by Laura Munson | Sep 11, 2017 | Motherhood
For those of you who feel like your best falls short sometimes…here’s some permission to GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK! (special permission for mothers of college-bound seniors, in the throes of athletic recruitment!)
“Mom. I’ve decided that I want to play baseball in college. It’s my dream.”
This came out of my rising senior son’s mouth, early this summer, after his first few games with his new Legion baseball team. This was not the plan.
I am a planner ahead-er. Especially when it comes to my children. So throughout my son’s high school career, I’ve gently teased out ideas of what college might look like for him. What his dream would be. The long and short of it was this: A big school with great sports teams, near a city, with a lot of diversity and opportunity, and a strong Business School. We knew he wasn’t D1 baseball material, and so playing ball at a large university wasn’t really on the map, even though I know how much he’s loved the game, all the way back to T-ball, buck teeth, and a scrappy little mop of blonde hair.
It was time for him to spread his wings and see what else there was out there to love. Plus, he’s been raised in a small mountain community in NW Montana, unlike the Chicago of my youth, and the New York city of his father’s. We were excited for him to start playing the field of life, not just the field of and around the baseball diamond.
“Just think—you’ll have a regular spring, for once. You’ll have extra time to be able to expand academically into new terrain, and enjoy what college life has to offer.” He seemed copacetic. Relieved almost. And frankly, it was a relief for me too– I’ve logged a lot of hours on those baseball bleachers, and he’s logged a lot of hours on that diamond and in those dug-outs. It would be a good step for us all. Because how could I pass up being in those bleachers as much as possible, even if it meant a long road trip. Heck, in Montana, we’re used to those—all for the love of ball. I was privately happy to put it in the rearview mirror.
And then that day in June… “Mom, I love this sport. I love the kids who play this sport. I’m good at it. I want to play in college. I don’t care if I don’t have as much of a social life. My team will be my social life. I don’t care if it’s not some big university near a city. I’ll play D3. I just want to play baseball.” Out of the mouths of not-so-babes.
I’m a mother. Far be it from me to stand in the way of my child’s dreams. And what he said was all true. He’s a talented leftie pitcher, and a great first-baseman, and a spirited team member. He never ever complains about any of it. He takes it as the Hero’s Journey that baseball is: The call to leave home, go out in the world, and come back, more the wise, despite some scrapes and losses along the way. As of this June, he just wants “to play baseball.” I remembered a seventeen-year old girl who just wanted “to be an artist.” So I Googled D3 baseball colleges: Small. Liberal Arts. No Business major. Mostly rural. And very…very expensive. Plus, they don’t offer athletic scholarships. Huh.
I quickly learned that on top of it all, the kids who get recruited for D3 sports, have been going to recruitment camps for years. They’re on the coaches’ radars. They know all about scholarships and are in touch with Financial Aid departments. They have their lists in place and have toured campuses. They’ve met with Admissions people. Just when, I’m not sure. Surely not in the summer. They’re the Boys of Summer– they’re playing baseball every second of every day—eighty-eight games! And if they play other sports, not then either. AND, the cherry on top of the top: it all has to be done Early Decision or Early Action…by…drum roll: November 1st! That’s in a matter of months! And the cherry atop the cherry on top: my son is the quarterback of the football team. Just when are we supposed to visit campuses? If he misses a practice, he misses the Friday game. How does one fly from Montana to Pennsylvania, and upstate New York, and Ohio, and Minnesota, and Oregon, have a proper visit during the school week, and make everybody happy? Never mind pay for it all?
We were late to the party. Very late.
This is not my style. Usually…I’m throwing the dang party. How could this have happened? How could I not have at least seen the potential of this coming our way and had a back-up plan in place? How could I make my son proud, and make it through this without guilt, shame, the feeling of less-than, the feeling of failing him? I hadn’t been able to save the marriage from ending, or keep his father from moving thousands of miles away, or his friends from moving, or his sister from taking an internship far from home this summer. I hadn’t been able to provide a house full of action and fun like it used to be. In fact, in the last five years, I’ve been working all the time. Leaving him home alone. Leaving him to cook his meals and fend for himself– the opposite of what I would ever have opted for as the mother to my son. I was not going to fail him this time. No way.
And so it began. The baptism-by-fire SAT sign up and tutoring, the college essay boot camp, the virtual college advisor meetings, the recruitment videos and the camps in Long Island and Oregon, the Common Application. I’ll save you the stress of it all, and me the blood-pressure spike, but suffice it to say that on top of my full-time job leading writing retreats in Montana, and a book deadline for a novel I’ve been working on for a few years, as a single mother, I was now scrambling to put together a schedule that would be do-able. For all of us. Not perfect. But possible. And all before November 1st. Deep breath. 
But the breathing is shallow at best.
