Do you know?

Do you know that some of my days are the happiest I've lived? That after twelve years, my favorite date night is one spent laughing in bed with my husband?

Do you know that when I awake to the gentle nudge of a little hand attached to a young voice saying "Mama! Mom! Mommy! Are you up?", I shrug in the weighty haze of sleep, open my covers instinctively, and eagerly welcome into my nest one or both of my small offspring?

Do you know that I never tire of seeing my sons' faces as they first see mine in the pick-up line after school? Do you know that on the day they stay until 4:30pm because one loves chess and the other loves science, I miss them and dare the hours to pass more slowly?

Do you know that my boys saying, "I love you" is some of the sweetest music ever sung? That the notes they write me in awkward handwriting are perhaps the best love letters I've ever received? That I still smile when I hear my husband's key in the lock?

Do you know that in the moments I allow myself to consider what life would be like were something to happen to one of them, both of them, all of them, I can't stand it? Can't fathom it? Panic?

***

Do you know that I am sometimes crippled by tremendous anxiety? And that it is sometimes, or even often, brought on or exacerbated by my darling children and their love for me? 

Do you know what it feels like to need a good deal of alone time but to push that need away daily? As if you're running a marathon in the summer sun but must eschew the rehydration stations along the way.

Do you know what it's like to have almost nothing left for your partner when finally he or she returns home?

Do you know about the challenge of finding good child care and of affording it?

Do you know about counting on the minimum sleep/days at school/you name it and being cheated of that? Do you know what that does to you? To your friends? To those you don't know?

Do you know the feelings of failure and shame all of that knowledge elicits in women who want to do best by their children? And who feel that the smallest slips set them back dramatically? Mar their children beyond what's "normal"?

Do you know the feelings of failure and shame and worry that knowledge elicits in me?

***

Do you know that each time someone like Sarah Silverman or Hayden Panettiere or Brooke Shields or Gwyneth Paltrow or Catherine Zeta-Jones publicly admits to depression or anxiety or postpartum depression, so many women breathe a collective sigh of relief and are saved by knowing they are not alone?

Do you know that this is all hard? That life is hard? That motherhood is hard? That unearthing and living as our truest selves is hard? That gilding those lilies is a profound disservice to individual struggle? That honesty would make individual struggles less solitary?

Do you know that in unabashed truth there is not only relief but joy? Connection? Empowerment?

***

I know all of these things now. I know them even when they're hard to accept. When they're difficult to say aloud. When loved ones frown or shrink away from what I know and say aloud.

I know that my friends know these things. That readers know these things. That strangers do.

I want to own them and share them with you because when others have done so in the past, I am strengthened and made more brave. I am comforted. I am normed. As are you. 

And what better to know?

Time's determined march

Leaves are changing color and falling, but the high temperatures and humidity persist. My habanero plant is flowering again; it is confused. Summer and fall are duking it out in the final battle for seasonal primacy.

I step from my bath, dripping and thoughtful. Epsom salts and heat help my achy back, the scar on which hasn’t faded over the years as much as I’d have liked. I am prone to all manner of irregular freckles and moles; some need to be removed, while others are simply physical manifestations of my idiosyncrasies and can stay and remind me of such. 

I study my face and its newer wrinkles, my belly and hips. My eyes look tired. Things everywhere are both taut and soft, as aging bodies are wont. Thinner here, fuller there.

It occurs to me that the seasons aren’t the only things fighting for supremacy.

I used to know everyone in the school pick-up line. But during the past two years, waves of new families have reached the shore, and now, I sometimes feel slightly meek and anonymous. Friendships are being forged, over children and similarities I may never know. 

I haven’t felt that way in a long time, and I’m not sure if I like it or don’t.  

My big boy will graduate this year and move to the older campus. I think I like that but nostalgia grabs my heart and makes me unsure. I glean comfort from the fact that even if I’m then just part of the crowd, my younger one will tether me to the special place for a couple years more.

