a family of love and lost jackets…
January 28, 2012
It was a two hour trip to DC. I was just praying we would narrowly miss the Friday commuter traffic. It was a cousin weekend and the kids could barely contain their excitement because we all know, there is nothing better on the planet than cousins. They are like siblings but with out all the drama and everydayness. Not to mention the meet up and drop off point was IKEA, this meant meatballs and gravy while watching School House Rock and sitting on a bright green ergonomically correct chairs.
We rolled up to the family parking and started to pile out of the car. Jack hopped out with no jacket on and hands dug deep in his pockets, it was about 38 degrees.
“Jack! Where is your jacket buddy?” I asked. There was already that tone in my voice.
“I don’t know, I thought I brought it!” he responded acting shocked.
I don’t really know exactly what happened after that moment but a rant of sorts started. It wasn’t really yelling, it was the kind where I made him feel like total crap for this forgetfulness. I knew it was not just about this moment. It was the four jackets lost before, the four Columbia jackets I had so proudly found at the thrift store, the 57,000 reminders to put on a jacket, to pick a jacket up, the pleading to hang it on the perfectly designed mud room/station hook to make it easy, it was the whole entire spring when this child was three and jumped in every puddle known to man, it was old…and A LOT.
As it was happening, it was almost as if I was out of my body looking down on myself. I knew it was wrong, I could feel it…but I just could. not. stop. This may have only been about 4 minutes of ranting but it felt like 100 minutes or maybe a 1,000 to Jack. I muttered something about everyone getting back in the car and we were going to buy a new jacket.
And then she spoke. That Lucy girl.
“Mom, I am gonna tell you something right now.” Her voice calm but firm.
“Mom, we are a family of love, and you are being too harsh on Jackie-boy right now, and it hurts his feelings mom, it is just a jacket mom, just a jacket. …and jackets don’t matter mom, love matters and I just gotta tell you that.”
And I turned around and looked at Jack, his eyes watering, having just been rescued and righted by someone so small yet so wise, and said,
“You are right Luce. You are right. I am sorry Jackie-boy.” *big sigh* “Oh dear.” and that was all there was to say.
And I felt like a total jerk and so proud at the same time…because on some level there was space with these dear souls for rants, love and truth telling.
We bought a new jacket and I held it as he slid his arms in.
“Maybe you guys are so good, all that is left to complain about is stupid jackets.” I said while I hugged him so tight. He hugged back even tighter.
And two days later, he opened the car door at the car pool line and said, “Oh mom, I know it is some where…” his brow furrowed and eyes wide. I sighed and half smiled, because there is this sort of surrender and calm that comes after the freak out has finally been released.
and because…
We are a family of love, and lost jackets.
waiting for baby…
October 25, 2011
A sweet, sweet family…waiting on the next addition. It’s amazing how much you can be loved before you are ever even born. Thanks to Monique for breaking up the chaos of my life lately and spending some time with you all in such a beautiful place…it was lovely.
i swear…
October 14, 2011
We were on a staycation this week…well, it ended up as a bit of a disaster, I’m calling it the workcation, but there were some truly lovely lazy moments. I swear some of the best family times happen on lazy mornings when everyone congregates to one bed and hangs out…doing a whole lotta nothin’. (except the climb-over-the-rail and fall on the bed trick)
lots o’ dinners…
October 11, 2011
We had our first dinner with Jimmy by candle light last night….my, was it lovely. Jen made to die for manicotti and salad, Vic and I made bread. Lillian (age 7) proclaimed that she only loved our cooking, the mothers in her life. It was joyful and sort of peaceful, even in kid chaos. There is something about intentional gatherings, bright orange pepperberries at a pretty table and comfort food on a fall night. We ate way too much, I think Jimmy would have been happy by the fullness all around.
…and your moments are coming in, daughters coming home from college for meatballs, the sweetness of preschool grand daughters who still can’t say the word spaghetti, homemade marinara being stocked up for the winter, large casserole dishes of lasagna shared with gaggles of kids and friends…thank you for joining in on this kindness mission. I think it may be one of my most favorites yet.
Our simple love and kindness holds so much…
You can still join us!! This mission ends on October 18th! Send us a picture of your dinner with Jimmy to patience@kindnessgirl.com or upload on your facebook page and tag Guerrilla Goodness, or put it on the GG page- any way you want to share! All pictures and messages are being forwarded to Dolores and her family.
