Week 10……We made it to the last week of school. Friday was the last day for my three children. I thought it would be a fantastic day where we breathed the collective sigh that they and I had been anticipating since our homeschool adventures began. I had a lot of thoughts in my head about the pictures we would take and how we would celebrate. But we didn’t do any of those things. It was a pretty horrible day. I woke up in a bad mood, and it went downhill from there. Some things were left to the last minute, which irritates me because I don’t like the last minute unless it is an impromptu phone call with a far-away friend or a sudden cancellation, which allows me free time. I didn’t have a definitive marker on how our lives were going to be infinitely better with summer coming our way. I had not communicated to anyone my expectation of the finality of this day. It might be because my kids are not at ages where they have monumental move up’s or move on’s. There were no zoom gradations which I’ll be honest, was pretty good with me because that the idea of that didn’t sound fun to me. It can only be described accurately as UGH. It was one of those no good, terrible, very bad days.
It reminded me of the opposite scenario earlier in our shelter at home process when my daughter had a birthday. She had a late March quarantine birthday. I wasn’t prepared. I hadn’t organized a car parade or any big gift. We were still finding our footing and optimistic that we could make plans with friends in a couple of weeks (ignorance is bliss!). I did tell my neighbors about her birthday and boy did they come through to make her feel like a million bucks that day: sidewalk chalk, balloons, posters, and a scavenger hunt. The night before her birthday, we talked about how her birthday wasn’t going to look anything like what she had in mind pre-quarantine. At 11, you spend a lot of time thinking about all the things you could do for your birthday. This begins right after your previous birthday and gets upgraded and altered with all the other birthdays you attend that year. There would be no sleepover, no movie theatre, no late-night favorite ice cream shop run. We set a realistic and achievable expectation, and she communicated what was most important to her for that day. The result, she had an amazing birthday. She was over-joyed because on her birthday she wanted to feel loved and she did. She felt the best kind of love, love by people through small acts of kindness, love through quality time, intentional love not perfectly planned big birthday party, or big gifts kind of love. It exceeded her expectation and mine.
Expectation is a double edge sword which we never quite know which way is going to slice.
I think about the many interviews I have listened to over the years of athletes, authors, actors who believed that once they won the Oscar, the gold medal, the Pulitzer, they would finally feel satisfied and happy. They would get the exhale they were waiting for. It is the same for all of us. Once we get a raise, finish our degree, get a C-level job, get to summer, get our kids off to school, own our own business, get married, get divorced, become empty nesters, or retire; life will magically suddenly feel just right. To listen or feel instead, a sense of loss, lonely or the pressure of future expectation is heartbreaking. I think what I was feeling on this last day was, this is it? This isn’t what I thought I would feel? Where is the collective relief, where is the jumping for joy? We survived homeschooling and sheltering in place, and we STILL love each other. Where is the parade, where is the prize at the bottom of the cereal box? Mostly I just felt, “UGH, what’s next?”. I didn’t feel motivated, I didn’t feel excited, and I didn’t feel grateful.
Friday night, after I had sufficiently let my entire family know how grouchy I was by snapping at them for small things and then just not talking, I laid down with no contentment, no desire about a fun Saturday the next day or even a to-do list to keep myself occupied. I felt what is one of the worst feelings in the world for me, lonely and apathetic. I did my silent cry while my husband rubbed my back. I worked through my guilt about being snappy to my family and not grateful for all the joys and comforts of my life. As we began to talk through this, he listened patiently for me to put my finger on it. You see, I always have to find it, label it, and name it for myself. Otherwise, it just floats around like an annoying black spot on my eye that I’m trying to rub out.
What I said was, “I don’t want to go back to where we were. I don’t want that level of busy. I don’t want to spend hours looking at my planner to figure out where everything is going to fit and how I can squeeze it all in (I haven’t even looked at my paper planner for ten weeks, this has been a good break up for both of us!). I like that we all have time together and time apart without us being “at things.” I don’t want to be the ultimate stop in keeping track of everyone and everything. It gives me no pleasure to schedule, remind, schedule, remind, remind, remind, remind. But, it also gives me trepidation to imagine what will happen if I don’t do that. I realize that I set myself up in this role, but I don’t want that version of it anymore.”
Those were my bars in front of me, and now I have walked around them. Yet, I don’t know what return to life looks like without me doing that. What I fear it means is, things will be missed, forgotten, half-assed, and I don’t like the thought of that either. To pour salt in the wound, I REALLY want to know if I should, send my kid to camp, make my kid take the ACT, make travel plans, attend church, and when work life is going to pick back up to normal. I was fine not knowing for a while, I patiently made the best of it, but now, I just want to know. All of it!!
Pretty early in our marriage, you know that phase where you can convince your spouse to do things like dance lessons, watch romantic comedy movies together in the theatre, and go to marriage retreats; we were in one of those phases. I decided we needed to learn how to communicate better. We had to do this exercise where you took all these little figurines and make a scene that represented your family. It has an official name that I just learned from my friend google, sand tray therapy. I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time, or I probably wouldn’t have done it because that name sounds fluffy to me. Furthermore, I know my husband wouldn’t have done it if I said, “Hey, we are going to go do some sand tray therapy, you onboard?”!! Our kids were roughly 6, 4, and 1 at the time. So, we go to this room that is lined with little shelves with all the figurines of people and characters, animals, and hobbies. It has everything you can imagine. We both get to work with me knowing that my sand scene is totally going to impress everyone and WIN (this is my wheelhouse after all)!
