A Purple Heart

I’ve heard people say having kids is like wearing your heart on your sleeve. And today for me, that was the case. I was doing pretty well with P. out of town and the days before me of solo parenting stretching out. In fact I have gotten it down to a system. I work babysitter breaks in for myself and try and make sure I get some writing time in and yoga and pray for some time with a good girlfriend or two—the last not always working out because of the family demands we all seem to be under with the littles.

I was doing well until I picked my oldest, F., up at kindergarten. He got in the car not his cheerful self, and asked when he was going to have a playdate. (Playdates—what a construction of safety parenting! I balk a bit at them because when I grew up we played with the neighborhood kids and occasionally had a friend from school over, now it is all about the playdates; parents orchestrating friendships. And the reason I balk? Well, I have seen the long term outcome when I worked at a few universities in my previous life. I witnessed kids not being able to work out their problems with their roommates without a parent intervening or another adult they were so use to this friendship management that they lacked the confidence, tools and resolve to do it themselves.) Needless to say, I participate in these social norms of today, and F. has not had a playdate in a few weeks, which feels like forever to him. I told him maybe Friday as a mother had inquired about having F. over to play with her Boy x. F. perked up at this.

We arrived home and F.’s cheeriness dissolved again when we walked in the door and our golden retrievers greeted him and accidentally knocked papers out of his pack. Immediate tears sprung. I chided him a bit, “F. this is not something to throw a tantrum about,” as he cried and yelled at the dogs: “No one is being nice to me!” He took off his coat and ran up the stairs to his bed. I followed him and he broke down in wholehearted sobs. I held him. He finally confessed, “Boy x is not nice to me at school. I tried talking to him a few times at school today and he kept a serious face and did not respond except for once.”

Now, Boy x F. has regular playdates with… and has had some problems with him in the past at school. It seems Boy x is one way in the solo company of my son, and another at school. Mama bear in me comes out when I think about it. We’ve talked about friends and how a true blue friend is consistent not one way in one situation and another way in a different place. Put in kindergarten terms not hot and cold…and then discussed who is hot and cold and who is consistently nice to him—and he to them. We also have talked about how a person makes you feel when you are around them, that friends bring out the best in one another optimally; a fine balance. F. named some kids who do this for him and Boy x was not on that list, Boy x he said, “He used to be nice to me. He even said ‘Sorry,’ to me, but sorry means you won’t do it again and he has.”

By now my heart is fully patched outside of myself as F.’s tears resolve, and he changes into play clothes. After a phone call to his teacher to better understand what the school dynamic is that is occurring between the two, I agree to let him go to Boy x’s on Friday because he really wants to under one condition: we talk about some strategy beforehand and he agrees to discuss how it went afterward. With that pact in place, we walked downstairs to make Valentine’s Day cards for school. I watch as he moves so gracefully from protecting his heart for the day to giving of it again as he crafts his cards for his classmates. I know that some of those feelings he feels now I had as a child and while I want to protect him from the yo-yo friendships, I know I can’t so much protect him as prepare him for how to handle them. It took me nearly 36 years to come to the conclusion that I don’t have to be friends nor remain friends with people who are not consistent, or kind, or who drain my energy. I spent a lot of wasted energy trying to nurture relationships that I should have let go of gracefully. No one said to me as a child that I didn’t have to like everyone and that if everyone didn’t like me it didn’t mean that it was because of me per se. Since I have learned this, I feel much freer and more like I have the energy for the people I cherish. And I want to help F. set a healthy boundary that he does not have to try so hard with Boy x, because I will not let Boy x erode his confident self by his inconsistent actions toward my son. 

One of F.'s Valentine's.

So tonight my heart is raw and outside of my body a bit as I contemplate how letting my little boy move into the world where I can’t help orchestrate his friendships moment by moment takes courage. I know he will be better for navigating some of these seas himself, but it is not easy to watch and know when to intervene and when to let him test the waters. F.’s teacher is going to begin a lesson on friendship and caring for our hearts and others hearts. Her hope is that the kids understand that when we are mean with our words, our facial expressions, our body language that it creates a wrinkle in another person’s heart. And ultimately for them to learn at a deeper level, that hearts are soft and tender and we need to be careful with our hearts and others. Whew, you can say that again! My heart is wrinkled tonight and try as I might the iron is not hot enough to press them out. Perhaps, this is part of how we earn our purple heart as parents--that as our kids' hearts get wounded in action, our hearts ache too. And even though we'd do anything to take away their pain they are better served if we do our best to help them heal.

