christening of the ears

maggie has wanted her ears pierced.
she wanted it last year too but the asking went away quickly.
it has come back up again
and hasn't died.
i knew i never wanted to pierce my infant's ears,
and i knew i didn't want to tell her when it was time to have her ears pierced.
and i no longer thought about making her wait until she was 8 until the age of accountability
because i don't believe in that anymore.
instead the only rule i had was that i wanted to do it when she was ready,
and she was ready.
she wanted to start 1st grade with earrings.
maggie has an impressive trait of knowing what she wants
and her wants have always come from inside
not from other people's expectations.
(oh! to keep that trait inside her forever!!)
the only person that wasn't ready was me.
i was afraid it would change her,
not make her young and innocent.
i wanted her to look little for a long time,
maybe forever.
i felt guilty about modifying her body before an age that she could really understand.
i was afraid she would love it so much,
and to see her love something so deeply would make me afraid.
thankfully i felt these feelings,
understood that they really stemmed from my own fears of loving deeply
and allowing myself to feel pleasure,
and let them go.
we made a special sunday afternoon trip out of it.
a special day where she wore the skirt she wanted
and wore the braid that she believed would keep her hair off her ears the best.
she welcomed a few ear pinchings just to prep what it would feel like.
she wasn't really afraid,
just excited.
that's just how she was in the chair too.
didn't want a teddy bear to hold
and didn't want to be called baby or princess.
she just wanted to have the experience as it was.
she was brave.
she didn't cry.
and she was happy.
happy she did it.
many smiles.
smiles from me and her.
i smiled because she was still just a 6 year old little girl,
and the earrings didn't take away from her innocence
or her childlike look.
if anything it enhanced it because it was her childhood desire.
it felt good to love something
and experience the uninhibited pleasure of loving it.
i like that she feels more connected to me, too,
because we are both girls with earrings.
and i love that she allows me to clean her ears without fighting me;
it's something she looks forward to.
she lets me in
and doesn't push me away.
i hope she always remembers this day,
just as i remember going to the jewelry store with my grandma, mom, and sisters for my ears.
i was brave too,
so brave i got to go first to be the example.
i remember it being special,
a rite of passage.
and for maggie,
i hope she remembers this day,
sitting in the chair at claire's,
having her whole family there to support her.
having her own rite of passage.
and remember how it feels to love something
and allow it to be special.

fragmented

fragmented,
an accurate way to describe our summer days.
i have had high hopes of
scheduled
being the word that would better describe them.
try as i might,
there has been so much unscheduled fighting,
tv watching,
late nights,
lounging in robes together creating concoctions and memories while there should have been sleep happening.
unscheduled night scooter rides,
mud pie birthday cakes,
soccer trips to the park,
games in the living room floor
driving practices in the church parking lot.
while daily jobs and reading time may not have happened in the order i was hoping for,
i can see the memories were really made in all the fragmented moments.
perhaps even in the fighting.

a peanut is a legume

i heard a story today.
jennifer finlayson-fife shared it at the strengthening your relationship conference pete and i attended.
it was about her autistic son.
he memorized all fruits and vegetables when he was young,
and he loved identifying them all at the grocery store.
by age 7 he was focused on naming all the nuts,
even peanuts.
his mother kindly explained that while a peanut looks like a nut and sounds like a nut,
it's actually a legume.
he freaked.
"NO! it has to be a nut!"
that was the only reality he had known,
and it was terrifying to him to have that reality shaken.
even though he resisted the new idea,
it didn't change that a peanut is still a legume.
after some wailing,
he began self-soothing by repeating
"a peanut is a legume. a peanut is a legume."
he accepted that fact as a new reality.
that happened to me today.
my relationship reality has been something that simply isn't a true reality.
my reality has said that the only way to be successful was to give up yourself,
all your desires, interests, plans, and goals.
this reality has hurt me,
has not made my relationship successful
or made me happy.
but it was my reality.
relationships demanded that you lose yourself.
there must be something wrong with me.
i never questioned that it was my reality.
how could that be so?
it was in fact an incorrect reality.
a healthy relationship requires you to be the best version of you,
holding everything that is fundamentally important to you in your relationship space.
holding it there without the expectation that your partner will embrace it and give you everything you dream of.
it's acting out of a place of integrity for those wishes.
and when your spouse doesn't reciprocate,
you still hold onto your sense of self without punishing
or resenting
or
withdrawing.
you still honor yourself.
you still always have the choice to do that.
and as one partner does that
it gives the space to the other to do the same.
there has been self-soothing on my part today.
"what i want does matter."
"what i want will make my relationship stronger."
it will.
it will.
part of me has always known this,
and i've had one moment where i've lived it.
i don't want to question if a peanut is a nut ever again.

soccer for all

sam played in the park city tournament this weekend with his new team.

they won 2nd place.

bigger things happened than just winning the medal.

he switched clubs this year from forza to metasport,

and we lost our beloved coach pete tesch.

we went to a new team where we only knew 2 players.

it has been difficult.

we started off the summer tournament season with some pretty hard losses,

and many frustrating moments where i feared the team was not going to gel

and we were going to be outsiders forever.

plus, it has been hard for me and sam to only see him play center defender,

a position he has never played.

he has been out of sorts

and has missed what he does so well as forward and mid-fielder.

things took a turn this weekend as this team gained momentum and experience

and bonded over a victory in the semifinals that came after overtime and a shoot out.

