Special.

When I first returned to grad school, I remember that I had visions of emulating Mr. Rogers. Not his fame. Not even really his medium of puppetry and television. Just his wholehearted authenticity and work to make the world a better place for children.

I'd kind of forgotten of that inspiration lately so I was delighted to read these letters this morning, via my daily treat read of a site, Letters of Note:

letters via the fabulous Letters of Note

What a remarkable exchange, especially knowing that it was probably replicated hundreds, thousands of times with other young and old correspondents. Just brim-full with compassion and...namaste.  It reminded me to look up one of my all-time favorite articles, a 1998 profile of Fred Rogers in Vanity Fair magazine (reposted here; you might want to know there are a couple of profanities).

Indulge me with another favorite (I think I posted this before but I can't find it for sure).  I dare you to watch it and take the 10 second challenge he issues. 

I can't be Mr. Rogers. I'm just not that guy, not that good or thoroughly guileless, don't have the sweaters or the single-focused discipline. 

Over time my interests have evolved to be oriented more around parents than children. But this morning I realized I still take a great dose of inspiration from him. I think parents (everyone, really) experience processes of development and growth and change in their roles with accompanying emotions and challenges that can be equally bewildering and novel. Mr. Rogers's preschooler friends are not the only ones trying to figure out their world and thirsty to know they are known, understood, and supported. We don't outgrow that.

So, in honor of Mr. Rogers, I'd like to say to you, reading this: you are good and capable and special.  Just the way you are.

Your blog friend and neighbor,

A.

Liner Notes 40-46 : Things I apparently forgot to say

40. To determine when to flip pancakes, wait until the edges set and start to bubble. Cook them on medium to make sure that the middle gets done and the outsides don't burn*

41. Check the bottom of dishes to see if they're microwave safe. Otherwise, you might explode your roommate's bowl when you're cooking lunch for that boy you know.*

42. Sometimes awkward people will overstay their welcome or make you feel uncomfortable with their lack of boundary respect.* Not everyone reads social cues very well or wants to get the message. Be kind and compassionate while also finding a way to be firm and stand up for yourself and your discomfort. No, I'm sorry you can't come into our apartment right now. We're all studying/busy/have plans.  Or we feel uncomfortable when you show up alone at all hours and expect to hang around our apartment...maybe next week we can all get together with a group. 

43. Staying up really late will catch up with you eventually. Case in point, 3:30 a.m. is too late to stay out, weekend or no.* I'm pretty sure most people will back me up here.

44. Sometimes the hype about attending the football game makes the actual game a disappointing let down.* This applies to most over-blown hype. It's hard to live up to.

45. It's a good idea to double check where your classes are held to make sure you'll be at the right place the first day.* When you realize your mistake and read where the class really is, it's a good idea to note the right building so you don't rush into the wrong classroom a second time.*

46. When serving guests breakfast and you have only a couple of dishes, consider giving the guests the plates and serving from the pans, not the other way around.* :)

. . .

With the first of my children having left home this fall, I'm writing occasional Liner Notes, bits of advice to my kids concerning my take on how to be a gracious, awesome grown-up-type person (both trivial bits and major advice). Why "liner notes"? Because, back in the day, I pored over the liner notes of my cds, curious to find the story behind the music. That's what I hope this will be: the story behind the music of growing up and setting off on your own. (Or at least a ready-made catalog of how you can avoid making my mistakes.) Feel free to chime in! What would you add?

*actual events in the life of my freshman...small hiccups that will just provide fodder for good liner notes of her own someday. Lauren is having a fantastic time so far and seems to be making the most of every minute. I love hearing about her great new friendships and adventures and almost constant hostessing. We miss her but love knowing she's happy in her new setting.

Do you have any great freshman disaster stories?

. . .

Facing West by The Staves

Yes, my heart faces west at least several times a day. 

Take two

Here's Maddy's first second day of school, sophomore year. It was a rainy + chilly day, perfect for the cheerful yellow rainboots and a cozy sweater. 

