As I’ve mentioned, oh, 76 or so times, I have four teenagers in the house. Which means we have very little of some things (leftovers, tranquility, time, clean laundry), and a lot of other things (drama, chips and salsa, deodorant, hormones).
And as the culture around them accelerates to 5G-speed–despite my kids’ lack of a fully-developed frontal lobe–my husband and I are working hard to keep communication open.
I sat with a friend recently, warming my hands over a fire pit as the nights here in Colorado begin to slide into fall. What she and her family have been through is nothing short of horrific, and it felt sacred to listen to her story in relative silence.
They’re on the other side of tragedy now–the side they weren’t sure they’d ever see. But because they made it through the trauma, she explained quietly, everyone thought they were okay now.
Y’know what’s not a good sign? When there’s water dripping from the light fixture in your downstairs bathroom…when someone’s taking a shower upstairs, in the bathroom right above it.
Oy, vey.
Genevieve’s voice poured through the phone to me. She’s a former pastor’s wife still wading through court proceedings following a horrific, jarring divorce. That’s not to mention the affair, the pregnant mistress, the mental disorders and gaslighting. Her descriptions called to mind a life upturned, shaken violently, spilled. How do you help a friend grieving after divorce?
Some pieces of her former life had temporarily skittered beyond vision: Her ally in the world’s onslaught. Financial security. A co-parent and advocate for their boys. Her helper to pick up the kids or fix the washing machine. A calm presence after a nightmare. Someone to process the day with. A lover of her body.
Recently I noticed something curious as a friend described talking to herself.
She leaned forward. Her eyebrows turned down into arrows. She jabbed a pointer finger repeatedly, thumb held up like a pistol.
People think of sleep as one of the easiest things in the world. Babies can do it! (Though as one woman wrote, “I don’t want to sleep like a baby. I want to sleep like my husband.” Hear, hear.)
But I’ve noticed a weird amount of people around me now who have serious issues getting to sleep and staying asleep.
My thirteen-year-old and I sat across a sticky table from each other at the local donut shop. If I remember right, he had this maple-frosted thing that was the size of a small planet, totally at my permission (unusual for my Sugar Nazi tendencies). His tears had dried by now, leaving a whisper of salt on his cheeks.
“I just feel like I have more setbacks than wins,” he shrugged, so clearly in pain.
Stress is like wearing a flannel shirt when you’re washing dishes, you know?
One minute, you’ve got your hands in the water, scrubbing, the edge of your cuffs kissing the water. Next minute, the water’s bled up to your armpits. (For this reason, my husband’s told me that in Boy Scouts, they always said “Cotton is death”: If you’re wearing cotton when you’re active in the cold, it absorbs your perspiration, and can quickly bring you to hypothermia in bad weather.)
A couple of weeks ago, I was stuffing paper bags with sandwiches, flipping pancakes, signing permission slips, smelling breath to confirm teeth brushing, etc.–all your average morning chaos. That’s when my middle child told me he was quitting football.
Imagine the activity in my kitchen suddenly lurching to a halt. “What? Why?”
He had some good reasons. And a few not-great, 12-year-old ones. It was one of those weird parenting situations where you wish there was a highly detailed playbook. What to do when your kid wants to quit football and he’s been in it for a month and isn’t getting to play and… I told him to go to practice, and we’d talk about it on the weekend.
Author’s note: If you missed these previous posts, you might grab them first for other overarching ideas on choosing vulnerability even when it’s hard–and being a safe place for others when they don’t have their act together.
My husband and I were headed out on a date night (can you hear the angel choirs singing? I needed it. As in, bad). It was admittedly last minute, to the point that my curly-turned-cotton-candy hair had been lassoed by a headband and fun-bun. But my kids would have food and it looked positive no one would burn anything down, so the big stuff was covered. Thus I sat in the passenger seat with my makeup bag, aka magic wand. I was just about through patting on concealer when my husband looked over at me.
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