after a 15 hour day in park city we came home with a 2nd place medal

and a connection with the new team that i thought was never going to come.

after 3 games in 1 day i saw the potential for this team.

they found their groove 

and dug deep and fought hard in the final game,

so hard they led the other team the whole game or held them in a tie into overtime.

they lost by 1 point,

but it still felt like victory,

even though sam cried.

i think he felt a lot of pressure as last defender,

like it was somehow his fault.

thank goodness for the kind words of an assistant coach that helped him see all that he stopped

and to see that without him the game would have been bleak.

and thank goodness we could help him switch his mindset by seeing that fighting hard through 3 games without giving up is a big deal.

also to see that this team beat us 5-0 the night before,

and we didn't give them an easy victory this time around.

i'm hoping confidence will continue to grow inside of him and help him to be aggressive on the field and a part of the team off the field.

he's a good boy,

a great son,

and a fantastic soccer player.

we are so proud of him.

also proud of maggie and will for being supporting troopers all weekend.

they were happy to play with lake, taft, and owen all weekend.

and happy to chase golf carts,

play playground tag with a base

(will got called in by maggie to enforce the base rules.),

and get autographs from cool teenagers.

and for me,

i had my own lessons.

trusting time is almost always the right thing to do.

relationships in this venue don't happen automatically.

they happen after time together

and mutual time supporting these boys,

who in fact are still actually kids.

sam has been the only player that has played every game without a break.

pete tesch coached the game on thursday.

he told him it doesn't look good to ask for a break.

pete told him he wants him to be the kind of player like tyson who was mad every time he got taken out.

sam told me he made a commitment then and there to not ask for a break ever.

he felt inspired,

but he did get a 1 minute water break for the 1st time at the end of the last game for a drink.

he's easy to inspire if the message is sent in his language.

a little piece of me in them

my dad used to take me golfing.
sometimes i got to play
and other times i just walked and watched.
i made my own fun and memories as my imagination grew
while chasing golf balls,
dreaming of swimming in every pond to retrieve them,
and sneaking as many "free" balls as i could out of the trees.
sometimes my dad would let me hit a few balls in the fairway or on the green if no one else was around.
and on the rare occasion he got a cart,
he let me drive that too.
i don't think time has diluted these memories for me;
i know i really loved that time.
i learned a lot about golf by just watching,
i learned how to put with Sherman's phrases...
"you got to get it there, alice!"
i saw a lot of sunsets from bountiful ridge and bonneview,
and i sweated a lot on the UU course.
i also learned a new skill and confidence.
realizing my children know nothing about this part of me,
or have rarely had this type of experience with me,
i decided to take them to the driving range with me this morning.
so glad i did!!
they took my speech seriously about what i expected of them in this world of a grown up sport.
they were respectful and aware.
they listened to my golf lesson as i imparted every bit of training i ever received from my father.
and fun was had by all.
even me.
i could still drive the ball past the 150 yard mark
and hit it consistently.
it was all so familiar
and positive.
positive recalling something so good in my past,
positive sharing that with my children.
thanks, sherman, for giving me this.

lemonade: worth it

the kids wanted to do a lemonade stand today.
i don't love lemonade stands.
they feel like too much work and mess.
(i do like seeing the signs they make though.)
and after the work and mess,
will enough people stop to make it worth it?
today was worth it.
it wasn't a mess.
i enjoyed it actually.
enjoyed seeing my kids work together and not be fighting.
seeing them choose the perfect spot,
under a shade tree,
in front of a church for parking,
and on a busy street.
i enjoyed seeing them look people in the eye and be talkative even if it was as stretch for them.
enjoyed the colored car game,
even if not 1 white car stopped for sam
and even if i won with silver.
(i guess people driving silver cars like lemonade the most.)
i enjoyed seeing the boys give away free lemonade to the teenagers on skateboards
and the mosquito abatement lady.
and enjoyed every teenage boy that stopped who relieved their summer childhood through a glass of lemonade and a big tip.
i enjoyed seeing the realization my kids had that teenagers are actually nice people
and the realization that they have never known a naughty teenager.
(hope that they will remember they can be a nice teenager too. they will be.)
i enjoyed seeing maggie in her own world picking sour apples off the tree and ground.
(they were actually kind of good.)
i enjoyed seeing the childhood wonder as the kids divided up their $11.75,
making sure it was even.
enjoyed seeing will not worry about the extra change and genuinely not care.
enjoyed the time outside reading under a tree,
being with my kids,
and feeling like it was a summer day at it's finest.
also enjoyed the kid's willingness to help me pass out back to school hair flyers in the neighborhood.
they gave me hope that people will come.

one more down

maggie is down another tooth.

it's her 3rd tooth,

but this time it's the most significant tooth,

the 1st top front tooth,

the one that takes the baby look and turns it right into the look of a big kid.

now she looks big.

this has been a long time in the making.

it has been loose for months.

in maggie fashion, she checked it everyday and then left it alone.

she wanted it to fall out all on it's own,

and that's kind of how it happened.

it was gray from the dead root,

could be twisted almost all the way around,

and barely hanging on by a thread.

then she took a basketball to the face,

and it was out.

and she was thrilled.

she got a $1

and was glad the tooth fairy didn't actually keep the tooth.

she loves writing letters to the tooth fairy asking how much money her tooth is worth.

she's enjoying being big 

and trying to make the s sound correctly.