Oh, I love this girl.

^And even though this is a little overexposed, I love it anyway. It captures her.
Here, I'll add a slightly underexposed one to balance things out: 

. . .

When Maddy brought home all the paperwork and syllabi for the year, for some reason I recalled something Elizabeth Edwards once said. During her son Wade's early high school years she decided to read some of the books he was reading for class so they could discuss them and she could hear his burgeoning analysis and thoughts about life.* 

Brilliant. Now that the kids are older, I feel a bit separated from them in their studies. I'll proofread an essay here and there but mostly Lauren and now Maddy and Sam have sailed their own academic ships. So in light of that, I started thinking that I'll read along with Maddy on a few of her books this year. 

Here's the list for her sophomore English class: 

The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
Song of Solomon, Morrison
The Turn of the Screw, James
A Separate Peace, Knowles
The Crucible, Miller
short stories, Shirley Jackson and others
Ender's Game, Card
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
Walden, Thoreau

And films:
The Front (Woody Allen)
Persons of Interest (Alison MacLean)
Walkout 

Pretty great books, right? It'd be kind of like a low-key, mother daughter book group. That I...crash and wrestle into my own territory and attend uninvited? Is this a sweet & lovely idea or borderline helicopter parentish?  I can't trust my judgment on these things anymore. I swing wildly from benign neglect to hovering. I blame the emptying nest and the fleeting years. Savor is my mantra. Gather and savor.

*p.s. In a sad turn of the story, later, when Wade died in an accident before his senior year, she would read the books for that year out loud to him at his grave. Heartbreaking.

On the shifting of family plate tectonics

When I got home from the dropoff trip, I opened Lauren's door and sighed at its emptiness. She pretty much packed up everything and cleared the room out, partly because it needed to be that thoroughly cleaned (she's an accumulator, that girl) and partly because bedroom space is at such a premium around here that we might need to use it for other uses when she's gone.

Later in the day, G said "oh, you opened her door! I've kept it shut because it's too hard to see it so empty and Laurenless."

We realized, G and I, that part of our melancholy is because we are both oldest children in our families. We've never been the person left behind before! We did the moving out, intoxicated with new freedom and forward momentum and oblivious to the shifts in the family plate tectonics we left behind.  I have a new appreciation for those youngest children in families, who say goodbye and adjust, goodbye and adjust, goodbye and adjust, bearing witness to the dwindling resident family numbers and the countdown to an empty nest. 

So I want to apologize, these decades later, to my youngest brother. Sorry, Chris.  Being left behind kind of stinks.

That's not to say what we have right now, with the four of us, isn't wonderful. It is, and all the sweeter for realizing how quickly the time will fly until we will say goodbye and adjust, goodbye and adjust, again. We've shifted our places at the dining table to be more cozy. Maddy and Sam get along famously and seem to be closer than ever: friends as well as sibs. We text and call Lauren like crazy and love to hear about her life and update her on ours. For instance, Maddy is in the throes of watching the disgusting driver's ed movies and Sam is rereading the summer book assignment for 8th grade for good measure and learning Somewhere Over the Rainbow on the ukelele.  Life is good. We're adjusting and shifting.

. . .

FYI, Lauren has started a blog of her college days. Email me if you'd like to know where to find it...I asked and she's fine with us living vicariously through her. :)

Stepping outside

 

On Friday evening, everyone was swirling around the kitchen after dinner. Dishes were done. Sam was strumming Hey, Jude on his beloved new ukelele. Laughter. Glow. Singing. It was delicious, hyggli. And, suddenly, too much. I stepped outside to the twilight yard and sat on the patio to cleanse my palate of the sweet heavy rich thoughts and memories we have been serving up lately.  