I am smack dab in the throes of it right now. And here’s what I’ve learned: You can’t be perfect. Even with the best of intentions, as a mother…you’re just going to fall short sometimes. Even with your heart and soul and mind as sharp and on it as possible, there are times as a mother of a college-bound child when you are going to look around and say, How did I get here? I didn’t mean for this to happen. I was trying so hard. I was doing my best. And my best…well, it just isn’t good enough. And you’ll look around at the other mothers, and somehow, they are at the party that you didn’t even know existed. They are seasoned party-goers, with gracious hostess gifts, and the perfect, in this case, little red-white-and-blue jersey, and ball cap, with the proverbial stadium seat sporting their son’s soon-to-be alma mater’s mascot.
And you’ll feel small, or wrong, or just plain bad. And you’ll find yourself crying in bed in the early hours, or lying in the dark with heart palpitations, and the feeling of true hopelessness, desperation even. You were the one that dropped him off on his first day at Montessori with a backpack full of black-eyed Susans for his teacher, with a loving note. You were the one who lay in bed with him every night reading him Ferdinand, and Mike Mulligan, and Dr. Seuss, who sang him Lullaby, and played This Little Piggy, and taught him how to make homemade ice cream. You were the one who drove over mountain passes for any number of baseball and football games—and that one time when he missed the bus, and you drove six hours to drop him off at camp, and turned around and drove six hours back. You were that mother, yes you were. You promised him you’d give him the very best of you. And here you are failing him in his, to date, biggest opportunity, his biggest dream. Because…what if he doesn’t get that scholarship money, and what if you can’t swing it to get him to more than three of those schools so he doesn’t even know where he wants to apply early, and what if what if what if…well, what if his “dream” doesn’t come true?
I know the answer. He’ll be okay. We will all be okay. First world problems. But still…this is one of the last things we can do for our kids—shepherd them into their next chapter, and the first one far from home. We’ll see what happens in November. We’ll see if he’ll get that golden ticket, and he’ll open that letter and smile, and nod, and fold into my arms in happiness and relief. We’ll see if we get that moment of, “We did this. This dream is going to come true!” But even if we don’t, I have to believe that regrets are never really teaching tools. We will always fall short somehow. We’re mothers. There is no A+. There is only the very best we can do. Even if we are late to the party. Especially…if we are late to the party. Because here’s the bottom line: There is no party. It’s really, in the end, just the Hero’s Journey, after all.
If you would like to take a break in 2017 and live the writer’s life in the woods of Montana, find community, find your voice, and maybe even find yourself…check out this video and info, and email the Haven Writing Retreat Team asap to set up a phone call! Laura@lauramunsonauthor.com
Now Booking 2018 Haven Writing Retreats!
February 28-4
April 18-22
May 16-20
September 19-23
September 26-30
October 24-28
http://www.lauramunsonauthor.com/retreats/
(previously published in Grown and Flown)
by Laura Munson | Aug 9, 2017 | Motherhood
I sent my son off to baseball recruitment camp yesterday morning. In a matter of months, I’ll know where he’s going to be spending the next four years. In one year I’ll be attending two graduations: My daughter from college, my son from high school, both of them onto the next giant step of their lives. And me too. I suspect I’ll be this woman that I wrote about in 2014, on park benches everywhere. That’s my goal. May this inspire you to “let the parade pass you by.”
When is the last time you sat on a bench in your home town? It’s summertime here in Whitefish, Montana, so that means there are tourists enjoying the view from our town benches everywhere I look—taking a break from the overwhelm of our nearby Glacier National Park, our stunning lakes and rivers, and miles of pristine wilderness. I’ve lived in Whitefish for twenty years and with our long, dark Montana winters, summer is my biggest bully, beckoning me to get on my horse, put on my hiking shoes, pack up the camping gear, grab the huckleberry bucket, paddleboard, canoe…and get after it, as we say around here. And “it” is a high calling with vast reward. I have been good at “it.” Not this summer.
This summer everyone in my family is running in a different direction. Perhaps you can relate. My daughter is leaving for her first year in college in a matter of weeks, baby-sitting 24/7 to help pay for her expenses (we should all be $baby-sitters$ these days!) My high-school bound son has been up to his ears in baseball— his 13 year old All Star team not only winning State, but last weekend, Regionals! (They went up against teams from all over the Pacific Northwest who had hundreds try out for those coveted spots. They had twelve. Small town miracles do happen!) Personally, when I’m not watching baseball games or filling out college forms, I have been under a deadline for a novel I’ve spent the last few years writing. (Deadline was yesterday. Made it—phew!) In other words, I haven’t stopped to enjoy summer. Haven’t seen my horse. Haven’t taken one hike. Went out on Whitefish Lake once thanks to a friend with a boat who took “pity” on me when she saw my pasty skin. Got some fresh huckleberries from a friend and her secret huckleberry patch, which I guiltily used in our pancakes the next morning. It felt like cheating. Most of all, I haven’t felt part of my community. And I miss it. I need to sit in it and just be.
So yesterday, when our town threw a parade for our Whitefish All Star champs, I got there early to make sure I captured it all on camera and cheered alongside the fire truck holding those glowing young men. I was all ready to go, expecting the fire truck to round the bend at exactly 5:00 as scheduled in our town newspaper, but there was no parade to be seen. I waited, checking my camera to make sure I had remembered the memory card and a charged battery—(I have an uncommon knack for forgetting both in the most photogenic moments), texting my son to find out what was going on. Whitefish loves its parades. I got a text back. Schedule change. Not til 6:00. I had an hour.
