It’s rare that a book makes me cry. Besides Dobby’s death in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the end of the children’s books, On the Day You Were Born and Love You Forever, I can’t recall another time I teared up when reading a story. Enter the oddball characters and off-beat storyline of Anxious People by Fredrik Backman, the best-selling author of A Man Called Ove. Backman’s story about a would-be bank robber who “failed to rob a bank but instead managed to spark a hostage drama,” combines quirky characters and a seemingly disjointed storyline to deliver a surprisingly profound message about love, friendship, connection, forgiveness, and the commonality of pain, desperation, hope, the need to be rescued and the ability to be someone else’s saving grace.

Despite the humorous approach Backman takes as he unfolds the story’s plot about a bank robber with a toy gun who attempts to rob a cashless bank and then not-completely-on-purpose takes an apartment full of strangers hostage, he hits all the feels when he poignantly reflects on relationships, marriage, parenthood, life and death.

His reflections on parenthood were the “Someone-get-me-a-tissue-dammit!” moments for me.  When I read this book in April, I was nearing the 7-month mark in a complicated medical saga that included a two-month local hospital stay and 6 weeks of medical tests and procedures at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, followed by several more weeks of recovery. I spent all this time either in a bed or in a recliner, which provided me with plenty of opportunities to do a lot of nothing except watching tv, reading and thinking. A lot of those thoughts took me to the past – in the “life flashing before your eyes” kind of way that happens when you’re not sure if you’re going to live to have much, if any, of a future (although my prolonged recovery was more of a “life plodding before your eyes” situation). I remember feeling especially reflective at Christmas time, when I had a drain out my side and tube in my arm to accommodate a 12-hour-a-day nutritional IV, and I couldn’t do much of anything for myself. I was in no shape to take part in any of the typical pre-Christmas insanity I always vow to do better to control but never do because Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without decorating, shopping, baking, cooking, wrapping, sending out cards, going to parties, hosting family, overspending, overeating, overdrinking, and overdoing. Right?  Anyway, I spent a lot of time during the holiday season ruminating over what this year wasn’t going to be, remembering what the previous years had been, and wishing for the chance to re-do so much of what I decided I had done wrong in the past, not just at the holidays, but over the course of my kids’ entire childhoods. There were regrets. There was the obvious realization that there is no flux-capacitor-equipped DeLorean that can take me back in time to re-do anything. And because of that, there were also a lot of tears.

As my physical and emotional health improved, I found I was being less hard on and more forgiving of myself for a lot of things, but when I read the following passage from Anxious People a few months later, those regretful-mom emotions came right back: “Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you’re always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong, you’re forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing. We don’t take our eyes off them for days at a time, but then you read just one text message and it’s as if all your best moments never happened. No one goes to see a psychologist to talk about all the times they weren’t hit in the head by a swing as a child. Parents are defined by their mistakes.” Ouch.

I can’t say for sure if this is how most children truly feel, but I suspect it’s pretty accurate for a good number of them. I know for sure it’s how I’ve sometimes felt about myself as a mom, and I have plenty of friends who’ve told me they’ve felt the same way. Parenthood comes with tremendous responsibility, and with that responsibility comes a tremendous amount of pressure that we get everything right. We know that screwing up anything means the possibility of screwing up everything for the small humans we promised to protect even before we saw them for the first time. Because, for a brief but crucial moment in their lives, we are their world. So, we walk around with this parental anxiety, worrying that maybe we haven’t done enough – or maybe we’ve done too much – and maybe what we’ve done (or haven’t done) has caused harm to those little people we love more than we imagined was possible. Then we end up focusing on our mistakes, on the moments we feel we were at our worst as parents, and we tend to beat ourselves up for them over and over in a way we never would do to someone else.

How many of us promised ourselves we’d never use the tv as a babysitter and promptly broke that promise when we realized it was either sitting our kids down in front of the tv or sitting ourselves down in front of a bottle of our favorite alcohol that was going to get us through the day? Sure, we ended up wishing Barney would become extinct, or Thomas would derail, or Dory would drown after hearing “just keep swimming” for the hundredth time, but our sanity ended up being more valuable than attaining some impossibly high standard of what a “good parent” was supposed to be.

We tended to break a lot of those “good parent” promises we made to ourselves over the years. You know, like the one where we were never going to feed our kids frozen waffles for dinner but then did pretty much every summer night because waffles were quick and delicious (by kid standards), and then we could go back to hanging out with our neighbors until it was way past our kids’ bedtime. Then we’d break another rule and hose the kids off in the driveway instead of giving them a proper bath before reading them the shortest story we could find and putting them to bed. That way we could get back to our neighbors, beer in one hand and baby monitor in another, because we had convinced ourselves that monitors worked across the street and two houses down, even as we talked and laughed and drunk-sang American Pie and Paradise by the Dashboard Light with each other.

To be fair, I can’t speak for all of us. Maybe that was just me. And really, moments like those weren’t awful for my kids. They liked watching tv and eating waffles and staying up past bedtime with their friends and not having to take a bath. But there were also moments when I lost patience instead of doing my best to keep it, when I yelled instead of demonstrated the control I should’ve been exemplifying, punished when I could’ve done a better job creating teachable moments, unintentionally knocked them down when I could’ve intentionally built them up, hurt them in ways I didn’t mean to when all I really meant to do was love them. And those are the moments I wish I could go back to and tell my younger self to be more patient, more calm, more merciful, more intentional, more like the kind of mom my kids needed and deserved.

It’s incredibly difficult to see with clarity the right way to handle a situation when we’re in thick of parental life, responsible for not only keeping alive the children we brought into the world (or adopted or became a stepparent to), but for keeping them safe, teaching them values, making sure they’re healthy and educated and socialized and given opportunities to discover who they are and what they love to do and how they can use their gifts to contribute to the world. And it’s almost impossible to consistently make thoughtful, rational decisions when we’re overwhelmed and exhausted by the responsibility of it all. But when enough years have passed, when young children have grown older and parents have grown wiser, the gift of time slowly unwraps itself and reveals the clarity we couldn’t see all those years ago.

Backman writes, “It’s hard to explain to (an older child) when you were little and I walked too fast, you would run to catch up with me and take hold of my hand, and that those were the best moments of my life. Your fingertips in the palm of my hand. Before you knew how many things I’d failed at.”

There’s so much truth in that, the longing to return to the days when our kids helped us be the best version of ourselves, the time before they learned that the best version of us sometimes got lost in the crowd of different people parenthood required us to be – breadwinners, caregivers, teachers, chefs, doctors, nurses, chauffeurs, event planners, accountants, coaches, referees, spiritual guides, therapists, disciplinarians, and cheerleaders. It’s no wonder so many of us got stuck in this identity traffic jam and lost our way. Life would hand us a situation and we needed to figure out which of these people the situation forced us to be. We had to prioritize and try to make the right choice. And sometimes who we needed to be wasn’t even a choice, it was a necessity, or often it was simply a reaction to a situation we didn’t have time to really think through. It wasn’t easy getting things right every time. As a matter of fact, getting things right every time isn’t even possible given our inherent imperfections. And there were days we felt we got most things wrong. Those are the days many of us wish we could return to and, like a GPS, recalculate our route. Then we could turn around and choose a better way.

But we can’t do that. We can’t change the past and we can’t relive the times we regret. What we can do, if we’re so inclined, is tell our kids that we were just doing the best we could with what we understood about parenting at the time (which was, let’s face it, not a hell of a lot). Then we can ask them to try to understand the intent of our actions, to forgive the unintended impact those actions had, and to love us despite our mistakes, the way we have always unconditionally (though imperfectly) loved them.

