The End of Dreaming

I have a confession to make.  I’ve been struggling with some big feelings.  Some ugly jealous/crazy resentful feelings.  There seem to be a number of people as I scroll through my Instagram and Twitter feeds that are doing. big. things.  Living the kind of dream life I’ve long given up.  Traveling all over the world for work or pleasure.  Creating something from nothing and actually following through on the things that I’ve always thought I’d like to do someday.

The part that really frosts my flakes is that these women are in my life stage.  The “living with littles and desperately trying to survive” life stage.  Only they don’t seem desperate to survive.  They’re thriving, actually doing the things I gave up on, chalking it up as impossible to do with kids this young.

I used to be a big dreamer.  I loved envisioning what great adventures my life would hold.  When I was sixteen my psychology teacher had us create a “life to do list” where we listed all the things we wanted to do in our life.  No aspiration was too big or too unachievable to be put on the list.  At sixteen I knew I had all the time in the world to touch a giraffe, win an Oscar, perform on Broadway and go on a cruise.  For the next ten years I kept that list at hand copying it in the first page of every new journal I started, crossing off the things I’d done and adding more dreams as I imagined them. 

In high school and college the endless possibilities of “what life could look life” were exciting and enticing.  Where would I go to college?  Who would I meet?  What would I study?  And then, whom would I marry?  What would my career look like?  Where would I live?  The endless combinations of decisions left to be made created an environment ripe for dreaming for me.  Anything could still happen.  I had no idea what my life would look like.  I loved it.

I’m finding myself, in my more dramatic moments, feeling as though I’ve reached the end of dreaming.   So many of the “big” questions have been answered for me.  I know whom I married.  We are currently shopping for our forever house, answering the question of where we will live.  Two kids in, the “what will I be?” feels pretty limited, at least in this young kids stage.  We’ve begun to settle into our life in a way that feels pretty final.  Somewhere in the last few years I stopped putting that life to do list on the first page of my journals, stopped reminding myself of the adventures I wanted to have, stopped dreaming up new adventures to add.

I’m a “P” on the Meyers-Briggs personality test, which means, among other things, that I am more comfortable before a decision is made.  I like the open-endedness, the unknown, the anticipation of what may be.  Making a decision always comes with a little bit of a let down for me.  It’s why I never find out the gender of my kids beforehand, why I never let Tommy tell me what he got me for Christmas and birthdays and why, while I love my tattoo, I still had a bit of a hard time with the permanence of it all.

Tommy on the other hand is as “J” as they come on the Meyers-Briggs.  He loathes the decision making process and just wants to come to a conclusion.  I can see him getting more and more excited as we settle into life.  He needs roots and permanence to feel comfortable.  It’s something we are constantly navigating in our marriage.

It’s normal, necessary even to find ourselves in this place of settling in.  And in quiet, still moments I can be honest enough to admit it’s a cheap fix to blame my end of dreaming on this season of life.  Having forever questions answered doesn’t mean it’s really forever.  Or that there’s nothing left to anticipate.

No, if I’m being really honest, I’ve stopped dreaming because I’ve given up on myself a little.  It was easy to speak aloud my dreams in high school and college because there were so many of them and the possibility seemed endless.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve had to take a crash course in “realistic limitations.”  A job where I travel and teach and write?  The logistics of figuring out how that works with kids and the part time job I already have feels like a mountain not even worth attempting to climb.  Traveling the world with Tommy?  That takes real dollars and those little people cost a lot.  And don’t travel well.

Facing the reality of what it will take to make some of these dreams happen have me too exhausted to even start trying.   It feels too impossible to see the light of day.

And if I’m being even more gut-level honest here (and I might as well go all the way) there is nothing more vulnerable and risky to me than saying I’m want to do something that may not come to fruition.  I have been known to follow through on things I absolutely don’t want to do anymore only because I declared publicly that I was going to do that thing.  (This is the only reason I’ve completed three marathons and participated in natural childbirth.)  The potential shame of putting it out there and failing keeps me from dreaming at all.

