Summer of Seeking Peace

Way back in early May, I was having coffee on my porch one gray, chilly Sunday morning, and summer seemed like a distant dream. I was feeling in a bit of a funk about summer and how it isn’t what it used to be now that the kids are all grown. I just don’t seem to enjoy summer the way I once did, so I decided to make a concerted effort to make this summer different, and fun. I made a list of things to do this summer to jazz it up a bit. Fun journeys for us to embark on. Fun things I was going to do on my Fridays off work and fun things I was going to do with my family on the weekends. My list included things like finding new hiking places, going for long bike rides on the Katy Trail, making a new flavor of homemade ice cream every Sunday, buying a treat from the ice cream truck, building a backyard fire pit and drawing “fabulous” art on the driveway with sidewalk chalk with my children, who now have much better artistic skills than they had at age 5.

I wrote a list in my journal, thinking that putting it in writing would make me accountable to actually DO these things.

2017 was going to be “THE Summer O’ Fun!”

I kicked of my Summer O’ Fun with a trip to visit my brother and brother in law in Atlanta. Really, I wondered, where better to kick off summer than in HOTLANTA? A place where I put my feet up and relax in ways I don’t at home? A place where a sign on the porch proclaims, “It’s Always 5 o’clock Here!”

Ahh…Memorial Day weekend. The official summer kick off. MY official summer kickoff. I came home on May 30 after a relaxing weekend ready to take on Summer 2017.

I had plans!

I had a bucket list!

I was ready!

I bought sidewalk chalk!

I bought a new ice cream maker!

It was going to be awesome!

Four days later, my mom fell and broke her hip. My summer plans went out the proverbial window as I spent the next 4 weekends going to my parent's house to help. My Fridays off became the only day of my weekend when I could do laundry, clean my house and run errands, and I got home late on Sunday night, so my bucket list of summer fun was put aside and forgotten about.

July was vacation and work craziness. I often looked longingly at my bucket list, thinking that I still had a few more weeks to fulfill my summer wishes.

Now, the end of August has arrived, and the only thing I’ve managed to cross off that bucket list I so dreamily wrote back in May is a big fat NOTHING. Not one thing.

I haven’t gone on one bike ride.

I haven’t taken one hike.

I haven’t drawn that driveway chalk art.

I haven’t made a batch of homemade gigantic bubble mix.

I haven’t visited the friend I wanted to visit.

I haven’t made homemade ice cream every Sunday. (I did make it one Sunday, and it didn’t even turn out).

I haven’t picked peaches. (I did buy some from an orchard, though!)

If I look at the bucket list I wrote back in May, it seems this summer has been a dismal failure.

But, really, it hasn’t. My Summer O’ Fun hasn’t turned out the way I envisioned on that dreary day in May, but it has, however, been really good in most ways. I have put a great deal of effort into making the most of this summer, and I have done my very best to find peaceful moments in all of it while trying not to long too much for what I expected/wanted it to be.

*While spending all those weekends with my parents for a month wasn’t easy, there were most definitely things I enjoyed. I went grocery shopping with my dad. I helped him do yard chores like planting tomatoes and cutting weeds. (I won’t talk about the icky huge bug bites I got that required a doctor visit because I am such a delicate, precious little city girl). It was nice to be able to help them out and spend time just being with them. We did have some nice chats, and I know they appreciated my help.

I feel at peace with my relationship with my parents for the first time in a long (very long!) time.

*We went to the beach. It was sort of a last minute trip, we didn’t go where I wanted to go, but we found a beautiful hotel on Ft. Myers Beach, complete with a fun beach side bar that hosted a band almost every night that we could listen to on the deck outside our room. It came at really bad time for me at work, and it was a real struggle to put crap aside and enjoy the trip, but I managed to do just that. I have been writing quite a bit about our trip, and there will probably be a whole post or two about it at some point. For now I will just say, envision lots of heart eyes, and I keep these images close to my heart.

My heart found a great deal of peace on my trip to the beach. It was just what I needed at the time. I want to go back!

*I have had some time to spend on a couple of crochet projects. I finished a baby blanket for a gift that I absolutely love, and I started on a new blanket for myself, that I think I am going to love. I’m calling it my Sunshine Blanket. It is literally little squares of sunshine, that I am crocheting in all colors of yellow and orange that will one day be sewn together into a blanket. More about that another time, too.

Crocheting always brings a bit of peace and calmness to my day, even if I only have a few minutes to devote to it.

*I wrote a few months ago about the weight loss challenge with my co-workers. I have now lost 20 pounds since the beginning of March. It’s been an up and down adventure, sometimes I go weeks and don’t lose anything at all, but I have stuck with my healthy eating, and I feel better than I have felt in a LONG time. I go for walks almost every morning, and I am eating so many vegetables that it’s a wonder my skin isn’t green. I still have more I want to lose, but I have gone down a couple of sizes, which has helped keep me motivated. I have gone from a size L-XL in shirts to a M, and I am down two pants sizes. I even bought a pair of skinny jeans in the JUNIOR department this weekend! I haven’t been able to fit in junior size clothes since I don’t even remember.