There’s a meme I saw recently that said, “When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your parents grow up.” I think it’s as true that when we were parents of young children, we didn’t realize how much more growing up we had to do either. So, it’s important to remind ourselves that despite our frustrations with our kids when they made mistakes, we forgave them, we loved them, and we had faith (at least we really, really hoped) that someday they’d figure it out. And I think we need to grant ourselves the same grace. While we can never go back to those exhilarating, anxious, crazy-beautiful, young-parent years and fix those things we realize now we broke, we can learn from them. Maybe they can help us be the best version of our parental-selves now to our adult children, because sometimes it seems they need us more as adults than they did when they were kids. And as they’ve grown up, so have we. We know better now. We can do better now.

To quote Backman a final time, “We do our best. Then we try to find a way to convince ourselves that that’ll just have to…be enough. So we can live with our faults without drowning.” 

So, just keep swimming, parents. Don’t let the memory of your faults drag you under. You navigated some pretty tough waters, rode out some choppy waves and weathered some big storms. And you loved your kids through it all, the best way you knew how. Now it’s time to love yourself.

When Hillary Clinton published It Takes a Village in January 1996, I remember being indignant over her promoting the ideology that parents weren’t the ones solely responsible for raising their own kids. I mean, by that time I had a 2-year-old and a 9-month-old, so of course I knew better. Right?

Looking back, I’m not sure why I expected that the responsibility for loving, nurturing, educating, teaching values and faith practices, instilling a work ethic, cultivating creativity, modeling discipline and dedication, promoting teamwork and personal accountability, navigating relationships, and providing for the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health needs of children should or even could rest squarely on the shoulders of two people who just really wanted to give parenting a shot at best and may have just simply managed to figure out they had interlocking parts at worst. Successful business icons and entertainers have multiple assistants, athletes have coaches and trainers, the president has a cabinet and staff, chefs have sous chefs, a growing number of people have (or should have) therapists, and we all rely on Google to tell us anything we want to know about everything. We count on remotes, GPS, Siri, Alexa, Amazon, Webex and Zoom so we don’t have to get up, look up or show up for anything. So what’s wrong with accepting the fact that parents can’t – and shouldn’t – do by themselves what is arguably the most difficult job in the world?

I can’t recall the exact date when I realized that maybe I was wrong about the whole “it takes a village to raise a child” concept, which originated as an African proverb and means it takes an entire community of people to interact with children in order for those children to experience and grow in a safe, healthy environment. But I do remember the exact incident that led to that particular whack-upside-the-head moment. It was my oldest daughter’s first day of preschool in ’97, just a few weeks before her 4th birthday. Her preschool was held in the nursery portion of our church, the nursery she’d been playing in every Sunday since she was about a year old. She had never met her teachers before, but the environment was a familiar, comfortable, fun place and she felt safe and welcomed. At least that’s what I told myself as we sat next to each other on the floor that first morning when parents were expected to stay with their children for class and she looked at me and said “You can go, Mommy. This is MY school.” Multiple times. She even tried to push me away. Ouch.

I was a stay-at-home mom. At that point I hadn’t spent more than maybe a weekend with my husband or an overnight in the hospital when I had her brother away from her. My husband traveled frequently for work, so she was used to being away from him but not from me. Yet there I was watching other 3-year-olds clinging to their moms, crying at the thought of being left behind in this unfamiliar and frightening new place, and my daughter was telling me to get lost. Clearly, she needed something – longed for something – I couldn’t give her. Her preschool instincts about learning were wiser than my adult preconceptions about parenting. It was her school. And it was her mind that was to be developed, her creativity that was to be inspired, her beliefs and abilities that were to be explored, her values and goals that were to be revealed, her life that was about to unfold. So two days later when school started, I let go of her hand and watched as she took the hand of one of her teachers and walked away from me without looking back. She walked head on into a new, exciting world full of other people who were more qualified and prepared than I was to help her find her way through it. That day may have been as important for me as it was for her.

Since then, our family’s village has grown so large it’s probably more accurately described as town. My four kids’ unique life courses have been theirs alone to choose and follow, but they’ve been forged by the ideas, talents, wisdom, expertise, words and actions of hundreds of teachers, professors, coaches, directors, family members, friends, parents of friends, church leaders, physicians, counselors, co-workers, and even musicians, authors, gamers, athletes and the immeasurable number of thoughts and opinions shared by others on social media (the good, the bad, the apocalyptic). The influence my husband and I have had on them is still there somewhere – likely being discussed during intense therapy sessions, I’m sure – but it’s buried under years of friendships, schooling, church, athletics, music, theater, work, travel and marching to the beat of their own hearts. And that, I now believe, is how it should be.

Parents are setting themselves up for futility, frustration and failure if they buy into the delusion that they’re capable of being everything and everyone their kids need to become healthy, well-adjusted, capable adults. We aren’t. We don’t expect neurosurgeons to rebuild cars, concert pianists to paint murals, or football players to hit home runs (Bo Jackson excluded), so why do we set such high expectations of ourselves as parents? That’s not to say we don’t have obligations and shouldn’t do everything we can to love, teach and provide for our kids and to help them discover their gifts, work through their challenges and make the most of their opportunities. It’s just that we shouldn’t believe we’re the only ones capable of doing or that others can’t do some of these things better than we can.

There’s a fantastic barn raising scene in the movie Witness in which an entire Amish community comes together to frame a new structure in one day (Actually, the whole movie is fantastic, and if you haven’t seen Harrison Ford in his prime playing a cop who goes undercover to protect a young Amish boy who witnessed a murder, have you even really lived?). Every person, whether adult or child, has a role to play in the process. Together they work to clear, haul, lift, hammer, saw, level, cook, serve and clean, and at the (literal) end of the day, there’s an unfinished structure standing in front of them – one that still needs a roof and walls and a lot of Pinterest-inspired interior decorating – but one that’s been made solid and strong because of the efforts of many. What a great metaphor for the concept of raising a child into a young adult.

We went through our own “apartment raising” experience last week as my husband and I helped our youngest daughter get settled into her new place, which is an adventurous 1,154 miles from our home in Wisconsin. After graduating in December with a music education degree, her spring substitute teaching and directing jobs were Covided (that’s a verb, right?) and she moved back home in March to nanny and to resume her job search, which led to an incredible opportunity to teach at a private academy in small town in Maine. Students at the academy live as close as a couple of blocks away to as far away as China, Korea, and the Ukraine, and because it’s a boarding school, she was invited to live on campus as a kind of resident assistant in exchange for free rent and dining services. As a new music teacher looking for a job at a time when schools are debating in-person vs. virtual formats, the arts are even more of a second thought than usual and large-group singing may be banned indefinitely, she jumped at the offer and took it sight unseen except for what Google maps and the academy’s website could show her. She was everything you’d want your young adult child to be when an opportunity like this comes up – overjoyed, optimistic, energized, excited…all those positive adjectives that are usually followed by an exclamation point. And I was all those things for her. For me, not so much. Yet I had moved about the same distance away from my home in upstate New York to attend college and I remembered that spirit of adventure and independence and desire to create my own life in my own place. How could I begrudge one of my children the same opportunity, especially when one of my goals as a parent is to help raise kids who are strong, independent, adventurous, confident and dedicated to making the world (or at least their part of it) better?

And so there I was last week, helping her unpack, setting up her apartment, shopping for the extras she needed, touring her office and the academy’s performing arts center, exploring her new town, meeting some of the people who are now her co-workers and occasionally fighting back tears knowing that pretty soon we’d be driving back home to the place she grew up, which was now the place she’d just be visiting from time to time.