A friend writes with disbelief, “I can’t believe you volunteer at school so often.” I reply, “I love it because not only can I give back but also I can see my children as their best selves.” I had never thought about that before and am again struck by the power of writing without thinking, of responding without editing myself immediately and repeatedly.

There is a lesson there.

I awoke this morning as might a furious storm, swirling and messy and vexed. My agitation could have been for so many reasons, or none at all. I cried, and cooked. I talked to a dearest friend and kept cooking. I poured my soul into my friend and my food. And, later, into my boys.

They were both darling and not, thankful and spoiled, perfect and ugly. My mind told me to run, my heart urged me to stay. Both were right. I am no longer interested in the not-rare arguments about, for example, how much of a body one will willingly bathe. But I am inordinately grateful to be the one asked for advice and trusted with deep secrets.

Finally, the pregnant skies have opened, releasing their watery savings with an unapologetic gush. The parched earth yawns, gratefully lapping up what is shared. Mud splatters, newly sown seeds are unmoored. Wild animals take cover, my domesticated ones snooze obliviously, comfortable and secure on blankets and in beds.

Time marches inexorably on, battling towards the future and against the past. I see it in the seasons, and on my body. In the wave of new faces and the six years that have flown by, a blip in a vast sea, since my family joined the school community we hold so dear. In my dog’s gray whiskers, and in my husband’s too. In the rain that pours down and my sons as they mature.

In the belief in tomorrow and the fresh start it holds.

Raising children, raising adults

I mentioned to y'all that while in New York a couple weeks back, Shawn and I went to hear a former colleague of his, Julie Lythcott-Haims, present her new book, How to Raise an Adult. Julie is an impressive woman in many respects -Stanford undergrad, Stanford Law, lawyer, Dean of Freshman at Stanford, Obama for America volunteer, writer, TedX speaker. I really enjoyed her straightforward, warm personality, and have continued to think deeply about all she discussed.

Julie wrote this book after witnessing, during her professional tenure at Stanford, what can only be called a devolution: teenagers who arrived at college not as young adults but as kids; people more impressive on paper than in person; people who seemed less attuned to any budding sense of self than to their parents mapping their paths for them.

This was at Stanford, one of the most elite and competitive universities in the world. Arguably, these kids were those who’d most successfully navigated and completed the college admissions gauntlet our educational system presents: be the best at every turn, from the earliest age, and maybe you’ll be rewarded with a spot at a top-tier school.

And yet, what few until recently have stopped to ask is: At what cost?

In Julie's words, "when I spoke to the freshmen, they could tell me what they'd done but not why they'd done it...Chronologically, they were adults but they were largely incapable of fending for themselves...I began to wonder why childhoods were no longer preparing kids to be grown-ups. And what is getting in the way of people becoming who they really are?"

Let me be clear that Julie’s tone was not one of judgment but of concern. And, as a mother who’d found herself cutting her ten-year-old’s meat for him at dinner one night, also one of understanding. Too, as you probably suspect and as she stated, this is largely a middle- and upper-middle class phenomenon.

Julie noticed a dramatic increase over time of parents who brought their kids to college, helped them move in and settle, but then stayed -literally or virtually. And the kids were grateful. They didn’t want their parents to leave.

She recalled advising sessions during which students’ phones would ring multiple times, regularly they’d glance at the screen, say “Oh, it’s my Mom, do you mind if I take this?” and sometimes conference the parent in.

She described walking around campus and hearing students talking to their parents, often for the second or third or fourth time that day.

She started to see that helicopter parenting wasn’t just producing overly-scheduled, highly-accomplished people but also somewhat stunted kids who didn’t seem to know how to be their own selves, how to discover what made them tick, how to move through life independently.

Julie’s overarching concern is, as she said, “for humans:” for people who know who they are and can live authentically; who are tapped into their own minds and souls; who can embrace life as individuals rather than somewhat fearful automatons.

We have gotten to this “existentially impotent” state not out of neglect or lack of concern but because we parents are all trying so hard to do so right by our kids: “It’s part of the evolution of our love from umbilicus to our arms, from our breast to our early applause.”

But again, the questions: At what cost? To our kids? To ourselves?