Hope you are enjoying your fall with the ones you love!
Kindness for YOU starts on October 31st so don’t worry if you haven’t signed up yet or were wondering where your e-mail is, it’s COMING!!
creating kind spaces…
October 2, 2011
Fall found her way to us this weekend so I pulled a folding table out onto the front porch, well, that and the laundry has been folded so nicely on the dining room table (thank you Jorge) for over 2 weeks now. Who knows when the clothes will find their way to the drawers?
So our family is about to take on a new adventure. It’s the kind that will require a bit of sacrifice from each one of us. I have to be honest and say I’ve been dwelling on the sacrifice part all weekend long, with a touch of worry thrown in. I find when I get stuck and need to be in a new head and heart space, the best place to start is my home. Maybe it’s because hope is cultivated in the places we find rest in, our haven.
A dear friend brought a beautiful bouquet of flowers from the farmer’s market, I carved pumpkin and gourd votive candle holders, we made homemade pizza with pepperoni stars and I wrote messages left on each plate.
The kids took turns reading their messages, the energy shifting little by little, someone made a toast and then Lucy decided we should all make a wish on our pizza stars. Most members wished for more pizza and voila!- more appeared. We talked about all the things that would suck about the changes ahead and all the parts that would be great.
My message said- Our LOVE is BIG and can hold and fuel our dreams!
Boy, is it true. I wonder why I don’t do this more. Invite our worry and uncertainty to a giant beautiful table of humanity and love, with space to voice our concerns but meet them with intentional hope and goodness. I think this may be the way to do hard and great things, along with some pepperoni wishing, of course.
What helps you when you are worried or facing something big? I usually start with a freak out and end some where in something beautiful, eventually.
love, love, love…
August 31, 2011
There’s nothing like a hurricane to make a wedding memorable…although I’m pretty sure the love of the new Mr. & Mrs. Waters is plenty fierce and strong all on it’s own. They beat the storm but just by a hair. What a sweet day friends! Thank you for including me…here’s a little preview:
this week…
August 24, 2011
well, it was really last week…but, you know…
we should all…
August 14, 2011
we should all do some more couch diving…with brightly colored head bands on.
what everyone should know on the first day of school…
August 11, 2011
first day chalk- don’t worry it’s coming soon…
Something new is always a little bit scary and exciting.
The first bag lunch of the year is always the best.
You look GREAT!
Some mom, grandmother, papa, dad, auntie is looking at the clock and thinking of you all day long, wondering how you are.
Everyone is learning and growing.
Making a world outside of your family or the familiar is good and also may take some time, but it’s worth it.
If something pops up that is hard, it’s okay, you will find your way…you will do this over and over again, all the way through life.
You are not alone.
Love is everywhere.
You are so loved.
the royal protectors…
August 9, 2011
To say my family is addicted to technology may be a bit of an understatement. TV isn’t so much the problem, no cable, not even an antenna…but computers, movies streaming, the internets? Yeah, well, there lies the love. Surprisingly, these children also share a deep love for art, the outside and other lovely things. Even so, in order to attempt to balance things, we have what we affectionately call Media Free Mondays.
The first hour of every Monday, children complain, walk around in circles while they detox, then they moan. If I can survive the first half of the morning, something wonderful happens- the real play starts to unfold. I’m not sure how but last week someone thought fort making would be a good idea, and before I knew it, there was a castle in my dining room. The royal subjects asked for a snack, their ever so humble servant delivered.
They were mostly excited about the royal goblets.
While they were busy constructing a royal library, setting up castle bedrooms, fixing secret entrances, I overheard this conversation:
Lucy: Well, I have to go to a royal meeting!
Jack: Well, who is gonna sleep with the baby? All good parents sleep with their babies!
Lucy: Hmmm, true, we need a babysitter!
Jack: Well I can’t, I’m a knight!
Josiah: That is what a knight IS Jack, a royal protector.
Jack: You’re right, I will sleep with the baby.
I laughed in the other room…while I know loads of good parents that do NOT sleep with their babies, I believe the next time Jorge or I head to a royal meeting, the other will now be called the royal protector.
this week…
August 5, 2011
lazy, lazy summer days…
secret garden supper…
July 2, 2011
The First Secret Garden Supper of the Season…
On the menu:
(by Papa Cris and the Party Wagon of Kindness)
Watermelon Mojitos
Fish Tacos with Pineapple Salsa
Spanish Rice with Chipotle Sour Cream
Personal Nachos with Cheddar
Caramel and Chocolate Ice Cream cones
and a truckload of super family love…and a few fireflies.
sitting in kindness…
June 23, 2011
We sat together after everyone had left…sitting in the aftermath of kindness. It is the kind that isn’t always so easy, it is heavy and sometimes sad.
