Eleanor Roosevelt

Last weekend we took a family hike. It was absolutely gorgeous and required just enough of me physically and mentally that I found myself completely engrossed in the task at hand. We trekked through terrain that alternated between rocky, muddy and icy until we hit the summit of Goodnow Mountain. We had just overcome a bit of doubt that we would ever find the firetower when we saw it.

“There it is, straight ahead,” Sean said to the girls. I could hear the relief in his voice. It was nearly 4 o’clock and the ascent had grown colder and colder. He didn’t want to have to turn back, but he’d been ready to do so to keep us all safe. We scampered the last hundred yards and plopped down for a triumphant picnic. Everyone was chattering and gasping at the view when I took a moment to really look at this landmark we’d been working toward. I knew in theory what a firetower was, but standing at the base of it and suddenly contemplating what it mean to scale the vertical finish line, I balked.

There was no need to go up. We made it to the summit, saw the view, give me my stamp and let me go. Except we weren’t done, the girls were looking up in wonder and every fiber of their little beings screamed, “I get to go up that?! SCORE!” I quickly made myself busy with cleaning up lunch and giving the dog water. “Mom, can we go up now?” Finley asked me. She was squatting in front of me, face flushed from the hike, cheeks chapped from the wind. I sighed, “I don’t know…”

“Please mom? Please can we go?” she asked. I said no, explaining that I just couldn’t do it, that I was too scared. “But I’m not mama. I want to go up there.” her lip began to tremble and I knew tears were coming. Hers and mine. Resigned, I dusted myself off and walked over to the base. I looked up. Damnit. I insisted that she hold my hand as we made our way up.

One flight; I was ok. The second flight Finley started to pull away from me, “Wait up, honey, hold my hand.” We moved up the second flight and then halfway up the third I began to shake. I tried not to look out the cyclone fence, tried not to focus on how open it felt, how high we were and how completely out of control I felt. “C’mon mom,” she said. I moved toward the next flight and the wind took hold of me. It was so strong. I was stuck. My hands were plastered to the step and I couldn’t move up or down. She started to move up and I screamed, “No!”

I couldn’t let her go and I couldn’t move. Something in her softened and she came back to me. She stayed with me as I crawl-slithered back down. I tried to keep myself from getting dizzy and panicky as I moved down. I apologized over and over as I moved. Sean came to me with Avery beside him. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said. He moved past shushing me, “It’s ok, babe.” He took Ave up as I took a spot on the massive rock summit. Fin sat beside me and waited. After my fear subsided she told me how much she wished we could go up.

I told her how scared I was and explained that I just couldn’t make it up and that it was ok. “We made it all the way up the mountain, we don’t have to go up there. We did a great thing and that’s enough.” She walked over to the bottom step and sat, looking up wistfully at Sean and Ave. I heard Sean and Ave up top, taking photos, looking out at the spectacle of the sweeping Adirondack view. I thought about how hard the girls had worked to make it up to the top. I considered explaining to people that I made it to the top but never went up the fire tower. I cringed.

I had to go up. I had to do it for Finley, for Briar, but most of all I needed to do it for me. Then I thought, “Amanda, you are out of your f*cking mind. You don’t have to do anything.”

“Ok,” I said.

“Ok, what?” Finley asked.

I swallowed, “Ok, let’s go up.”

She squealed and we moved to the first flight of stairs. “You have to stay with me, though. Ok, Fin?” She nodded, aware that if she wasn’t careful I’d change my mind. I went step by step. I kept my eyes on the step ahead of me and my hands on Finley. Every so often I’d have to tell her to slow down. The fences on either side of us seemed too low to have any hope of stopping us if we fell. “Honey, we could fall,” I got dizzy. I told myself to look at the steps.

As we hit the fifth flight of stairs the wind kicked in again and I think I gasped audibly. Sean called out, “Man? What are you doing?” I laughed violently, “I’m just coming up.” We kept moving, eventually passing Sean and Avery as they moved down the tower. When we got to the opening at the top I moaned. I placed both palms on the floor and literally pulled my body through. Finely started to move toward the windows, which to me, in that moment, looked like wide chasms through which she would fall. “Baby, stay here,” I yelped.

I took a deep breath of air and focused everything I had on a square of ply-wood that kept me from seeing how high we’d climbed. “I just need you to give me a minute and stay with me.” I scooted toward her and we met in a hug. “Here, let me take our picture.” I struggled to hold the phone up. I tried not to let my fear mar her experience. “Isn’t it great that we did it? We made it to the top!” She beamed and then melted into me. We were tired. I snapped a picture and then looked back at the opening. I asked her to stay with me. I went down backwards the whole way.

“Just look at the steps, Man. One, two, just keeping watching the steps.” I told myself. We went through the wind, we went through two, three, four flights of stairs and I caught sight of the rock. She was pulling away from me on the last run of stairs. “Slow,” I called. My feet finally touched the stone floor and I slumped to the ground. I smiled at Fin and then at Briar. I’d done it.