Normally, I would think, “Ok— what can I check off my list? What mail needs to be sent? What errand can I run? Do I have anything at the dry-cleaners? But the stores were closed and my car was parked far away…and there was the nicest empty bench on the street corner in the shade. And I thought—what the heck. Why don’t you just sit down. Take a load off. People watch. And BE. See what other people see when they sit on our town benches. The Burlington Northern railroad running through, the azure skies and popcorn clouds. The emerald green ski runs on the forest green mountain. The children skipping alongside their carefree vacation-minded parents. The older people licking ice cream cones and gazing into shop windows I race past every day, really taking it all in– commenting on the western art. “Oh, that’s lovely.” And moving on, slowly, on the shady side of the street.
Summer can be slow. The “it” can be something quiet. Meditative. Simple, with no proof– not even a photograph. I decided yesterday, sitting on that bench, that I’m going to become a bench dweller. I’m going to make a practice of sitting on benches, especially in my home town. I want to see the wonder of what Whitefish looks like to people who are seeing it for the first time. I want to say, “Hello” to strangers, and locals too, and give benign smiles that have nothing to do with team sports or college entrance or work or who are the best teachers, or who are you going to vote for, or even what’s in the local paper. I just want to Be in my town. Take a load off. Sit a spell.
When those fire trucks came around the bend, I grabbed my camera, ready to shoot in rapid fire, to share on Facebook and with the paper and everybody else for that matter. But instead, I stood up, and waved, smiling to my son and his team, took one picture, jogging alongside them for a few steps to show my support. But then I stopped and watched, smiling and proud, as the truck made its way down Central Ave. And I sat back down on the bench. Being a parade chaser is too exhausting. Sometimes it’s better to let the parade pass by. There will be more parades. Most of life is about all the stuff that lives between our heightened moments. That’s the “it” I’m going to start getting after. On little benches everywhere. I invite you to do the same in our last weeks of summer.
If you would like to take a break this fall and live the writer’s life in the woods of Montana, find community, find your voice, and maybe even find yourself…check out this video and info, and email the Haven Writing Retreat Team asap to set up a phone call!
September 6-10 (FULL)
September 20-24 (a few spaces left)
October 4-8 (FULL)
October 18-22 (a few spaces left)
February 21-25 (now booking)
The rest of the 2018 schedule to be announced…
Follow me on Facebook for more news, community, and inspiration!
***We reached our goal and our baseball family is leaving for the Babe Ruth U-13 World Series in Virginia today! Thanks to all of you who helped make it possible!
by Laura Munson | Jul 26, 2017 | Motherhood
I wrote this 20 years ago one summer evening, after a day of hiking in the mountains of Montana with my brand new baby. It’s all about letting go– something I am learning all over again as she enters her senior year in college and my son, his junior year in high school. Deep breaths to all mothers out there who are facing empty nests…
It is summer in Montana and it is past our collective bedtime, but we are driving into a sky glowing burnt orange, steel green mountains not yet silhouettes. The days are full here, too full, maybe. There is a three month panic to be scantily clothed and to wave the limbs around in hot air, in water, on a sweaty horse’s back. Suddenly there is so much sun after so much snow and grey matte sky and it’s a drug we agree to take in overdose. I don’t wear sunblock. Neither does my husband. We slather our baby in it, but let the undersides of our arms rest on the hot black paint of the car door while the tops– all the way to our fingers– in-between our fingers, bake in high-noon sun; then on our foreheads and backs at the lake in sparkling water, on hot rose rocks, on alpine trails, in meadows of lupine, Indian paintbrush, yarrow, huckleberries. With red and purple-stained skin pulsing sweet dried sweat over the throb of cooling highway, we cover our tracks back, turning off fourteen dead, fifty injured in a bombing today in an Israeli market; hold hands, try to find the moon.
Look. A star, I say, letting go of his hand, pointing. Yeah, he says. Two of them. That one’s bright. I wonder if it’s a planet. Wondering, I reach back for my baby’s hand without looking, craving a little loose bundle of fingers. There is a soft sigh from the back seat and I get my offering. Everything to her is this kind of sky. A chirping squirrel is still as full of wonder for her as the stars popping out over the blue Jewel Basin one way, the pale orange still hanging over the Canadian Rockies, the other. I close my eyes a moment; a small prayer in honor of squirrels. I want wonder.
There is heartbreak in all this. I fight to be there, under the gaining stars, not to consider the end of this day’s light a misfortune. It doesn’t have to be a death. It doesn’t have to make me think about tomorrow. I flirt with the story of the market bombing– picture a mother handling tomatoes, her son slipping an orange into his pants– fight the image of their bleeding bodies lying splayed and still in the dirt, covered in blown-up tomato pulp. No. I hold my baby’s hand tighter and weave a few of her fingers into mine. They’re sticky with huckleberry juice. I feel the stinging of sunburn on my back, minus an X. I mouth, I am here…I am here. The wonder does not have to be scary. She’s not scared. She is singing. I peek back to see what she is doing with this closing darkness. She is fingering the window. Counting stars. Feeling glass. Drawing pictures with her saliva. She is where I want to be.