But I’m trying to walk into vulnerability these days.  And I think the practice of imagining adventures for my life is important in and of itself.  I need there to be possibility and anticipation or I start to feel full of ennui.  I get all Ecclesiastical and begin declaring everything to be meaningless.  I need to dream big dreams because it keeps me engaged in life, makes me hopeful and happy.  I need to dare to dream despite the realistic limitations because it is a practice in faithfulness to God and myself.   I need to share those dreams with others because it keeps me open and vulnerable and accountable to at least trying.  And I need to have grace for those dreams that are deferred or simply left undone in twenty years.  I don’t chastise or shame my sixteen-year-old self for daring to believe she could win an Oscar or perform on Broadway.  Rather I smile at the bigness of her goals and breadth of her self-belief.  I expect fifty-year-old me will feel the same about my thirty-year-old dreams as well. 

The Hockey Boys

The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup on Monday.  Ten years ago this would have been a non-event for me.  The hockey boys changed all that for me though.  Today I’ll watch coverage of the parade and rally with pride and excitement.  Here’s why.

I grew up in the Blackhawks blackout era.  Their owner, in a (foolish) attempt to drive ticket sales, refused to televise the hockey games.  If you wanted to watch the Hawks, he argued, you had to buy a ticket.  It was a dumb move, killing a generation of potential fans.  As a result I mostly looked down on the sport.  I deemed what little I knew to be barbaric.  Hockey players were a savage bunch, vulgar, wild and with few teeth.  They were allowed to punch each other’s lights out during a game.  It was encouraged even!  So uncivil.

Since I didn’t really know anyone who played hockey and it wasn’t on television, my opinion of the sport remained unchanged for years.  Until I met Tommy.  A hockey player.

Tommy had played in high school, college, and grad school.  And continued to play in rec leagues after that.  His nickname was the Urinator because after one to many concussions he would pee his pants any time he received a big hit.  After his 11pm hockey game he would stay out until 2 or 3 am drinking beer with his teammates.  As you can guess, armed with this knowledge, my opinion did not change right away.

It wasn’t until I started watching some of his old man league games that I started to appreciate the sport.  You had to recognize the tenacity it took to get that little teeny hockey puck past the hulking goalie, all while wearing 3/8” blades.  I still wasn’t crazy about the fighting having spent the past two years in a job where my number one goal each day was to not have any physical altercations in my classroom.  But once I learned that Tommy had not once in over fifteen years of hockey playing engaged in a fight, I realized you didn’t have to tussle to play the sport.

Then I met the hockey boys and I really fell in love with the game.  A few months into our marriage a former Wheaton College teammate of Tommy’s passed away unexpectedly.  The funeral brought all the hockey boys back together, a tragic reunion after many years without a lot of contact.  Because of this loss the boys committed to more regular reunions.

Which was why I found myself hosting the hockey boys a year later.  They came to town for an alumni hockey game at Wheaton.  We had recently purchased a house in the area with a big basement.  And we had beer.  It was really all that was necessary to deem our home a suitable base for the weekend. 

Between the college game and beer runs the boys camped out at our house while I fluctuated between trying to stay out of their way and enjoying their company.  I sat on the porch, listening to stories from their college days and the constant good-natured jabs at one another, understanding for the first time why hockey was so important to my husband.  These were Tommy’s people.  Wickedly funny, coarse, and more than a little mischievous, on the surface the hockey boys were exactly what you would expect.  But beyond that they were good hearted, kind, loyal and the kind of friends who would drop anything when another brother was in need.  They laughed loudly while drinking beer and beamed proudly while speaking about their kids.  They played flashlight tag in my basement at 4am.  A bunch of 30 year olds running around in the dark trying to hide and shining lights on each other.

We’ve seen the hockey boys a few more times over the years.  The regular December reunion hasn’t seen solid attendance for the last few years but this April they all came together for a wedding.  They were the same combination of funny and irreverent and solid and upstanding.  They were still a band of brothers, these hockey boys, and I found myself grateful for my husband’s place among them.  