We took her out to dinner the night before we left, and waiting at the restaurant when we arrived were dear friends, former band/choir/drama parents whose three boys’ lives intersected so often with our three younger children we pretty much felt like co-parents rather than mere friends. They had moved from Wisconsin to Massachusetts over a year ago and were so excited to work with us to surprise “the daughter we never had,” they didn’t care at all it was going to be a 5-hour trip there and back to do so. As we ate and chatted, I watched my daughter sitting next to her “other mom” and started thinking about how much I knew they cared for her and would drop everything to drive to her if she needed them. And I thought about the die-hard Packers fan we met earlier that day who was so overjoyed he was going to be working with an authentic Cheesehead, he seemed to have adopted her already, and her other co-workers who told her how happy they were she was there and how much she was going to love it, and the fact my sister in NJ would be visiting the following week when she took her son to tour colleges, and that my parents and other sister were also only a few hours away. Her new village had welcomed her with open arms, already embracing her as one of its own, and she was hugging it right back.

After dinner, our friends left for home and we drove back to our hotel where our daughter had parked her car earlier in the evening. This is where we were to say our goodbyes as she was heading back to her apartment and we were planning on getting up to head out of town the next morning. So, after a couple of big hugs and a few big tears, we watched her get in her car and drive away to join that village that will work with her to help raise a new generation of children. And even though she didn’t say it, I heard the echo of her sister’s little voice reminding me “This is my school. You can go, Mommy.”

It takes a village to raise a child. Sometimes it takes a child to teach us that.

I’ve started writing this blog more often than the term “uncertain times” has been used to describe the past couple of months. And as someone who wishes that and every other coronavirus-related phrase would disappear from our lexicon, I haven’t wanted to add to the cacophony of all those “We need to care about people,” “We need to care about freedom,” “We need to care about the economy,” “We need to care about all three” voices that make themselves figuratively heard through posting articles and memes in social media. You know, those things that do nothing to change anyone else’s beliefs but serve to remind everyone just one. more. time. who they believe we should(n’t) listen to and what we should(n’t) be doing? Nobody needs another virtual lecture.

Besides, it’s been hard trying to put into words all I’ve been observing, thinking and feeling lately, mostly because what I observe, think and feel seems to change from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. In March I watched with optimism as our school’s staff made the daunting leap from in-person instruction to virtual teaching in literally (and I mean “literally” literally) two days and how promising it all seemed when we believed we’d be welcoming our students back in two weeks, which almost immediately changed to three weeks…then a month…then not until the fall. And now even that is all in question. Feelings of hopefulness have changed to feelings of helplessness and back again more times than Moira Rose changes wigs, which, if you’ve been watching Schitt’s Creek during quarantine, you’ll know is a Schitt ton.

Anyway, it’s been hard enough trying to understand all these fluctuating coronamotions I’ve been experiencing let alone being able to express them in any meaningful way. Then my daughter showed me a video by Nadia-Bolz Weber. Nadia is a good friend of my former pastor, who introduced me to her writings, recordings and insightful wisdom several years ago. She’s a Lutheran pastor and NYT best-selling author who’s a heavily-tattooed, frequently foul-mouthed and beautifully-expressive former addict who knows what it’s like to live hard, love immensely, embrace grace and to believe in the good even when mired in the bad. In her message “Optimism won’t save me…but neither will worrying about shit” (you can check out the article and video here) she writes about the “Stockdale Paradox,” a phrase popularized by author Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, and says “So the “Stockdale Paradox” is the ability to hold two opposing but equally true things at once: You must have faith that you will prevail in the end. And at the same time you must confront the brutal facts of your current reality.”

Yes. This. This is why a mom of a high school senior can feel both thankful she’ll be able to spend more time her son during these last few months before college and devastated knowing he’s missing his prom, spring sports season, final concerts and graduation. Or why a couple can enjoy “attending” church on a Sunday morning from the comfort of their couch while drinking coffee and wearing their pjs but still longing for the personal connection with their faith family that can only come from worshiping together. Or why someone can be grateful for the ability to work from home and having the resources to help his kids learn remotely while desperately missing his co-workers and fantasizing about the bus showing up to take his kids away for 8 glorious hours. Or why we can appreciate feeling closer to far-away family and friends due to newly-discovered platforms like Zoom while we regret not being able to be together with our nearby family and friends in person.

I think at this point it’s fairly safe to say we’re all struggling with our own version of this confusing and frustrating dichotomy– that while most of us have faith we will prevail someday, there are times when the brutal facts of our current situation beat us so far down that “someday” seems unreachable.

And so, after thinking about all of this during a walk this morning, I decided to come home, delete all my previously-attempted blogs, play my poetic-license card and rewrite the words Charles Dickens penned in A Tale of Two Cities in an attempt to reflect on this paradoxical time that’s shaping our future while it’s writing our history.

It is the worst of times; it is the best of times.

It is an age of disappointment; it is an age of contentment.

It is the epoch of fear; it is the epoch of courageousness.

It is the season of isolation; it is the season of connection.

It is the spring of defeat; it is the summer of resilience.

It is a time of panic and of patience. Of sadness and of strength.

Of frustration and of fulfillment. Of heartache and of healing.

Of loneliness and of togetherness. Of confusion and of comfort.

It’s a time of protest and of praise. Of confrontation and of compassion.

Of lecturing and of listening. Of silence and of song.

It’s a time of doubt and of daring. Of inexperience and of innovation.

Of resistance and of rest. Of frustration and of faith.

It’s a time that divides us and a time that unites us.

It’s a time that challenges us and a time that changes us.

It’s a time when we may simultaneously wallow in remorse of what’s been lost and wonder in amazement of what’s been newly realized.

It’s a time to not be ok and a time to be ok with that.

It’s a time to remember the promise that neither death nor life, neither fears for today nor worries about tomorrow nor doubts about right now, that nothing in creation – even COVID-19 – can separate us from God’s love even if it temporarily separates us from each other.

It’s a time to believe that no matter how brutal our current reality is, we will prevail.

Someday.

In time.

There are three things you can count on seeing this time of year on Facebook: 1. Summer-bashing, fall-idolizing seasonists who insist on posting about pumpkin-spice-this and countdown-to-Christmas-that, 2. Fantasy Football frenzyists (I like making up words in my spare time) who clearly can’t wait for the regular season to begin, and 3. Moms of school-aged children who post first day of school pictures and pose the stereotypical and rhetorical question, “Where did the time go?”

No offense to everyone who writes those words (which means I’m about to offend everyone who writes those words), but I don’t think we really want the answer because in reality we all know better, and I think many of us (myself included) feel pangs of mom-guilt as a result. So why do we keep asking as if we really have no clue how time passed without us realizing it, as if our inability to notice has all been beyond our control, as if we’re looking at our children the way we look at that single sock that comes out of the dryer after we know it entered the washing machine with its twin? It’s not a mystery. Time doesn’t “go” anywhere. It’s with us all the…ahem…time, and its consistent, predictable, irreversible passing fills us with everything from anticipation, excitement, joy, dread, regret or sadness depending on what “it” is that we’re experiencing at any moment.

Time lumbers as slowly as a pregnant woman struggling to stand during those 9 months of morning sickness, swollen bellies and feet, middle of the night trips to the bathroom, mood swings, hangry episodes and compulsive nesting rampages. Probably even more slowly if you’re a prospective adoptive parent waiting for your soon-to-be child to be born and/or for the courts to muddle through the legalities of adoption.

It rocks along with us during those quiet, shadow-filled middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes, when all we hear is the creaking of our chair, our soft, lullaby-humming voices, the steady tick-tock of the clock on the wall and our thoughts wondering if we’ll ever sleep through the night again. It’s also there during those not-so-quiet colicky nights when all we hear is the screaming of our child and our thoughts screaming for peace and sleep and begging for someone to take this wailing waif away for just a little while.

Time crawls along as our babies become independent and curious and their own number one health hazard, and we spend our days teaching, playing, corralling and saving them from their fearless ambitions to eat everything they find or climb everything they see.

