Pictures and Personalities

Today was the day that I finally had all the school pictures to update. School pictures aren't always the most flattering or fashionable. I know a lot of people who refuse to buy them, but I love the quirks they reveal in my children, the real glimpse into who they are at that moment, that fleeting moment. And I love the sameness, from year to year: the pose and the background are the same, so it is an easy timeline at which to marvel.

My children are no longer at the age where I can have much, if any, say in what they wear or how (or sometimes even if) they groom themselves. They know what they want, how they want to present themselves to the world and while my influence may be heard, it is not the dealmaker in any situation. How did we get here so quickly? Since I try to pick my battles wisely and I am not willing to die on the hill of school picture outfits (and, even when I am, I lose. Case in point: Last year, I begged Z to wear a button up shirt on picture day. I pleaded, I cajoled, I wheedled. At long last, he compromised by wearing his favorite Star Wars t-shirt under the button up and he left for school. I should have smelled a rat, for in the car, he shed the button up and his school picture featured him in only the grey t-shirt. The grey Star Wars t-shirt of which the only part visible in the picture is the neckline, where the 'galaxy' looks like cotton pilling. So, it appeared for all of this past year that Z wore a ratty, aged t-shirt for school pictures. He presented himself as he wished.)

The rest of my children are no less particular about their appearance. Z, at least, voluntarily wore a button up shirt this year. I guess he's growing up. CW, who is as different from Z as possible, wore a button up and a bow tie. He has long been more particular about his appearance than his brothers. Bam wore exactly the same thing this year as last: a red plaid shirt unbuttoned over a navy t-shirt. He has been a red plaid shirt guy forever. In years past, I could talk him into changing up the shirt (still red, still plaid, just a little different), or he grew and was forced to change. This year, he hadn't grown and I didn't have the fight in me to make him wear a new shirt. His glasses are a different frame, he is slightly older looking, but otherwise it's as if he didn't age at all. Bam is my young soul, the one most resistant to change, to maturing. He is also the slowest to grow, so he seems a forever suspended little dude, unless I compare pictures carefully. M is so tall and thin and so sure in her self-knowledge. I hope that never changes and I try to nudge her only as much as is necessary so that she doesn't lose sight of that self-knowledge. I never want her to doubt. Her hair is finally long enough to sport somewhat of a side braid this year. That, and a dress (as always) were her chosen look for picture day.

This year, CE is a senior, so her picture is the obligatory black velvet drape that 'looks' like a formal in the way that no formal looked, ever, but we all wore them. My parents' wall has all our senior pictures lined up, as if we reached the end of high school and froze. As I was placing all the current pictures in their frames on my wall, I thought about not changing hers next year. Again, how did we get to this place so quickly?

This motherhood thing never sits still. I have never been the sort to cry as new milestones are reached and old ones are left behind. The milestones keep getting bigger. It seems like yesterday that I took CE to kindergarten for the first time and yet, she finalized her college applications this weekend. She was a 12 year old who loved to wear large flowers in her hair just a minute ago and now she prefers loose curls and a dramatic winged eyeliner. This time next year she will not live here any more.

I love who my children are. They are only mildly influenced by me and DH; they are so much their own people with their own lightning fast minds and strong spirits. I love watching them grow into their stewardships, into their talents. But, really, how did we get to this place so quickly?

Dancing and Baby Steps

Baby M, who turned nine yesterday, so she is not really anybody's baby except mine, got roller skates for her birthday. She is Over The Moon. They are pinkish purplish and fabulous. She and her brother had a great plan for the morning, this first day of Thanksgiving break: skate to the park. Except for one glaring oversight. Baby girl doesn't know how to skate. She sees her brother, Bam, who has been skating for a while now, skate up and down our death defying hill with ease. She thought that skating would come easily to her. She fell. And fell and fell in the kitchen. After a bad tumble where she cracked her head on the tile, she sobbed and sobbed and said it was too hard and she was too scared. I suggested she put on her bike helmet and stay in the kitchen for a while, that maybe the path to the park, with its glaring absence of walls, was too advanced just yet. Eventually M agreed and is now happily spider walking her skates from wall to table to wall in the kitchen. But every so often she goes onto the family room carpet to do her 'routine:' a wonderful bit of spins and dancing that the higher friction carpet allows her to execute safely.