*****

I still so clearly remember Jack’s first foray into team sports. He was almost three, and Oliver was a newborn. I signed Jack up for tot soccer, despite his protestations, because I thought it’d be nice for all of us to spend some time outdoors and for him to experience a group activity.

We gussied him in tiny shin guards and a cap (I did draw the line at cleats; no expensive cleats for two-year old soccer!) and bought a small, shiny ball pumped just so. Like Ferdinand under his cork tree, Jack proceeded to spend every practice in the backfield, picking flowers and identifying weeds instead of running laps and doing drills. I’m not sure he ever kicked his pretty ball.

I happened to find this all extremely dear and, never much of an athlete myself, didn’t care that he was not cottoning to soccer. He had tried to tell me that he wasn’t interested, yes?

When the “season” ended and the team leaders wanted to order trophies for the kids, I declined. The response, a subtle sucking-in of the breath, a vague grimace, surprised eyes, made me pause.

Jack had not played soccer, had not seemed to enjoy or even be interested in soccer, and so, in my opinion, did not deserve a soccer trophy. It made sense to me, but boy did I feel on the loser end of things. That sense of judgment  -I was the only one to say no- was an interesting pill to swallow.

It also showed me that ignoring the Joneses can take a lot of determination, especially in certain environments.

*****

I’ve thought about that soccer trophy many times in the nearly six years since and about praise in general. “What’s the end goal?” I ask myself. "What character traits might I instill by bestowing undeserved finery and zealous acclaim? What message would I send my kids if I disregarded their innate interests in favor of my own? Don't I want them to feel the power of their own agency?"

When we do what others do, either out of a desire to keep up or to avoid disadvantaging our children in any way, without stopping to think about the long-term consequences, we might later rue them. Even if the ramifications come from nothing more than sincerely having loved our kids so very much. Which is certainly where the praise comes in.

Oliver has to work hard to read, and Jack struggles with the process of getting his many thoughts from brain to paper. Those are the efforts that truly deserve parental help and praise. Where many of us get tangled is in generously praising or overly assisting that which doesn’t warrant it; the things kids can do on their own and should. Or the things they don't do, a la tot soccer.

When I think about the times in my own life when I learned the most, when I really glimpsed a piece of my truest self, when I figured out how to access that and unearth more, I see that they were all times in which I was alone in the struggle but could call upon the support I’d always had: I’d been given a great foundation but was then left to forge my own path.

So why wouldn’t I want to do the same for my kids? What does it teach them if I willingly decide for them, clean up after them, take away their chances to fall and fail and pick themselves up? 

I can do better in all these departments, and since hearing Julie speak, I've tried hard to backpedal the empty praise some, to remind the kids that doing things for their own pleasure is more important than mine (drawing a picture should make them happy; if I'm happy with it, that's great but shouldn't be the goal.), and to verbalize clearly that what I hope for them is that they find what makes them feel alive.

*****

One of the best gifts my parents gave me was saying, when I expressed my plan to change my major from environmental science to comparative religion, "That is SO cool." They didn't worry about how I'd support myself (or at least they didn't say that), they didn't say, "Hmm, that's odd. Are you sure?" They simply said, "That is SO cool." They said the same to my sister who majored in Acting and minored in Italian.

What that really acknowledged was a respect for the true passions we discovered and a belief in what we'd do by virtue of that. 

I carry all these things with me as I raise my kids, and they have coalesced into:

• a total commitment to teaching the boys to listen to their own hearts;
• a total commitment to not judging them for who and what those hearts are;
• a strong belief that I can't ensure that they'll always be happy but I can help them discover the best ways to find that for themselves;
• a strong belief that if they are always valued for the individuals they are, happiness is more likely to follow;
• and a desire to have them emerge from my eighteen-year womb as whole people who do not want me to move to their college town with them.

Do I expect that they'll try hard and do their best? Yes. But their best isn't mine and ultimately, their lives aren't mine either. I hope this means I'm raising adults. I think Mrs. Lythcott-Haims might say I'm decently on my way.