Brackish Reflections

It started with the photography business; as I put creative energy in to it, I started to neglect this.

And then the election ripped the ground from under my feet, and I was having a hard time finding how to exist here without ranting, wailing, crying. 

I feel out of practice. There are so many thoughts swirling, and I can't quite remember how I let them come to fill the screen. 

Over the past four years, the practice of documenting my family has brought be immeasurable joy. But truthfully, I started to become self-conscious saying the same things over and over again. Repeating myself and repeating what so many other mothers are saying across this wide web. But I want to return to that even if it means I will be repeating the same few ideas ad neuseam. Even if it means the occasional rant, now and again. Because there is value in giving my thoughts space to settle. In allowing myself moments of reflection. 

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Good Is Enough

We're "good enough" people. People who aren't inclined towards perfection. We have small ambitions. We're easily pleased with our efforts. 

Yesterday in the few moments after Tom came back from church and before I had to head to work, we worked outside, putting sections of the yard to bed for winter, letting Sena stoke a fire with damp leaves. Our goal was not lofty. We have no expectation that our yard will ever look like the visions I find myself pinning late at night when the house is still and quiet. But a few hours and a half dozen hands can make it look a little tidier, and that's all we ever really need. For things to be okay.

The mentality leaks into all facets of our lives. Our hobbies and parenting. The way we eat. The dinners I cook. The cleanliness of our home. Our finances. We aim for good enough, and it serves us well. Tom plays his homemade banjo knowing there are improvements he could make, seeing the flaws, but nevertheless, happily, proudly, often just a little too loudly. I post pictures that speak to my heart without concerning myself for long about their technical shortcomings. We are imprecise people.

This weekend I was talking to a friend about homeschooling. The past few weeks I have taken up a new mantra with old origins: "But first do no harm." Instead of worrying about all the things I'm not doing or about the myriad things I am doing badly, I'm concerned mostly that my children's love of learning is not dampened, that their happiness fills the crevices of their days. 

There will always be people out there doing things better than I do. People who stick with their plans, who abide by schedules and who make checklists that actually get completed. I am not one of them, and Tom isn't either. For better or worse, we seem to be raising children who follow in our non-competitive, unexacting footsteps.  I see it in the way Sena does math, the way Gus plays soccer.  It's a trait that will not always serve them well, but sometimes it will be just what they need. It will let them be content with what they have. To accept accept themselves for who they are. It will allow them the freedom to try and fail, or sometimes to try and quit. And they will be prepared to move on and try again. 

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Revised

One day, my kids will leave. They will meet people who have never met me. Or their dad. Or their aunts or uncles. Or their oma or poppy. They will meet all new people, who they will have to explain to. It might be on a third date, or while sitting on  a curb late night after a college party. They will have to tell people who they just met about the family that raised them by the edge of the Chesapeake. And I wonder what they will say. I wonder which parts they will include. Which parts they will skip over. The parts they'll exaggerate. The parts they are proud of. The parts that bring them shame.

I've perpetuated a myth, a story about my family that is only tenuously connected reality. I frequently speak and write the truth as I want it to be, rather than the truth that is. Sometimes, speaking it and writing it makes it real. And sometimes it makes me a fraud.

I remember trying to explain my family through writing in the creative writing class I took my freshman year of college. Tom was in the class too, but he was just a quirky guy I sort of had a crush on. The hours of explaining my family to him didn't happen for a few more years.  In that class we had to write a list poem: "ten things you have seen." Everyone's list seemed to include the sun setting or rising on some monument or landmark. We wanted to make sure everyone else knew that we were well traveled. I remember one of my lines was vaguely connected to a kayaking scene, and thinking of it embarrasses me now. These ten lines gave us the chance to define ourselves. I can't believe that made the cut.

Most of the lines were about my family. My mom praying. My dad crying. Even then, I knew that it would be hard to define myself apart from them.

I wonder how my children will define themselves. I wonder if they will think that their parents were eccentric or young or fun or interesting. Or will their parents just be parents. Just like everyone else's. People who tell them not to do things they want to do. People who don't understand them. People who are so painfully disconnected from the world they want to inhabit.

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Ordinary Happiness

This is a photograph of my mother, her now ubiquitous gin and tonic at her side. Gus swings in the background, his friend waiting his turn down the hill.  Just out of the frame my brother-in-law grills rosemary lemon chicken while Sena makes a salad inside. My friend Carrie is playing with our two boys as they swing and slide, speaking to one another in a language similar to English. Another friend's child, who I'm watching for the evening, sits in an azalea bush, her pink romper almost an identical shade of pink.  Molly is rocking Alamae to sleep while Tom's upstairs changing out of his suit. The record player spins, long since forgotten. The house is littered with toy trucks and abandoned glasses of water. The day has been full and messy and loud.

