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.
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