So what do you do when your heart is outside yourself as you navigate parenthood? How do you find the delicate balance of helping your youngins learn the social intricacy of school? And what do you do for yourself when your partner is out of town and you are with your littles to keep sane?

What's Your Number?

On Sunday, during a sunny afternoon hike up Atalaya with my friends Carol and Mary, we got to talking about the ways in which we take care of ourselves. For a person who deals in words, I like numbers a lot. Numbers get right to the point: As in, on a scale of 1 to 10, how well are you taking care of yourself right now? I think about this often in an abstract way, but I’ve never stopped to quantify it, or take inventory. So while I was surprised when Carol asked the question, I was even more surprised when I heard my answer. “Eight,” I said, right off the bat. The number sounded high as soon as it left my lips, but it was easy to rattle off the things I need to find optimal balance, to hit the sweet spot of being both grounded and energized, present in my life and continuing to grow:

1. Fresh air and exercise on the trails at least 6 times a week

            2. Writing

3. Time with friends; often most efficiently combined with #1.

These are the three essentials I can’t live without, the non-negotiables in my daily and weekly schedule that help me stay sane and feel like myself. But I also need:

4. Quiet, alone time—that's why I'm trying to learn to meditate

5. 8 hours of sleep

6. Adventures & travel

7. Yoga once a week

8. Good books to read

9. More whole foods, less sugar

As we talked, though, I began to have second thoughts. Maybe it’s more like 7.5? I wondered aloud, thinking of all the things I wish I could do more, or do better: like jet off on assignment to remote places, alone, like I used to do before I had two small daughters. Or really push myself physically, remembering wistfully those four-hour bike rides and high-mountain endurance runs from my old life. I wish I had time to run and ride and hike the trails AND go to a strength training class. (Especially since I read that lifting weights supposedly makes you smarter.) I wish I could do yoga more than once a week. I wish I could go to New Zealand or Norway, plan a climbing expedition, and have more adventure in my everyday life.

But then I realized that although the results aren’t always what I hope, most of the necessary pieces are in place. I know what I need, and for the most part, I do an OK job carving out time to take good care of myself so that I can take better care of my family. I know that when I wake up feeling blue from my missing my dad or listless about trying to drum up writing assignments, there are specific things I can do to feel better right away. I have strategies and a system, a tick-list of to-dos (and, thankfully, a very patient husband). And I almost always come home reenergized, sunnier, and much nicer to have around.

Carol’s question was a good exercise. I realized that even when my life feels nuts and out of whack, I’m happier than I think. And that makes me happy.

Everybody has their own sanity list. What’s on yours? (My dad liked to lie on the carpet and daydream for half an hour every day to recharge his brain.) On a scale of 1 to 10, how well are you taking care of yourself right now? What’s your number?

Writing Practice: Where were you when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded?

Where was I when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded? Eighth-grade geometry class—or was it 9^th-grade algebra?—at Summit Jr. High. This was a gothic brick building, major curb appeal, tall and steepled-looking, and inside it did not disappoint. Classic U-shaped—or was it H?—with endless hallways running at right angles to each other, no nonsense, the way schools used to be. One half block from the Summit train station, where commuter trains left every hour for New York City. The halls were lined with lockers that clanged when you opened and closed them, and except for Mme Delby’s 7^th grade French class and Mr. O’Neill’s 8^th-grade drama class, all of junior high was a blur. As it should have been. That horrifically awkward period when your hair was either too short or too long, all the familiar landmarks of youth had fallen away, replaced by corridors of lockers, gym teachers with nylon pants and expectations, and a phone booth out front where so-and-so, the class bully, with boobs and facial hair at 13, tried to beat you up one day after school. She asked: What are you looking at? You: Nothing much. Yes, with sass. Then-best-friend Blake snorted with accidental laughter, then read the look in the bully’s eyes and yanked your sweater (monogrammed no doubt): Come ON. The day the  space shuttle exploded, you were one of a million kids watching the very same TV broadcast on a wide brown TV wheeled in on an A.V. cart for the occasion. The blinds were down, the room dark, exciting, and movie-like. Elbows propped on desks, chins propped on wrists as history was made, much better than the usual filmstrip or chalky equation on the board. It was shortly after 1, or just before 11, and the puff of smoke looked so right at first. Of course it would be that way: engine thrusts sending the rocket ship into space, sort of like exhaust from a muffler when the car starts cold. What gave it away, then? Surely not our shocked classroom; we were in awe, detached as adolescents will be. It must have been the announcer, the shrieking TV crowd—did the math teacher turn off the TV, or did we want the capsule fall, looping and spinning?