I look at my husband’s face. It is the color of the Whitefish range: the last coal. He likes the window down halfway. He likes total silence. He is driving. He is where I want to be. Earlier, in the hardware store parking lot, I wait in the car with my daughter asleep in her car-seat, checking to see that the seatbelt is not cutting off her breathing. How can she breathe slumped over like that, her head to her belly? But she does– I can see her shoulders rising and falling. In-between checks, I stare at puddle mirages in the hot pavement, at women in passenger seats on the diagonal, all lined up; babies sleeping behind them. They are checking too, staring at mirages. One by one they click into ready position, their husbands walking proud and purposeful with a new hammer, a bag of fertilizer, dandelion killer. I am waiting for bear mace– red pepper spray, as if that would do anything, a grizzly bear bounding at us, our baby in the backpack singing to the bear, a cliff behind us, my husband reaching to his belt for his pathetic weapon. Play dead…play dead…play that woman and her son with tomatoes all over them in Israel, frozen, watching paw over paw hurl toward me over lupine and Indian paintbrush and yarrow, huckleberries. But I don’t know about the market bombing yet. And there is no bear. But I don’t know that yet either, sitting in the car in the hardware store parking lot.
The day is done. Pepper spray– check. Pants and a sweater for later– check. Teva’s for the beach– check. Sunblock for the baby, three extra diapers, wipes, baby food, sun hat, a change of clothes for her, life vest– check check check check check check check. Back pack, fanny pack, water bottles, trail mix, sunglasses, camera– all checks. Bathing suits, towels, beach-blanket, rafts– yep. A cooler full of cold beer, sandwiches and whole milk in baby bottles– done. Gas– we’ll get some. Where are my sunglasses? Have you seen my sunglasses? Oops, forgot the keys. Where the hell are my sunglasses? On top of your head. Oh. We need bear mace. That stuff costs forty bucks…you have a better chance being killed in a car wreck than by a griz, anyway. Put your seatbelt on…we’re getting bear mace– we have a kid now. All right all right all right.
The day is done. We used everything but the pepper spray. I look at my husband, still losing light at the same rate as the Whitefish range, and feel safe and in love with him for carrying the baby in the backpack, the mace on his belt, pumping the gas– little things he wouldn’t want to know I loved him for. Little things that free me up to think about breathing and seat belts and bleeding bodies covered in tomatoes, and grizzly bears. I let go of my baby’s hand and reach for his again. He is where I want to be.
It’s all stars now. They call it big sky and they’re right. What are you thinking about? I whisper. Nothing, he says. I sit there and try to think of nothing, watching headlights come at us at seventy miles per hour on my baby’s side, pull at my seatbelt quietly to see if it would really stop me, nothing…nothing… I look back to see if she’s asleep. She is. I reach my hand back and rest it on her chest. She is breathing. Nothing…nothing… I put the same hand on my shoulder and feel the hot from the sunburn. My mother has had five melanomas removed from not wearing sunblock. Nothing…
I am left with my breathing. Check. My heart beat. Check. A raven sky. Countless lights twinkling…God, they really do twinkle. Twinkle twinkle little star– I figure out that it’s the same tune as the alphabet song. And then I am left without songs, because one of the stars loses itself in dust and falls right in front of us, right on the highway. We pass where I think it has fallen and look for stardust and leftover glow, but there is just an old cracked double yellow linesee that? I say. The star? he says. And I look for another; pick one and stare at it, ready to see it go down. But the longer I stare at one, the more I see all around it, and none fall, and it doesn’t matter, because I’m going deeper and deeper into the biggest sky I have ever seen, and I have lived here for years now, and I’m not thinking about that either. I am lost, in star after star after star after star…after star. After star. And I am there, wherever that is.
If you would like to take a break this fall and live the writer’s life in the woods of Montana, find community, find your voice, and maybe even find yourself…check out this video and info, and email the Haven Writing Retreat Team asap to set up a phone call!
September 6-10 (FULL)
September 20-24 (a few spaces left)
October 4-8 (FULL)
October 18-22 (a few spaces left)
.
by Laura Munson | Apr 10, 2017 | Motherhood
Click to Listen to the sounds of my Montana marsh
Every spring when the birds come back I feel so grateful, and also, a little bewildered. Are we really that worthy? How can they leave Belize or Costa Rica and do quick fly overs in New Mexico and Arizona and want to brave the jagged frozen Rockies and the turbulence and the cold to come back to Montana? How can they look down over white-out and say, “There. That’s where I’ll land. That’s where I’ll make my home and my family and teach them everything—absolutely everything. And then send them off. And then empty my nest of even me and leave again…back down to the desert and to the jungle and to the sea. Only to do it again.”