There seems to be a different camaraderie among hockey players.  Perhaps because it attracts a certain kind of guy, or maybe the unique hockey stench forms an unbreakable bond among its members.  I think it may have something to do with the rules of fighting.  Despite my initial distain for the combat aspect of the sport, I’ve come to respect, even appreciate the fighting.  Fighting doesn’t usually happen all willy nilly, a result of hot tempers.  Players fight to protect their own.  If someone takes a particularly hard and unprovoked hit on one of the smaller players you can bet you’ll see gloves thrown off later in the game.  They fight for each other, in defense of their teammates.  It’s kind of cool.  (Of course some fights are just because one guy ran his mouth a little too hard, but on the whole you find a reason for thrown punches.)

I’ve come to really love hockey and the spirit of the hockey boys.  I may even be a bigger fan than my husband.  And though I swore up and down no kid of mine would ever play hockey, I’m finding myself looking forward to a house full of hockey boys (or girls) and all their teammates.  I can think of no finer group for Monster or Toots to join.

IRL

Once upon a time I started a blog.  Then I cloaked it in CIA level secrecy.  My own husband lost access to it when he casually mentioned the URL address to friends one night.  (It was so casual that they promptly forgot it, but Tommy got locked out for a good 6 months.  Eventually I let him back in, but not without a strict lecture about how the writing I put on the World Wide Web was private and not for the public to see.)  My blog was really just a more official place for all the random thoughts in my head to call home.

As I started dipping my toes into the blogging world I continued to keep my own work under lock and key.  I never included my blog address in any comments I left others, even refusing to leave comments at all if it automatically linked up.  I wasn’t ready for anyone to read, judge, or evaluate my thoughts.  I knew I wasn’t a professional writer.  I knew I wasn’t saying anything life shatteringly profound.  The writing was clumsy and awkward, I posted maybe once every other month, and none of it ever connected really.  I wasn’t writing for an audience, just me.

Over time I got more comfortable sharing my blog with a wider audience.  It was an audience of strangers albeit, but an audience nonetheless.   I never shared my blog with anyone I knew In Real Life though.  Friends knew that I had a blog but it’s name and address remained top secret.  While I’d reached a point where I didn’t care if some one in California came across my site and thought, “meh, she’s not a very good writer,” I wasn’t ready to chance my friends reacting that way.  I didn’t want everyone in my real life to think that I walked around imagining myself as a Writer with a capital W.

There were other reasons for my secret World Wide Web life.  Online I could write my truths as I experienced them without any accountability.  When my thought truths were shared with people who never saw me in real life there was no one to contradict them with my actual reality.  I could talk the talk online without anyone knowing if I also walked the walk.  Sometimes our talk and our walk doesn’t match up, not because we are choosing hypocrisy but because we just haven’t seen aspects of ourselves clearly yet.  I know there are ways that I see myself that don’t match up with how people in my real life experience me.  Exposing my writing meant getting comfortable with this contradiction and (life-long) journey to match my perceived self with my actual self. 

Finally, I didn’t want offend or hurt someone with my writing.  I don’t post anything I wouldn’t say aloud to my nearests and dearests but I am keenly aware of the one sided nature of a blog post.  If I’m expressing my opinion about a topic in person I’m able to read your face, to pay attention if something in my words sting or if I’m not being clear and adjust accordingly.  I can’t do that online.  Writing on the Internet puts it all out there and hopes for the best.  Or sometimes just the last word.  On the Internet the priority tends to be to communicate clearly and captivatingly the author’s opinion and perspective.  In a real life conversation there is give and take, room to communicate in love and truth with peace being the ultimate landing place.  The last thing I’d want is for someone in my real life to walk away from a blog post hurt and angry with me.

