Last Sunday Sarah attended her school’s Homecoming Dance with a group of school friends. I love that she has this group of friends, and I can also see she is still sometimes a bit separate and disconnected from them. They welcome her and look out for her, but she isn’t quite a part of conversations or group trips to the bathroom in the middle of the dance. Although perhaps her not joining them in the trip to the bathroom was because she was busy dancing the entire time! The last time she had a school dance, I went with her and sat in the room the whole time in case she needed help or wanted to leave early – and so I could be scandalized by “kids these days!” For this dance I sat in the hotel lobby and read a book. I knew Sarah’s teacher was chaperoning the dance so I trusted her to get in touch with me if Sarah needed anything. She told me that Sarah was on the dance floor the whole time. While I didn’t get to observe the songs and dances that I might question as to, “how does one even dance to that? What are they even listening to?” I could still see enough of the dresses to be scandalized at what kids wear these days. It may not actually be any different from when I was going to such dances, but what feels ridiculous is that the school prints out rules about the dress code that it then clearly doesn’t enforce at all. So why do they even bother to print it? What is the point of saying girls can’t wear tube dresses or anything more than two inches above the knee if they don’t say anything when girls show up with dresses that barely cover their butts? Meanwhile, Sarah was wearing a long-sleeved striped dress that did come two inches above her knee – and then she wore musical note socks with her black flats.
Amy is adjusting to her Whisper brace beautifully and even does cartwheels and backbends while wearing it. She is thrilled to be able to touch her toes, and I imagine this makes it a tiny bit easier to get to her school locker for which she needs to get on her knees. Clearly whoever assigned lockers wasn’t thinking about who was tall or that someone in a brace maybe should get a locker in the top row instead of the bottom row. I’m sure things were randomly assigned, but it points out once again how people don’t think about things unless it touches them or someone they know personally.
Yesterday we went on a walk in the woods, and Sarah delighted in picking up leaves along the way as she pretended to be on a leaf-walk with Granddad. Granddad was not on the walk with us, but as with any of her scenarios involving him, all she needs is her imagination. Granddad has a t-shirt that Sarah loves that reads “Team Oxford comma,” and he recently got her the same shirt. She is thrilled to be on Granddad’s team and wears the shirt at all times except when she is in her school uniform. After our walk we went to a fall festival and then went bowling. We all chose special bowling names. Carl was Potato, Amy was Robot Cat, I was Monday, and Sarah was Granddad. It was hilarious to call out to her, “Granddad, it’s your turn.” She did a dance of celebration after each roll regardless of how many pins fell. As Carl said, there is a good life lesson in that.
If you wondered why my bowling name was Monday. . . I recently heard someone posing the question, “if you were a day of the week, which day would you be?” I instantly thought that I am a Monday – getting things done and a fresh start to the week , but also coming with some layers of shoulds and responsibilities. Anyway, I pose the question to you. What day are you? And why? The why is the most interesting part because we all will have different associations with days and different explanations.
During our walk yesterday I realized that I wasn’t fully enjoying our time out because of the things left to do when we got home. They weren’t even things for me to do. They were things for the kids to do: Sarah to practice piano and Amy to do her Schroth exercises and some schoolwork. I really wished I had pushed a bit to have those happen before we went out, because then our time out would have felt more free. To me. I could see I was the only one feeling encumbered by this invisible to-do list. I realized that this was part of my pattern of wanting to finish my homework before playing because then the play feels more free. But! What if that isn’t actually a true thing? What if that is just the way I like to do things and have done things but isn’t the way everyone has to do things? What if I’m not right about that? Or what if I am right for me, and there are other ways of being that are just as true and right? I would love to be able to play fully even if there is still homework to be done. My intention is to be more present and flexible about such things, and to respect my patterns too so that maybe for future weekends I will request that to-do items happen before we venture into our adventures. As I start seeing that some of my beliefs about the world might not be true, I feel like my cat emerging from her forbidden foray in the basement when she had a cobweb stuck to her head. My beliefs are like the cobweb, perhaps glaringly obvious to others and truly not a part of me, and yet I have no idea they are there because they feel so much a part of me. It is exciting every time I do get a glimpse that maybe the foundation of my world view has some cracks and that more ease might be on the other side of allowing the cracks to grow and the foundations to crumble, but also, could everyone please do their homework?
Lots of love to all of you, belief cobwebs and all. Aren’t we all as earnest as my cat as we move through our lives doing our very best?
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