I leaned again the stairs and swiped to the camera on my phone. I flipped to the last picture and stared at the proof that I had moved past my fear and made it to the top.

I shake just looking at it, but instead of just fear, I also feel the rush of having endured the fear to get to the other side.

It’s also a sacrifice.

I find myself feeling like a sham at work and at home as I take this week that so many parents are spending with their kids, and I work. We started this business when my belly was just beginning to grow with Briar inside of me. Our family grew along with our business. I have spent late nights, endless weekends and white-knuckle days building this business, and then a second. I have also spent afternoons I might otherwise have missed, playing with my girls and enjoying swaths of sunlight. Even as I have cut back some time, I struggle with whether I work too much. I am needed here at work and I am making the most of my time. I also want to be here.

Monday the girls went shopping, Tuesday they went horseback riding. Wednesday they went bowling. Today they were planning Between each activity I have no doubt that I suppose I am not really needed, yet I struggle to shake the feeling that this isn’t just unloading my kids. They are having the time of their lives, all five of them. Yet a part of me feels furtive, waiting, tensed, for some sort of strike. A look? An aside? From strangers or the girls, I’m not even sure. My idea of succeeding as a mom is certainly different from theirs. I need to stop focusing so much on how I am doing compared to how I thought I would do or how I think people think I should do.

I try not to get in the middle of political disputes, but I think in the same way that the media has adopted a very voyeuristic and accusatory bent, people have become cruelly uncensored in their non-stop judging of one another and themselves. Our appetite to measure success and failure as well as the relentless comparison of one way of doing things to another, is bottomless. Except that I have hit bottom.

I don’t want to parent as if I am in a contest. I don’t want to rationalize what I do as if I am on trial. I cannot continue to second guess and falter because I worry that things might not be just right.

I want to parent remembering to be flexible and forgiving. And when I fail at the former, lean on the latter. I wish for all parents and all children this same license to live your life without worrying about the naysayers and the strength to not be one yourself.

I was beginning to feel short tempered and hopeless. My pants were covered in dog hair and travel funk, my hair was wild from 2 days of disregard and my face was unaided by cover up or mascara. My legs were dry and itchy, my stomach was upset and I had a head ache that just wouldn’t quit. A little tiny voice hissed at me that I needed to shake it off, “you are going to ruin your trip over nothing.”

I shook my head. Sean had hopped in the shower, the girls were napping and I was flopped on the bed with nothing I had to do. I looked out the sliding glass door and watched a cedar tree bend as gusts of winds came in off the ocean. Despite a cloudy sky, sunlight bounced off the waves and poured into the room. Somewhere nearby I could hear birds singing and kids were shouting and laughing as they rode bikes.

I grabbed my phone and went to snap a picture to preserve the light, to savor a positive. I watched quizzically as my reflection came onto the screen. The focus on the camera was set to shoot back at me. I took a deep breath and looked into my own eyes. As the air came out of my chest I softened. The face staring back at me was not what I expected. The anger and frustration I’d been feeling weren’t there, my crazy hair didn’t look the way I had imagined. My face didn’t look neglected, I didn’t seem dirty.

I pressed the button to take a photo, almost like rubbing my eyes to clear them, but there I still was. Then it finally hit me, we see what we believe, but sometimes (often times) that just isn’t true. Believe that you aren’t the mess your internal voice accuses you of being. Know that on your worst day, your best-day-you is still there. When a similar cloak begins to weigh you down, own the truth that you really can change how you see things.

See a you worth believing in every day.

I have a third-trimester-like-instinct to nest. I cannot stop my mind from thinking about preparing the house for warm weather, organizing the girls’ clothes, determining what we’ll be growing in the garden this year. Even more than addressing our home, there seems to be an impulse to ignore what is beyond our home. I have been doing so many things professionally that require me to step outside of the norm—presentations, late meetings, and a sustained outspokenness.

I’ve always been very willing to give every moment to my work. Respond to emails at midnight, undertake projects on the weekend. You name it, someone asked it and I responded with an emphatic yes.

Suddenly, as I see Finley catapulting from last baby to big girl, as Briar peers around corners at growing up, as Ave struggles to carve a place for herself and as I see how other people are spending their time, I want a taste of sacred time.

I want a weekend with my family. No work, no favors, no just-this-once.

I want to explore the backyard and take note of the buds springing from different tree limbs. I want to scrawl cheery notes on the driveway in bright chalk. I want to hold hands with Sean and feel the sun upon our skin. I want to see the look in my girls’ faces as their questions go unimpeded by cell phones and laptops.

The thing I realized this weekend was that creating this demarcation makes me better at both.

We get one life, call it short, call it wide open, but above all else, call it yours.

Pausing briefly to allow certain snarky friends to mutter, “It’s you, not the cameras.”

Anyway, I love Instagram because I (almost) always have my phone. I can snap pictures and despite poor lighting, clumsy composition or general carelessness, I can usually snap something that with a wee bit of filter love can become something that reaches inside of me and reignites a moment.

