acceptance
morning on Mother’s Day
My young adult kids are still in bed, and I’m thinking about being a mom.
I’m thinking about how I don’t really fully know the things I’ve done well and the things I’ve done poorly as a mom because it’s confusing—it’s tough to know how much to give and support and accept our kids’ needs and desires and how much to have boundaries so they learn to make decisions and recover from mistakes and respect that others have needs, too.
And I’m thinking about how I still want to teach my kids things and direct them, but my role now is more in the realm of gentle mentorship when they ask for my advice; and maybe sharing with them some of my own ongoing growth so they can see that at any given moment I may be a good role model in some ways but a very very imperfect role model in other ways; and also occasionally addressing things in our relationship when I’d like things to be different.
And I’m thinking about how grateful I am to be a mom even on the hardest days. Or especially on the hardest days. It’s difficult to explain, this part. But the way I love Callie and Jace is something I hope they feel on some level, even when my flawed human self doesn’t communicate that love very well. And I hope every person feels that kind of love, not necessarily from me, but from someone. Because I think knowing that we are fully lovable even when we are behaving in terrible ways helps us to be okay—to recover from our worst moments, to accept that we have been sucky and will likely be sucky again, and to be forgiving with ourselves and also with others.
Pretty much all of the above is about me and my feelings, and I’m okay with that because it’s Mother’s Day, after all. But I also want to say two other things.
I remember my own mom reaching out to me on Mother’s Day once I became a mom. I don’t think she and I ever had a conversation about what it means to be a mom. But I can’t help but wonder if these were the kinds of things in her heart, too.
My mom would sometimes drive me crazy with her empathy for people who messed up. It seemed to me that she was so busy feeling bad for people who had done terrible things that she didn’t think about accountability, and, worse, she didn’t seem to spend much time celebrating people who made good choices, day after day. I used to half joke that Tonya Harding was one of my mom’s personal heroes because my mom talked so much about Tonya Harding’s difficult childhood, way way before that I, Tonya movie came out, at the time when Harding was widely viewed as a rather vicious person.
But now I wonder if my mom was focused on the stuff that mothering has helped me to better understand. That it’s easy to love my kids because they are smart and wise and funny and hard working and have hearts that are big and generous. And it seems like it would be harder to love my kids who snap at me and leave dirty dishes in the living room and sometimes make poor choices that have negative effects on themselves or others. But it’s not hard to love my kids in the midst of their imperfect moments. Sure, it can be hard to appropriately deal with imperfect moments. But the love, well, that’s not hard.
I think my mom, with her six kids, was well-practiced at seeing people’s actions in the context of them doing the best they could in any given moment. And when she reached out to me when I became a new mom, maybe she knew I would grow in that practice, too. All this is complete projection because we didn’t have this conversation, but it’s something I wonder. It’s like my mom lived that loving-kindness meditation without ever actually saying the words. It’s like she saw people in general as worthy of love the way her own kids were (and are) worthy of love.
So that part was about my mom. And now this part is about my kids. Callie and Jace are amazing people. Yesterday we ate and grocery shopped and cooked and watched tv and played an inappropriate game. We laughed and laughed and laughed. Their significant others were with us, and they are lovely people, too. That’s all I wanted to say. I’m so proud of my kids, and I’m so lucky to be their mom.
I hear them stirring upstairs. Happy Mother’s Day to me.
the dog not taken
Many many years ago I was at work when I received an email from my then-husband Scot. It had a picture of a bulldog-boxer mix. She was so ugly she was cute. Her name was Lilly, and she was a rescue dog.
Several minutes later, Scot sent me a picture of a dachshund named Fancy. Oh my goodness, I still love that name. Fancy.
Scot and I had two awesome kids and had been talking about getting a dog eventually, and it seemed that eventually had arrived. Scot and I went back and forth. Should we adopt Lilly? or Fancy? with pros and cons generated as if we could make a rational decision about these dogs.
Finally, I said, “We just have to choose. And once we choose, we can’t question our decision or wonder if the other dog would’ve been better. We just have to choose one and commit to that one and love that dog no matter the pros and cons we encounter.”
I suggested Lilly because Scot had sent her photo to me first. That was it. We made the decision. I never forgot Fancy, but I also never questioned whether we had chosen correctly and I never regretted bringing Lilly into our family. She was our dog. End of story.
***
What car to buy. Where to spend the holiday. Whether to order the quesadilla or the flatbread. What job to take. Who to date. Where to live.