She really likes to dance. Her soul has always soared with a wicked beat. Her skirts must always be spinny; she can barely abide pants, preferring leggings and avoiding the constrictions of jeans at almost all costs. I rarely even buy pants for her, as a result. When she was little, she would screech and scream until she could peel off the offending pants. Anything that diminishes her movement is to be avoided. So, of course she was drawn to skates and their increased capacity for soaring. She just didn't account for the learning curve. We rarely do. Baby steps are aggravatingly slow. Our spirits know how to soar. It's our bodies that have to learn the muscle movements at a protracted pace. But the blessing here is that our muscles have their own memories. If we teach our bodies well, even at the aggravatingly slow pace they require, our bodies develop muscle memories, our brains carve neural pathways so that the soaring dancing and skating, once learned, become hard wired and easy, even when not practiced consistently. Like riding a bike, you only need to learn once and then your muscles will take over, reminding you of old lessons learned.

Suffering great stress and trauma can often seem like an actual brain injury. Tasks that 'should' be easy, suddenly seem insurmountable. In such times, when the floors of life are too slippery and there are not enough walls to hold us up on the open road, we would do well to go back to the carpet with its higher friction, if only for a rejuvenating moment. We need to go back to the baby steps, take things in increasingly small chunks--smaller and smaller until we can breathe again.

It's hard to stay in the kitchen when we want to go to the park. It's hard to crawl when we long to dance. But baby stepping leads to dancing. Patience wins the day. Every time.

Sight

When I was in college, one of my roommates was a stunningly beautiful, blonde 6 foot tall woman. She was kind, fun, good AND beautiful. Time after time, men would come up to her, remember having met her (how could they forget?) and then turn to me with "and what was your name?" It didn't matter how many times previously they had met me, if I was standing near my friend, their reaction was proximal amnesia: She was the powerful magnet to the hard drive, erasing any memory of my existence in their brain. It mattered not a bit if I was glitteringly witty, fun, intelligent or downright strange. In her presence, I was, above all, invisible. I found during that same time, that I could go entire days without saying a single word. My classes didn't require comment and there were enough volunteers that my silence was not glaring. I would realize at the end of such a day that I had not opened my mouth at all. I was invisible; I was mute. One evening, my roommates had convinced me to find a date for a girls' choice dance and we were having a reasonably enjoyable time. My date was cordial and he could see me, though we were not a match made in heaven. At some point during the evening, I made a sly pun quietly to myself--for my own amusement--since I neither expected anyone to hear nor to notice me. My roommate's date, who had been looking absently at the floor, lifted his head up suddenly and looked straight at me. And laughed. He heard me. He saw me. He saw me even though my stunning roommate was right there. That electric feeling of being seen when I had become accustomed to invisibility, being heard when I had been seemingly mute. I will never forget it.

Sometimes we say we wish the earth could swallow us whole, that we wish no one would see us. But I don't think that is actually true. We want to be seen; we need to be seen in order to be loved. It is a deeply vulnerable place--allowing ourselves to be seen. But it is a devastating place--to ask to be seen and still to be invisible. Horton could hear the Whos--'a person's a person, no matter how small' or so Dr. Seuss told us. What do we do with the people we see? The thing is, we can't see all the people all the time. Our brains are just too mortal, too finite. But God sees. We can be certain that we are visible to Him. He made us after all. He promises throughout the scriptures, throughout all time, that He will never forget us, we are graven upon His side, upon His hands, the chastisement of our peace is upon Him. Since God sees us all, we can ask Him to help see better those who most need to be seen. It's as if the Lord, in His role as Great Healer adjusts the prescription on our glasses, our perspecticles as it were, so that we can see each other as He does.

Being invisible during that time some twenty-ish years ago did something to me that I am only now and only sometimes able to move beyond. I don't want to forget though, that invisible, mute feeling entirely, because hopefully it helps me to pray better, to seek better to adjust my vision. To see who the Lord needs me to see, to see what needs to be seen.