How to Not Be Perfect (but Still Be Unendingly Happy)...

When I was younger, I wanted to have 4 girls. I talked about them all the time-I even had all of their names put on my birthday cake when I turned 14. (I was completely normal like that.) Their names were Bradleigh Elizabeth, Anastasia Rebecca, Jessica Kate, and Tyme Aryn.

My girls and my nieces consider themselves those four girls.

As they should, of course.

These four girls are every single thing that I hoped for as a 14-year-old. They love to sing and put on plays and play games-they never tell me that something is too dorky, they are absolutely the friends that I would have wanted when I was their age.

We spent this entire past weekend at my sister’s house in Kent, doing nothing in particular, but everything. We played miniature golf (I won) and bowled (my sister won). We played at the park. We went to the library for a Star Wars day (Kent has fabulous libraries, I am most jealous). We ate Swenson’s and Chick-fil-a (the girls and I had never had Chick-fil-a and we very much enjoyed it). We went to Chuck E. Cheese, even though it is not my sister’s favorite. We went to the drive-in movie theater.

When I was growing up, I adored all of my cousins. They were all older than me and my sister, and two of them lived in Indiana, and I thought they hung the moon. I’m quite envious of my girls very close relationship with my nieces.

When we got ready to leave, April said for everyone to say what their favorite part of the weekend was. Betsy said Star Wars. Felicity and Mallory said miniature golf. And Natalie just pointed, and we had no idea what she meant, and finally she whispered, “The girls.” Meaning that her favorite part was just my girls being there. It was terribly sweet.

Things I’m loving this week:

Toy Story 4

First off, I do love to go to the drive-in movie theater. We saw Toy Story 4 and we watched Aladdin again, and I love being in my own vehicle, able to turn the volume up, leave my phone on, and talk to Mallory and Betsy basically the entire time. Drive-ins are the bomb.

I love Disney and Pixar and all the bits and pieces that go into Toy Story movies, so it is not shocking at all that I enjoyed this. I did think that it was a different story than the others-the two main storylines dealt with the existential question of what it means to be alive, and when your care for others crosses the line into narcissism. Heavy stuff for a kid’s movie. Some of it I completely agreed with, and some of it I have a lot of feelings about.

Dear Evan Hansen

I have been anxiously awaiting this musical, but also a bit fearful of it hitting a bit too close to home, and it did, but not for the reasons I anticipated. The buzz on this is huge, and rightly so, because it’s an amazing piece of theater. I have decided that we are having a moment right now, a moment in which we are beginning to think it’s okay to own our idiosyncrasies, no matter how overwhelming they may seem, or how insignificant they might feel in the grand scheme of things. The story here is profound, and it hit triggers for me that I did not expect.

There is a storyline here involving Evan Hansen’s mom, about her guilt over being a divorced parent and over how that has perhaps contributed to Evan’s anxieties. As the mother of a precious, beautiful, amazing daughter who struggles a good deal with anxiety, this hit me harder than I’m sure it was meant to.

I still feel so much guilt over being divorced. I don’t for one moment want to believe that I have caused or created any kind of anxiety in my daughter. It’s all complicated and sometimes I can’t believe that it’s four years later and I’m still dealing with my own insecurities over what it means to be someone’s ex-wife. What I have learned lately is to take these moments that hit on all of my triggers and give it some space to just sit and be with that feeling, to just let myself feel sad or scared or whatever it is. And then to give myself some grace-to remember that I am not perfect, and that just as I did not have a perfect marriage, I do not have a perfect life after marriage. And that’s okay and no one is expecting me to have all of the answers.

I remind myself that these 4 girls that I dreamed of having came to me in a way other than me being mother to all four of them. And yet they are all four my dear girls, all with such different personalities and attitudes and I cherish each of them. Life comes differently than you imagined sometimes, and it turns out even better than you had hoped. That might sound like a Hallmark card, but it’s true.

This crazy life I lead is not the perfect life I imagined that I once had. But it’s ten times better.

Echo Chamber...

Back in the day, so long ago it feels like a different lifetime, I wrote short stories- some that were truly just all my own creation, but the vast majority of which were Roswell fan fiction. Which is sort of embarrassing to admit-I mean, fan fiction alone has a bad reputation, but add Roswell in there and it’s sort of like admitting that you’re a complete geek. (I am a complete geek.)

Roswell was a show on the WB, back in the day when the WB had Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its rotation; heck, back when the WB was the WB and not the CW. I was in college when those shows came on the scene, so too old to just swallow the characters whole as potential role models (that role had been filled by 90210 and Saved by the Bell). But young enough to watch them all in a non-ironic way. I fell in love with most of those late 90s dramas-Felicity, Dawson, Buffy being my favorites, Popular and 7th Heaven being the filler.

