Mother's Day: This Year it Kind of Feels like Bullshit

 

Last week in a class I teach, the subject of mother’s day came up. The teenage assistant who helps me said, “I think on Mother’s Day my mother should celebrate me because when I was born she became a mother.” An elder in the class, a mother, replied, “Then you should celebrate her on your birthday. Do you really want to trade your birthday for Mother’s Day?”

I understand my assistant’s perspective. Being a mother is one of my greatest joys. It’s where I learn the most about myself and humanity. It’s where I am most humbled and most proud. I laugh my greatest laughs and shed my biggest tears in the role of being a mother. I do celebrate my daughter on this day because, without her, I wouldn’t be a mother. 

BUT, that perspective is troubling as well. In the grand scheme, without mothers, the planet would cease to exist. We would have no reproductive capacity. The world would die. So, on this day, on every day is real important to celebrate the mothers. 

Fall down on your knees people and thank the women who brought life to this earth. One day. It’s not much, not enough. 

Yesterday my friend Kate sent me an article, Of Course the Constitution Has Nothing to Say About Abortion in the New Yorker about this current debacle with Roe v. Wade. Here’s a quote:

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is surprised that there is so little written about abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses, vaginas, fetuses, placentas, menstrual blood, breasts, or breast milk. There is nothing in that document about women at all.

Take that in. There is no mention of women in the constitution of the United States, but without women, without women who choose to go through pregnancy, give birth, and spend a hearty dose of their life’s energy raising the next generation, this country would not exist.

How incredibly galling this whole debate about reproductive freedom is. And, to reflect on it on Mother’s Day, a day when we celebrate this role — this significant, important, critical, life-giving role — women looking at a dystopic future that looks a lot like the Handmaid’s Tale. 

Being a mother is a joy but it’s also a sacrifice. As a mother, you are always thinking about someone else before you are thinking about yourself. There’s no choice. It’s biological. Even when I don’t want to be thinking about my daughter’s health and safety, even when I want a break, I can’t take it. I’m a mother. I chose that role. It’s in the fibers of my being. Yes, it’s a joy. And it’s fucking hard work.

What about the millions of women who don’t choose this role, who don’t want to be part of this Mother’s Day? Because they forgot to mention us in the drafting of the constitution, these women may be forced to take on a role that is a sacrifice, a role that forever changes their place in the world, their destiny.

Women all over the United States are getting cards and flowers and chocolates, little trinkets to say how important they are on Mother’s Day. But that’s all just junk. What about giving women something that really shows gratitude, something that truly honors this life-giving role? What about choice? That would be a real mother's Day gift.

An Ode to the Mail Lady

I’ve been cleaning out boxes and going through old letters. In the process, I uncovered a stack of letters from my late father. Dad died more than twenty-five years ago and most of the letters were written when I was in college. My father was very funny. In my freshman year, he wrote me a poem about homesickness entitled, “An Ode to a Girl Named Laura.”

I often write silly poems to my daughter, partner, and friends for birthdays and holidays. It’s when I feel most connected to my father. My daughter now writes me a silly poem every year on my birthday and mother’s day. She has the same quirkiness that my dad had, that I have and it delights me every time I get one of her poems. 

There’s a smiley mail carrier in my neighborhood. She doesn’t deliver my mail, but she serves the blocks around me and I often see her when I’m walking my dog Freckles. Freckles is a chubby little Shih Tzu and he attacks our poor mailman Troy. But whenever he sees the smiley female mail carrier he waddles up to her and sniffs her ankles. She always stops to say hi and laughs at how ridiculously slowly Freckles walks. She hoists her mailbag behind her so he can bend down to hold out her hand for him to sniff. 

This mail carrier seems young. But she’s been delivering mail around here for at least fifteen years so she can’t be that young. She wears a baseball hat with her ponytail sticking out of the back opening. Though she has a mask, she wears it down on her chin so I can see her wide smile when we pass each other. 

Even the mail carrier’s walk is happy. She always has a pep in her step; she reminds me of Huck Finn walking towards the pond to go fishing while his friends whitewash his aunt’s fence. Even though she’s delivering mail, it’s like she’s on a happy adventure.