Just when I’m thinking that I can’t stand it one more day—my life in infinite shades of grey, ice shrapnel defining my every winter step….they come back, casting their votes on this place I call home without migration. They need this place of echoes and countenance I guess, to do the work of their lives. As they’re heading north, I’m telling myself I need what they’ve had– color and light and for my body to be winged and nimble…and not braced against the air outside my front door. I’m tired of my daily buck up—the forced flinging open of my front door every morning to feel Montana’s fresh slap—you’re alive and you can take it. So that I can be grateful then, for the retreat back to the warm woodstove breath of my house. Even in spring. It won’t be a warm outside welcome for months. Not Belize warm. A Canada goose stands on the ice of the pond in the meadow. A mountain bluebird on my hoar-frost encased mailbox. I look at the chickadees and ravens and magpies and flickers—are we really worthy of all their faith?
I have watched. For twenty-five years I have watched. I know them by their faces, their nests and feathers and flocking. I know their symphony, and sometimes Stravinsky cacophony that is the world outside my door beginning in March. Oh that cunning allegro, oh that fine mezzo again, oh that tricky staccato followed by that day-is-done decrescendo. But I have never really learned who is singing what. I don’t know why. It’s similar to the way I go through an art museum: take it in first. Then step forward to read the plaque. What’s in a name, if you don’t feel your way to it first? It was the same way with trees and wildflowers when I moved to Montana. I needed to feel the wholeness of it all and know it by season. Know that when the dandelions are out, that the bears are coming to the avalanche chutes. Know that when the calypso orchids are blooming, it will be time to celebrate my first born’s birthday.
But yesterday, it was time to know the symphony by its players. It overcame me like a long lived itch that I suddenly needed to relieve. I don’t know exactly why and maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe because I’m finishing a novel I’ve been writing for two years and I already miss its characters. Maybe it’s because a year from now, my youngest child will be planning his college migration. For whatever reason, yesterday, I sequestered myself to my bed and cranked open the window as wide as it would go. And I listened to the marsh below, piece meal. Song by song. All day. Picking out their riffs and going on the internet to birding websites to hear the songs from the singers I suspected.
Who knew that a little thing like a nuthatch made that roadrunner’s meeep meeep? I’d thought it must be a furry creature all these years, slicing through the forest’s music. And that upward aria I’ve heard for so long, usually at dusk? A little thrush I’ve never laid eyes on but who surely lives in my back yard, faithfully and hopefully: the Swainson’s thrush. I knew the bossy red-winged blackbirds, of course, because how can you miss them? And the ubiquitous robin’s song. You have to be paying no attention at all to miss those. And the chickadee’s my tree, this time of year. But the one I really wanted to know, was what I’ve always thought must be our western version of the mockingbird—that schizophrenic song that doesn’t know quite what it wants to say. And yet it says it over and over. I scoured the internet and my bird books trying to find what bird was behind this rote sentence in too many genres. I’ve always wanted to tell it to settle on one. I like the poetry at the end, personally, not the throat-clearing at the beginning, or the screeching in the middle. I figured it had to be something rare. Something elusive. Maybe even exotic that I’d missed in all my wandering in the woods, looking up, paying attention.
Finally, at the end of the day I thought, What about a sparrow? A regular old sparrow. What song do they sing? And you guessed it. That one.
My son came in and said, “What are you doing?”
“Learning my bird songs finally. Did you know that the most simple birds make the most unique songs? And the smallest make the loudest. And the biggest birds, sometimes the faintest.”
“I’m going skiing. It’s the last day the mountain is open.”
“We need to make that list of colleges to look at, you know. Soon.”
“I know.”
Then my daughter wrote me a text from her college dorm room in California. “I’m going camping for my birthday. You know I swam with a blue whale over spring break in Baja. I don’t think I told you.”
And I wrote her back, “I’m so proud of you. I hope you know that.”
And I thought…maybe it’s time to learn them all…so I can say a proper good bye. Because they come back, you know. They come back.
Now Booking Haven Writing Retreats 2017
June 7-11 (a few spaces left)
June 21-25 (a few spaces left)
September 6-10, 20-24
October 4-8, 18-22
by Laura Munson | Jun 9, 2014 | Motherhood
as seen on mamalode.com
I can never remember if the word “commencement” means beginning or ending. My knee jerk reaction is to think that it means ending, though my writer’s mind quickly corrects it.
That’s probably because graduation ceremonies are called Commencement, and I think of graduation day as an ending– leaving the known behind: a good reputation, dear friends at a stone’s throw, families whose refrigerators and bikes and kitchen tables are yours for the sharing… the dismantling of decorated walls soon to betray you for guests, or someone else with new photo collages, new tapestries, new blue ribbons. I have never been good at leaving the familiar, and I usually mark it with a little hidden graffiti—Laura Munson lived here, and the dates.
But it’s not my turn this upcoming Commencement. It’s my daughter’s. Now it’s she who is dismantling her room, coming down to the end of her check list, five more days of school to go, graduation invitations in the mail, college deposit in, orientation dates in stone. There is a new timber in her voice; something dire. “Mom, can you do something with my Breyer horse collection?”