It toddles steadily as we chase our unsteady new walkers around the house or the yard or anywhere else we happen to go and try to (unsuccessfully) convince them that sitting in the stroller or cart makes life easier for all of us, even though we know it makes it easier only for us and way more constraining – and frustrating – for them. (This is when we bring out bribes like snacks or special toys that appease them for about 17 nanoseconds, by which time they realize none of this is allowing them to get out and run away).

Time runs alongside us as we’re off to play dates and preschool and peewee soccer practices, and it does its best to reign us in so we can spend some calmer moments reading stories, playing games, watching whatever it is that’s all the rage and, for those lucky enough with tired tykes who nap, to manage to get something for ourselves done…like maybe read one page of a book before realizing, dammit, those toilets need to be cleaned and laundry needs to be folded and the kids will probably want to eat some kind of meal before bed.

It drives with us to school and music lessons and dance lessons and practices and games and concerts and performances and meetings and conferences. Then time escorts our kids to dances and football games and parties and dates on its own because our chauffeuring services are no longer needed. And before we’ve figured out what time has been up to, it leads them from our homes to their first dorm rooms and towards lives that are no longer a part of ours (well, except for the financial part, that is).

And it’s then when we shrug our shoulders, shake our heads and ask, “Where did the time go?” But we know the truth: Time didn’t go anywhere without us. It’s been ticking away right next to us while we’re busy either trying to ignore it or wishing it away or begging it to slow down.

We can’t wait until our nine months of morning sickness, heartburn, food cravings, unpredictable bladders, swollen feet, sore backs and Braxton Hicks contractions are over…until we’re in labor and then we want that to be over before we can yell “Where the hell’s my epidural?!” We pray for our newborns to sleep through the night because we’re tired of being tired, and we long for the day we can go out without our hair looking like Einstein’s and clothes that aren’t covered in baby food, snot and that piece of a mashed-up Cheerio or gummy fruit that stuck to our backs after we picked up our toddler. We get sick of the constant mess of toys, games, books and art supplies strewn about the house and we curse stepping on Legos and Play-Doh and finding glitter everywhere, longing for the day our house may look like those in the latest Clearly Children Don’t Live Here magazine. We are too exhausted at night to be excited to read stories or check homework or bake 5 dozen cookies for whatever our kid told us at 7:00 pm her class needed tomorrow morning. We look forward to when we no longer have to be in three places at the same time and when we can stop organizing carpools because our kids can finally get themselves to where they need to be. And while all this is going on, in the back of our minds we tell ourselves “You’re going to miss this someday.” But in the front of our minds, the part that speaks loudest to us at moments like this, we say “But I wouldn’t miss it right now!”

We tell our kids to hurry up, to stop dawdling, to “come here right now,” to finish dinner, to get in the car, to get out of the car, to do this and that faster. And then they do. They grow up and we miss it because their growth comes in those little moments, those often exhausting, frustrating, super-chaotic moments where they are learning to be the independent, creative, caring, responsible people we’re trying to teach them to be. And then, just when we’re enjoying the human beings they’ve turned into, they’re gone. It happens to most of us if we’ve done the jobs we’ve hoped to do. It happened to me three times already and it will happen again in two short weeks when we move our baby to college. And my heart aches while at the same time it’s so full of love and happiness for all my kids who have moved away and onto the rest of their lives.

Their time with me is done. Now their time is all their own to manage – to take, to save, to bide, to waste, to lose, to kill, to wonder where it went. And I pray that when they’re parents they’ll be more careful with it than I was – that they’ll pay closer attention to its passing, that they’ll treasure with their children the moments I once wished away with them. I hope they will have learned from the mistakes made by all those parents who’ve come before them – those who didn’t understand until it was too late.

But will they?

Only time will tell.

Pretty soon we’ll be seeing posts from people sharing links to articles and blogs offering helpful and healthy suggestions to parents (mostly moms) who are dropping off a child at college for the first time this fall, encouraging us to be supportive, patient, understanding and excited for our child’s new-found independence even in the midst of our own (assumed) sadness. With all due respect to the good intentions of these advice-givers, they’re about as helpful to a mom of a college freshman as ice chips are to a mom in labor. I’ve been through three college freshman move-in days and am facing my fourth (and final) in just a couple of weeks, and I can tell you putting into practice their well-meaning advice is as easy as it was as putting into practice any of the words of wisdom in What to Expect When You’re Expecting that followed those that said, “Congratulations! You’re expecting!”

There is no “This is how you beat the ‘my-baby-is-abandoning-me-for college’ blues” cure that fits all of us. Some moms are buying themselves a case of wine to celebrate the fact they’ve successfully seen a child into his/her legal years and are rid of the immediate obligations and frustrations that came from getting them to that point. Some are buying themselves a case of wine because they know it’s harder to miss someone if they have their friends, Merlot and Chard, to spend quality time with. Some are buying themselves a case of wine simply because it’s just what they do on a Friday. All valid reasons.

All moms are different and the experiences we’ve had raising our kids are different, too. The ones we read about in books or see on TV way more often than not don’t match our reality. So don’t worry about what you’re “supposed” to do and how you’re “supposed” to act. You have earned the right to make this moment your own just as much as your child has. You have endured morning sickness, stretch marks, labor, colic, temper tantrums, carpools, PTA meetings, school dances and carnivals, teacher conferences, Girl Scout cookie sales, sports practices and games, music lessons, sleepovers, concerts, plays, marching band competitions and last minute trips to Walmart to buy food for the class party your son had promised everyone you’d provide two weeks ago but just got around to telling you about at 10:00 the night before.

So don’t be afraid to have a meltdown when you say goodbye. Remember when you told your kids it was time to leave the park/playground/pool? Or you asked them to share their toys with their siblings? Remember the screams of “Noooooooooo!!!! I don’t wannnnnna!!!!!” followed by the dramatic floor-flop, the flailing of arms and legs, the scrunched-up red faces and subsequent sobs that emanated from those tiny bodies who just earlier in the morning, when you finally let them have a Pop Tart with breakfast, told you in their cutest, most darling voices ever that you were the best mommy in the world? Long hugs, getting choked up as you’re helping your child unpack, ugly-crying when it’s time to drive away and leave him/her behind…they’re all acceptable forms of allowing them to relive those moments from the other side of the tantrum.

But don’t be afraid not to have a meltdown either. It’s ok – and probably healthier – if you are so happy for your child that it’s impossible to be sad for yourself. It’s also ok – and definitely healthier – if, because your relationship has been strained, that you’re looking forward to the emotional break you and your child need to take from each other. A mother’s heart is big and complex enough that it carries an ample supply of both joy and pain intermixed with the abounding love it holds, and which of those dominates her feelings at any given time is the one that happens to be momentarily winning the emotional tug-of-war game that is constantly going on inside of it.

The truth is, there is no right or wrong way for us to handle our children growing up and moving out and leaving behind pieces of their childhood for us to box up and stick on a shelf. There’s no one way of coming to terms with the fact our role as a mom has forever changed – that our kids will (hopefully) always need us but never again in the same way they did the first 18 years of their lives. There’s no multi-step process that teaches us how to celebrate the young adults they’ve become while mourning the loss of the little people they once were. There’s no way to stop the memories that rush back when walking past an empty park on a beautiful and quiet Sunday morning and being able to hear the sounds of our kids playing and laughing and screaming “Again!” when we pushed them on the swing or hung on to them while riding down a slide. And there’s nothing wrong with us if those memories make us smile or make us cry. Or both.