I always appreciate seeing this mail carrier. Today when I passed her we had our usual smiley exchange. It was raining and she and Freckles and I were all wet. But she smiled and laughed and bent down to let Freckles smell her hand like she always does.

As she walk-skipped towards her mail van the beginning of a poem a la my father started forming in my head.

Here’s an ode to the happy mail lady.

Wears her hat to stay in the shady.

Smiles all over the neighborhood streets.

Petting every fat dog she meets.

She doesn’t know the impact she makes.

Just being herself is all that it takes

To brighten the days of neighbors she sees

As she cheerily walks beneath the big trees.

I’m thankful for the many hours she walks

to deliver each letter.

Just seeing her face always makes me feel better. 

I’m too shy to actually tell the mail lady how she makes me feel, but I hope my smile gives her some idea.

Let's Make a Forest

 

Lately, different friends have been talking about “getting the hell out of dodge.” People my age — late forties to early fifties — talk about moving out of Seattle. “It’s too dirty,” they say, “it’s gotten too big; it’s like San Francisco now.”

I take it hard when someone I know and love, someone who has become part of my community, wants to move away. “What about me?” I think to myself. “What about us? What we’ve created, built, sustained for all these years?”

I love my friends. I love my neighborhood and my neighbors. Last night my across-the-street neighbor called to ask me to keep an eye on her house because her husband’s wallet had been stolen. Someone had made a bunch of charges on his credit card. Her husband was going out of town and she was worried about being alone and a stranger having her address. “I know it’s ridiculous,” she said, “but I just want you to know.” I looked across the street before I went to bed and this morning I texted her to make sure all was well.

I love to share a cup of flour or borrow an egg from my neighbors. I love to walk down the street and clip parsley from my friend’s garden when I run out. I love watching the seasonal birds that rest on the wires outside my kitchen window. I love to watch my lilac bloom every year and see the new trees and plants neighbors plant every spring; I look forward to watching them grow year after year.

And the kids! I love to watch them grow up— seeing new parents emerge with their newborns in Baby Bjorns, then strollers, then walking them to preschool. Before I know it I’m watching the kids catch the bus on their own, eventually driving their parents’ cars to soccer practice and parties.

It’s true. Seattle has changed a lot. Housing rates are unfathomable for most home buyers. I was so relieved when a close friend of mine miraculously found a house she could afford within the city limits last week. The other option would have been for her to move to a county a car ride and ferry crossing away. And then she’d be gone, one of the lost ones.

My therapist says I am deeply loyal. That’s true. I hate to lose a friend. I hold on and fight till the bitter end. Whether a physical move out of town or an emotional break-up, I don’t accept it easily when a friend wants to move on. It feels like a waste, money down the drain. Why work hard to create something and then just walk away? 

Every week I bring my elderly neighbors a meal. There are three of them — one couple and one single man. I check in and see how they are faring. And every week I am amazed by these older neighbors — pillars of endurance and strength. All three of them are in their nineties. “I want to be like them,” I think to myself when I see them. I want to be an elder in my neighborhood, holding the history that lives here. They have been here almost as long as some of the trees that tower over the houses on our block.

I understand that there are many reasons to leave one’s home. Financial is only one reason. Another is that people change and grow; their needs and desires change. Some people have been biding their time in the city until they can retire and move to the country. I understand. I get it. But it still hurts my heart. I don’t want anyone to leave ever. “Stay close,” I want to say, “let’s not change anything. Let’s grow old together. Let’s feed our deep roots with the images of the life growing all around us.”

Last week while walking my dog I came upon three elderly women from the block up the hill from me. They were standing on a corner in front of one of their homes chatting. They waved me over so they could say hello to my dog. We introduced ourselves and the women shared with me that all three have lived in this neighborhood for over fifty years. They knew each other so well; they were old, familiar friends. They stood in the sun chatting casually but they inhabited the space powerfully, like old-growth Fir trees deep in the forest.

That’s what I want. I want to grow into an old tree with my friends and my community around me. I want to be as comfortable and familiar as the three elderly women up the street, so known to each other that they communicate like the mycelial network in the old-growth forests.

