Just a quick midweek post to say hi  from the abyss of a birthday week (Lainey’s) for which I’m planning an epic scavenger hunt this weekend but haven’t actually started working on it yet. Might want to get on that.

I had one Mother’s Day request this past weekend–everyone has to go to the beach…and like it. So when the sun was creeping past the hot-as-hell point Sunday, we headed to my favorite beach as of late to finish off the evening riding waves, writing our names in the sand and chasing seagulls. It was perfect.

Going to the beach is so much easier than it used to be. The little ones no longer push the boundaries of how far they can go, and I’ve downsized my bring-it-all approach to showing up with a small backpack or tote and a blanket. The kids carry their own towels and usually one floatie, and we can pack it up and leave in a matter of seconds.

Still working on teaching Dash what’s an appropriate time and place to whip it out and pee (“NOT towards the people, Dash! It’s not funny!”), but we’ll get there. Also, the best way to confirm to a four-year-old that something is indeed very funny is to say “It’s not funny.”

I’m far more eager to go the beach than Brett, so I like to remind him often that he’s the one who tells everyone how much he loves Naples because of how close it is to the beach. “You know you have to actually go to the beach to credibly use that reason. I’m revoking you of your Naples travel guide status.”

10 more school days for us, and we couldn’t be more excited.

A few things I’m loving right now:

1. Will Ferrell’s commencement speech at USC last week. Watch it. It’s so so good. “I didn’t read any reviews because I was too busy throwing darts at the dartboard, all the while facing my fears.” And “You will never truly be successful until you learn to give beyond yourself–empathy and kindness are the true signs of emotional intelligence.” 

2. The Creativity Manifesto written and illustrated by Wendy MacNaugton and Courtney E. Martin (just ordered Martin’s book): “…Pick up your pen. Pick up your paintbrush. Pick up your damn chin. Put your two calloused hands on the turntables, in the clay, on the strings. Get behind the camera. Look for that pinprick of light. …Focus on that light. Enlarge it. Reveal the fierce urgency of now. Reveal how shattered we are, how capable of being repaired.”

3. Orlando Soria’s Instagram Stories. He’s hilarious. They make me laugh every day.

4. And this quote by John C. Maxwell: “You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine.”

…and I meant to share this interview last week. Talking about my favorite books and what reading means to me over at The Reading Lists here.

I’ve been trying to write a Mother’s Day post for three days now, locking myself in my office when Brett gets home and declaring, as the kids pass their perfectly capable father to come bang on the door to ask ME to get them a drink/sign their homework folder/explain why fish don’t have butts, “ASK DADDY! MOMMY’S WORKING! IT’S HIS TURN!” There’s a special tone of voice I’ve reserved for these moments, of course–mommish enough to pass as directed toward the kids but clearly intended for Brett.

Read between the lines: “Dear God, intervene already.”

Intervention is difficult though when Nella’s already lying on the floor, sliding her fingers under the door, crying, “Mommy, do you see me?” Because there’s only one way to answer that question in motherhood, and it is always “Yes.” I always see you. In my office, in my bathtub, in my sleep.

I managed to slip away to take a long shower tonight while Brett watched the kids play in the pool, but right as I went to lather my shampoo, I heard them coming…all of them. “We’re cold, can we get in the shower with you?” A minute later, I was crammed against the back corner tile, fighting for an eighth of the water stream while three kids in bathing suits drew pictures on the fogged-up shower doors–a cat, a bunny, a snake that slowly disappeared with more steam–and I tried to figure out how to rinse my hair with my tiny share of the shower head.

It is hard to find the place where they end and I begin, and while I thought I’d find it in the shower tonight but failed, there is always one place where the lines feel strangely clear–at an airport bar when traveling alone. My friend Claire and I have talked about this before, and so she sends me a photo a couple weeks ago, no explanation needed–a half-finished mimosa on a table in front of a window overlooking the runway and a stretch of planes against a cold gray sky.

“Ahh, I love it. I know that feeling,” I text back.

“I know you do. I took this photo specifically for you.”

It’s the one definitive place between two worlds and two people, and whether I’m departing to adventure away from them or excitedly coming home to get back to them, the airport bar scene is always accompanied by this electric energy and deep thoughts for me, heightened, of course, by the faint buzz of an airport beer. It’s where my intertwined identities separate for a moment, hover above like little spirits, and acknowledge each other:

“Oh hey, adventurous one that dwells within. I see you.”
“Hi, Mom. Nice to get a break, huh? You’re doing a good job, by the way. Fun working with you.”
“Hey–in case we don’t get this opportunity again for a while, I need to tell you this: I love them, but I love you too.”
“Don’t worry, I get it. And for the record, I love them too.”

And then they hug and get all tangled up again as I reach for my phone to find that picture of all three kids sleeping in my bed, the one where Lainey’s arm is tucked into Nella’s, and Dash is hogging half the bed. And I feel electric again–because nothing feels more electric than loving them.

I find it necessary to honor the part of me that is just me–to take quiet runs alone, say no to opening the office door sometimes, say yes to those trips that take me away, explore hobbies and talents and desires outside of my kids. I do it for myself, but I do it for them too–because it’s too much pressure on them to be linked to my every happiness, and I want them to find themselves outside of me as well.

But mostly, I lean in to the entanglement of it all, especially during this phase of our lives–to lean in to the fact that listening to the adventurous one that dwells within often means inviting Lainey to join me on a run, or scooting my magazines off the edge of the bathtub so Dash can climb in with me, or pausing work on the computer so Nella can sit in my lap and tell me what songs she wants me to play on Spotify.