As I wander between conversations, I try to think about how to capture the feeling, the contentment, the happiness. I think about the reasons why I want to capture it, why I want to find my way to a computer to upload pictures and search for words. I think about the reasons why I started a blog, a word I still detest.

I've gotten better about not being jealous of people's things. I no longer spend hours coveting dresses and boots, bags and rugs and fancy rings. But I still get jealous of the lives other people lead, the fun I'm not having. I started a blog, in part, to remind myself that I am making the most of this life. I also started it as a way to keep myself accountable, a way to make sure that I keep making the most of it, that I don't get lazy and stop trying. Life is better when lived with intention. I have been lavished with blessing, but I also work to make it what I want and to appreciate what I have.  And sometimes while I watch my mother sip and stare, I think that I have hit my mark.

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Too Many Feelings

Childhood is short and fleeting. Read the caption on any single mother's Instagram post on the birthday of her child and you are sure to be reminded that "it goes so fast."

I am certainly no stranger to such sentimentality. I suffer from the same fear of time. I, too,  am plagued by nostalgia.

It's a big responsibility, these brief, fragile days of youth we are entrusted with. We must make the most of them. There are times when I worry I am squandering them, allowing them to be wasted while my children plug in so I can attend to the business of running a house or find a few moments for myself. That guilt serves as a powerful motivator. The knowledge that there are a finite number of days that we will share together makes me pack up a picnic to be eaten after a morning full of dentist appointments. It takes me to a park so my kids can hang from monkey bars and roll down hills, find dandelions to make wishes on and push each other down slides.  I didn't really want to do it -- there were a dozen things I felt like I should do-- but we were already going to be out and dressed and on the move, so why not make it special?

Lately I have found myself afraid of dying, afraid of the time when I will leave this earth. I believe in Jesus and heaven and eternal life, and even still, I'm afraid of departing this earth, this life. I'm not afraid of an untimely death. I'm afraid that 100 years, should I be given them, would still not be enough. I know I can't give myself a single extra day, but I know that I can do the best I can with the ones I am given. Yesterday it meant taking my kids to Quiet Waters Park. Tomorrow it means visiting friends. Sunday it means celebrating with my family. Each day it means I need to find joy and give it.

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Curious

I used to be embarrassed of my flakiness- the fleeting, but overpowering excitement I felt for ideas, aspirations, plans, and projects. I was ashamed that I don't always keep up with the changes and the hopes. I try things on for a while, spend countless hours daydreaming and researching and imagining. But then, I move on. Something new sparks my interest and gains my attention, leaving my past plans and projects in dusty corners of my memory and home. I frequently revisit them, show brief enthusiasm again before racing forward in another direction yet again.

Over the years my friends and family have been subjected to an endless barrage of my new next thing: plans for orphanages, restaurants, island life, farm life, adoption, raw foods, fermented foods, local foods, backyard chickens, renovations, photography, poetry, weaving, hobbies, businesses, trips, events, educational programs.

This is not the behavior of a successful artist, entrepreneur, or activist. To become good at something, to make money from it, or to inspire change, you have to stick with it. But I can't. Or rather, I don't.

But I am not as embarrassed by this trait anymore. At some point this fall, I heard Elizabeth Gilbert address the difference between passion and curiosity. The problem is, I'm more curious than I am passionate. I get excited about things and want to explore them, but nothing has ever rooted itself so deeply within me that I haven't shaken it off when a new prospect came my way. My life is not guided by some beautiful, encompassing passion.

There are so many things that I wish I had done. So many things that I still hope that I do. But I am no longer embarrassed by the things I haven't completed, the changes I haven't stuck to. I am always my happiest when I am planning and scheming and dreaming about what is to come. So I will continue to pursue my curiosity. I will continue to subject my family to my flights of fancy, and I will be all the happier for it.

Edit: So apparently I had almost the exact same set of thoughts exactly a year ago: The Price of Contentment

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Wonder

The other day I heard someone say, "Have a wonderful day. " The man sounded so cheerful and earnest. I knew that he truly wished that the person he was speaking to would have a great day. However, I wasn't so sure he actually meant for the other person to have a wonderful day, though maybe, of course, he did. Had he intentionally used that word?

How often are our days full of wonder? How often do we allow ourselves to be pleasantly surprised with the beauty around us? How often do we let a sense of surprise sneak into perception?

Every year of my life, I see more things. I experience more things. I meet more people. I am increasing things I know, and decreasing things that I don't, which is by and large, a great thing. But it means that it becomes harder and harder to come by things that feel novel.

I'm trying to remember to look more deeply, to stay quiet, to listen, to inhale. As I sat in the dark fields on Friday night, as I drove into work this morning. I'm teaching Fahrenheit 451, and it's funny how often the books I'm teaching start to seep into my everyday. I don't want to be a part of the culture Bradbury feared. I don't want to stop paying attention because if I do, I'm afraid of all the things I might miss. There are things full of wonder out there.

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