I know I am a dreamer. People will move on. I may move on one day too. Maybe when my daughter grows up and moves to another city far away I will feel called to her. If she has a family maybe my roots will not be strong enough to hold me here and I will want to create new ones closer to the ones she is laying down. 

But for now, I am committed to being here. I feel at home in this place— calm, grounded, and at peace. I want to keep growing my roots here. And I want all the other trees to stay close too. Together we make a beautiful forest. 

Intergenerational Learning

 

Right now I have the great privilege of running an intergenerational writing program for high school students and older adults (a.k.a. senior citizens). The program is a five-week series where participants work in pairs (older-younger teams) to create and share their life stories.

I was worried about getting youth to participate and so offered an incentive of a $100 gift card along with community service hours. In the first session, I could barely get any of the young people to speak. And I worried about the elders too. I feared that they would struggle to relate to the young people, perhaps feeling offended by their manners or their attitudes. But the older members of the group seem thrilled just to be in the space of the youngers. “I like the energy,” one said on our very first day.

Now we’re three weeks in and this intergenerational program is nothing short of amazing.

Each week we do some kind of team-building warm-up so the larger group can get to know each other. Then we break into pairs where dyads do some interviewing and some writing. Last week I had everyone line up by age without speaking. There are four teens and four elders. They dutifully did as asked and were surprisingly accurate in their lineup. In order, from youngest to oldest, they placed themselves against the counter along the side of the room — 14, 14, 15, 16, 68, 80, 81, 82.

For the next part of the activity, I invited them to choose the age they would choose to be if they could choose any age and reposition themselves in that spot along the line. The first fourteen-year-old said he’d want to be nineteen. He said he thought it would be a good age because he’d be older but still young. The second fourteen-year-old said she’d like to be twenty-two so she could be out of college and getting ready for real life. The fifteen-year-old girl after her wanted to be twenty-one and the last sixteen-year-old boy wanted to be twenty, “so that he could be in college but still get support from his family.”

The eighty-year-old woman in the elder group said she’d like to be forty. “Forty,” she said, “is when my real life began. It’s when I became truly independent.” The next elder to go was the sixty-eight-year-old. “You know,” she said, “I’d like to be exactly this age. I love being this age.” The eighty-one-year-old said that she’d like to be fifty because that’s when she felt like she was finally getting wise. And last to go, the eldest of the group at eighty-two, said, “I’d like to be thirty. When I was thirty I traveled the world. I’d like to travel the world again.”

“What a gift,” I thought to myself as I watched the younger participants listen to the elders. The kids could only imagine five or six years beyond their current ages but the elders had chosen a span of almost forty years. Forty years of wisdom. “What a gift for these young people,” I thought, “to hear this insight into what life can be like in the years far beyond their imaginations.”

Yesterday we did an activity where people shared things they liked or disliked about their neighborhood and the world. Every single elder said that they felt like their communities were too quiet. They missed the noise of young people— the laughing, the yelling, the wildness. And the kids complained about their own brand of isolation; they talked about feeling isolated, affected by crime or living far away from friends.

At the end of yesterday’s session, after a full hour of writing exercises, we closed the group as we always do with a circle where everyone shares something about their experience that day. The eldest participant shared a letter that she’d written to her partner, a fourteen-year-old girl. “Dear — — -,” it started, “the wisdom I have gained from talking to you today fills me with hope….” She read the whole letter talking about things she’d learned from talking to her young partner that day.

For his closing, the fourteen-year-old boy who’d shared his fear of crime in his community laughed to the group, “An hour is not enough time for this. We need a whole day.”

We still have two of the five sessions to go and three of the four youth participants have asked if they could do it again. My fear of engaging these young and old people together was unfounded, completely misguided. These pairings of young and old seem meant to be. They are like the Yin and Yang coming together to create perfect harmony. 

Learning to Fly Again

When COVID struck I had recently sold my business and was feeling newly liberated. I was intentionally aimless. I spent days by myself puttering around the house, taking walks, deliberately doing nothing. I did this by choice because I was tired of the rat race and I needed some peace and quiet away from it all.

