A twig of a tree stands in our yard, a few buds just starting to form. In the future, those buds could become branches. But now, they’re nothing but green and brown nubs off of a slim trunk.
It’s hard to believe that one day we’ll be eating pears from that tree. In fact, we may not. Deer may nibble the buds or disease may fell it.
And yet we planted it anyway.
To me, Lady Liberty and the words on her base should be what America strives for.
To me, America should be celebrating the beautiful diversity of our country. It should be celebrating that people come from different backgrounds and experiences. It should be recognizing that people look and act different from each other and being amazed at how wonderful that is.
“It doesn’t really matter whose fault it actually is, we need to clean it up together,” I said to my kids, talking about some mess or another. I heard those words come out of my mouth as if I actually believed them. But I did really want to believe them.
I am a blame monster. If there’s blame to put on someone – even myself – I am on the case. I used to think that if you could blame someone for a problem, they would learn their lesson and not do it again.
Problem solved, right? Uh, no.
A silver-gray hair flowed from the top of my head down past my ear, ending right at my shoulder. “Huh,” I said, looking in the mirror and shrugging. It’d be cool if it was eventually a skunk stripe like Rogue in X-Men or glittery like Luna Girl in PJ Masks.
Perhaps my ambivalence about gray hair seems strange, considering that women are supposed to hide any sign of aging. But there’s a sense of strange gratitude – I expected a hell of a lot more of them by now. Like many things on my 37th birthday.
Big world events – like COVID-19 (coronavirus) and climate change – can drive us to despair. I’ve semi-seriously joked that my anxiety about climate change has at least prepared me for this outbreak. But I’ve also learned that there are a couple of ways to react to these big world events, some of which are mentally and emotionally healthier than others.
In a study by a Swedish University that I found in my book research, researchers found that teenagers reacted to climate change in three ways: “emotion-focused,” “problem-focused,” and “meaning-focused.”
Writing a book is a lot like birthing a baby. Both require huge amounts of work to bring into the world. Both have unending unpredictabilities and surprises. Both are deep works of love.
And today, I’m celebrating both. It’s my book release day for Growing Sustainable Together: Practical Resources for Raising Kind, Engaged Resilient Children and the anniversary of my older son’s birth.
“I’m laughing cause I read that book. She’s 14 now and she’s okay,” a woman commented to me. She gestured at the book in my hand, an advice book about parenting challenging kids. Absorbed in my own thoughts, it took a second to realize she was even talking to me.
“And he’s splashing in a puddle!” I said, pointing out the picture of a beige puppy frolicking in the rain.
Then I stopped. Why had I assumed the puppy was male? Why was the “he” my default? For that matter, why did I assume the adult dog singing the song to the puppy was their mother?
“One two three four five six seven eight nine ten!” my three year old counted, touching the pictures in the book as he went.
I blinked. Since when can he count? Did this just happen?
The story that opens this essay was so heartbreaking! My kids are usually okay with death, but dead parents are a whole different thing.
Here’s the first few paragraphs:
My two-year-old’s face was blank. Then it curved down into the slightest of frowns, as he stared at the open magazine’s page. As he’s usually a very expressive kid, I had never seen this look before.
But then, I had never read a line in a story quite like that: “This baby skunk lost its mother.”