But over time my secret online life became public.  I shared specific posts I’d written with a few friends, and a few more found me on their own.  Then, when I needed to host a dinner party for a blog post I was told that my friends’ attendance came with a condition.  There would be no dinner guests if the URL address of my blog were not shared. Then things got really real when my two old friends Abby and Catie shared some of my posts with their friends.  My online presence was no longer a secret.   

And so the doors of my corner of the Internet have been flung open and people I know IRL now know me online too.  And I’m not gonna lie, there have been moments where my insecurities have gotten the best of me and I’ve started thinking up names for a new even more secret blog.  But on the whole, I’m so happy to share this space with the faces I see day in and day out.  Their support has been so encouraging and life giving.  It’s allowed people to know me more deeply and intimately.  It’s given me a reason to keep writing (what up 2013?  It’s only June and I’ve already written twice as many posts as any other year!).

I thank you for reading.  And today I share my misgivings asking for grace.  Have patience with me if my self-awareness hasn’t quite reached my reality yet.  I’m growing and stretching and sometimes it takes a while.  I promise to be as honest as I am able, to never put up a front and to admit when I’ve been wrong. 

And if I’ve written something that leaves you stung or hurt or judged- please tell me.  Let’s talk about it.  I can only do that face to face with you real life friends.  If something isn’t clear or you have questions or concerns, my heart is open- please ask.  This space, this Internet home of mine is only worthwhile if it opens dialogue, brings connection and infuses the world with more love and grace.

All this of course extends to readers who I’ve never had the privilege of meeting.  (Are there any of you out there?  I’m never quite sure if anyone besides Tommy is actually reading this.)  Feel free to email me or leave a comment.  Start a dialogue.  The Internet can bring out the worst of humanity (as is evident by the Cheerios commercial backlash) but I’m also convinced that it can be used to foster the best in us too.  My hope is that this space does that, and you feel free to dialogue and question and push back when necessary- in grace and love of course.  

On Advocating for your Kids and Not Being That Parent

Currently two aspects of my personality are warring each other.  On one hand there is an incredibly large part of my persona that doesn’t want to make a fuss.  I don’t want to be difficult, don’t want people to have to spend a lot of energy accommodating me, nor do I want to be perceived as anything short of “go with the flow.”  I’m a fairly adaptable person, and would much rather be the one adjusting to circumstances than force others to adjust around me.  The thought of someone thinking I’m difficult or hard to please makes me all hivey and twitchy.

I’m trying very hard not to raise selfish, difficult, “please accommodate me” a-holes.  I want them to be able to work around others’ needs and preferences.  I want them to be able to handle change and hiccups with grace and consideration for others.  However, three year olds are not particularly great at this, especially three year olds as adverse to change as my Monster.

Therein lies the problem.  Currently, this core value of being “easy going” directly conflicts with my other core value of advocating for my kids.  I found myself in the principal’s office of Monster’s school asking if it would be at all possible for him to stay with the same teacher for summer school.  He started school with only two weeks left in the year and his transition has been, shall we say, not great.  (See also: awful, frustrating, and traumatizing for everyone involved.)  The one bright spot has been his attachment to his sweet teacher, Ms. Kim.  He talks about Ms. Kim at home, finds comfort from her alone, and can be seen holding her hand during the day.  In short, Ms. Kim may well be the only thing Monster likes about school.

I completely understand that things will have to change and my kid will need to learn to adjust.  I want him to learn to adjust, believe me.  It would make my life a heck of a lot easier.  But this transition has been so difficult and he’s had to deal with so much change already, I’m a little concerned losing Ms. Kim will make his head explode. 

So there I was in the principal’s office, my mama bear instincts asking for someone to accommodate us, to plan around us, while my “be as undifficult as possible at any cost” side nervously sweated and paced, so uncomfortable with the conversation.  I stood their hating this, reading every look on the principal’s face as proof that I had been deemed “that mom” and would forever more be placed in the
“demanding parent” category.  Yet I persevered because it’s my kid and he needs me to advocate for him.