I can feel the coolness of the slide as I lean in to take her photo;
feel the wind behind me and hear her squeals.

I can hear the sound of Cabin 3 playing and feel the heavily lacquered table
beneath me as I feel the warmth from her beaming face at doing a grown up thing
and enjoying chocolate milk past bedtime, and those early potent hints
of little girl slipping away to reveal who she’ll become.

Removing the color strips the memory down to snow and smiles,
the burning in my legs from run after run down the sledding hill
and the relief of having said yes.

I love knowing that revelations I’ve had about the strength that lies beneath pig tails
and missing teeth will stay with me in little wisps of now that are preserved.

Yesterday I took a picture as I raced to make a conference call to a cross country client. I was worried, doubting my preparation and embarrassed and frustrated not to have child care in place. I was setting Finley up with an activity, she till had the satisfaction of a trip to the library and reading stories from our perch on a sun drenched love seat. There is no guilt or longing, it was a moment that embodies the challenge I face every day in playing the roles of mom and business owner. Outside the frame there is chaos, but in the frame and all that matters to me, there is a beautiful, happy, healthy little girl in an environment that I know she’ll remember fondly.

Thank you Instagram, for helping me filter and sort the beauty and mayhem of my life
into a moments I can shuffle and revisit with the gentle swipe of a finger.

We believe in the history that still rings in the architecture in Glens Falls, we believe in the future that shines from the kids scampering up the library stairs, we believe in giving back, putting in and doing everything we can to create even more to love. I share these old links as a way of personifying what we are doing. Losing a grandparent, gaining a friend, taking a stand, it’s all part and parcel of building a life and loving a place.

I hope you love where you live and anytime you want, I invite you to experience where I live and all the things that are becoming a backdrop for the stories I tell.

Let the worries that have weighed us down, sink gently into the earth below.

We’ll carve a new path with renewed clarity and hope. Let it all just fall away.

Counting my blessings for dear friends sharing this journey.

I am struggling because I can’t see this person, I can’t protect the person being hurt and honestly, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how the hell to cope with a 7 year old telling my daughter he’ll kill her if she tells on him. I wrote to the teacher* and have her assurance she’ll keep my daughter safe, but the thing is, how do you believe that? How do you believe that after a threat to kill her she has ever really been safe.

Now I know that it can be said that the child probably doesn’t really mean that, but when words like “attack” and “bullying” really become commonplace in how a day at school is described, what do you do? What if he does mean it? Or what if he doesn’t, but then he gets backed into a corner by taunting and dares? My primal response to these things is equal parts mom and child.

I am scared.

I am angry.

I am shaking.

I am angry.

Mostly though, I am heartbroken. I don’t understand what is happening to our society. Little girls being made to look like women; little boys being conditioned to fight; parents perpetuating, ignoring or simply freezing.

I don’t want to freeze, but I am at a loss as to how to navigate this space of teaching my girls how to stand up for themselves and how to know when to ask for help.

*This is not an indictment of the teacher or the school. My concern shared with the teacher via email was met with an immediate response which cc’d the principal. I feel heard, but I believe this problem is much larger than my daughter’s experience. My questioning is about how we as parents cope with a generation of students who live in a world where school shootings and student suicides seem to exists as palpable threats all over the country.

Am I being kind?

Am I being honest?

Is the direction I am steering correct?

Are things that shouldn’t matter distracting me?

On a lark I looked back a year, a year to the date to be exact. The lesson I was learning then is a priceless one for me to re-embrace and share now, as I know so many other people who are struggling. Let’s try and be tender ourselves so that we might be better equipped to do the same for others.

365 days ago.

I was wrong.

As is almost always the case when I leap to conclusions about how something in parenting is going to be, Finley proved me completely wrong. Since the first time she donned pjs instead of a nightgown she has insisted on buttoning the shirt herself. These little girl pajamas do not come with buttons made for little fingers. Tiny, fragile and often to too small to stay fastened within the button holes, the buttons wiggle out from between her pink little digits. So often I’ve waited, expecting frustration and defeat.

Instead she pops her little face up, the sheen of bath time still present, and she says, “I can do it.” Her tone is calming, reassuring and matter-of-fact. I sit back and watch, beyond impressed that she has chosen this thing to do herself and grateful that I haven’t steamrolled past her willingness to keep going and just done it myself. The buttons don’t all come easy, sometimes she realizes that she has gotten off course and that the top is gaping, other times she decides she’d like to start at the top and not the bottom. Her ability to reset and begin anew with undiluted focus and optimism can make my cheeks burn.

How many times a day do I puff up my cheeks and expel a massive whoosh of disappointed, annoyed breath? How often do I let the naysaying in my own mind prevent me from conquering that which only seems impossible? Lately I’ve taken to using this buttoning time to reflect on how much I can do if I just harness a little bit of Fin’s attitude of “I can’t not do this.” I think that as I store memories of her like this, I’d like to try and offer her a few of her own where she sees me smiling and working through until I get it right.