Before having kids myself, I always swore I’d never tell my kids “no.” Unless it was an emergency. I believe it’s the Dine (Navajo) who raise their children without using the word “no.” I’m thoroughly enchanted by the idea, and sadly haven’t been up to it myself. Despite my best intentions I hear myself saying “no” all the time.

“No, you can’t use the butcher knife yet, wait until you’re older.”

“No, you can’t pummel your baby brother even if he hit you first.”

“No, you can’t jump on the couch, don’t you remember going to the emergency room the last time you jumped on it?”

I could go on.

There are multiple problems with no: it creates disappointment, it becomes easy to use and next thing you know you’re using for everything, it stops being heard because it’s overused. The thing to do, is not say “no.” Easier said than done.

Perhaps a parents main job is to be their childs first source of disappointment so the child can learn how to deal with it.

That’s a depressing thought.

And yet, I know I’m constantly disappointing my kids.

“No, we can’t go to the river right now, it’s time for bath, books, bed.”

“No, we can’t have ice cream, you’ve already had too much sugar and you’re bouncing off the walls.”

“No, we can’t stay up late and watch a movie because we have to get up early tomorrow.”

I don’t mean to be a stick in the mud, but sometimes being a parent means parenting. Of course I want to stay up late and watch a movie with my kids, but not tonight or they won’t get enough sleep and then our event tomorrow will be awful for everyone. It still feels crappy to say no, even when it’s the right thing to do.

I remember growing up and playing basketball with my dad. He’d tell me the rules, we’d play, and as soon as I scored a point, the rules would change. It was confusing and frustrating and disappointing. Much like being told no. Now looking back I wonder, were the rules really changing or was he trying to introduce me to the next thing I needed to know in an effort not to overwhelm me with all the things I’d need to know? I’d like to believe the latter, but…

I grew up in a time where kids went to school, were expected to get A’s across the board, and then went to college. There were no other options even presented. This was the path. I gobbled it up. And then in high school I had a teacher who was even more demanding than my mother, a teacher who had me quite literally breaking out in hives from stress. I worked my ass off for that teachers approval.

One day I’d turned in an extra credit project and was summoned to her room shortly after. She accused me of cheating. I was devastated. I’d never cheated in my life, not even in my math, my worst subject, I certainly wouldn’t cheat in English, my best.

There’s something about that day. I haven’t quite worked it out yet. But it was the beginning of the end for me. I lost so much of my fight then, so much of my confidence, my trust in my ability to do what I set out to do. From that point on when anyone told me I couldn’t do something I believed them.

The thing about disappointment is, it’s everywhere. You’ve got to know how to deal with it. You’ve got to be a duck and let it roll off your back like water.

That’s what I’m trying to teach my kids when I have to say no.

No just means not right now, not no always and forever.

It can be tough to get that across.

I never want them to stop asking just because I said no this one time…well, that’s not entirely true, I mean, I absolutely want them to stop asking now, because I’ve already said no, but I do want them to ask again another day. So how to get that across? How to disappoint for the moment and not forever.

I haven’t figured it out yet.

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}

Did you have a childhood hero? I can’t remember that I ever had one, at least, not in the way most people think of childhood heroes: Wonder Woman, firemen, a sports star. I did have Wonder Woman underoos, of course, but I don’t ever remember worshiping a character or a profession or anything. The closest I had was my mom. Still is.

As a divorced single mom, my mom did her best to move us to the areas with the best schools, even if it meant she had a longer commute to work. She did her best, when we were very poor, to ensure I didn’t know we were. There were a lot of handmade, homemade holiday decorations, and I always thought that was part of the fun. She made us a Christmas Tree out of cardboard one year, I thought it was beautiful.

Growing up she’d bring home work for herself and for me. Looking back it was just busy work I couldn’t screw up but made me feel like I was helping when really, I suspect, it was giving her time to get the real work done. Then we’d clean the house to the Pointer Sisters or Tina Turner or Billy Joel. I can’t remember these cleaning sessions except for jumping around the house with a rag screaming “Jump! for my love!”

I have a strong work ethic, a desire to get everything done on time or ahead of time, on budget or ahead of budget and this is all because of my mom.

She also instilled an incredible love of books in me, something I try desperately to instill in my own children. We’d take weekly trips to the library where I could check out as many books as I could carry. And there’d be the occasional trip to the used book store where I could buy as many books as I could carry. Just the thought of these events makes me swoon.

My boys and I go to the library every week. I encourage them to take was many books as we can carry together. When we go to a used book store or a garage sale or Scholastic Book Fair, the rules are the same: how many can we carry? This is the greatest legacy I can leave them.

I wonder who my boys’ heroes are. I haven’t thought to ask. Maybe I will.

Equally important, who were my moms heroes? Who are her heroes now? Where did her love of reading come from? Is the legacy I’m passing down one she started or was it gifted to her?

If asked who my hero is now, I’d still say my mom.

As a parent myself now, I know exactly how much energy and drive and thought it takes to be a parent, just how much of myself is drained every day even as it’s refilled by the same. I can’t imagine doing this alone.