The more I think about it, dropping a child off at college for the first time – whether it’s your oldest or your youngest – is very much like giving birth. There’s a lot of labor involved, which usually includes an excessive amount of sweating and, occasionally, swearing. And even though you’re trying to cram your child and her belongings into a tiny room instead of un-cramming her from your tiny womb, there’s a considerable amount of pushing required. But when the hard work is over and it’s time to hold that perfect, beautiful person in your arms, instead of whispering in his ear “Hello, little one. I’m so glad I get to be your mom. You have my heart and I’ll love you forever,” you whisper “Goodbye, little one. I’m so glad I’ve been able to be your mom. You still have my heart and I’ll love you forever.”

And there’s no book, no article, no words of advice that can prepare you for that.

There’s something about sitting on a beach and gazing at the ocean while your husband is somewhere at the bottom of it (hopefully learning how to successfully SCUBA dive) that allows you the chance to do things you just don’t have free time to do when you’re at home, like unsubscribing from all of the emails you never meant to sign up for, or those you did mean to sign up for and now regret because they inundate your inbox every. single. flippin. day. It also gives you a chance to think thoughts that are as deep as the sea in front of you or the pockets of the people at your resort who are here for their annual two-week visit.
Today it’s making me think about the need for all of us – whether we think we need it or not (count me in as usually one of those “not” people) – to unsubscribe from the demands of our daily routines, or the toxic people in our lives, or the stressors that don’t allow us to be who we want to be, or the cruel thoughts we often think about ourselves that tell us we’re not good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, loved and valued enough, worthy enough or just not enough enough.
If you’re familiar with the Enneagram, you’ll understand when I say I’m a 3 – The Achiever (if you aren’t familiar with it, Google it and take the online quiz. Better yet, order the book The Wisdom of the Enneagram. It’s a fascinating personality profiler and the most accurate one I have seen). Achievers are, according to this theory: “The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious.” We 3s feel valued when we are seen as being capable, reliable, and accomplishing what we say we’ll do and then some, ideally before we say we’ll have it done. Like all personality types, there are times when our tendencies can be healthy, positive and fulfilling and times when they aren’t so much…or at all really. Like, for 3s, when our need to remain driven and focused and to accomplish overrides our need for rest, relationships and pursuing things that bring us joy. Oh, sure, there is joy in finishing a project or knowing you helped someone by doing some task, but it’s not the same as the joy you can get from zooming around the Caribbean in a Hobey Cat or having free cocktails served to you at a swim-up bar. Our habits can bring us closer to the happiness we deserve (yes, deserve!) and the people we love, or they can take us far away from both. So when we feel the tide pulling us away from the kind of life we want, maybe it’s time to unsubscribe from the behaviors, thoughts and people that are not allowing us to be, as author Mathew Kelly says, “the best version of ourselves.”
It’s not easy to do this. I know. I’m awful at it. I like to achieve. To do. To work long after everyone else is finished. And I know I’m not alone. Too often most of us get so caught up in all the stuff we (tell ourselves we) have to do, we (tell ourselves we) don’t have time for the stuff we really should do. You know, the stuff we would want for our kids- like a job that makes them happy instead of rich (although both are ok!), or a place to live that feels like home (but not actually at home when they reach a certain age), or a partner who allows them to be themselves, or the ability to travel, or time to just connect with their friends, family or even themselves. I’m not sure why we decide we don’t need these things for ourselves, but it seems we have a much easier time seeing their need for others but not for us. It’s not until we finally get the chance to get away for awhile from all of those distractions that prevent us from being our authentic selves, to see all those things that are really important. They are usually right in front of us…like this ocean I’m still looking at…and to be able to focus on them means we need to unsubscribe from all those things that just really don’t matter.
So tomorrow I’m looking forward to a less-cluttered in-box. And maybe when I get back home, I will have a less-cluttered week. Ok, well maybe after catching up with all the work I’m not doing while on vacation and my son’s grad party next weekend… See? I’m awful at this. But for now all I need to think about is if I should stay by the ocean or move to one of the pools, when I should reapply sunscreen, which book to read, which tropical drink will be first on my list this afternoon, where we should eat dinner tonight and if my husband will be resurfacing anytime soon. As for all other decisions and responsibilities, I’m checking the “unsubscribe” box.

As the mom of four kids who were involved in marching band their entire high school careers, I’ve argued for a long time that marching band should be considered a sport. If you (or kids you’ve raised) have ever spent several hours of practice carrying an instrument and perfecting your ability to play exactly the right notes while taking exactly the right steps and ending up in exactly the right position, followed by putting on a uniform and then having only one 8-12 minute chance for you and every single one of your teammates to get everything you just practiced perfectly right at exactly the same time for a group of judges whose job it is to pick apart everything you’ve just done and to reflect your collective accomplishments – and failures – in a subjective score, I’m willing to bet you’d agree. (For the record, my willingness to bet is only slightly stronger than my willingness to run, which, if I haven’t mentioned before, is non-existent).

Marching bands seem to be like sports teams in so many ways; band members spend hours upon hours practicing and playing together, often in extreme temperatures – anywhere from 90-some degrees during band camp down to temps that are in the single digits with wind chills by our November holiday parade, although sometimes those extremes can hit in the same week (#Wisconsinlife). They face the physical challenge of marching around a field during hours-long rehearsals while carrying an instrument and holding it in exactly the right position, as well as the mental challenge of memorizing all their music and each precise step they need to take during their 10-ish-minute drill.  Their directors are equivalent to coaches, the support staff to assistant coaches and the drum majors to team captains. They ride in buses to their competitions, wear uniforms, compete against other bands on a field, earn scores and win trophies. They compete in state and national championships and have banners hung in their school gyms when they succeed at those high levels.  They have dedicated fans who don their favorite band’s “spirit wear” and cheer them on from the stands. And their parents travel to every venue and pay every entrance fee to sit for hours on bleachers, sometimes sweating, sometimes freezing, while pretending to be able to identify their marcher in the crowd of matching uniforms, shakos and plumes.

Yet unlike other teams, marching bands aren’t afforded the ability to make and recover from mistakes, missteps or miscues during competitive performances. They don’t have an hour of playing time to win a competition. They have about 10 minutes to display the highest level of performance ability possible and that’s it. If a marcher is sick or injured or doesn’t show, there are no substitutions. If someone is over-heated or tired or twists an ankle, there are no time-outs. The director doesn’t send in a second or third string anybody. Nobody else knows how to play another person’s position, so if someone can’t participate, you don’t get a backup player…you get an empty space in the formation.

There are no star players in a marching band either. Sure, there may be soloists or small ensembles who are featured, but those people’s names are never announced or written in a program. Nobody stands out from the rest. As a matter of fact, an important part of a successful marching band show is having marchers who don’t stand out from the rest, because if they do it means something went horribly wrong.

When it comes to scoring, there’s no objective way to determine who places first. Bands don’t score goals or make baskets and they can’t play any defense; as tempting as it may be for player to run into the field and take out a tuba during another band’s performance, I’m pretty sure that would warrant a couple yellow flags and time in the penalty box if those were even things in marching band. Band members can only perform their unique show to the best of their ability and then sit by as other bands attempt to do the same.  And when they’re all done, a panel of judges decides which band performed better than the others. If every band performed the exact same show, this would be more of a straight-forward task, but that’s not how it works. Music, drills and props differ from show to show and the number of instrumentalists and color guard members vary from band to band, so there’s no way to make true side-by-side comparisons. When two or more bands execute nearly perfectly their respective shows, it ends up coming down to the judges’ preferences in show styles. And there’s nothing a band can do to affect what a judge thinks about their choice in music and visual presentation.

And the spectators, well we understandably cheer most loudly when our favorite band is on the field, but we also clap and cheer for every other band as well. Because we know that despite our culture’s need for winners and losers, every kid in every band deserves recognition for their hard work and pursuit of excellence despite what scores or caption awards their band earns.

