The Agony and the Ecstasy of a Ten Year-old

My firstborn turns ten today. Pardon the theatrics, but I thought there would be more time.

On the aging spectrum, our girl is now closer to adulthood than she is to infanthood. By all legal measures, we are past the midway mark of having raised a child in our home. This feels equal parts accurate and completely impossible.

For example, our girl is far more likely to pick out her own clothes, friends, and activities than she is reliant on her parents to deign to have an opinion about these and other matters. But she also cannot imagine a world where we are not on the other end of a school day, and girlfriend would have 2.5 pairs of socks in her possession if not for her parents. Half the time I am so proud that girlfriend has such a vast vocabulary, and the other half I am willing all the dictionaries to disappear because really, she doesn't need to know any more words and their manifold meanings. There are also roughly 4.7 million topics we have yet to broach with her, a bajillion stories left to tell. We just brought her home as a newborn from the hospital last week, yet the seeming half-century's worth of tween sediment in her bedroom belies her recent arrival. We have pocketed the well-hewn paradox of parenting, and found that this pebble is still ours to carry for some time.

I am in awe of the unique, resilient person our girl is becoming. And I am utterly bewildered by this human who looks and sounds like her parents do, but whose DNA seems to be drawn from another source entirely, one far more exuberant and observant, like maybe a creature, part Manga princess and part wildebeest? I do not know this person and yet I should not be the least bit surprised by her. I was able to spend every waking and sleeping moment of her first few years with her, but it's still breaking news to me that she is going to reflect all the virtue and vice within me and that there is nothing I can do about it.

Our daughter is ten. Time is spiriting us away on this journey and it is stealing moments and months from us when we are otherwise checking our e-mail. Simply spread both hands wide and you can count the full set of digits. The spaces between the fingers and thumbs, though, they tell a story, too. There are the notes that repeat, the repetition that forms the chords that we remember. But between the fingers and thumbs are the rests, the moments of silence, the seasons of growth when the chords are imperceptible. The notes and the rests, the milestones and the blank pages in the baby book. We failed to document it all because we thought this hard, beautiful season might last forever, or we foolishly thought we would remember all of it.  Instead we wear more lines around our eyes, hear the faint echoes of laughter from moments we wanted to bottle whole--and these tell a story, too.

The past decade has taught me that it is all little bit of both. Raising a human is heaven and hell at the same time, the agony and the ecstasy in equal measure, running concurrently, in two parallel streams.

We are closer to the end of parenting a child. We are nearer to an understanding of her as a child trying to become an adult. There is no mic drop here, though, no busting through the ribbon at a finish line. We are miles from watching her take her first steps, but we as her parents are still profoundly wobbly. We carry the paradox of parenthood in our pocket and hope we are swift enough when it causes us to tilt too far in any direction. Falling is guaranteed--particularly falling more in love with this beauty love force girl person whom we adore, ten times ten times ten.

Directions for my Memorial Slideshow

Whereas your mother is of a sound mind on this day the 11th day of January in the year 2018, she will be henceforth referred to as the Deceased. The Deceased shall entrust members of family, namely her children and eventual publishers of her memoir(s) to handle the attendant Memorial Service Slideshow according to these irrevocable conditions:  

• Archival photos in which the Deceased appears to be volunteering in children’s school or at least has Eyebrows on Fleek shall be given preferential placement in the slideshow arrangement.

• Archival photos that feature the Deceased wearing mom jeans, other pleated slacks, or more than one chin should be used sparingly, if at all.

• Under no circumstances shall images in which the Deceased appears to be holding more than one beverage in more than one hand be used in the slideshow.

• All musical selections should be vetted against the Deceased’s playlists on Spotify. If Spotify ceases to exist, under no circumstances should any songs be drawn from the Bob Carlisle’s “Butterfly Kisses” album.

• Unattributable quotations, such as “Live, Laugh, Love” will cause the Deceased to rage from The Beyond and should be used under no circumstances.

• All text slides should utilize a sans serif font. Okay, just kidding. Don’t go getting crazy and using Curlz or Comic Sans or something totally insane, ya wingdings.

• Preludes to the slideshow should be limited to live duets by Lea Michele and Chris Colfer in the spirit of “Defying Gravity” as seen on “Glee” (Season 1, Episode 9). OBVI.  

• Postludes should be brief but meditative and probably entail a string instrument.

• It is the Deceased’s wish that you would find yourselves crying throughout the slideshow because you found a reason to miss her -- I mean, HOW MANY TIMES was Leroy the Elf not moved in the morning? -- and not because the slideshow was triggering in a certain kind of way.

• Length of entire slideshow should be appropriately long based on years Deceased was alive, and just awkward enough for any ex-boyfriends present.
• The Deceased wishes to vouchsafe the fact that there are fun-size packs of Goldfish crackers for each of you in the vault if you get hungry.

LinkedIn makes me itch, 2018 has that new car smell, and other thoughts

LinkedIn is still a boxy place full of bosses, former ones and prospective bosses, small boxes to check and boxes into which we must shoehorn our skillset and lop off the quirks that may make us incredibly valuable but may not necessarily be valued. I click and scroll and read and my shoulders feel freighted by the imaginary shoulder pads I should be wearing in my little box of a profile picture. I can never look proffy enough for LinkedIn.

Random gents from Nigeria attempt to add me to their LinkedIn networks. I receive invites at least daily from complete strangers from Lagos, people whose titles sound like they ripped them from the Lives of the Saints: God's Hands and Feet, Director. Do I want to add this person to my LinkedIn network? Is it my own hubris that I don't want to add someone with the hubris to place the hands and feet of the Almighty as his professional title?

I click on "ignore request" because it all makes me feel a bit icky. Then I am smacked by my own privilege. What licenses me to ignore? Where do I hop on my First World high horse, so jaunty as I wave away these requests for connection. Because I was born under a certain star? Because I stand on the shoulders of giants? Because I would struggle mightily to imagine what it's like to have queued up a website on an unstable internet connection in a place so desolate of opportunity that the only hope one holds is to make a connection, no matter how superficial, because that feels like progress? What is it like to log on to LinkedIn and not feel bewildered by the boxy bossiness, but rather to find endless sea at nighttime, small boats and buoys bobbing with their sails up, tomorrow replete with possibility albeit unknown?

Whereas I can log off and hope for something to work out.

The very fact that I can write this true sentence about my life is some privilege worth confronting: I took the fall off to help the kids transition. Meaning, I chose not to work for someone else but rather worked for myself. In the pajama pants of work-from-home mythology.I booked hair appointments in the middle of the day like a proper Betty Draper. I went to yoga when I wanted, ate snacks at my desk, picked my kids up from school every blessed day. I've enjoyed the leisure of negotiable deadlines and the thrill of hard deadlines and I've even prettied up my professional website so that if the freelance hustle wants to pick itself up? It can.

It is now time to reemerge and inhale that new car smell of 2018. Ironically it smells like a gritty public bus ride to somewhere, somewhere that I'll have the privilege to serve.