But Roswell came along at just the right time-I was a sophomore in college, right in the middle of this time in my life when I was reading so many books, learning so many new things, and, most importantly, writing like my life depended on it. Stories came pouring out of me and I had no where to put them. Somehow I stumbled upon a Roswell fan site, looking for spoilers if I remember correctly, and came upon this notion of fan fiction. I had no idea what that was, and it just so happens that I read a couple of really wonderful stories on whatever site that was-fan fiction is a tricky thing, and some of it is retched awful, truly. But in that first blush with it, I found Persephone’s Footfalls, which, in the world of Roswell fan fiction, is like stumbling upon Great Expectations-it is widely acknowledged as the best fan fiction that this tiny show ever offered up to the world.

(Written by Elizabeth, who remains one of my favorite authors of all time despite the fact that I know nothing about her except her name, she wrote the very best of Roswell fan fiction. This particular story was a retelling of the myth of Persephone and Hades using the human character of Maria and the alien character of Michael, and while that could have turned out awful, in her hands it became an exploration of falling in love with the enemy, of what it means to be “other,” and of what it means to be a family. It is one of the best stories I have ever read.)

It didn’t take too terribly long for my writing to find a home in the Roswell world. I loved writing these stories, because the characters were already established, and so I could play with the constructs as much as I wanted to, I could write POV pieces that explored ideas that I needed to play out in my own head-it was an early form of therapy for me. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and was rewarded for these efforts by something of a following in this Roswell world. I loved that-I write so much better than I speak, and this was a way to meet new people and not trip all over my tongue.

And then the bottom fell out. Roswell, you see, had been a tiny show. It was developed by Jason Katims, who had been a writer on My So-Called Life. Initially the show had been promoted as a My So-Called Life with aliens-all of the alien stuff was just sort of a large metaphor for being an outsider. That story telling is what drew me to the show. But because it was a science fiction show, there was a hunger for more special effects and “alien” storylines among a lot of its fans. When it just barely survived cancellation that first season, the writers began to amp up all of the more “out of this world” aspects to the storylines, to the point that the show became almost unrecognizable. With that shift in tone, the fan base for Roswell stories, and particularly the large, angsty teen drama that I liked to write-the fan base just collapsed for that.

It was just at the same time that my stories completely stopped generating any traction that I got engaged. My life shifted away into planning my new, adult life, and writing along with it. Until the blog came along, I didn’t write at all for about nine years.

Sometimes the blog feels the same to me-like sometimes I’m just sending these words out into the void and they don’t really have any life beyond that. But writing is my happy place, my passion, my joy inside of every single day. Words don’t come in the form of stories anymore, and for a long while I beat my head against that and tried to force them, but I have finally made my peace with the fact that they aren’t going to come out in that way any longer.

Words come to me in snippets, in long essays that exist, I know, as still just a form of therapy that sometimes I hope that other people can relate to. That’s all any of this is. But I do cherish having a place to keep my words, a home of my making to hold them and remind me years later of all the changes inside of me in the past eight years that I have been blogging.

So, I’m going to keep right on blogging like it’s 2011, and sending these words out into the void, if only to hear the echo of my own voice.

Halfway There...

In the summer, my girls are gone often through the week, which is backwards and inside out from normal. When the girls are home, we are so busy with all the things-spending time with friends and at the pool and of course watching all the movies-and when they are gone, it’s like a slo-motion camera, as I spend my nights reading and trying to not panic that when the girls are grown this is how my life will always be.

I’ve been watching old episodes of Designing Women, which is one of my favorite shows ever of all time. I have said many times there are 4 women that I grew up aspiring to be-Anne Shirley, Sally Albright, Corky Sherwood, and Charlene Fraiser Stillfield. Charlene always spoke to me-she would be such a different character if the show had been made even a few years later. Charlene starts out the never married one, the one who trusts so easily with all of her heart-naïve, really. That’s a word that many people have used to describe me. I’m good with that, mostly-maybe if I weren’t quite so trusting, life wouldn’t have shattered quite so hard, but at the end of the day I’d rather be too trusting than to be suspicious of the people around me. It takes a lot for me to cut ties with someone completely.