“Can’t you just leave them on your shelf?” I ask, vignettes reeling by of mock horse races on the lawn and barnyard feedings with tiny plastic apples, and that one coveted palomino paint that became real one Christmas.
“I need room for my stuff.”
“What stuff?”
And then I realize that the stuff that has been strewn all over her room for the last four years of high school actually could have had a home in her bookshelves if we’d been more able (or willing) to pack up her plastic horse collection. I’m not sure whose job this is. Please Lord, not mine.
I look into her eyes. And I see…it’s my job. Some things are just too hard.
Suddenly, I feel a desperate need to give advice in fast forward. “Have I taught you how to make hospital corners? And to never leave a wet towel on a bed? Or leave a glass directly on wood?”
“I know. Respect the wood. You’ve told me.” She’s tolerating my Mom-ness much more than usual lately. She’s in the bittersweet of Commencement while I am bursting into tears in pathetic public places, like at the bank drive thru, catching myself in the video screen looking miserable. Will her roommate know that when she needs a hug but is too shy to ask, she makes tea? Will she know that she likes to sing in harmony and that all those eye-ball rolls don’t really mean anything? Will she know that she acts street-tough sometimes, but is deeply sensitive and if she’s playing the ukulele along with Jack Johnson, something pretty rough probably happened at school that day?
“Mom, why are you crying?” she says, bringing me back to the grim task of packing up her happy childhood.
“I’m sorry. I’m just going to miss you.”
Last week was when it really hit. I was doing laundry and I heard from her room in that new dire timber, “How do stamps work?”
“Stamps? Like postage stamps?”
“Yeah.” This from a 4.0 student.
I went into her room. She was sitting on her bed addressing graduation party invitations. “Really? You can program a computer, but you don’t know how stamps work???”
“My generation doesn’t really use them.”
I was sure she was playing a joke on me. Stamps? But she wasn’t. She really had no clue that you use the same stamp for a local letter that you do for one that goes all the way to New York City.
Geez– what other glaring omissions have there been in my mothering? I’ve tried so hard to fill in every blank, taking every single second possible as a teaching moment. “Maybe I should write you a survival handbook for college and beyond. Would that be helpful?”
“I know all the basic stuff. But yeah…maybe the extra stuff.”
I wracked my brain, taking inventory. The extra stuff. If stamps are “extra” this could get ugly! I decided to do it room by room, compartmentalizing life in cross-section, like the dollhouse we spent hours decorating and playing in.
Kitchen:
I started with How to boil water, tell if pasta is ready, smell a gas leak, turn off the water main…but suddenly it turned into a different kind of “extra.”
• If you’re having a bad day, leave the dishes. But do soak them, or you’ll really be in a bad mood when you get around to cleaning them.
• If you’re having a really bad day, don’t adhere to the utensil slots. Just chuck ‘em all in and let them fall where they may. Actually, if it’s a really bad day, just leave the dishes alone. They can wait.
• No matter what kind of mood you’re in, make yourself a nice meal, especially if you’re lonely.
• Always eat some fruit in the morning and some veggies at some point in the day. Keep bananas, carrots, apples, and potatoes around. They do the trick when you’re not feeling inspired.
• Keep a granola bar in your purse. (Tip: Use only small purses—lest you end up with a Mary Poppins carpet bag, coat rack and all. Read Nora Ephron’s essay on women’s purses.)
• Splurge on really good jam and really good bread.
• Always have a flower or a piece of greenery in a vase on your kitchen windowsill. It really helps.
• If you see evidence of mice, set traps immediately. This probably will not apply to 99% of the places you’ll live, (we live in Montana), so take it metaphorically: See s*** for what it is and get rid of the source before it gets out of control.
• If you use To Do lists, get rid of the word “goal” and replace it with “possibility.” You’ll be nicer to yourself that way.
• If you find yourself writing down something that you’ve already done on a To Do list, just so you can cross it off, you might want to stop making To Do lists.
• Allow yourself to grocery shop without a list, but not when you are hungry. You might surprise yourself by what ends up in your grocery cart—like rhubarb or radishes or kale or pistachios!
• Always smell fish before you buy it. If it smells like fish, it’s no good. Also, look into its eyes. They should be clear. This also applies to boyfriends.
• To cut goat cheese, use dental floss. (Unflavored! Duh. Don’t roll your eyes.)
• To make Deviled Eggs, put boiled eggs into cold water/ice bath. When cool, cut in half, shell ON, with sharp knife, then scoop egg out with spoon. Magic!
• Learn how to make homemade chicken broth. (Ask your mother)
Living room:
• Splurge on nice candles. Light them for yourself daily. Light the not-nice ones for guests. Not the other way around.
• Lie on the couch and do other things than watch TV. Like read a book or listen to classical music.
• Watch old movies. You know…back when people used stamps, and women dressed for travel. There’s a lot to learn from the “olden days.”
• Limit TV.
• Listen to NPR. Especially opera on NPR. Pretty much everything you need to know about life is in operas.