Sometimes I get super stressed about choices and remind myself of Lilly and Fancy. Sometimes there’s no such thing as a bad choice. That doesn’t mean a choice will have no complications or that everything will be perfect. Lilly was certainly a challenge at times.
But it means that we can drive ourselves crazy thinking that we need to make the “right” decision when such a thing often doesn’t exist. Sometimes the “right” decision is simply the decision we make. The path unfolds. We continue on our journey.
Of course, we can spend time looking back and wondering exactly what our lives would’ve been like with Fancy instead of Lilly. I could start doing this today and still not have exhausted possibilities if I continued down that path for the rest of my life.
But why bother? We took the Lilly path. We faced some struggles with Lilly, sure, and she eventually died, and thinking about that can still make me cry. But choosing Lilly was not a mistake. Just like it wouldn’t have been a mistake if we had chosen Fancy.
It was just a choice. No right, no wrong. No reason to evaluate it after the fact, no reason for regrets, no reason even to feel proud that we took in Lilly instead of Fancy. It was just a choice.
***
Not all choices are Lilly and Fancy choices though. This point is such an important point that I will hopefully return to it and write about it another day. For now I’m just going to say that it’s a good idea to pay attention to our choices, big and small, and see if they align with who we are and what we want our lives to be. If they don’t, we gotta shift.
I’m not sure why, exactly, I’ve been thinking about Lilly and Fancy. I think part of it is trying to figure out how to accept my past choices, even when they’ve had problematic consequences. At least some of those choices, well, they were aligned with who I was and what I thought I wanted my life to be at the time. I just wasn’t in a place where I could know myself as fully as I do now, and I couldn’t know the impact of my choices ahead of time. That’s unavoidable, the partial knowing we have at any given moment. Even now, looking back, I could be completely wrong in my assumptions that other choices could have led to better outcomes.
***
On Mother’s Day weekend this past May, I heard Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” both Saturday night at a brewery and Sunday morning at an exercise class, and it sizzled through me as my body moved in both settings. I embraced it. My anthem. I cannot tell you how many times since May I have found myself singing inside my head, “And I never lost one minute of sleeping worrying about the way things might’ve been.”
Okay, I admit. It’s an aspirational anthem. I still sometimes lose sleep worrying about the way things might’ve been.
***
Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is often cited to suggest that we are better off if we live our lives in unusual ways rather than following the crowd.
However, the two paths the speaker encounters were worn “really about the same.” That is, the paths are like Lilly and Fancy, with either one equally promising, with both paths equally traveled.
At the close of the poem, when the speaker imagines the future, he admits that he’s going to look back and tell himself a story about the path he chose: He’s going to say that he took the path “less traveled by,” and he is going to claim that the choice “made all the difference.”
Even though he’s already told us that’s not actually the case.
I think I’m going to do the same thing: I took the dog less prettified, and Lilly really did make all the difference.
The funny thing is, you believe me, don’t you? And I believe it, too. So that, at least, is the better side of regret—the belief that our past choices were somehow or other the right choices, and that, one way or another, our journeys make sense.
Facing the demons: Initial steps
I’m heading into post #3 of a series on work-life balance in academia. So far I looked at the signs that something is wrong and the personal, institutional, and cultural factors that lead to extreme and unhealthy over-work.
NOTE: I wrote the above and the following about 6 days ago, before a whole bunch of things went haywire. I still feel a bit out of control, but I’m posting this anyhow. It’s a glimpse of reality, unfinished and honest, hopeful and ambitious but also disappointed and disappointing. Ultimately, this post reflects my initial steps in that they are TO BE CONTINUED….
As I powered my way through completing and submitting a textbook manuscript, I was already planning small changes. I have implemented some of these, and I’m in the process of thinking about more.
So here ya go. Some initial steps I’ve taken and some plans I have to move forward.
| Before—personal habits | After—personal habits |
| Check email and social media immediately when I wake up. | Charge my phone downstairs. Check email etc while eating breakfast (I know I can put it off longer, but I’m taking small steps here, so give me some credit 🙂 |
| Check email and social media immediately before going to sleep. | Read before going to sleep. I love to read. |
| Lack of exercise. | Walking outdoors? This is my plan because it combines exercise with being outdoors. I haven’t implemented this one yet except for one walk, today. But I got a FitBit for Valentine’s Day (good for the heart!), so that helps me keep track. |
| Avoid household work. | Contribute to making meals. Also spend time cleaning out my closet, helping my daughter clean out her room. More on this below |
In terms of institutional change, I’m at the stage of educating myself. To that end, I’ve
- reviewed the department bylaws used in another one of my university’s departments to better understand
Legit. That’s it. I actually did more, I’ve definitely thought more, and yet I’ve already failed at a good bit of these basic plans. So I’ll be back. Next time, if you’re lucky, you may hear about being careful what you wish for and the reality of exhaustion. Or maybe I’ll just be full of wisdom and good advice.