Lots of happenings around here in the last week: Sam's birthday on Monday, lovely family times, Lauren's breathtaking patriarchal blessing last night, her birthday today, sorting and packing and shopping and (tomorrow) flying west with Lauren to deliver her at university. All wonderful, happy events with an aftertaste of leaden, sweet melancholy.

Truth is I've been avoiding writing here. The emotions have outpaced my ability to step outside of it all to reflect and do it justice. I crave sparse and spare and breezy lightheartedness.  Luckily I live with these guys:

"Pteradactyl!"

Or, at least, I do for another 12 hours, give or take...  

See? I can't be trusted not to take a maudlin u-turn.

I know: She's going to have a fantastic time. She'll be back home in that bed of hers and I am her mother whether she's near or far. But I'm fighting those pesky lumps in the throat today, this week. Far seems                             far.

My apron strings, a status report

These kids just keep going and coming back and leaving again. At this rate my proverbial apron strings are going to be all in tatters with all the stretching and untying and retying. This summer feels like a huge turning point in our family with the kids trying their beautiful new wings (new metaphor alert!) and us, their parents, waving goodbye and smiling and jumping up and down and blinking back tears.

Or I might be a little bit lonely and melancholy today.

I put Maddy on the train early this morning so she could trek up to Maine to join her friend and friend's family at their lake house for the weekend. Lauren blips in and out between work and socializing, already acclimating herself to reduced family contact. Sam is at yonder camp and must be having a blast because he hasn't written us even once, although I did email the director (helicopter mom hover powers activate!) and he assured me Sam is doing great. 

Yonder camp is pretty wonderful, though. He's at Birch Creek Service Ranch in Utah, a program for good kids to learn more about service and community and have lots of outdoor fun. It's based on the philosophy of one of my heroes, Lowell Bennion, and his creed:

Learn to like what doesn't cost much

Learn to like reading, conversation, music.

Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.

Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills.

Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different   . . . different from you.

Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done.

Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs.

Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, 

and fixing things.

Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day.

Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.

(Of course, you don't have to go to a 3-week camp to learn these things. But keep in mind he has no brothers. He's the only 12-13 year old boy at church. He needs some intensive boy time.) The boys spend the first half of every day doing service in the surrounding community of ranches and farms, the afternoons doing camp fun, and the evenings in concerts and discussions and group activities, with some backpacking trips thrown in along the way.  Ever since our friend's son went a few years ago and raved about it we've kept it in mind for Sam.  So we are thrilled he's able to go, too.  It would be even better if he WROTE US A LETTER so we knew it was as awesome as we hoped. But whatever. My letters to him are increasingly pleading threatening inviting so I think he'll get the message sometime along the way.

My mothering years are galloping by at breakneck pace.  I'd love to peek in on our years of afternoon summer naps and swim diapers and sticky popsicle faces and towel bundled babies on my lap and 5:00 bathtime. Just to visit. Maybe linger. It's true: the days are long but the years are short. I used to roll my eyes at it but turns out they knew what they were talking about.

Now remind me: why didn't I have more kids? Just kidding. Kinda. 

. . .

Photo via

Another farewell every day

 

Isn't it amazing that virtual (just about) strangers voluntarily agree to get up at the crack of 0 dark thirty to teach other people's children about faith and scripture and life and eternity? Yes. Yes, it is. Almost as amazing as a group of teenagers voluntarily arising at the same hour and groggily making their way to church for a daily 6 a.m. class. On Sunday Lauren celebrated four years of this routine, graduating from our church's youth seminary program. Thank you to her teachers, past and present. You've made all the difference.

And here again, another farewell. Another landmark passed. Another lump in my throat. 

Actually, to be absolutely honest, I'm still in denial but this week--with all its "last this" and "last thats"--is working overtime to get me out of denial and into hysterical meltdown mode. I'm a little nervous...it's not going to be pretty once it hits. This episode of Modern Family hits a little too close to home.

Liner Notes 2-5

 

2.  Never get your hair cut in the midst of an emotional crisis or on the day of a big event.  Haircuts, like guns & new hiking boots, need at least a 5-day waiting/breaking-in period. 'Nuf said.