I don’t remember mine. I mean, I don’t remember it at all! I imagine that it had my family in some kind of a circle (I like circles, they say inclusive and equality to me). I imagine I picked little items around each of us that represented things we were into at the time, like toys for the kids, books, travel. I imagine I spent a lot of time finding figures that looked like us and items that showed how well I knew and loved everyone in my family.
Here is the mic drop friends, while I can remember NOTHING of my sand table scene, I will never forget the sand table scene that Mike made. In my head, Mike was going to be sub-par because he didn’t really want to participate in the first place and also because I like to think I own introspective in our relationship. I was wrong, wrong, and to make it worse, he wasn’t even aware of how bad mine was and how good his was. His scene was what our family actually was; mine was what I wanted our family to be.
In his scene, I was the pied piper (literally there was a little figurine with a person playing a little fife), and I was facing my family. I was leading them; I was happily and confidently showing them where to go, while of course, multi-tasking by playing my little flute. Mike was standing close, but a little behind me and angled in, and my kids were standing a little further back, side by side, and angled where they could see both of us. He didn’t waste a bunch of space with other accessory stuff. We each had one item beside us. I just remember thinking, how did he get that exactly, right?
We all need someone who helps us reset how we think things should be, how things are, and what changes we need to make to settle with it. Last night Mike told me that he had already talked to the kids about why I had a bad day. He said, “Your mom invests in a lot in starts and finishes, in beginnings and ends.”. He is correct; I cry on the first day of school, the last day of school, birthdays, and when I know it is the “first or last” of something. He continued, “She likes to mark these things; she likes US to mark them with her. She likes to take pictures, take time to talk about it, and to celebrate the beginning or the end. We didn’t do that today, and we should have.” Once again, he managed to get it right.
I am still here at my crossroads. I want to keep the parts of this sheltering that I like and leave behind the things I don’t. I fancy myself better without a head full of schedules and to-dos. I’m more fun, funnier and more mindful. I am a better wife, mother, PT, friend, and person. I worry less and enjoy more. I have a better feeling about what I need, and I make sure I get it. Instead of a hierarchy of who or what needs me most right now, it is like we are all on this same platform, linking hands and when one person needs something, the two people nearest them just dig in a brace for a minute while they re-find their footing or get done what they need. I no longer have to keep re-arranging the order, so I am linked at all times to everyone. AND, I don’t want to be the vital link anymore. There was a phase where I did, but it isn’t anymore. I wanted and parented toward where we are now, but it doesn’t make it easy.
This is hard to write. It will be even harder to say out loud. I don’t always like this quality about myself. I am not overly sentimental, and when I feel this sentiment, it is a lot for me. My future best friend, when I meet her, Brene Brown, would call it vulnerability. She’s spent a career studying it because we should spend our lifetime learning to embrace it. It is the quality that moves us toward loving and appreciating ourselves now as we are instead of wishing we were another version.
Over the years, I have welcomed these starts and finishes as an appropriate day to feel all the feelings. I have some expectations about these days. No one sat with me the night before the last day of school, like I did pre-birthday with my daughter, and discussed how this day would be different than usual. I am an adult, and I didn’t know I needed that. This last day did not mean the same thing to everyone in my family. They had not been holding their breath the way I had. I had expectations of the last day, and they were not met. Only, I don’t want to be the kind of person that is disappointed in first-world problems like this. After all, I have a comfortable home, food on my table, and a healthy family. I have absolutely nothing worthy of complaint. This is not a good point my friends. Comparative suffering doesn’t make my suffering lighter, it does not mean I am not grateful for my blessings, and it doesn’t rob me of empathy for others. As Brene Brown says, “The refugee in Syria doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your kindness only for her and withhold it from your neighbor who’s going through a divorce.” This isn’t about grateful or earning suffering points for a bad day. It is about acknowledging how we are. It is sitting with that, accepting it, and leaning into support.
Furthermore, for me, it is also deciding, do I not want TO BE the pied piper in this next phase, or am I going to embrace myself BEING the pied piper. If the linking hands are what I’ve been working toward, then I’m going to have to give up some of my pied piper ways. Being the pied piper and being the link in the chain are mutually exclusive, and I can’t be both at the same time. But it is good that I started to figure it out. That my friends, is how we begin to wrestle with expectation and vulnerability.
I wish this could all be done quickly and tied up with one of those fancy bows I am mesmerized when other people tie. This is a lifelong journey that no one gets perfectly right. I feel grateful that I have someone that helps me do this better. I feel proud that when I talk with my kids about this later, they can hear it; they will know this is something that happens to all of us. Comparative suffering doesn’t win us points. Expectations are a double edge sword. When I want to change a pattern or a role, I first have to acknowledge the actual position I am in and how I got there. Then, I need some support and patience from my family and close friends to make the change.
I decided to imagine what my sand table scene would look like now. First of all, I can’t make a sand table scene now that I know it is called that. But, I can show you my current favorite family picture taken by my dear friend Eleanor.
(J- I’m going to proceed confidently forward on my path E/M- I am going to enjoy this moment with the people I love despite the chaos around me, E- I’m going to plant myself in the center of this family and enjoy being loved, Me- I’m going to whisper my advice quietly from behind so it isn’t as obvious that I know what you should do, M- I’m going to smile wisely from behind because no matter what, I’ve got your back. Photo credit: Eleanor Michal Photography)
This is good, hard work my friends. I’m glad I did it, I hope you will too.
Advice From A Friend: Reconsider your expectations and embrace your vulnerability