How did she have the energy to clean the house after a week of working and caring for me, making sure I did my homework each night, that I had my clothes for the next day picked out a ready to go? How did she have an ounce of creativity left at the end of the day to make decorations with me when she knew she was also responsible for all the other things: presents (where applicable), magic, ideas.

Not all heroes where masks and capes, some carry craft supplies and ask how many books you can carry.

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}

I suppose everything has a beginning and an end, even things we never expect to end, like love, the Star Wars empire, a lifelong friendship that turns out not to be so lifelong after all.

Growing up I had a best friend I almost never saw. We’d met when we were on vacation with our families and it was instantaneous best friends at first sight. The sort of thing that never happens in real life, but did. We didn’t live too far away from one another, a three hour drive, but neither of us drove at the time. Our parents picked up the slack and we’d get to visit once a year. The rest of the time we wrote. This was before text or email. So we wrote letters. Gloriously long, epic letters. Full of all the things: troubles with siblings and school and partners we didn’t have.

At some point our friendship migrated to all the technological things: emails, texts, FaceBook. We somehow managed to remain best friends for nearly thirty years despite only seeing each other in person a literal handful of times. We stayed friends even though our lives were completely different: she had a great job when I was freshly back from a stint in Europe with no idea what to do next, she settled down and started a family when I was jealously looking on and nowhere near ready, she moved out of state when I was ending a major relationship I’d never thought I’d leave, she was getting a divorce when I’d just gotten married and was gearing up for a major move out of state. We never seemed to be in sync yet remained best friends. And then we weren’t.

It was my fault. I screwed up.

That divorce she was going through was intense, not that any divorce isn’t, and she needed me.

I had a breastfeeding baby that had never had a bottle, a house I was trying to fix up to sell, a toddler that I needed to keep out of my husbands way while he renovated the house and I packed, and through it all we were also trying to figure out just where we were going to go.

In books and movies I would have dropped everything and run to be with her. For at least a weekend. But this was real life.

I had no frozen breastmilk to leave my baby behind, and didn’t know how I’d bring a baby with me and be able to emotionally and mentally be there for her. I had a deadline on renovating/selling the house and I wasn’t even packed yet, I couldn’t leave my husband with two kids and a house to pack up/renovate, not even for a weekend, we didn’t have the time. And I didn’t know how to explain all of this to her and not sound like I was making excuses. So I didn’t.

I didn’t explain it.

I failed her. I said I couldn’t go to her when she needed me. I was a terrible friend.

Even now, roughly three years later, I don’t see how I could have done anything differently. I’m sure there’s something, but I don’t see it.

I tried texting, calling, emailing. I never heard back. I tried writing letters the old fashioned way. No response. At one point, I wrote a letter shouldering all the blame, as I should, with no excuses, cause none would have sufficed, and threw myself at her mercy. I don’t know if she’s ever forgiven me.

Despite knowing no other way I could have handled it, I don’t know if I’ve forgiven myself.

I’d like to think I’ve learned something, but that’s just wishful thinking. I know that if she needed me now, I’d be there on the next flight. If she needed me now, it’d be a whole different thing though. Now I’m settled in my home, my kids are older and don’t physically need me here to survive, we’re on no kind of deadline for anything except maybe getting to karate practice on time. But I’m sure she doesn’t need me now. In fact, I don’t think she needed me then, she’s tough, but I still wish I could have been there. She has some really close girlfriends and I’m sure than at least one, if not several, were there for her. I wish I had been too.

Our lives were never in sync, it really shouldn’t feel like such a loss, but it really is. It’s no less of a loss knowing I caused it. Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise that two people who found best friendship at first sight could also dissolve that friendship in a moment. Maybe there wasn’t as much there holding us together as I thought. Maybe I took her friendship too much for granted. Or maybe she just recognized that the distance between us had become extreme, not just in mileage but in who we were. Maybe two people who were always so out of sync couldn’t continue a friendship based on the past.

None of that, though true, makes the loss easier to bear.

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}

When we moved to Montana, our priorities were getting the house cleaned up, fixed up, livable, and chopping wood. We moved mid-September and in some places that gives you less than a month til the snow starts. Luckily we’d have much more time, but you never know in Montana. At any rate, the majority of my days were spent cleaning the house while my evenings were spent splitting and stacking wood. The goal was to be ready for the snow, ready for the cold, ready to be spending the majority of each day inside.

We’d been staking wood for weeks and even hired a couple teenage boys to come cut/stack wood for us. The wood in the crib was slowly growing and when we got to three chords, which ought to have been enough to make me feel relieved and close to ready, I was still anxious.

And then there was a library book sale.

Our library has a book sale roughly two to four times a year. The book sales are fabulous and you have to get there right when they start if you really want a chance at all the good stuff. When we go early I can leave with four enormous bursting bags of books, but when I go late I’m lucky to fill a single bag.

At that first book sale we were lucky. We arrived early and filled four bags to bursting. We got home and filled the one and only book shelf we had at the time. Filled it completely. And I breathed deeply. I relaxed. I was ready for winter.

Ridiculous.