He cried a little. I know that cry, when you all of the sudden feel the pain of another, you don’t even know quite what to do with it because you know it is bigger than anything you’ve ever known or walked or held. And you can’t quite imagine living with it, and yet people do, with gnashing and fight and grace and beauty and strength and vulnerability and shame and pride and pieces all over, lots of pieces. …and we find our way.
“I don’t think we are supposed to fix it, I don’t think we can. I guess we just have to be in it with the people we love, stand by them, offer our love and feel theirs.” I said.
He nodded, somehow comforted by these words…and I think of all the years it took me to figure that out.
…and I wonder if other people are having these kinds of conversations with their 11 year olds. I wonder if I have brought my kid into this life that I feel lost in myself so many times, a life that constantly requires me to find new parts, heal old parts, choose courage again, even when I would rather not. …and yet I don’t really know any other way to be. He is stuck with me, in all of this broken kind life.
and it isn’t about rescue or being a good person, or passing some big value on…it’s just one human to another, one struggle among many being shared, one call that you are drawn to over and over again like a moth to a flame, one moment of seeing each other, one trust to let it pour or trickle out, and almost every time, there is no preparation, no chance to guard your heart or put the shutters up for the storm…it happens over making macaroni out of a box, or carrying laundry up the stairs, or one look when someone walks through the door.
…and we will sit, listen, talk and sometimes cry when that someone leaves…and then someone else will sit, listen, talk and cry when we leave…and later we will look up to the sky and see the moon shine, in all her glory…in the dark.
in case you have ever wondered…
June 19, 2011
we love you papa…
secret garden magic…
June 14, 2011
She told me yesterday that her job when she gets big will be “to love kids”…I’m pretty sure she is well on her way…
guerrilla goodness: moms go guerrilla
May 9, 2011
She knows me oh so well…I was ding dong ditched today with these beautiful dahlias, not for me but SO for me.
My dear friend and commune member Jen left these on my doorstep, she just knew, somehow, what would bring me perfect joy on this Mother’s Day. And so we went, so spontaneously, hopped in the car with Jen and her mom to Ding Dong Ditch flowers on doorsteps in our neighborhood, we took a couple kids and even a dog. Along the way we passed Susan, in her front yard in her pajamas, so she hopped in. No holds barred like she had done this every day of her life, she knew just which houses of mothers we should DDD. Some we knew, others we didn’t. Let me tell you, four belly laughing women, one pair of pajamas, one dog with her head out the window and tongue flapping in the wind, 2 expert kindness kids and 6 dahlias, I was so blissed the frick out…
And this is what mothers do for each other, this is how we hold one another in kindness and love, this is how we nod with the knowing, how we live everyday together, side by side…and care so deeply, give from the deep well, how we keep going.
Everywhere I turned, there seemed to be some form of love staring back at me…and oh to be loved! I hope you felt it yesterday too…just in case it was one of the hard years, or your heart is still needing/wanting more, here are a few more messages from our community kindness project- The Great Wall of Motherly Kindness: (I’m sure one of these is meant for you…)
Be so kind to yourself today in this post-mother’s day re-entry…we all could use it.
Thanks SO very much to Sheri and Franklin Goose for being partners and agents of kindness in the world!!! Love you!
a blessing for you…
April 22, 2011
a blessing Jorge wrote for Josiah for his 11th birthday altar…wishing this for you too. and me.
the simple life…
April 4, 2011
Today I am craving the simple…I’m wishing that these moments were all I had before me. Like when the suggestion to “raise your glasses” for a birthday toast invites the laughter when someone actually raises their eye glasses.
or…
The joy of cutting “J”‘s out of pepperoni to personalize the birthday pizza…
or…
Lucy pulling me out of a work fog with this little wisdom gem,
“I don’t think it’s good inside. You should come outside, can’t you feel the happy outside?”
…and who could refuse stopping for just a minute to pick a beautiful bouquet of weeds, and then leave them on neighborhood doorsteps?