Hey! stop laughing! I was serious! I sometimes have wisdom. Ask my kids. They’ll tell you that I was the one who taught them that the best way to deal with a bad break up is to make a playlist. That’s some good advice right there.
The day after commencement
I came across this bit of writing today when I was cleaning out some Notes. Notes are some kind of app that comes with my Mac and my iPhone and my iPad (back before my son somehow acquired my iPad for his own use). I don’t know why I wrote this particular thing in my Notes, but it was interesting for me to read a year later. So I thought I’d share it here.
Enjoy.
Day after commencement
I’ve taken the dog to the parkSwept out the garage andVacuumed cobwebs from the underside of the wheelbarrowI weeded one bed, newly defined and mulched at last summer’s endI took Callie out to breakfast. We chatted about writing and poems and we laughed when walking back to the car because she said, “I have to write a sonnet. I don’t know what to write about. I really don’t want to write this sonnet” and only minutes before we had noted that she is always Tom Sawyer at first, never wanting to whitewash that fence, but she always turns into Tom’s friends, finding joy in the chore that is now pleasure well executed.I assisted Jace as he made brownies with chocolate chip cookies on top.And nowI’m in the sun on the back deck in a blue bikiniReading and dozingAnd summoned to look at the wonder of the backyardThe chattering invisible birds punctuated by a regular 2-note reminder of a voice and a pattern and the lives beyond my own.I’m restless: Can I look and not notice the weeds? Can I relax and wonder and be in the moment without the evaluation and coming up short? Can I love this weedy yard and my big thighs and the conversations I had yesterday that I don’t understand because so many so often seem ready to take offense?I notice my impulse to fix and improve. I tell myself Iove the whole thing, weeds and all. I tell myself that “weed” is an unfair word; it sets up the undesirability of the plant from the get-go.My thoughts spin lazily round and round, the sun brightening the inside of my eyelids, me wanting to make things better, me wanting to accept things as they are, me, knowing I won’t ever be a bird without a care but at least I know to take time to read in the sun on the back deck when one more academic year is done.
- I had forgotten about making brownies with chocolate chip cookies on top. How yummy!
- I still wear that blue bikini (and a couple other bikinis as well, but not all at the same time) and I still read and doze on the deck. Ahh.
- I have no idea what I was referencing when I described “a regular 2-note reminder of a voice and a pattern and the lives beyond my own.” Was that my phone? the peepers in the creek behind my house? something else? I really don’t know….
- I vividly remember a reception I attended after commencement last year (“the conversations I had yesterday that I don’t understand because so many so often seem ready to take offense”). Two people—both were administrators in love with the university president—reacted with great umbrage to innocent questions I asked, which is an unusual experience for me. But lots of stuff went down in the following year, and it turns out I’m occasionally a force to be reckoned with, so maybe those two people somehow already knew as much. It’s funny that I exaggerated with the phrases “so many” and “so often.” Um, two, Laurie. Just two people. Just two times. Lol. So dramatic.
- I can’t believe how much I got done that day! I’m like some kind of freaking super woman. Part of me wants to edit some of that out of the writing, both because it sound a bit show off-y and because Guilt. Past Me is making Present Me all ashamed of my lack of productivity. Which is totally not the point of the writing. But I’m too lazy to edit. (did you see what I did there?? embracing my lack of productivity, baby!)
- I still struggle with the tension between improving and just loving things (including myself) as is. I feel like the kinds of wisdom I constantly hear are about acceptance, but that’s not always so practical, and even total acceptance seems like something I’m supposed to strive for, which is annoying. Don’t make me strive and tell me not to strive at the same time! Ugh.
- I just reread, and I think the part about Callie and Tom Sawyer makes me feel better about productivity and acceptance and laziness. All kinds of moments can be filled with joy. Sometimes I get too caught up in what I’m “supposed” to do or “need” to do, and the pleasure disappears until I remember that often these exact things are what I want to do. I think I enjoyed all kinds of activities in the day after commencement last year, and writing it out was not a way to inspire guilt in Future Me but instead was meant to remind Future Me of an ordinary day that was full of pleasure. Again: Ahh.
Laurie Mac Reads 