I feel a great deal of peace knowing that I am healthier and stronger.  

*My three college children have returned to their schools, and my house is way so quiet. I’d like to say it’s now clean, but it is not. They each left some sort of mess for me to clean up, and I will at some point. For the most part, they are all settled and happy.

It brings my mama heart peace to know my children are on a path to becoming productive adults, even if some of them have taken a twisty, roundabout path to get there.

I will end this with this photo:

Last Friday, I spent some time with a dear friend walking around a peaceful lake. I have had this post in the works for weeks, and even had already titled it what it is, and we had a conversation about seeking peace. So it seems perfect to finish it up now because this friend brings peace to my soul for so many reasons.

And my “Summer O' Fun?” Well, it turns out the “Summer of Seeking Peace” was even better and more what I needed, I just didn’t know that back in May.

Summer isn’t officially over for another month, but it feels like it is. The things I didn’t get to cross off my bucket list probably won’t ever get crossed off as many of them won’t be fun by myself. And some of them, I’d look downright silly doing by myself. I mean really, what 50-some year old wouldn’t look completely ridiculous crawling around on the driveway drawing chalk art or running through the yard making giant bubbles all by herself?

Oh well. There is always next year. 

This Girl...

I ended my last post saying stay tuned for My Heart is Full Part 2. This is not that post, but my heart is indeed once again, quite full.

This time last year, I was moving a nervous 18 year old college freshman to college. The college I really wanted to attend when I was her age but was unable to. It was very bittersweet leaving her there that day, and I probably would have cried my eyes out the entire two hour drive home if I hadn’t had her boyfriend with me. He didn’t cry, but he certainly was down in the dumps and not very talkative. He kept my emotions in check that day for sure. 

Rachel is my child who seems to feel things deeply and take things to heart in ways that remind me so much of myself. She worried because she didn’t really know anyone who was going there except one friend from high school and her roommate, who she had just met during the summer. She wondered who she would hang out with, eat with, walk to classes with, which sorority she would be asked to bid, etc. I tried my best to reassure her that everything would work out, that she would find her way, but I wasn’t sure she believed me.

Sorority recruitment was a tough week for her as she had to deal with a couple of her new friends being offered bids in a sorority that she wanted but did not get and then ultimately receiving a bid from a sorority that was not her first or even second choice. She called me in tears that day because her friend got in the sorority she wanted to get into. I did my best to put on my calm mom hat and told her to give it a chance. I told her to ask herself if she was upset because she really LOVED that particular sorority, or if she was only upset because her friend got in and she didn’t.

I said all this to her as someone who was not in a sorority, who never wanted to be in a sorority. Someone whose friends made fun of snooty sorority girls when I was in college.

Karma bit me in the a$$. Now, my daughter was one of those sorority girls whose ego was taking a beating because she didn’t get asked to join the one she really wanted. My heart ached for her ache.

She took my advice (for once!) and gave it a chance.

Now, here we are a year later. And I am pretty sure that she can’t imagine her life at school without her sorority sisters.

She now LOVES Tri Sigma. She has made some wonderful friends. She has spent this summer making and buying gifts for her future little sister that she will have after recruitment in a few weeks. She has a chair position in her chapter. She is a mentor for incoming freshman, which is why she moved in a week before classes starts. As I helped her move into the Tri Sigma house today, I couldn’t help but think back to this time last year. She has a job this year, and she reapplied to be a student ambassador, even though she was so upset when she didn’t get that job last year.

She has come so far, and I am so proud of her! She has persevered and not given up.

She started college last year not sure of what she wanted to major in, but now she knows. She wants to be a teacher, which does not surprise me at all. She wants to teach really young kids—preschool or kindergarten. Rachel has always had a wonderful way with kids, and I have no doubt she will be a fantastic teacher. She is considering special education.

Did I say she has come so far, and I am so proud of her?

Oh, yeah, I did!

I’m writing just the facts here because that is what comes easy for me.

This time last year, I fought tears the whole way home after dropping her off because I didn’t want to upset her boyfriend.

This year, I didn’t cry even though her boyfriend was not with me. I smiled the whole way home. I smiled because this girl I love is finding her way in the world and I am so proud of her. I smiled because I remembered myself at her age, and I was in no way near where she is at right now.

I sometimes wonder/worry if I have done a good job as a parent. What parent doesn’t wonder that? Days like today don’t erase those worries, but days like today do give me a teensy little glimmer of hope that I have done something right. I have a dear, sweet daughter with a heart of gold.

Look at her! I look at these photos and think, “Be still my heart! This girl is mine, and I am so proud of her!”

My Heart Is Full

(Disclaimer: Reading this post may require the use of Kleenex. More than one).

My heart is so, so full.

I just returned from a weekend that was something beyond the words I am going to use to describe it. I’m not sure I even will be able to describe what this past weekend was, but I shall try!

