From the Blog
Being a parent can feel a little (okay a lot) like living in a continual revolving door: going round and round in circles, getting dizzier and dizzier by the moment, but rarely moving forward. Or at least in the way we commonly conceive forward to be.
The title of this blog post is the question that stopped me in my tracks today. It came from E. The impetus behind the question came from a comment I made to Dr M in the car without thinking after another nesting trip to the land of affordable storage and home organising solutions, a land that admittedly feels a little like Disneyland to me, and can exert a certain siren-call that overrides even the pressure of my tired, swollen feet. Ikea.
‘And that’s why I like living in community,’ she said. ‘We share each other’s lives.’ This sage thought came from a near-stranger, now friend, who I met just today, who offered me and my two small companions generous kindness as she saw us struggling in the lunch line, who sat with us afterwards as E and W played on the college lawn, and who, to the less than quiet background noise of children’s excited play-voices, opened her heart like a bird unfolding its wings.
There’s no way that one word alone can sum up the experience of moving house. It should have four or five names, at least, to begin to reflect the massive creature that it is, with all its many arms and heads, and the way it takes hold of your life for a few intense weeks, gets in your face, wraps around you, and threatens to entangle you.
I’m guessing that what is true for me, is true for many others out there. That is, some of my most hypocritical moments happen when I am chastising my children for bad habits that I clearly haven’t overcome myself. For me, the guilt-feelings hit hardest when daughter E. sticks out her beautiful defiant jaw and bemoans, not once, but repeatedly: I need. I want. NOW! I then, in all my maturity and wisdom, reply, with a similar irritated inflection in my voice: patience, patience. Why can’t you just be PATIENT!
Perhaps it is only fitting that for my first entry in this space I begin with a reflection on the fact that I have absolutely no idea where this year is going. We’ve just wrapped up December 2014, untangled our feet from stray tinsel ends, picked up (hopefully) the last remaining fragment of torn paper and sticky tape from the carpet, and we are driving headlong into January 2015, complete with new diaries, new schedules and new hopes.
Being a parent can feel a little (okay a lot) like living in a continual revolving door: going round and round in circles, getting dizzier and dizzier by the moment, but rarely moving forward. Or at least in the way we commonly conceive forward to be.
The title of this blog post is the question that stopped me in my tracks today. It came from E. The impetus behind the question came from a comment I made to Dr M in the car without thinking after another nesting trip to the land of affordable storage and home organising solutions, a land that admittedly feels a little like Disneyland to me, and can exert a certain siren-call that overrides even the pressure of my tired, swollen feet. Ikea.
‘And that’s why I like living in community,’ she said. ‘We share each other’s lives.’ This sage thought came from a near-stranger, now friend, who I met just today, who offered me and my two small companions generous kindness as she saw us struggling in the lunch line, who sat with us afterwards as E and W played on the college lawn, and who, to the less than quiet background noise of children’s excited play-voices, opened her heart like a bird unfolding its wings.
There’s no way that one word alone can sum up the experience of moving house. It should have four or five names, at least, to begin to reflect the massive creature that it is, with all its many arms and heads, and the way it takes hold of your life for a few intense weeks, gets in your face, wraps around you, and threatens to entangle you.
I’m guessing that what is true for me, is true for many others out there. That is, some of my most hypocritical moments happen when I am chastising my children for bad habits that I clearly haven’t overcome myself. For me, the guilt-feelings hit hardest when daughter E. sticks out her beautiful defiant jaw and bemoans, not once, but repeatedly: I need. I want. NOW! I then, in all my maturity and wisdom, reply, with a similar irritated inflection in my voice: patience, patience. Why can’t you just be PATIENT!
Perhaps it is only fitting that for my first entry in this space I begin with a reflection on the fact that I have absolutely no idea where this year is going. We’ve just wrapped up December 2014, untangled our feet from stray tinsel ends, picked up (hopefully) the last remaining fragment of torn paper and sticky tape from the carpet, and we are driving headlong into January 2015, complete with new diaries, new schedules and new hopes.
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