At the end of a marching band competition, there aren’t reporters clamoring for photos or chasing down the winning director for a quote either.  No MVPs are named. The fans don’t storm the fields to find their favorite marcher and get his or her autograph. The director isn’t doused with Gatorade (which I’m pretty sure is just fine with most of them). The state champs aren’t thrown a parade (at least in our town) and are welcomed home only by a collection of parents and fans who stand by the door cheering for them as they walk off their buses into the school.  And while their trophies and awards pile up in the band room, they are never put on display in the high school’s main trophy case, which is reserved for athletic recognitions.

Maybe that’s why marching band isn’t given the recognition and respect I think it deserves. Marching band defies our understanding of traditional sports, of what winning and losing means (a band can win a competition, but that doesn’t mean the other bands “lose” it), of how our society views physical activity (hard work is not directly proportional to dirty uniforms in band) and physical fitness (kids of all shapes and sizes participate in band) and gender-specific teams (marching band is obviously co-ed and the gender identity of its individual members doesn’t matter at all) and the value placed on beating an opponent.

And perhaps that’s just as well. Because while band kids appreciate and celebrate winning like (other) athletes do, that’s not the reason they play. They don’t join marching band to prove to others they can be better than anyone else; they join to prove to themselves they have the ability, the drive, the focus to be better than they used to be.  And when I think about it that way, I can’t help thinking that marching band is more than a sport. Marching band is a discipline. It’s an art. It’s a tool that can be used to shape how young people see themselves and others. It’s a medium through which they discover that the rewards associated with working hard and with achieving excellence don’t have to come from defeating anyone or anything except the notion that what they do isn’t valuable, isn’t meaningful, isn’t anything but the rewarding, fulfilling, character- and leadership-developing, discipline-enforcing, team-building experience it is.

I’m so grateful my family took advantage of the opportunity to learn this.

I wish more did.

There are many things people post on Facebook that make others cry – poignant sayings, tributes to loved ones who’ve died, stories about abused animals, images of natural disasters, videos of military heroes returning to their families and, of course, things like election results and snow accumulation totals in mid-April. But this past spring it was a picture posted by our school’s band director of a few chairs and music stands in our band room with a caption referring to that day’s first marching band rehearsal for the upcoming (now current) season that got to me. That rehearsal was to be the first of what will be many lasts for me between now and the end of the school year, when my youngest graduates from high school and prepares to head off to wherever his plans and ACT scores will take him and our money.  And though I’ve been well-aware this time’s been quickly approaching, I didn’t expect a simple picture of an empty room to flood my head with memories and my heart with emotions that would spill out my eyes and onto my keyboard.

Since 1997, my four kids have attended a total of nine different schools. During my kids’ early years, I volunteered in classrooms, served on PTAs and PTOs, was a homeroom mom who planned class parties and events, helped organize and run fundraisers, served as a football and basketball team mom, donated food for teacher appreciation days and chaperoned field trips and dances.  Throughout the 11-year span of my kids’ high school years, I’ve been serving on our band booster board, volunteering with our drama and choir departments, working with other parents to plan the annual all-night lock-in for our graduating seniors and had a short stint as a football mom during my youngest’s freshman year.  And while I’d like to say I took all these things on for the good of the kids and our schools (which IS true), I’d be lying if I said I didn’t say I also took these things on for me. I wanted to be involved in my kids’ school lives enough for them to know I was paying attention to what they were doing, that I supported their activities and wanted to know who their friends were. I felt the need to make connections with our schools’ teachers, staff, coaches and other parents, to feel like I was somehow contributing to our schools and teams and arts programs, to give me a sense of purpose beyond keeping my own kids alive and my house standing. And in the process of perhaps taking on a bit too much at times and over-scheduling my volunteer calendar, I’ve met an amazing community of teachers and parents, several of whom I now consider close friends. We’ve spent hours together in meetings, working in concessions booths and at an untold number of events, running fundraisers, developing severe cases of bleacher butt from sitting at games and marching band competitions, applauding our kids during performances and celebrating those rare times we don’t have some kid-related event with adult conversation over coffee or wine (ok, usually wine). And while all of this has been going on, I’ve gotten to watch children learn, develop and grow; kids who are now interesting, fun, engaging young adults I’m lucky enough to still have in my life.

And in just nine months, all of this…all of what I have allowed, for better or worse, to define such a great part of who I am will simply, quietly and unceremoniously end. I will have spent 21 years being a part of multiple school communities (four different schools at the same time at one point) and, as a dear friend who hung up her “Super Volunteer” cape in June when her youngest graduated after her own 21-year stint observed, I’m not even going to get a watch.

Although I know I can’t speak (or in this case write) for everyone, the parents I’ve gotten to know through shared toil, sweat (or sometimes hypothermia) and tears don’t do these things for the recognition. Which is good because there is none except for possibly the occasional eye roll from our kids as they silently scream, “Good God there she is AGAIN!” when they see us serving up lunch during band camp or climbing on their field trip bus or flinging open the downstairs door during a cast party with a bowl of chips in one hand, a pan of pizza rolls in the other and an offer to explain to them anything in Cards Against Humanity they may not yet understand (even though there’s plenty in there we don’t understand ourselves, nor do we probably want to). And we don’t do them because we long to be run ragged, spread thin and walk through our days exhausted because we stay up too late baking for banquets, assembling raffle baskets and creating SignUpGenius links. No, we do it because we love our kids and our schools and being a part of something more than just our own selves and families. We do it because we’ve found purpose and a sense of belonging and friendships that have lasted years and, with any luck, will continue long after our kids are gone.

As I’m reminded throughout this upcoming year that this will be the last marching band competition, the last play, the last concert, the last committee meeting, the last parade and the last all-night school graduation party I attend as a parent, these past two-plus decades of my life will flash before my eyes, and I’m quite certain my eyes will give away the emotions that come with those final moments (thank Ulta for waterproof mascara!).  Because saying goodbye to all of this doesn’t just mean saying goodbye to my kids’ childhoods, it also means saying goodbye to this role I’ve embraced all these years. It means living in a house with too many empty bedrooms and too many boxes filled with keepsakes and too few actual people. It means redefining my purpose and priorities and trying to figure out where to channel my energy and free time, which are definitely not going toward home improvement projects, yard work or training for a marathon. It means wondering if I’ll be able to sustain old friendships or how I’ll develop new ones without the common bond I’ve shared with so many for so long. Sometimes thinking about this upcoming “empty nest” phase is just as intimidating as it was holding my firstborn and wondering what parenthood was going to be like and if I had what it would take to be a good mom, or at least one who didn’t screw her up too much.

But I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Moms tend to do that, don’t we? Out of habit, usually born of necessity, we’re always anticipating, preparing, thinking ahead to what needs to be cleaned or baked or signed or who needs to be dropped off where, and we too often forget to enjoy what’s right in front of us, unless it’s that cup of coffee or glass of wine I mentioned earlier. I believe we would be better off if we stopped thinking about what’s next and started looking at what’s now, even amid messes and noise and filthy uniforms and calendars so full we can no longer read the actual dates. Because soon enough it will all be gone and so will our children who brought this chaos into our lives, and, with them, the community of schools and teams and the parent-friends who’ve helped us get through it all. Sometimes it takes a picture in a Facebook post to help us realize we’re going to miss that just as much as we’re going to miss our kids.