When COVID reached pandemic status and I was forced to isolate and limit my daily activities I felt okay for a while. It didn’t feel that different to me. My teenage daughter was initially happy about the two weeks off of school. My family made lists and played games. For a little while, the forced isolation was okay. Then it wasn’t.

My partner and I acclimated. We found ways to be grateful for the quiet of our new life. We often relished in the lack of social expectation. We’d been buzzing around in the world for half a century and a little rest was just what the doctor ordered. But for my daughter this isolation was not welcome; it was torture. I watched the flicker in her eyes slowly fade; it was as if a chrysalis was forming around her budding wings. Her essential adolescent desire to fly was stripped away and she lay listless in her room for hours on end.

During those long months that turned into years, my daughter’s mental health was my greatest worry. I masterminded efforts to have a friend spend the night in warm sleeping bags on our deck, bringing meals and water and games outside for them. I bought heaters and umbrellas and a fire pit to encourage outdoor gatherings. Last summer brought us a little respite and my daughter and her friends finally gathered freely, without the help of their parents, without the fear that had plagued them in the winter months. They fluttered around the city, exercising their broken wings for a delicious few months.

Things have slowly gotten better and I’ve seen my daughter come back to life. But she’s not the same. That flicker in her eyes that dimmed during the first year of the pandemic has still not come back completely. And maybe it never will.

I hear stories every week about teenagers who are suffering — stuck in the listlessness that afflicted so many young people during the first year of the pandemic. Some kids haven’t gone to school in months and many, including my own daughter, have lost the academic musculature to stay the course with the school expectations that used to feel so normal.

I see it in my work too. Even though we are partially back to in-person, it’s so easy for people to call in and say, “I was exposed” or “I have a sore throat.” This will mean a few days working at home until they can get a test, easily a full week of isolating away from the team again. The ability and inclination to go into the shadows are ever present now. It’s easy to stay hidden. Isolating is what was required of us for so long that reverting back to this way of being feels easy now.

It doesn’t serve me to wish for things to go back to how they used to be, especially because I don’t think that the “used to be” busy-ness and frenetic lifestyle was the right thing either. But I do wonder how we recover. I wonder how we help our kids recover.

My priority is still my daughter’s mental health. I just want to keep her wings active until she flies off to college. Whenever I see a spark in her eyes or hear enthusiasm in her voice I am right there, cheering her on, interested, excited, encouraging. I want to remind her of that muscle, the one that engages in life. I want her to keep working it, strengthening it enough so that when I’m not here to cheer her on, she’ll still be able to fly.

WoWoWo Wordle

 

Wordle, our country’s newest trend, has definitely swept me up and in. Wordle is the first brain game I’ve been able to stick with. It’s finite enough that it doesn’t overwhelm me. It makes me use my brain in a different way from my default everyday activities, which, as I get older, feels like an important investment. It feels good to solve a puzzle every morning and I look forward to the next day every time I’m done.

Last week I was on day 78 of my Wordle streak. I was getting used to the idea that I would never miss a word. I was improving — getting words on the third try compared to my norm which is the fourth or fifth. But then, on day 79 I missed. I had gotten so cocky, so sure of myself. I envisioned my skills becoming so refined that I’d regularly be able to get Wordle on the second or third try. But in my rapid-fire word choice, I’d grown sloppy and lost!

Wordle is one of the first things I do in the morning and I know why. Getting the answer, solving the puzzle, winning the game is an immediate, palpable burst of dopamine. It starts me on a good path — one I feel like I can succeed on. And it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something.

On that day when I missed my first Wordle, I felt sunken and demoralized. How could this happen when I was getting so good, performing better than I ever had?

I recommitted myself. I would work harder, think more carefully about my first word, and not be so impulsive on deciding to use a subsequent word that wasn’t the most strategically sound. The next day I got Wordle on the fifth try. Not my best, but at least I got it. I didn’t have the same surge of dopamine I’d been getting when I was on my winning streak, but I felt like I was recovering, coming back from the penalty box.

But the next day I missed Wordle again. And this time the blow was even greater than after my first loss. My success rate dropped from 100% to 98% and I felt rotten, like the true loser I really was. The dumb me came out of the shadows and swallowed up my confident, sharp, wordsmith-y self. It was a dark day.