Where do you draw the line?  How much advocating do you do, and how much do you let your kid learn to adjust?  How do you keep from being a “troublesome mom” without neglecting your kid?  I know at my core that speaking up for Monster is much more important than what anyone thinks of me.  And yet I still die inside imagining the staff complaining about me in the teacher’s lounge!  Has anyone else struggled with this?  How did you decide when to speak up and when not to?

Mother's Day Hangover

Mother’s Day came and went last Sunday.  This is my third Mother’s Day as a mother, but nothing has beaten the one right before I became a mother.  I celebrated with my family and my husband’s family in a sweet lunch out.  Tommy gave me the wallet I’d been eyeing for months, the one that I could fit my phone into and toss in my diaper bag without having to think twice.  At 37 weeks pregnant I was close enough to be anticipating with sweet excitement the arrival of this baby.  Little did I know in exactly one week I’d be holding him.  So you see- perfect. 

This past Mother’s Day was nice.  It included breakfast out with my little family and dinner home with my extended family.  All in all it was a day filled with sweet, harmonious family moments.  The kind of day Hallmark tries their best to create.

But I found it hard to enjoy. 

I always find days that are supposed to celebrate me hard to enjoy.

Part of it is the fact that I put a lot of pressure on these days to fill some unmet need in me.  And of course they can never stand up to this pressure.  For some reason I need permission to articulate my needs and desires.  Days like Mother’s Day or my birthday give me that permission.  I would never spend the money on an expensive wallet that I’d been coveting for months, but if Tommy “grants me permission” in the form of a gift I suddenly feel worthy of the luxury.  Days like Mother’s day give me permission to feel worthy of being celebrated, pampered, and put first. 

So I anticipate these days with a large amount of expectancy.  I’ve stored up months of wishing and waiting to be noticed, appreciated and celebrated.  And all of a sudden one day bears all the weight of my hopes and dreams in the unmet recognition department.  And of course a single day will crumble under all that weight.  I found myself strangely emotional and sad on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, knowing I would yet again be disappointed.  Not because my sweet husband didn’t try, but because nothing could fulfill that many months of need and expectancy. 

Because my husband did try.  And he asked me time and again what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day.  But therein lies a deeper, more difficult problem.  I didn’t really know what it was that would make me feel loved, celebrated and pampered.  I didn’t know what I wanted.  At first I thought I was frustrated and hurt that my husband didn’t know me well enough to create a day that fit me.  But when I really sat in it, when I really thought about what I wanted Mother’s Day to look like, I had no answers.  I don’t know me well enough to create a day that fits me.

Which was a particularly depressing discovery.  Not only do I need permission to express my needs and desires, but when granted said permission I am tongue tied, unable to articulate what it is I want.

I’ve talked a big game lately about how turning thirty has given me a whole new confidence and self-awareness.  The reality is that I’ve tricked myself into thinking that being sure in a small amount of personal preferences meant I’ve mastered the whole self discovery thing.  I’m not there yet. 

And the bigger reality is that at thirty years old I really need to stop waiting for permission to ask for my needs to be met.  I need to stop waiting for someone else to introduce me to myself and start figuring out what exactly I need and want in life.    

The thirties, for me, are about being bold and going after the life I desire instead of waiting for permission to be the person God created me to be.  If this is the case then I need to start getting in touch with that person.  It feels like sacred and true work.  But it also feels like clumsy work, awkward and uncomfortable.  Shouldn’t I know this by now?  Did I used to know it and forget?  It feels vulnerable and risky to try and fail at self-discovery.  Shouldn’t this come naturally? 

And yet I don’t want to be fifty and find myself disappointed yet again because another Mother’s Day has come and gone failing to meet the unmet needs I don’t know well enough to articulate.  I don’t want holidays to buckle under the pressure I’ve put on them because I can’t advocate for myself throughout the year.  I don’t want to limit my worthiness of love and appreciation to a few days a year.  It’s no way to live life really.  