My word for this year is indeed trust. God keeps reminding me of it too. I can’t count how many times recently I have listened to a podcast that I don’t normally listen to and the theme has turned out to be trust the universe, trust your voice, trust your body. How many of my devotionals lately have spun around this idea of trust- it’s quite possible to walk right past your burning bush for years without noticing. And that’s okay, because when you are ready, you will see it. Or, at least, that’s been the message to me of late. Turning 40 is this amazing thing-I’m old enough to feel settled, I’m happy with my life and where it is, I’m thrilled, truly, to wake up every morning in this house that I wanted from the time I was a little girl, surrounded by my family and friends-my life is a small life, small but happy.

I still want to explore this world, I want to go out and see things and do things and have all sorts of experiences. I still feel young enough to want so many things. But old enough, I guess, to truly appreciate what I have. Broken heart and all.

Summertime...(in Will Smith's voice)...

It’s been a busy few weeks in our world-Betsy graduated from 8th grade, and Felicity from 5th, and there were meetings for work and dinner with friends and all the things.

(Betsy’s class was to say what they want their occupation to be as they got their certificate-Betsy wants to be a pediatrician, which has been her dream since she could talk. My mom asked me what I would have said at age 14 and the answer to that is that I wanted to be a wedding coordinator. Such dreams.)

The start of summer is mostly just the best time-the weather is fairly lovely, not yet scorching hot, and the girls are so happy to have days of staying in their pajamas, eating a million popsicles, going to the pool, staying up to watch *all the movies*-it’s such bliss.

I miss my old life most of all in summer, as I leave in the morning and miss all the fun all day long. But I do love my job and we have grown accustomed to food and shelter, so off I go.

This year is the year of Betsy and the Bug’s Brady Bunch Binge-a-thon. (I seem to have taught them that thinking up a cool name for your most geeky endeavor makes it even more cool-I firmly believe this. I’m still All 80s All the Time Summer, myself.)

Anyway, there are a lot of things that I’m loving just now:

Rocketman

All the hearts. The music is fabulous (of course), the story is so compelling-and I say this as someone who mostly knew the whole thing going in. Taron Egerton is pitch perfect and Jamie Bell is also wonderful.

I had a song that I played for each of the girls when I was pregnant, a song that is “their” song to me, and Betsy’s is “Tiny Dancer.” So of course I cried all over her when they sang it in the film. “Tiny Dancer,” to me, is about carrying this person in your heart, this person that no one else can see but that you know to your bones is there. When I was young, I talked so much about my children, and of course people acted like that was weird because it was, but to me, I knew that they were there, just waiting to meet me someday. When they laid Betsy in my arms and I looked at her big blue eyes, I cried so hard because it felt like, “Oh, it’s you. Finally.”

(Felicity’s song, if you are wondering, is “Sweet Child of Mine.” And Isaiah, who of course came into my life at the age of one, does indeed have a song, “Swept Away,” by Christopher Cross.)

I Think You’re Wrong but I’m Listening by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers

I know, I talk about Pantsuit Politics all the time, and I do so wish that everyone would listen to every episode because I love how Beth and Sarah disagree without any anger, how they parse out what their position is, how shaded all of their positions are-as a person who does not see black and white in any issue, I so appreciate the nuance that they bring to their conversations. This book lays out exactly what the parameters are for those conversations, lays out how to extend grace when you just feel like the other person is flat out wrong.

Aladdin

I really enjoyed the new Aladdin-I don’t compare the live action versions to the animated movies, I go in with no real expectations, so perhaps that changes things. What I loved the most to be honest was that Will Smith seemed to be having an excellent time-I am old enough to remember those summers when Will Smith was in the blockbuster movie of the summer, and the thing that I loved about those movies was that he always seemed to be having such a good time. (I think that, at least at the beginning of his career, Will Smith just thought he was so lucky to be invited to the party, and it showed in his enthusiasm for his projects.)

Booksmart

My gut reaction to this was, it’s a bit much. I went into it expecting something a bit different than it was-parts of it I thought were hilarious, and parts just uncomfortable. Sort of similar to how I feel about Bridesmaids. But in the time since watching it, I listened to a podcast full of people who loved this movie and they did illuminate me to bits that I just glazed over without much thought. So perhaps I need to think about it some more.

So far, summer is delightful. Betsy is working a 5000 piece puzzle, so my family room is sort of a disaster, and the girls are inhaling The Brady Buch and we are watching The Wonder Years (they make fun of me because I cry at the end of every single episode) and we are catching lightning bugs and jumping on the trampoline and getting ice cream from the Dairy Duchess and going to the playground (it is hilarious to me when they talk about “when they were little” at the elementary school). It’s a summer that mirrors all the summers in my life, which is what happens when you live in the same place for 40 years.

But I promise, I wouldn’t want it any other way.