Ah, Mother’s Day. That one day of the year moms are often served breakfast in bed by their little ones and pretend to love Lucky Charms-topped peanut butter toast and orange juice that doesn’t have champagne in it. It’s the day our significant others may remember to buy us a card and flowers and we smile so we appear appreciative while secretly being irritated because they spent money on something that will die and an over-priced piece of cardstock with someone else’s words written on it – money we could have spent shopping for ourselves or for getting a mani/pedi or massage or maybe going to a bar with some friends (or, let’s face it, all alone). Mother’s Day is also when we get gifts from our kids we didn’t have to think of, make or buy ourselves – like painted rocks, or coffee filter and pipe cleaner butterflies, or glitter-laden cards, or homemade gift certificates that promise a clean(ish) room provided we don’t look under the bed. And for those of us with older kids, we may (if we’re lucky) get a phone call so we can enjoy the gift of vocal communication as they apologize for not being able to be with us because they are working and also for not getting us a gift because the reason they are working is they are either saving for college, are in college or they are paying off college loans and can’t afford to buy anything.

I know I can’t speak for all moms, but based on what my friends and I have talked about over the years – during chaotic play dates, rain-soaked football games and bottles of red wine – and what I’ve read in articles about “What Mom Really Wants for Mother’s Day,” I think it’s safe to say there’s a majority who do not want what Hallmark, jewelry stores and flower shops tell our families we need to make us feel appreciated.

What we really need is to be left alone. At least when our kids are little. It’s true anyway for those of us who are/were stay-at-home-moms during our kids’ baby/toddler/pre-school/we-are-the-sole-reason-for-this-woman’s-existence-and-the-cause-of-her-slow-decline-into-insanity years, and I can only imagine it’s similar for those who juggle a job on top of changing diapers, feeding kids, reading bedtime stories, helping with projects and trying to keep the house from looking like a family of raccoons busted into Toys R Us. It’s not that we mind pretending to be asleep while listening to our family make breakfast in the kitchen. It’s just that while we are waiting we are wondering how long it’s going to take for us to clean up because the “And you don’t have to worry about doing anything today” line may be well-meaning but we all know it’s total bs. And while we know our significant others have good intentions when they leave us all alone with the kids on the Saturday before so they can go out “to take care of something,” in truth, most of us would happily give up the presents and take instead an hour locked in our bedroom with a book, a glass (bottle??) of wine and a “Mom has left the building” sign on the door. Hell, even 20 minutes to take a shower, get dressed and put on makeup without an interruption is a welcome gift! When our children are little, there is something to be said for the “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” theory of mommy-hood. As a matter of fact, it might be more appropriate to say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder and prevents mom from jail time,” although, looking back, jail time may not have been a bad option. Having our clothes picked out daily and all our meals prepared and cleaned up for us would’ve been a welcome change, and it’s not like we slept uninterrupted or went to the bathroom without the door wide open anyway.

Yet, when our kids hit the teenage years, our Mother’s Day wish changes from wanting an hour to ourselves to longing for an hour of time with them – 60 full minutes without the distraction of their electronics and our “to do” lists and without having to coax, beg or bribe them to do this. By this time in our relationship, they are probably as tired of hearing us remind, nag, yell and enforce consequences (translation into teen lingo: punish them) as we are of doing it. We all dream of going through our children’s years without having to be the bad cop, without losing it after telling them 1,384 times to carry their dirty clothes out of the bathroom instead of leaving it piled up somewhere between the toilet and tub, or that they’re just as capable of actually opening the door to the dishwasher to put their dirty dishes in it as we are, or that dusting their rooms doesn’t mean blowing the dust from one surface to the next, or that we pay for their phones so they can communicate not with their friends but with us, ideally before we’ve had one of these “textersations”:
Mom: Hellooooo? Have you seen any of my past seventeen texts asking when you’ll be home?
Child:
Mom: I know you answer your friends’ texts the nanosecond after you receive them, so either I need to start worrying or deciding how long I’m taking your phone away from you when you get back.
Child:
Mom: Can you at least type 1 for “Yes, I’m alive” or 2 for “No, I’m no longer of this world”?
Child: 1
Mom: OK, so when will you be home?
Child: Well you don’t want me texting and driving so I guess as soon as you stop asking me all these questions. Also, can I stay longer?

We want them to be able to see us for the fun, non-confrontational people we long to be. We want to be able to sit with them and tell them how step-on-a-Lego-with-your-bare-foot hard being a mom is, how we know we often get things wrong, how there are so many times we’ve lost it when we wish we wouldn’t have, said things we wish we could take back, acted Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining crazed when we wish we would’ve just walked away and counted to 10 (or maybe 10,000), or how we wish we would’ve spared the life of their Pillsbury Doughboy doll instead of cutting off its arms to teach them a lesson about why it was wrong for them to continually cut up their shirts while sitting bored in their first grade class (definitely not a stellar mom moment right there). We desperately want to explain why it is we can seem like the “cool, fun mom” to their friends while all they see this totally un-cool, un-fun side of us: because we are so entrenched in our commitment to raise them to be kind, honest, hard-working, responsible people, we take it personally when they don’t seem to get it, forgetting that their brains are still developing and we weren’t created to be perfect. So, we take it out on them even though we’re disappointed with and mad at ourselves for our own perceived failures. We want them to know we forgive them way before we forgive ourselves for our imperfections and that even though we seem to be out to ruin their lives, we would give ours up 100 times over for theirs because of how fiercely and completely we love them. Moms with teens just want to be heard and understood – much like they do, I guess. But we’d take simply being tolerated if it meant having that precious time together we were desperate to give up a few years before.

Then, when our kids grow up and move out and start living their own lives, and those Mother’s Days when we were all together – even those chaotic ones we naively wished away – are now just tucked away in our memories, we often find ourselves wishing for a do-over. Wishing that we knew then what we know now – that those little creatures we gave birth to and did our imperfect best to raise would become people we loved to spend time with and wanted to know better and missed like crazy when they were gone. And we look back and realize that if shoes had been left a mess in the mudroom or beds had gone unmade or we had to do extra laundry because our kids got soaked in puddles or dripped ice cream down their shirts, they’d still likely have turned out ok and we would’ve been a lot less stressed out. Maybe we would have even enjoyed those breakfasts in bed if we hadn’t been concerned with getting syrup on our comforter and we would’ve been more excited to open those gluey/glittery cards if we weren’t thinking about what a mess they were making all over the place.  But there are no such things as “do-overs” when it comes to being a mom (except for when you become a grandmother, or so I’ve been told); we can’t re-live our kids’ childhoods so that we can un-do the mistakes we made. We can only do our best to be the kind of moms our kids need now.

Because they still need us. They need us to encourage them and support them in their schooling and career choices, even those that won’t make them six figures or the promise of job security until they retire. They need us to let them know it’s more important to us that they’re fulfilled in what they do than in how much money they will make doing it. They need us to be supportive of their choice of partners, even those we wouldn’t pick for them ourselves, if, of course, those partners treat them well and make them happy. And if they don’t, our kids need for us to be honest and to tell them that, even if we know they may hate us for it. They need to know if they are sick or stressed or overwhelmed by life, we will be there for them. We will do what we can, spend what we can, give up what we can to help them make it through whatever storms life churns up. They need to know that by doing this our goal is to help them become stronger and healthier and better equipped to deal with future obstacles, not to make them dependent on us again. They need us to rejoice in their accomplishments and encourage them to embrace life’s adventures, even if those adventures will take them hundreds or thousands of miles away and our hearts are breaking for ourselves just as much as they’re bursting in excitement for them. They need to know we are proud of them – not for what they’ve done, not for what they’ve won, but for who they have become – even if they don’t fit the mold we foolishly tried to squeeze them into when they were little. They need to know we adore them for who they are and that we’d be their mom all over again if we had to go back and start from the beginning. Only we’d do it much better this time.  They need to know how grateful we are and blessed we feel for being able to celebrate Mother’s Day as their moms. And they need to know that while our nests may be empty, our hearts never will be because we are carrying our children in them wherever we go. Still. Always.

