sign from God for me to trust that my dad in heaven and God is still good.  Because my first two babies have honey colored and dark brown hair but then, when I was pregnant with this third baby, my dearly loved, red haired dad unexpectedly died and the effects of this tragedy took a toll on my faith and my understanding of God.  Then, six months later, I gave birth to a little red haired anomaly and it felt a little kiss from my dad.  

Maybe it was from God, but it could have just as easily have been a nice coincidence.  

But then, sixteen months later I gave birth to another ginger haired baby and I wonder if surely this meant God was trying to tell me something, that this was more than just coincidence.  Maybe it is a sign.”

If it had just been Lou, the older daughter, I might have been able to convince myself that it was all just a lovely coincidence.  But then Rory came and two babies with the same hair color that is nothing like their parents but everything like their grandfather and maybe, just maybe it’s more.  

It could be a little piece of my dad in the babies he never got to meet.  Maybe it was God’s way of keeping my dad’s name on my tongue.  Whenever anyone asks where their unique hair color comes from I get to speak of my dad.  And I get asked that question multiple times a day.  Or maybe it’s a visual reminder of him I get to kiss and hug every day. 

But sometimes I wonder if it’s even more that that.  Maybe it’s a reminder of God’s love and care for me still.   A physical representation that God cares about me enough to send me a sign, an answer to the rawest and most vulnerable questions my heart holds.  These two babies and their unique hair color came during a season of my life when I so desperately needed to know that God was good.  Could God’s answer to the biggest questions and fears I have about Him lie in the hair atop my daughters’ heads? An answer I desperately need to hear?  Maybe it is a God thing…

I’m learning in this season to claim this truth with a little more certainty.  I could be wrong, sure.  But I’m tired of letting my fear of being wrong allow me to assume that God can’t or won’t move in my life.  I don’t want to stop looking for God’s hand because I’m afraid of placing too much significance on some innocuous seeming event.  I don’t want to be silent because I’m afraid to hope.

And while I will likely not go into this whole mess of theology and belief with the check out girl at Trader Joe’s each time I am asked about their hair, I will settle in a little more deeply in my heart my own truth about God’s work and his “sign.”  I will choose to believe this God thing…

On celebrating your wheelhouse

adventuring

This past winter I attended some meetings with friends I only see once or twice a year.  In the meantime we keep up with each other through social media, liking Instagram pictures and wishing kids happy birthday in comment sections.  Right before this particular trip I had posted something on Instagram about a “fancy party” my kids and I had as part of the Fun list we create twice a year (summer and winter).  The Summer/Winter Fun lists are just basically a handful of things my kids and I want to try and do during the season that we are in.  The things range from stuff that requires some planning on my part- go to an indoor waterpark, go to a baseball game- to stuff my kids do all the time but becomes special once its on the list- go to the pool, sit by the fire and look at our baby books.  Most of it is all stuff we’d be doing anyway.  It’s just a simple way for us to add a little adventure to our seasons and make the stuff we’d already do seem a bit more significant.  For me, nothing about the Fun Lists are difficult or hard.  They push me to do a few things I may have easily put off until it was too late to try, but by and large it’s all stuff the kids and I already look forward to doing.

last year's summer fun list

When I caught up with these friends at the annual meeting more than one made a point to mention my “fancy party” post and comment wistfully at “what a great mom” I was, implying somehow that I was going above and beyond in the parenting game.  The comments caught me off guard and made me uncomfortable.  I was being given far too much credit.  The fancy party was not an act of heroic “Mom-ness” on my part.  It consisted of letting my four year old pick out my entire outfit (gray vintage polka dot dress I wear to weddings, knee high heeled brown boots and the earrings I wore for my wedding), inviting a few friends over, putting a table cloth on our dining room table, serving left over desserts from a party we’d just had and letting the kids drink out of tea cups and glass mugs.  None of it was too much trouble and all of it made that dreaded 4-5pm hour go by much more quickly. 

the fancy party

Pushing my kid on the swing for more than three and a half minutes or doing some sort of complicated craft with them- those are heroic acts of Mom-ness.  When I post about those on social media I would like a parade thrown in my honor and some sort of gold medal.  Unfortunately I don’t post about those on social media because they don’t happen.  Ever.  

