Confessions of a Daughterless Mother

I saw this quote a few weeks ago and have been ruminating on it ~ rolling it over in my mind and listening to its message ever since. “Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.  Such striving may seem admirable,  but it is the way of foolishness.  Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.  Show them the joy of tasting  tomatoes, apples and pears.  Show them how to cry  when pets and people die.  Show them the infinite pleasure  in the touch of a hand.  And make the ordinary come alive for them.  The extraordinary will take care of itself.”   ―   William Martin ,   The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents The extraordinary will take care of itself. I love that line. Preparing our children for greatness seems to be the mantra of our time. The best is what they deserve, they must work harder to be more successful, to earn more, to have a h...

Friday Cooper lost his wallet.  Again. Last week he lost it and someone was kind enough to make a few phone calls and track him down. It was in the middle of road and someone saw it and picked it up. No such luck this week. Sunday Aiden got his little thumb impaled by a fish hook well past the barb.  Daddy was a hero and got it out with a pair of needle nose pliers but not before As passed out and hit the dirt. His poor little face was a pale, sweaty mess. I hardly flinched. I'm not sure if that indicates a growing ability to differentiate true emergency or just a numbness to my sh17 show. Monday - still no wallet - I picked Cooper up for a doctor's visit (his last in his six month recovery from shoulder surgery!).  We drove the half hour to the office to discover the appointment was actually scheduled for ... Tuesday. Shit. It did give us time to cancel Cooper's ATM and credit cards and get duplicates to start recreating his still lost wallet. Tuesday - Jackson f...

Seventeen years ago I celebrated my first Mother's Day. The sun was out, though it was a little chilly, I wore my favorite purple sundress with a cute blue cardigan over it. We took baby Cooper for a ride up to Morrison Lake so Eric could show me where his family cottage that had been sold a few years before stood. We stopped and got ice cream and walked along the river in Portland. It was sweet and simple, I felt overwhelmingly lucky to be in the club, to be a momma. So in love with my little boy was I. Fast forward seventeen years and Mother's Day isn't nearly as simple and that sweetness that accompanies new found motherhood has dulled, the duty and responsibility of motherhood has taken away some of its shine.  The expectation of duplicating those early Mother's Day memories is impossible. When the boys were little, my expectation of Mother's Day were almost always met. My boys loved me, snuggled me, their faces lit up when I walked in a room. I didn...

Last night I sat at the 100 Days Away Football Kick Off meeting and heard my son referred to for the first time as a "Senior". I had helped prepare the meeting - so I drifted off when it began ... When the boys were little Eric and I put miles and miles on both our car and our feet. In the late evening, trying to get them to sleep - in an effort to have a few minutes to talk to each other - we walked.  We drove.  One night - before Jackson was even born - we pulled into the Wacousta Elementary School drive. Eric pulled around and up close to the Dream Depot. This was the elementary school he went to, he still knew many of the teachers there, he'd helped build the Dream Depot (the playground on the west side - the envy of the district) as a high schooler.  He has so many good memories in the building. He smiled and looked at a sleeping Cooper in the back seat - all tucked into his car seat (I swear he might not have slept if we didn't drive for hours.  Kids bee...

"I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean." LeAnn Womack, "I Hope You Dance" The first time we took Cooper out of the country he was just shy of four months old. We traveled to St. Lucia in the Caribbean and put his baby toes in the sand and held him in the ocean. As he grew and the number of boys in our household also grew we continued to travel, we camped, and hiked, stayed with grandma, packed food and drove - anything we could to get them on the road. Anything to experience new places and people.  My boys have been lucky enough to surf in Costa Rica, snorkel in Jamaica, ride Jeeps in Cozumel, jump off a deck into the crystal clear water off the coast of Roatan, hike the hills of Tennesee and the Smokey Mountains, jump in a crystal clear pool in the jungle in the Dominican Republic, touch the walls of Fort Sumter, pull Walleye from the ice cold waters of Caribou Lake in Canada, tube down a river that cut through a mountain in Beliz...

Birthday flowers from my girlfriend I am 8 days into my 44th year.  I intended to write a post on my birthday ... but I couldn't.  I have always been moved to write and find that when I force myself it usually becomes an episode of me sitting in a chair bouncing up every 5 - 10 minutes to feed the dog, change the laundry, let the dog out, go to the bathroom, make lunch, check email, pay the bills, fold the laundry ... and ends in a very low word count with very high frustration. It works best when it comes to me organically. So I waited. I waited for 8 days. Then when I was driving home from the gym today I realized something.  When I was younger my birthday was potential: expectations for excitment, surprises accompanied a buoyed feeling of being older. Don't get me wrong - I am not hung up on my age (although I am less fond of the "11" wrinkle I have between my eyes than I ever have been before) - I don't mind the years piling up, but my birthday no lon...

Yesterday when Jackson came home from school we had a rare few moments to ourselves. He chatted about his day - telling me funny stories and anecdotes about his new teachers for this tri. He's not usually this talkative - so I was enjoying every minute. Eric and I often laugh at how often our questions are met with "Good." School was good, practice was good, dinner was good .... when I have these moments with them where they open up and words come out - I don't want them to end. While he was talking he was also getting ready for a workout with his trainer. Doing two things at  once, he continued giving me details as he walked up the stairs. He stopped about half way up and said "Seth yelled at me today." Seth is an autistic student that Jackson has had in his classes for the past several years. He does not like the other kids to touch him as he's afraid of their germs. I often hear funny stories about Seth, Jackson loves to chat with him and hea...