When my oldest was in kindergarten, back in 1999, I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to her. It was our special time together – just the two of us sitting on the couch and reading while my younger two napped or the two of us snuggled in her bed after the others had been put down for the night. Throughout the years we kept reading – at first only me to her, but soon she was reading to me and we took turns telling each other the story about the young wizard boy who, with the help of his good friends and the adults who looked out for him, fought the evil that lurked inside him through no fault of his own – that whispered to him in the darkness, that taunted him, that took away what mattered to him the most, that told him they couldn’t coexist, that one would have to die in order for the other to live.  We read together page after page, chapter after chapter, book after book until the last one, which she snuck into her room after we returned from picking it up at midnight from Walmart, and read to herself until 3:00 am while I tried to sleep before my sister-in-law’s wedding the next day. I was a bit disappointed she decided to finish without me, but at the age of almost 14 and with her childhood disappearing as quickly as footprints in the sand wash away with the rising tide, I understood.  I came to grips with the fact we had already shared our last story together. I just wish I had known it at the time.

And so she grew and graduated and moved out and moved on. Her life wasn’t perfect – she juggled school and work and activities, which brought on anxiety that worsened her senior year – but she sought treatment and was young and smart and talented and pretty and had her whole life ahead of her. After college she found a new job and a new life in a new city. And she was happy. Or so I thought. Until I found out she wasn’t. This past fall, when distraught texts turned into desperate phone calls that lasted into the early morning hours with me staying on the line until she cried herself to sleep, my husband and I knew she wasn’t just struggling. She was drowning. So she took a medical leave from work and came home where we could help save her from the current of despair that was pulling her away from everything that made her happy.

Except we couldn’t. And we watched as she drifted farther and farther away. Like the terrifying Dementors in the Harry Potter series, Depression lurked in the darkest parts of her mind – the parts that kept telling her how ugly she looked, how un-loveable she was, how meaningless her life had become – and it drained every bit of hope, peace and joy out of her. During the day she’d spend time with my supportive sister- and mother-in-law, and she’d be able to mostly function, but when I’d come home from work I would watch her melt into the couch and become practically unable to move. The place where we once had sat reading to each other all those years before she now either lay sobbing or staring at the wall night after night as I sat trying to understand, to reason, to convince her she looked like she always had, that she had so many people who loved her, that she was young and had so much to look forward to…all things that would make sense to her if Depression hadn’t been so effective at preying on her insecurities and doubts. If it hadn’t convinced her things were so hopeless that all she wanted to do was to fall asleep and not wake up. If it hadn’t made her say the words that will probably haunt me forever, “Mom, I love you and Dad but I just don’t want to be here anymore.” Damn that brutal, cruel, wicked, heartless monster.

Despite the recent trend to be more open about mental illness, Depression, like Lord Voldemort in HP, is still our society’s version of “He Who Must Not Be Named.” At the same time our oldest daughter was at war with this demon, our younger one was suffering from what we’d end up learning after several consults and medical tests is a condition that mimics a brain tumor and causes similar effects: excessive pressure in her brain resulting in severe headaches and vision and balance problems. And while we felt we could talk openly about the serious medical condition she was dealing with, talking about our other daughter’s Depression and the treatment she finally sought for it seemed wrong. Depression hides itself in a cloak of stigma and misunderstanding and an implication that whomever it possesses is a fragile “snowflake” who just needs to get over herself for Chrissake! While we don’t think anything of someone taking a leave of absence from work or school to be treated for cancer, for example, we are much less tolerant of someone needing a “mental health day”…or week…or, in her case, a couple of months. I’m not sure why. Maybe mental illness scares people because there are so many manifestations and none of them can be fixed simply by walking into urgent care and out with a prescription that will make a person feel better in 24 hours. Many mental illnesses (but certainly not all) are much like drug or alcohol addictions – they can eventually be managed and controlled but, as of now anyway, can’t be cured.  Let’s face it…people aren’t really trying. How many runs or walks are there for schizophrenia? How many silent auction fundraisers for eating disorders have you heard about? How many ice bucket-type challenges are there to raise money for people with OCDs or benefit dinners held for people with anxiety? Yeah, I can’t think of any off the top of my head either. Mental illnesses don’t usually offer the hope of being cured, so what’s the point, right? Someone like my daughter may always need medication or therapy (or both) to help her keep Depression dormant and faces the prospect of waking up every morning worrying the sonofabitch will reemerge, praying for just one more day of being able to see a flicker of light in the darkness. Perhaps imagining a life like this for ourselves or those we love makes us feel so uneasy that we need to ignore it, shun it, shame it out of existence, yet all we end up doing is ignoring and shaming the people who are already living it.

Whatever the reason, talking about what our daughter was going through didn’t feel right and, frankly, because living the experience was exhausting enough without rehashing it, we shared the details of what was happening only with our immediate family, our pastor and vicar and, eventually, a few close friends. Thank God for them! As we were met with more and more questions about why our oldest was home or what was going on with our family or how our younger daughter was faring, and as our oldest was recovering and seemed more open to talking about it in general terms, I felt a little more at ease sharing some of what she – what we – had been going through. And I was astounded at the number of times I heard “I’ve been where she has” or “My daughter/son is going through the same thing.” I was relieved to know other people understood what our family had been going through, yet at the same time I was perplexed that we all still feel the need to remain quiet on an issue that is clearly so prevalent. If we don’t start talking to each other and to our kids about mental health issues, I fear Depression will become the new number one “Silent Killer.” We need to stop silencing ourselves.  While I’m not a fan of “hashtag campaigns” because I have yet to see one come up with a solution to the problem its attempting to draw attention to, maybe it’s time to see #ustoo out there. Depression often manages to slither its way through multiple family members, and even when it only confines itself to one person, there’s no way the rest of the family isn’t affected by the cruelty it inflicts on the one they love. We are all in this together.

I could write pages about the daily emotions Depression’s hold on my daughter had on me;  anger, fear, insecurity, sadness, hopelessness, hatred and strangely enough, gratitude. Gratitude for my job that kept my mind off things for a few hours each day, for my family’s support, for the compassion my friends offered, and for the grace from God I could still see despite everything. For life, in all its messiness and imperfections, is still a treasured gift.  But this story is not mine.  It’s hers. And with courage, purpose and faith she has spoken up and written about it in her own blog, The Blonde Roast Blogger (please, please, please read it!). In doing so, she has learned it’s a story more people than she ever imagined could write as well.  People she hasn’t seen or spoken with for years have read her blog and reached out either publicly or privately to say, “this is my story too.” It’s hers. It’s his. It’s theirs. And because those of us who love them can’t help being taken along for the hell ride, it’s all of ours.

“The Boy Who Lived” is the title of the very first chapter of the very first Harry Potter book. Those were the first four words I read to my daughter when she and I began sharing the story of a young wizard boy whose parents had been killed by an evil dark lord but whose own life was spared because Voldemort’s curse was no match for the unconditional and absolute love that came from Harry’s dying mother and protected him from harm.  Yet his mother’s love could not protect Harry from everything – not from being neglected, bullied, afraid, feeling alone, being hurt, or from losing people he loved – just like my love was not enough to protect my daughter from the punishment she took from Depression’s abuse. Yet, with the love and help of his friends, with what he learned from his professors and others wise enough to counsel him, from the strength and courage he found within himself, from the hope he saw in his future and with a lot of magic, Harry fought against the Dark Lord and remained “The Boy Who Lived.” And with the love and help of her friends, with what she learned from her doctors and others wise enough to counsel her, from the strength and courage she found within herself, from the hope she finally saw in her future and with a lot of faith, Dani fought against Depression and became “The Girl Who Lived.” And here we are, all these years later, sharing a story together again.