Those four words in the title say it all, but there is so much more I hope I can convey.

There is a great deal of background “stuff” that led to this weekend, but I am not going to write about all that because really, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of it all. All that matters is that I ended up in DC at a conference for parents who have experienced the death of a child, teaching a workshop to bereaved parents on ways to create a lasting legacy and keep their child’s memory alive. While the workshop is what started it all, that doesn’t matter to this story either.

What does matter is that I had one of the most extraordinary and poignant and beautiful and downright gut-wrenching experiences of my life. One would think that in my work, my heart would be able to handle quite a lot. It can and it does. I have written before about the families and stories I sometimes take home with me at the end of the day.

My heart has certainly been full before, but never like this.

I went to this conference alone, which was a first for me. WAY out of my comfort zone! I was uncertain about what I would do at such a conference by myself. I worried and wondered if this group would respond in a positive way to the workshop I taught. As the time grew close, my panic also grew. I was flying across the country to DC, and I only knew four people who were going—one of my coworker’s parents and a couple I have worked with on one of Share’s memorial events—and I really didn’t know them all that well. In the few days leading up to the trip, I was so uneasy—not only had I never done anything like this by myself, but my travel arrangements were kind of a disaster, and I had an upset stomach for 3 days. I wished I had someone to go with me, but I convinced myself it would be an interesting adventure. I stocked my suitcase with a new journal, yarn for a crochet project, books and my bathing suit. I put on my Susie Sunshine hat and began to embrace the idea of some quiet time by myself.

 I truly could never have imagined what the weekend would be like. I did not imagine just how deeply I would be moved. I met so many incredible and downright courageous people who shared so many stories of their beloved children with me. It was quite humbling, really, that complete strangers would open their broken hearts and bare their raw souls in the amazing and beautiful and touching ways they did. While I had envisioned spending evenings in my room at the Dulles Hilton crocheting and reading, instead I spent them relaxing on the outdoor patio in the company of a group of people I now can’t imagine not having crossed paths with. One couple lives only 2 miles from me! We all laughed and cried for hours each night over glasses of wine and plates of half price appetizers.

While there was lots of laughter throughout the weekend, there was also an equal number of tearful, heart-clenching moments when the stories I heard and the looks on the faces of the brave souls who told  the stories just about undid me.

Like the mom whose athletic, 22 year old son collapsed while walking across his college campus and died a few hours later because of an undiagnosed heart defect.

Or, the mom whose daughter died in a car accident minutes after she was talking to her on the phone.

Or the mom whose daughter was hit by a stray bullet after some idiot asshole fired a gun into the air at a fireworks show.

Or the mom of a 12 year old boy who was swept away and drowned in a freak flash flood in their suburban neighborhood after he and his sister went out to happily play in the rain on a warm fall day.

Or the parents of a 15 year old boy with the most charming smile who died in a car accident after another 15 year old’s father let her take the car to drive her friends to breakfast.

The “ors” could go on and on and on and pile up one on top of another.

By Saturday night, my heart was so full there was absolutely NO possible way it could hold anything else. Not even one little drop. It was more than full…it was overflowing. All of the stories I had been so honored to hear, all of the photos of such cute and beautiful and delightful and precious children of all ages with twinkling eyes and crooked smiles who had been ripped away from their parents and all who loved them was almost more than I could bear. By the time my new friends and I gathered on the patio that night, the mood was lighthearted as one of the speakers earlier that day had challenged everyone to tell their companions at least one funny story about their child. As they all shared, I laughed until I cried, and this quote came to mind:

This conference--the speakers, the parents who attended—they were all perfect examples of that quote.

I left DC Sunday morning feeling exhausted to the core of my being. As I stood outside the hotel with my suitcase waiting for the shuttle to take me to the airport, I tried to clear my mind and not think about how the weekend had not turned out in any way I had imagined just days before when I had a knot in my stomach the size of my head. This will sound terrible, but as I waited for the shuttle, I was thankful that no one I met in the previous few days was waiting there with me. We had all hugged and said our goodbyes the night before, and I am pretty sure I could not have handled saying goodbye again at that moment.

My suitcase was stuffed full thanks to all of the books I bought at the bookstore, and my heart was stuffed full with all of the love and aches it could possibly hold. To say my heart was full is a huge understatement.

As the plane took me away from DC, I tried to read, I tried to sleep, but it was the bouncy sort of flight that the nervous flier I am HATES, and I couldn’t relax. Thankfully, it was short, not much over an hour. I landed safely in Indy, (don’t ask why I flew into and out of Indy when I live 4 hours away in St. Louis…I’m an idiot, I shall just leave it at that!)

Since I am an idiot who had to fly in and out of Indy, I decided to stop and spend the rest of the day and night with my mother in law since she lives only an hour or so from there. I should never have thought or said that my heart couldn’t hold anything else. Because it could, and it did.

Stay tuned for My Heart is Full, Part 2.