I follow a mom on Instagram who’s summer plan involves a different activity each day.  To share her fun she’s got hashtags for each day of the week (#makesomethingmonday, #tastytuesday, etc).  Her activities are things like creating fun snacks for the kids or art projects involving making homemade paint with food coloring, water and cornstarch and painting the driveway.  These are all things that make my skin crawl and leave me grumpy and stabby with my kids if I try to do them.  I scrolled through her pictures of kids happy and messy, enjoying the creative activities she’d not only thought up (or taken the time to look up on pinterest) but also prepared ahead of time and then had the wherewithal to capture photographic evidence of the activity (instead of spending the whole time supervising said activity mentally counting down the minutes it could be over while simultaneously preventing the kids from also painting themselves, the car, house and bikes, thereby sucking all fun out of the activity, as I would have done).  And I felt guilty.  I should do that kind of stuff for my kids.  I should get over my deep and abiding hatred of such activities for their sake so they can have fun memories of making messes and eating yogurt covered bananas dipped in chocolate chips they created themselves.

And then I remembered my conversation with my friend all those months ago.  And I had a moment of clarity.  These activities, the crafts and fun snacks, that’s probably fun for this Instagram mom, just like Fun lists and adventures are fun for me.  It probably doesn’t produce the urge to poke her eyes out or chew off her arm just to end the activity.  She’s probably not doing incredibly hard things she hates just for the sake of her kids in the same way that I’m not when we check off Summer Fun List items and have adventures.

I think it is a very common misconception when we see other parents doing the kinds of activities that we ourselves find hard/boring/frustrating/violence inducing.  We assume that they, too, feel that way about the activity but somehow overcome their aversion in a super human feat of self sacrifice for the kids.  We believe our own inability to sacrifice at this level makes us sub par parents and this causes us to discredit all the awesome things we are already doing because they may come more naturally to us.  Things that other moms might find hard/boring/frustrating/violence inducing.

I'd take this kind of crazy over blowing bubbles with the kids any day of the week 

For me, I get out of the house and do stuff with my four kids because between doing that and staying home with them, staying home is the more difficult thing.  I am not a homebody.  We go to the pool or visit parks we’ve never been to because I prefer that to staying home and doing arts and crafts projects or playing My Little Ponies with them for hours on end (or really for even just five minutes.  My Little Ponies suck.).  Other moms stay home and create cool pinterest worthy projects for their kids because that is much less difficult for them when faced with the thought of lugging three or four kids out in public.  I have a friend who has spent the last year creating awesome reading and writing activities every afternoon for her pre-k kid.  He’s a genius and will enter Kindergarten this fall more than a little prepared.  I wouldn’t know where to begin to create education activities for my 4 year old.  But my friend genuinely liked doing that sort of thing.  She used to be a teacher and this kind of thing is right in her wheelhouse.

I’m learning to celebrate the moms who are doing what is in their wheelhouse while also remembering that last part.  It’s in their wheelhouse.  And it doesn’t have to be in my wheelhouse.  And I’m giving myself just as much credit when I do the stuff that comes more easily to me.  Our kids don’t need us to do it all.  They need us to do the stuff that makes us come alive as parents, whether it’s getting out for adventures or creating beautiful crafts, cooking dinner together or homeschooling.  I’ve learned from experience that crafts are not fun when mom is tense and short fused the whole time.  Neither are adventures out.  The kids won’t know the stuff you didn’t do with them.  (They’re not on instagram.  They don’t even know that making your own paint with cornstarch and food coloring is a thing.)  They will remember the stuff you enjoyed doing with them.  So do that stuff with zero guilt about the rest.  Isn’t that more fun for everyone?

adventures make us both happy