She wants Justin Bieber who lures the other two in, and they’re soon laughing and dancing and shouting out what song they want next. “Pitbull!” Nella yells, and the twerking begins with the first beat. They shake their hips like Shakira on the “babybabybabybabybabybaby” part, and the girls fall to the floor in a fit of laughter when Dash’s interpretive dance goes awry. Every part of me is braided in this moment, right here, and there isn’t an airport bar in the world that can hold a flame to this.

It is during these times that I often do this thing I do where I imagine this moment is a sliver from the past and that my little old lady self has been given the opportunity to wormhole back to it. They can ask me to refill their cup a hundred times. They can shove homework folders in my face with stubby pencils that never write. They can demand for me to explain one more time why fish don’t have butts and fall apart when my answer isn’t what they were looking for.

In the end, I feel simply...lucky.  There isn’t a cell in my body that isn’t stamped with love for them. That’s why I can wave goodbye when Brett takes them all to Chuck E. Cheese tonight while I stay home and drink wine with my book club.

Happy Mother’s Day and love to all those who feel this day in different ways–the memories, the heartache, the hope, the thrill, the hard work, the beauty, but most of all…the love. 

This post is sponsored by StoryWorth.

“I’m not a writer,” my grandma tells me, “so you definitely don’t get that from me.” She identifies more with other roles–a mother, a grandmother, a former pastor’s wife, a nurturer of women through her church and community, but a writer? She doesn’t think so. And yet this year, our family has learned that Grandma’s been hiding a little secret from us…she is a writer. And she’s telling her precious story, chapter by chapter, in e-mails that arrive to us, without fail, every Monday morning.

For Christmas last year, I bought a subscription to StoryWorth for my grandma in a quest to learn more about her and dig up the stories of her youth and my mother’s youth before they’re lost. I added the e-mails of my aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews when I set up the subscription so they could read the stories too, took a little time selecting some of the questions that would be sent to her every week for the following year, and then I sent my grandma her invitation and waited for the stories to begin.

Grandma, what was your dad like when you were a kid? Grandma, what’s been some of life’s greatest surprises? Grandma, tell me everything you can remember about one of the best days of your life. Since December, we’ve learned the big things–like how she met my grandpa and how much her father impacted her–as well as my favorite, the little things–how much she loved her brown Pfaltzgraff dishes, descriptions of her favorite house she lived in with the decorative wooden door that slid into the wall and the build-in carved wooden hutch that extended from one corner of the wall to the other.

What I didn’t expect though was how much I’m learning about motherhood–how much I’m getting to know the grandma I never knew, the young mother who, just like me, rushed around the kitchen in the morning, making lunches and scooting kids out the door.

One of my favorite responses she’s written was the answer to “Grandma, what were you like when you were 30?” She’s given me permission to share it.

Having first born twins at age 21–and two that followed popcorn style–brought me into my early 30’s with four children under four years of age. Perhaps that’s the reason my “happy-go-lucky” nature was forced to settle down more quickly than it may have at a lesser pace in introducing me to motherhood. Simultaneously, I was embarking on a parsonage life that my family was entering.

Amid the joys of family life and all our love and laughter, there would be hair-raising stories that I would be reluctant to even mention for years, that would make for humorous to alarming proportions to read about. For me, it was a time of juggling through very good and yes, some very bad experiences which would sum up to some of the most meaningful life lessons in forming philosophies and realities into character-building factors that would extend to the next 30 years and beyond.

The culture of my generation was not given to as much aggressive measures of self-introspection as are prevalent today. “Sink or Swim”, it seemed to me, was consequently the criteria for reaching the success that lured individuals to achieve. The goals that were launched by my 30ish years boil down to guiding and molding each little life that I would be put upon to care and keep, by example, would lend them skills they would encounter in shaping them into the persons that they would become. I remember the concrete thrill and motivation at the earliest indication that a child was on the way, to have the privilege of molding and shaping this little life found within me to the best of my ability.

Looking in the rear-view mirror all these years later, I of course, would like to change some things, but that is not the way it works.

Happy journeying through your respective stages of your lives.

Love,
Mom/Grandma/Great Grandma 

The morning I received that story, I called her. “Grandma, you ARE a writer. You ARE. You’re writing your book.”

If you’re still looking for a Mother’s Day gift for a special mom or grandma in your life–a sister, a favorite aunt, a woman you admire and would love to know more about–I can’t speak more highly about the gift of a StoryWorth subscription. Each week, StoryWorth will e-mail your chosen storyteller one question (you can let StoryWorth randomly send a question, choose from hundreds of meaningful questions already written, or you can write your own). All the storyteller has to do is reply to the e-mail with their answer and stories, and StoryWorth will make sure it gets sent to the recipients you’ve set up to receive it. Chosen family members and friends can also suggest questions. And the best part? At the end of one year of storytelling, StoryWorth will bind your loved one’s stories in a beautiful keepsake book and send it to you. They’re offering $20 off to our readers when you order through this link (must order before May 15).

I believe there’s a writer in everyone, and what greater gift to give your mother than to let her know that her stories are important, and that you want to know them.

To learn more about StoryWorth, you can also follow them on their social media channels:

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It’s Monday morning and that means one thing…there’s a story from my grandma on its way, and I can’t wait to read it.