“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful, they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.” ~ Luther Burbank Oh, Spring is just around the corner – technically next weekend. We are seeing bright green grass in our field and these lovely daffodils are in full bloom over at my mother-in-law’s house. I cannot get enough of the changing of the seasons. Just … Continue reading Sunshine, Food and Medicine for the Soul
Always the lists. Give me too much free time between calls at work, and a fairly slow day with no nearby neighbors to visit with, and I used pages and pages of scratch paper to make lists for the New Year. Lists about working out, and menus, and lists of chores and how to rotate them. Lists about writing and making time for the things … Continue reading Learning to Laugh
It all started with Harold & the Purple Crayon. My youngest and I read the story together in front of a blazing fire and he said he wanted to have this book in his collection someday when he grows up and moves out. I told him he would need his own copy because there are some books I will always need to have on my … Continue reading The Stories of our Lives
My boys and I see pictures in the sky. We see big, bold, ridiculous, pictures sometimes, and we laugh and point. This is beginner imagination building that we have been doing since they were tiny. Now, they can create a story out of thin air. (The picture here looks a little like Olive Oil, from the Popeye cartoons, doesn’t it?) Some of my favorite spottings … Continue reading Imagining Pictures in the Clouds
The conflict happens because she’s right and she loves you. And yet, we strive against all her rightness, her great ideas, Her prodding us into things that challenge and define us. She made memories for us, with the books she read us, The games she played, the places she took us, The worlds she opened up to us, The things she made it … Continue reading Mothers
I have read that teenagers’ brains want to learn through hunger, thirst, and desire.* This is not something they do on purpose to annoy us. They are chemically altered because of their age and the enormous amounts of growing going on in their brains. They are drawn to things that require everything of them. They are tugged by sacrifice and meaning. They do not even … Continue reading Brains on Fire
Another bad thing in a world of bad things. I have not become numb, that is not what has happened. I crumble with each new attack, with each new assault – foreign or domestic. And then I disconnect, and block out the media, and become absorbed in my kids’ interests and the activities we can do together to fill our world with joy. I didn’t take … Continue reading We could Hug More!
It seems I have been struggling under a delusion that if I could just get my house organized Once and For All, everything would stay put. But it is more insipid than that – there is a strand of Once and For All twirling all through my head. If I could nail down my belief structure Once and For All, if I could prove my … Continue reading Sugar Sweet
“At this point in his life, he hadn’t started inhabiting his work, like he did later.” Continue reading Inhabit
As we rounded out the year of 2015, the boys and I sat up late-ish to watch Inside Out.
Of course, I’m raising boys after growing up in an all-girl family. It’s like Life doesn’t actually ever want us to feel capable or like we know one iota of what we’re doing. So, I can’t tell you if the interior landscape of boys during the upheaval that is Junior High is anything like that of girls, but I can tell you that I identified with every single thing that movie showed us about how an emotional world can crumble overnight.
It showed it so beautifully. And then it showed a boy’s mind – which was just a jumbled mess of bouncing things spazzing out because “There’s a Girl!” Which may just sum it up.
It’s cool how my boys watched it all the way through, even though, I was a slobbering, tear-streaked mess over it. There could be conversations about this in the future – especially as it relates to girls.
Some people go through a massive upheaval and recreation of all their core ideas and feelings as teenagers – a complete breakdown and disassemble and then a big, new, shiny control center with six times as many emotions is brought in – all sorts of complex reasoning and befuddlement gets added to the mix.
There are still ways to be happy and cool as a teenager. They are just surrounded by all these freak-out levers and gears.
It’s a very interesting time. I love how this movie showed it happening for a pre-teen. It was absolutely brilliant. I wish anyone had been able to explain these changes to me as a young person. I just thought I was crazy. It’s all perfectly normal. It’s absolutely completely normal to hit pre-puberty and feel like all is lost and you have no grip on reality. If only we as adults could usher our kids through this time better. If only we could help with signs along the way.
To be honest – I spent my entire twenties and half my thirties reeling from the trauma of my teens. If only I’d been able to see all that time ago, that I wasn’t crazy, or unbalanced, or OCD or anything else that people easily self-diagnose these days. I had just come through puberty, and my insides were in mass disorder. If only I’d been able to see that sooner, I could have started enjoying life ever so much sooner.
Which brings me to the terror of motherhood. Helping my children through this time. What the hell prepares anyone to do that? This great cartoon movie I just saw could help more than anything I’ve ever encountered in my life. No kidding.
Continue reading “Pre-Pubescent Insanity”
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