I’m back on a streak — 3 days. I still do Wordle every morning but I’ve slowed down. I know that every line is a potential step closer to losing or winning. Knowing this, I take my time, contemplating all the possibilities before jumping into a word. I no longer rest on the laurels of my past success.

I’m grateful for the two Wordle losses. What they taught me is to think like a beginner, to always be trying my hardest, and not assume that, just because I was good at Wordle for three months I will always be good at it.

I can feel my brain trying harder, thinking about every possible word that ends in “m” instead of just choosing the first one that comes to mind. In not assuming I’m going to win Wordle every time I’m getting more out of the game. I am working harder, giving my brain a better workout. I’d call that a win every time, even when I lose.

Habit Stacking Ain't so Bad

 

I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear. I didn’t enjoy reading the book — too directive and not contemplative enough — but I did learn a lot and I got some good ideas out of it. One of the ideas was habit-stacking, the process of starting small, manageable habits and adding other small, manageable habits onto those. Clear suggests making tiny lifestyle adjustments and keeping with them. This process invites significant long-term change.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been a seeker — always trying out new ways to make myself better — yoga, meditation, writing. I’ve taken loads of classes and read countless books espousing strategies for living a more balanced life. And I think I’ve been successful. At 53 I mostly feel balanced, nourished, and healthy. I’ve developed good habits that have stuck with me.

For me, balance always starts in the morning — whether it is a walk before everyone wakes up, doing a yoga class, meditating, or writing in the early morning quiet of my dining room table. At the beginning of 2022, I started a new set of morning rituals. They evolved organically, one leading to another until I had a stack of five. My ex-Catholic partner calls these morning rituals my “ablutions.” I didn’t know until I heard James Clear talk about habit stacking that this is what I’ve been doing.

Every morning I wake up to my dog Freckles sneezing and bark-moaning. Somehow he’s learned that sneezing followed by a few quick whiny barks will wake us up. Freckles’ desperation for his breakfast starts at random times, sometimes as early as 2:30 am. If we’re lucky he will delay his breakfast pleas until 5:30 am or 6:00 am.

I’m a natural early riser so I don’t really mind Freckles’ wake-up calls and I look forward to my morning ablutions in the kitchen. The first habit is to not look at my phone until after I meditate.

When I walk into the kitchen I turn on the coffee pot so that, by the time I’ve fed Freckles, I’ll have a pot ready. After Freckles eats he’s calm again and goes to his downstairs bed where he promptly starts snoring. I take my coffee to the tiny couch under the kitchen windows and read from my book of poems, a compilation of poems about kindness by various authors. I read the poem from the page I left off the day before a few times and then I close my eyes and meditate.

Often an image or idea from the poem guides me somewhere behind my closed eyes and I follow that until either it leads somewhere else or my meditation feels complete.

My next habit in the stack, and reward for not looking at my phone before meditating, is Wordle. After my meditation, I get my phone and open Wordle. Usually, there’s an idea from my meditation that’s floating around in my brain and I try to think of a 5-letter word to encompass that idea so I can use it to start my Wordle. Sometimes I get no letters but sometimes I get two greens or three yellows. On those days I feel affirmed that everything in the universe is indeed connected. I love Wordle — it’s a short sharp burst of dopamine to start my day.

My last habit, the one that completes my morning stack, is a one-minute plank. One of my high school friends turned me on to the idea and now I do it with my mom and one of my sisters every morning. I’ve just finished Day 26 and still, it’s not easy. I actually don’t enjoy it at all. But it’s a good challenge and pretty much the only time I engage my core or upper body so I’m going to stay the course.

I didn’t know, as my habits evolved from not looking at my phone to reading a poem to meditating to Wordle to plank, that I was creating a stack. But I see now that this is exactly what has happened. I get it. My tiny little habits have morphed into significant change. By the time my stack is over and I have to prepare for work, I’ve already had a full morning on my little kitchen couch. I’ve taken care of myself before I venture out into the world and spread myself too thin. Habit stacking. I’m a fan.