Category: Milestone Moments

Posted in Fragile Life, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, Round Two, Teens

Round Two

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

Thirteen is… training-wheels adolescence. Fourteen is hardcore, biker adolescence.
~Anne Lamott

Just before the storm (photo: Kelly Salasin)
Almost 14~Just before the storm
(photo: Kelly Salasin)

Parenting a teenager is a lot like New England Weather… Everything is going along nicely… the sky is clear, the birds are singing, the world is right-side up, and then BANG! A storm rolls in. Thunder. Lightning.

Suddenly you’re without power.

Maybe all your connections are zapped.

“Where did that come from!” someone says.

And you say something like: “Polar Vortex.”

Or in our case, “FOURTEEN!”

We’ve arrived. Just yesterday. And as if on cue, the thunder rolled in, the lightning struck, and I was ready to quit. Give up. Move out.

MOTHERHOOD SUCKS.

It took all the maturity and self-restraint cultivated over the past 50 years not to put the power back in my hands. To let my heart lie there, trampled upon, without striking back.

And it took all the self-compassion cultivated since becoming someone’s mother, to walk away, to lick my own wounds, without taking any of it too personally.

There is a scene from a favorite movie of mine: Spanglish. With Adam Sandler. Do you know it? Remember what he says when he finds out that his wife has betrayed him? Something about hearing the universe crack…

My universe, as a mother, cracked twice this week. Once with each of my offspring. And I have to admit that I could barely summon much affection for either of them afterward.

Maybe they deserve it. Maybe I’m being melodramatic. Maybe THIS is parenthood. Or maybe this crack is an opportunity for something new.

I’m on the lookout for what that is. For how it will shape me. And reshape our lives together.

But right now?

I want to move out…
timthumb

Posted in Milestone Moments, Teens

Tall. Taller. Tallest.

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

imagesI’ve watched it happen. I’ve waited for it to happen. I’ve measured it repeatedly. Measured us against one another.

And he’s come close. But I’ve remained. His mother. Taller. By a lot. And then a little. And a little less. And a little less than that.

Until today.

I saw it coming…

He’s been home sick. On the couch. His neck. His chest. Some how broadening, right there, in front of me. His back, his silhouette, becoming a man’s, swiping the child inside.

This morning I sat in the kitchen, and he passed me, noticing… something.

“You look small,” he said. “Stand up so that I don’t feel so tall.”

And I did.

And then, we did, what we’ve done, all year long.

Stood back to back.
Called for someone to come compare us.

It was his older brother who broke the news. We held our breaths. He chided his younger brother to stop tilting his head to make himself taller. And then he spoke the words that I’ve been waiting for. Been resisting. Known would come.

“Aidan is taller.”

A wide grin broke across my 13 year old’s face.

I took a seat.

(Tears sprung to my eyes.)

Posted in Fragile Life, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, My own childhood, Teens, What's Next? (18 & beyond)

Beloved

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

She felt motherhood slipping away, like an ice cap, slowly melting over time, and then suddenly breaking apart, drifting further and further…

Knuffle-Bunny-300x226Alone, at a children’s book museum, she released silent tears, as she read Knuffle Bunny Free to herself.

She had read the first in this series: Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale to her youngest when he was just a boy. Then there was Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity ; and finally: Knuffle Bunny Free: An Unexpected Diversion–where the beloved Knuffle Bunny is lost yet again, and not grieved so much, as released.

Just this week her youngest son found his own lovey–a penguin–lost amidst the covers of his bed. He guessed he had been there for weeks. Without noticing. Without crying for help. Without the imperative of finding his Pengie.

Her older son was off to college and his kitty, Slimmy, once a treasured companion, now sat on a bookshelf, beside cologne and cds, in a vacant room.

Her own puppy, Mine, was similarly stowed, without the daily attention its weathered body received all those years ago.

And then she wondered, what becomes of Beloveds like these, when WE ourselves are gone?