• Make sure to have musical instruments and keep them within eye-range so you’ll actually play them. Guitars and pianos welcome group jam sessions.
• Always have a drum somewhere for that person who claims they “aren’t musical.”
• Have board games and cards in a drawer or on a shelf. Play them. Especially Scrabble, backgammon, gin rummy, Farkle, and Scattagories.
• Have guide books and binoculars. It’s good to know your birds and flowers and other critters. Even in the city, there are hawks.
Bathroom:
• Have nice hand towels and nice soap in your powder room. Your guests should feel special.
• Use your powder room. You should feel special too!
• Always have an extra roll of toilet paper in each bathroom.
• And a plunger. (Replace plungers every-so-often, unless you are the type to wash and disinfect toilet plungers. Dirty secret: I’m not. That’s what the second flush is for.)
• Don’t forget to wash the toilet flusher handle when you wash your toilets. They are dearly overlooked. (Try not to think about that too much in hotel rooms.)
• Put nice art in your bathrooms. And magazines. You can learn a lot about a person from their bathroom.
• Supply room spray.
Bedroom:
Don’t be a slob. Pick up your clothes. If they’re not dirty, put them somewhere to wear again during the week, like in a hamper in your closet. NOT on a chair. And definitely NOT on your treadmill. Like your mother. Who then forgets she has a treadmill.
• Wash your sheets at least once a month.
• Splurge on nice sheets and feather pillows.
• If the person/people with whom you are sharing your room snore, make sure you have earplugs by your bed.
• Supply your nightstand with books that you want to read when you grow up: a book of poetry, a spiritual text of some sort, a classic novel, something on the best-seller list that is not written by a celebrity.
• If you eat breakfast in bed, use a tray. Crumbs are worse than bed-bugs in some cases, especially if you’ve listened to your mother and splurged on good bread.
• Eat breakfast in bed, but not lunch or dinner. That means you’re depressed.
• Do not let your dog sleep with you. Or your babies. They need a bed of their own, and so do you.
• Sleep in every-so-often. Like till eleven. This will get harder and harder the older you get.
Closet:
• You’re on your own on this one, but do get nice hangers if possible.
• Oh, and do accept that your “skinny” clothes are probably a thing of the past if you haven’t been able to fit into them for a few years…
Office:
Virginia Woolf was right—you need a room of your own, even it’s in an eave, or a closet under a stairway, or (if you’re lucky enough) a whole studio over your garage, or an unoccupied bedroom, or a renovated garden shed. Claim space for yourself!
• Don’t allow people to come and go without knocking.
• If you have children, always have an available chair in it for them. It’s important to have your own space, but it’s also important that they know that your work does not take away your motherhood.
• This one is really really important: Whatever it is that you do in that office, whether it’s a vocation or avocation, make sure it’s something you love. NOT something that you are necessarily good at. If you happen to be good at what you love, then that’s a bonus, but not a rule!
Outside:
• Have a communal outdoor space that feels like a room in your house, but isn’t exactly…like: A screened porch, fire escape, hammock, hot tub, front stoop, garden or terrace. It doesn’t have to be big. Just a place where you sit at least once every few days and dream a little.
A few extra extras:
• Write handwritten notes on nice stationary to people you love. That’s where the stamp comes in…
• Try not to kill bugs. If they’re inside, put a mason jar over them and take them outside. They do elegant things like lick the wax off the peony buds so that they can bloom. (I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there.) (Mice are a different story. If you’ve had one die in the walls, you’ll know what I mean.)
• Practice Yes and Possibility instead of No and Not Possible. Positive begets positive and negative begets negative. You don’t want the latter.
• Have fun, for crying out loud! Life is beautiful and heartbreaking any way you slice it so you might as well enjoy the ride!
• There is no such thing as cool.
• Judge not.
• Don’t mistake a full schedule for a full life. If you find yourself saying, “There’s never a dull moment,” you should probably make it a goal to have at least one “dull moment” every day.
• Take walks. (especially in the rain)
• Sing.
• Dance.
• Read poetry.
• Have dogs.
• Grow a garden.
• Travel.
• Create the sacred wherever you are.
• Be kind to old people and remember they know a lot more than you do. Ask them to tell you their stories.
• Know that there are saints everywhere. Look for them. They’re often where you least expect it.
• Call your mother. Texting is a challenge since she can never find her reading glasses. Plus, she likes to hear your voice. It reminds her of lying in bed with you when you were little, reading books, singing, praying, watching the moon, dreaming. And she loves you no matter what, which is hard to find.
DRINK WATER
by Laura Munson | May 2, 2014 | Motherhood
Haven Retreat was named one of the top five Writing Retreats in the US by Open Road Media and Tumblr! The last 2014 slots are filling fast so if you want to come, email me asap: Laura@lauramunsonauthor.com!
June 18-22 (full)
September 10-14
September 24-28
October 8-12
October 22-26
This is for all the parents out there whose child is going to college for the first time this fall…
As featured on The Huffington Post 50, and The Huffington Post College.