There are things to worry about that are worthwhile, or perhaps not, and things that will never make sense to worry over. And yet…

I’m currently kept awake at night by the thought that I’ll never be able to do right by my children if I continue homeschooling them. My oldest is so entirely like me that we butt heads. I understand exactly where he’s coming from and haven’t yet worked a way to get around the obstacle. It ought to be easy since we think so much alike and feel things so intensely. Instead we’re both ready to cry at the end of a session that ought to have taken ten minutes but took nearly an hour. I find myself wondering if he has a learning disability, if maybe he really ought to be in school instead as maybe he’d learn better with someone else, if I can just get him to read and then the world will be his oyster and the struggle can cease.

We spent the morning going over the worksheets from his Outschool class where he learned a few sight words: I, and, the. Words that populate books so completely that just being able to spot them allows you to read nearly half the book. He was so frustrated. So I asked him to go grab a book, any book, off his bookshelf and bring it over. He chose The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen (an excellent book and writer and illustrator and we own most of his creations and love them all). Anyway, as I’m reading the book aloud I stress the words I, and, the each time they appear. It sounds something like this: “‘There’s a python in the pantry!’ It went on and on and on…”

Rather than feel excited about the fact that these three tiny words were in near constant use and that any minute he’d be able to read the book on his own, he was frustrated. “Can’t you just read it regular, mom?”

*sigh*

The worst part? After an hour with my child, both of us miserable, he asks for more time with me doing “something else” because I haven’t spent any time with him today and I spent “all (my) time helping (his brother).”

His brother got me for 15 minutes.

His brother takes after his father. There’s no butting of heads or overwhelming emotions causing us friction. We can smoothly and easily pick a topic, like today’s numbers one and two, and get through it efficiently…he’s also only three years old.

The struggle to get from where you are, to the place you want to be…it never goes away. It exists always. It consumes your entire day, depletes all your energy, sometimes requires outside assistance to obtain. And sometimes the struggle isn’t even about what we think it is.

Do I need five chords of wood to get through the winter or a full bookshelf of unread books?

Both.

Do I need to help my kids learn to read and write and do math or can/should I send them to school?

Both.

The struggle in these scenarios isn’t about wood, books, teaching, learning, reading, or math. The struggle is emotion. Emotion will never go away. Learning to deal with emotions, have them, ride them, move on from them, remain outside their control…that’s the struggle. It’s difficult to see my struggle reflected back to me by my child. And it’s wonderful to see the times where he doesn’t struggle with the emotions, where I can see reflected back to me the times I’ve let the struggle go, too.

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}

I got this typewriter that’s really a pen/pencil/whatever catchall for my desk. I’d been eyeing it for months online. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I really want an actual typewriter, but not really because seriously finding ribbons and dealing with stuck keys and and and…no thank you. But still. An actual typewriter? *swoon* So I finally got the next best thing, a cute not-a-typewriter that holds my pens and pencils and scissors and highlighter….

It arrived the other day and as I pulled it out of the cardboard box and the styrofoam it arrived in I thought to myself, “this is a piece of junk.” It’s not ceramic or plastic, or maybe it is, I can’t really tell what it’s made of. It feels cheap. It definitely doesn’t look as good as it did in the pictures online. I put my stuff in it anyway. I set it up on my desk anyway. I’m staring at it anyway.

From this distance, it’s not so bad. Sitting back against the wall a little over a foot from where my eyes are up here sitting back upright in my chair, typing away on my computer. My computer, not my typewriter. Because a computer is logical. Until the power goes out and you lose internet and you’ve not backed anything up and….

I’ve always been an emotional buyer.

After I had my first kiddo and I was in a tailspin of barely showering once a week, unable to put the baby down without him screaming bloody murder, constantly breastfeeding (yes, constantly, there were a lot of issues and it took over six months to sort them all out), not sleeping because of a lifetime of insomnia combined with fear and anxiety over this little creature that did not appear to be making it and all because of me because it was all up to me because he was mine and I was responsible for him and I had the boobs and they were doing their job but something still wasn’t right and *spiral*

Anyway, somewhere in there these leggings and dresses and shirts became super popular, I don’t think I need to state a brand here. They were everywhere. Pop-up sales and internet sales and MLM sales and at garage sales and swap meets and and and. You couldn’t get away. I was desperate for something to bring some order to my day, some joy, and I needed clothes so…flash forward a month or so and I had more of these clothes than I could wear in a month if I never wore the same thing twice. More than I could wear in a lifetime if I combined them in different ways each day. It was completely out of control. And 100% emotional.

Once I figured out what I was doing, the clothes all went away. All of them. I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore. These things I’d been collecting and wearing and obsessing over for days, weeks, months…out the door.

It wasn’t the first time. As evidenced by the not-a-typewriter on my desk it wasn’t the last time. At least now I force myself to wait a few weeks before giving in to the desire.

And really, all said and done, I like this little tchotchke more and more the longer it’s there. The more I look at it, the less cheap it looks, the more like the pictures I saw online, the more like exactly what I wanted to make my desk in the guest room feel more like a desk in my office. The more validating it becomes. Cause really isn’t that what the fuss was all about?

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}