3. If you're going to do it anyway, you might as well skip over the complaining and just do it cheerfully. This is closely related to your great-great grandmother's saying that has trickled down through the ages: be pretty if you are, be witty if you can, but be cheerful if it kills you.

4. Don't expect mind reading.  As much as it would be lovely for boyfriends, husbands (though I expect you'll have just one), friends, roommates, and work colleagues to have the capacity to read your mind, life is happier when you express your expectations (or even lower them!).  A well-placed "what-I'd-really-love-for-my-birthday" is much better than a disappointment-drowned day, complete with baffled and well-meaning loved ones. Speak up, my dear.

. . .

With the first of my children leaving home in the next few months, I'm writing occasional Liner Notes, bits of advice to my kids concerning my take on how to be a gracious, awesome grown-up-type person (both trivial bits and major advice). Why "liner notes"? Because, back in the day, I pored over the liner notes of my cds, curious to find the story behind the music. That's what I hope this will be: the story behind the music of growing up and setting off on your own. (Or at least a ready-made catalog of how you can avoid making my mistakes.)

Feel free to chime in with your own in the comments, please! 

Photo: sisters in the kitchen (via Duke University Collection, 1980 by William Gedney)

Liner notes to growing up: 1

Exactly three months from today Lauren starts college. I just did a little heart skipping gasp there as I wrote that. Do you know what you do when you have three months left to impart what little wisdom about the world you've acquired? You panic a little. You wonder if you've done enough. 

Recently I realized that Miss L actually reads this blog now and then (hi Laurengirl!) and so I thought I'd direct a few entries (maybe weekly on Wednesdays?) to my kids concerning my take on how to be a gracious, awesome grown-up (both trivial bits and major advice). 

I'm calling this liner notes because, back in the day, I pored over the liner notes of my cds, curious to find the story behind the music. That's what I hope this will be: the story behind the music of growing up and setting off on your own. 

 1. Thank you notes really are essential.  Don't cash the check, use the gift, or read the book until you've written a note, a real envelope-and-paper, stamped, delivered note. (Also send one the day after being invited to dinner or a party.) It doesn't have to be long. It can just say "thank you so much." But thank you notes are non-negotiable: it lets the giver know you got it, that you appreciate it, and it increases the chances that you'll be invited back or given something again. Trust me on this one.

. . .

Feel free to chime in with your endorsement of whatever you agree with...you know how kids are more likely to believe something when it comes from a non-parental authority! 

p.s. Inspired by 1001 rules for my unborn son and other awesome such sites.

Backseat confessional

Something about riding in the car inspires all sorts of conversations and confessionals, doesn't it? A usually reticent boy will open up and relate detailed school interactions, thoughts about current events, intricacies of middle school social structure, plots of books, outlines of essays he's writing. The key is to remain mildly interested but not TOO interested if you know what I mean. Like most skittish creatures, middle school boys scamper away at the first hint of bright spotlight and inquiry.

Last week we were driving to scouts (or some other such thing) and a certain someone started describing how in one class his friends started dissing their parents, telling stories about how lame or clueless or (gulp) awful their parents are.

This should be interesting, I thought. Remember: skittish. Channel disinterest, disinterest, disinterest.

"Oh? Hmmm..."

"Yeah, I couldn't really think of anything really. But finally I told everyone how you used to mix up my shorts with Maddy's when you folded laundry into piles."

Well, whew. Internal fist pump. Though I couldn't decide if he was trying to compliment me or clear his conscience! 

I had to laugh. Don't get me wrong; there are tons of things he could have said about my cluelessness/bad parent moments. But as evidentiary exhibits of bad parents go, I'll take it. I love his rosy memory and am just thrilled that at least one of my kids doesn't have an encyclopedic memory of all of my less stellar moments. Because they're there. Oh, they're there. Just ask my other two.