NYC

It’s been a year and a half since my feet touched New York City pavement.  When too much time has passed since I’ve been to my city I start to experience withdrawal symptoms.  I find myself daydreaming about New York, running through as many memories of my time there as my mind can conjure.  I hone in with laser like focus on any picture, TV show or movie featuring the big apple, looking past the focal point to the city in the background, aching for its energy and searching for clues as to the specific location.  I experience strong feelings of jealousy and anger towards those lucky individuals living there.  And oh help the poor NYC resident who happens to cross my path during this period of withdrawal.  I will sit them down and force them to tell me all about what they are doing, where they are eating and how much they are loving New York, New York. 

At a wedding this fall I full on embarrassed myself with a couple of my husband’s friends who had flown in from NYC.  I couldn’t stop talking about it, couldn’t stop peppering them with questions trying to see if some of my favorite haunts still existed.  And then the embarrassment continued when I admitted that it had been five years since I’d lived in New York.  And then I hit an all time low when I had to further admit that I’d only lived there for two years.

I talk about New York like I’d lived there a lifetime.  In the grand scheme of my life two years is a remarkably brief period.  College was twice as long for heaven’s sake and I don’t wax on about that in the same way I do about my city.   I mean at what point will it be an unhealthy attachment to a place I once lived?  In ten years?  Five?  Two years ago?

Some of it has to do with all the years leading up to my time living in Manhattan.  I don’t even remember when I decided I wanted to live in New York City, I just always remember wanting to live there.  When I was a little girl New York represented Broadway and all my dreams of becoming an actress.  As I grew older my career ambitions changed, but the dream to live in NYC stayed the same.  The whole of my life leading up to my move at age 22 seemed to be moving towards that moment. 

My embarrassingly intense connection may also have to do with the beautifully intense life I lived there.  They were two very full years.  The first year in New York was the best hardest year of my life.  I don’t mean that it was the best and hardest year of my life but rather that it was the hardest year in the best possible ways.  I had no money, knew no one and was living really far from home with out any real safety nets for the first time.  At first, because I had no one to go out with, I would spend entire weekends watching Law and Order SVU marathons until I was too afraid to leave my house for fear of being attacked, kidnapped and sold on the Russian mafia black market.  (I finally got too scared to even watch SVU when I saw the episode with the woman found in her building’s elevator shaft.  She hadn’t even left the apartment!  I didn’t stand a chance!)  Then, as I finally had a few reasons to leave the house, I was so broke I would nurse one drink all night and walk everywhere.  I remember a night at a bar that was way too artsy and cool for me on the lower east side.  I stayed out too late to walk or take the subway home and I had to find an ATM with only a $2.00 service charge because my bank account was down to $22.50 and I had no other cash for cab fare.  But I lived in New York City and all I had to do was walk a few blocks to remember that this was my happy place.

If the first year was hard in the best way then the second was just best.  I finally hit my stride, made friends that would become lifelong loves, and started making just enough more money to enjoy things every once in a while.  I loved everything about that year and would need much more than a blog post to do it justice.

And then it was over.  At the time it felt right to move, it felt like I was getting out while I still loved New York, before it had a chance to make me jaded or angry.  Now though I wonder if I shouldn’t have stayed another two or three years.  I never expected to be a life long New Yorker.  I love my Midwest family too much to stay away (and I married a country boy).  But a strong part of me wishes I had given myself a few more years and memories with my city love.

Now, two kids later, I still wonder what it would be like to live there now, in this stage of life.  On good, non-withdrawal days I think about the chaos of two kids and all. the. things. that come along with them and I am deeply grateful for my house and car and quiet little life.  But on days like this, when my absence from the city I love has caused me to romanticize it and everything about it, I think about how much better the grass would be on the Central Park side, how much more I would love my life, how much better everything would be.  It’s not true of course.  The rich and beautiful life I’ve built here is such because of the people that exist here, not the geographical location in which I live.  And I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.  Not even a big apartment over looking Central Park West… well, maybe.  How big are we talking? J