Highs and Lows

Sorry for the radio silence. It’s been a topsy-turvy week, starting with an epic sleep-training session on Sunday night. (The baby jinx is real, by the way, so henceforth I am entering the cone of silence about M’s sleeping.) I made the most of my marathon, middle-of-the-night shift by inhaling the first 80 pages of Poser: My Life in 23 Yoga Poses, the clever new memoir by Claire Dederer, a book critic and mother of two (who also happens to be married to my former Outside colleague, Bruce Barcott). The book perfectly captures that misguided drive toward perfection that so many of us (i.e. me) seem to have when it comes to parenthood, writing, and well, all of life. Claire manages to avoid annoying yoga-speak and dishes instead about her zany, you-think-your-family-was-weird childhood in Seattle and her two very tormented births. It was so unexpectedly gripping that I almost didn’t want M. to fall asleep. Almost.

We awoke on Tuesday to an out-of-the-blue powder day: 19 inches of new snow at the Santa Fe Ski Basin, so Steve and I hustled P to nursery school and drove M up the mountain with us, where we did the baby hand-off in the lodge. I plowed through waist-deep powder pillows with a ridiculous grin plastered all over my face for an hour or so while M napped in her nifty canvas baby cocoon on the floor of the cafeteria. Later, while Steve skied, it seemed like half of Santa Fe was taking a powder day, catching up on emails in the lodge—the modern, mobile office. Love that. Looking out of the window at the snow still falling, fine as ash, with M making eyes at a bunch of 60-something badass retirees, I felt giddy with good fortune—especially when Steve let me ski the bonus round before it was time to go home.

Is it any wonder, then, the letdown that followed? Wednesday ushered in a mini Ice Age; my car thermometer topped out at two. We hunkered down en masse, a grouchy case of cabin fever setting in by noon. Some days trying to find balance between motherhood and writing feels like riding the seesaw with the mean kid who decides to get off when you’re at the top. Crash.

It’s partly logistics: The nanny’s out of town; the toddler refuses to nap/swats baby like a fly; and you can’t for the life of you locate five minutes of peace and quiet in your own home. Yesterday I was convinced the world was ending, or at least my writing career. Payments were late coming in and going out, I hadn’t pitched a story since before my father got sick, my bank account was in crisis mode, etc, etc. In my former life as a childless freelance writer, I used to be able to put in a solid seven hours at my desk on a good day. Now, I feel heroic if I can sneak in three; 90 minutes is more like it. How can you possibly make a living like that? Guess it’s time to dust off The Four Hour Work Week.

But it’s also perspective, and I know of no better cure for a bad attitude than going straight up a mountain, even when it’s zero degrees outside—maybe especially when it’s zero degrees outside. So I rousted myself for a frostbite hike with Steph, who listened to me rant, my self-pity sending little cloudbursts of steam from my mouth like an ornery old uncle smoking a pipe. It was stupidly cold, so we chugged uphill as fast as we could, following a lone set of footprints that about-faced at the grey ledge and left us to break trail. Soon we were above the mist and into patchy blue sky, Santa Fe disappearing and reappearing below us through the clouds. The piñons were clumpy with new snow, and the sun glittered off the pine needles. I knew then that this would be a day we would remember all year, maybe longer—not because it was so bad, but because it turned out to be so good. By the time we reached the top, I’d forgotten what I’d been bitching about, my nose was tingly, and Steph’s hands had gone numb like they always do, but life felt just about right again.


Just to make sure, I drove down Canyon Road, snow-packed and empty, and pulled into Downtown Subscription for a cup of tea before I had to go home. I only had one ratty dollar in my pocket, but the place was nearly deserted so I sat down with my notebook and wrote for 15 minutes on whatever came to mind. And you know what? I felt all brand new again. Next time you're feeling stuck or whiney, try it. A good walk with a good friend and 15 minutes of writing is all it takes, I swear.