May 1st, 2014. It’s been a strange spring for daffodils. By this writing, they’ve usually shot up, bloomed, and wilted. This year: not one yellow head in the garden. These daffodil bulbs are loyal and old friends. I planted many of them when I built my home here in Montana, three years into my now eighteen year old daughter’s life. They have never failed me, and frankly, neither has she. And now she’s a few months shy of fledging. Going to college. Spreading the wings that she has grown in full flourish and that I have proudly procured, mostly in small moments, doing things together like planting bulbs, canning jam from the strawberry garden, collecting heart-shaped rocks on any number of Montana riverbeds to line the garden path. This garden knows this child, and especially the daffodils do. She was born in daffodil time. My hospital room was full of them. I cannot look at a daffodil without thinking of her.
I try not to anthropomorphize as a rule, but something tells me that the daffodils are in revolt. They are harbingers, after all, announcing summer after a long Montana winter when you can’t believe there will be any other color than grey, mid-grey, and white. Somehow, they prestidigitate through the last of the snow and POW—there they are, promising color again. Birth. Every year their promise feels so pure—like the kind a grandmother makes. There will be life again. In abundance. Summer. Sun on flesh on green grass and ladybugs. Lemonade on the front porch with bare, painted toes, and cricket symphonies. I love those daffodils: they are all H.O.P.E. Maybe this year they know that she’ll walk down that garden path in a few months, and not come back for a long time. Maybe they’re depressed. Or in denial, thinking that if they don’t produce blooms, she will somehow stay. Maybe they’re trying to stall spring, so that summer and fall will have to wait. Maybe they’re teasing time in hopes of keeping her around a little longer. The tulips don’t seem to care at all. They’re ready to do their thing, looking around in confusion like their warm-up band has bailed and they have to play to an un-lubed audience.
I’m envious then, of the daffodils. I want to go on strike. To not have to feel my way through this fledge. This inevitable and natural parting. I want to fold my arms across my chest and say, “I’m stepping out of the wake of all this college stuff—the financial aid forms and tax returns, the coast-to-coast-and-in-between college visits, the applications and essays and what-do-you-want-to-do-with-your-life questions. The info sessions and tours with perky student guides walking backwards and shouting fun university factoids to battle-weary Juniors and their parents. The “Beggars” meetings with advisors and teachers and admissions people and alumni. The rejections. The acceptances. The “Choosers” tour that ended just last week— the trains planes and automobiles that have taken us to all of those hallowed halls, trying them on for size, hoping to fall in love.”
I just want to spend today sitting in the garden with her, amid the daffodils, telling her about the day she was born. And drink hibiscus sun tea. And braid her hair. Can’t I, can’t we, just…plain…duck from all this for a moment? It’s over. She made her choice and she’s thrilled about it. I am too. We have a few months now to breathe. To collect the years of her youth and to pile them up somehow into a cairn that will help her find her way wherever she goes. There is this deep need in me to have it all make sense. To make one defining sculpture of her happy childhood that she can leave behind, and a duplicate for her that is portable. I’ll put the first one in the garden and slip the other one in a box along with her comforter and favorite pillows marked: bedding. Maybe the daffodils will come out of hiding then.
Only a mother whose child is going off to college would have these berserk thoughts. I cannot imagine what a mother whose child is going off to war thinks about to fog her fear. I’m sure it’s about way more than daffodils. I keep thinking that I am one of the lucky mothers out there who knows her child will be happy wherever she goes, and if she isn’t, she’ll change things around so that she is. She’s so comfortable in her own skin. She’s so ready to fly. I mean, what if she wasn’t? What if she wanted to live in the basement and get a minimum wage job and let her dreams, or worse her wonder, sift through her fingers? If that was the case, I’d be shoving her out of the nest with all my might. This is a good “problem” to have. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy.
The official college decision day was yesterday. We sent in the deposit. Filled out the last forms. Applied for a few more scholarships. She wore the collegeT-shirt to school, along with her other friends who wore their college-of-choice T-shirts. It was a day of celebration. For her. I made her favorite comfort food: Greek lemon chicken soup. I think tears actually landed in the broth as I stirred. I served it to her in bed because she had homework to do and sprained her ankle running track, and just needed to be in bed. I don’t blame her. It’s the end of a long academic, extra-curricular, SAT, form-filling haul. She deserves her favorite soup in her very own bed. Next year, if she’s having a day like today, she’ll be in a bunk in a dorm room, with ramen and a microwave. Hopefully she’ll call her mother.
I am not a heli-copter mother. I didn’t push her through her childhood (except to take piano lessons, I confess. But I let her finally quit when she got to high school. Now she wishes I had pushed her to keep going…so go figure!) Instead, I took her pulse. I was the wind at her back when she needed it and sometimes without her knowing. But it was always her life to live, not mine. The first thing I said to her when we were alone in the hospital room on the day of her birth, her whole body fitting between my fingertips and the crux of my elbow was, “You can be anything you want to be.” Daffodils and all. Time to fly, my dear daughter.
Recent Comments