And for just these small moments, I can forget the massive load I have taken on, the one that is weighing on my mind, the stack I am trying to push through, the one I can’t get seem to get on top off…
What simple joys call have a way of calling you, even in the thick of everything else? I’d love to hear them.
to love and adore…
March 29, 2011
…because everyone
should have someone…
old and wise…
to love and adore them.
if you give a kid some wire…
March 18, 2011
Art unfolds in our house much like a “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie…” sort of way. I put out this lovely wire thinking we could do some cool sculpture which reminded Josiah of another wire project in which we used old junk from the recycle art box.
This sparked an idea in Jack, so out the box came. The stuff in the box inspired a windmill sort of sculpture which Josiah then decided something with wind power might make a cool boat…
which reminded Lucy of the Chronicles of Narnia’s Dawn Treader. She decided to get deep into ship building… and as a total side note I’m pretty sure I was the only one wearing clothes. So weird, right?
At the end, someone thought the wire might be good to hang all this art from the ceiling.
in the pit of my stomach…
February 9, 2011
I’ve met, talked, shared food and money to a lot of homeless people in my time. I know there are services, I know the issues are complex, I know it can be dangerous, I know, I know, I know. But there is something about a moment of human connection, not rescue or performing a good deed, but an exchange of humanity. Both people giving to each other…
The kids and I met a homeless family tonight. A mom, a dad and their two little boys. I’ve seen them walking in my neighborhood quite a bit, I had a feeling but was hoping they were just without a car. It was pretty cold and dark tonight when we saw them walking along the road, the little boy held his dad’s hand, the baby on her back with three layers of clothes on.
Of all the people I’ve bought meals for, given money or exchanged stories with over the years, I’ve never had quite this feeling in the pit of my stomach, this lump in my throat. They were kind and positive, didn’t ask for anything, the children looked like my kids, like your kids…We talked for a minute and I handed her enough to get a hotel room tonight but they still had a half hour walk ahead of them. I drove away and cried, knowing that everyone has to find their own way, whatever is before them and I believe they will…but some days, it looks so big, so hard, so real, so heavy.
And for tonight anyway, we will both hold our babies and watch them sleep…in the warmth of each other and a bed.
balloon delivery kids…
September 20, 2010
“Mom, I think the kids should go by ourselves.” Josiah said with a handful of white ribbons attached to bright balloons. It’s one of the perks of your dad being in the event industry. Every once in awhile he has a just a little helium left over and any good event guy has a pack of balloons somewhere in the trunk of his car.
Jorge asked the kids if they wanted to take Stella a balloon since she hadn’t been feeling well all day. The kids were all over it except the idea grew in about a second when they decided they should deliver balloons to all the kids on the street. After they delivered the first balloon, those kids wanted to come along. Before we knew it there was a whole gaggle of kids and balls of color racing down the sidewalk in total bliss.
The only thing better is an awesome adult playing monster and kissing you all over your face…
or a yellow balloon combined with a rad vintage Batman shirt (that was your dad’s when he was a kid) to make you run super fast…and it totally worked, you were like the wind.
Oh, the simple joys…
no language required…
August 27, 2010
His English is all but gone, just a few words here and there. He isn’t sure how it happened exactly, but said he just can’t remember anymore. Maybe it was his retirement this year, or no daily practice but for whatever the reason, he is returning to where he started. The language that is closest to his heart.
As I try to jog my own mind and revive my Spanish, I wonder exactly how I am going to do the two week long visit. I pretend we are in an exotic land on a sort of linguistic adventure, even though it is just my kitchen. While I fumble through, my daughter seems to have no problem at all.
He sits beside her and she brings him her beloved red boots. She climbs on his lap as if she’s done it a million times before even though this is only the second time she has ever seen him in her short little life. He gently slides each foot in and she wiggles off, and then holds out her hand…read the rest here.
girl goodness…
August 15, 2010
Things that make me smile:
this girl, this face, her girl power:
“Mom, we are the girls and when we get big together we are gonna have a big girl party and dress in diamonds because we are best friends, right?” she said while brushing our teeth together.
Me: “Oh yes! …and when you get big, I’m going to take you to New York City!”
Lucy: “And when you get big, I’m gonna take you on a playdate.”
Me: “Perfect, I would love that!”
Lucy: “Yeah! Pinky swear because we are the girls!”
and we linked pinkies and kissed our thumbs…forevah!
