Messing up

It has been a time of reconnecting with my kids. The dark of winter and the relative openness of my schedule after a couple of crazy months has brought us all inside to play cards and bake cookies and hang out together. And I am finding something wonderful: I really like them. I always knew that I loved them, but it’s lovely to see the ways I really like them, too. And parenting, which can be such a slog and so much work all the time, can also be so interesting too. I sit and play Connect Four with them and we laugh and laugh and I watch the way their minds work and the way those minds are growing. It’s a joy.

This weekend I learnt that even the pieces that aren’t a joy have joy inside them. I found out Saturday afternoon that on Saturday morning Aidan had cut off a piece of Ayla’s hair. Melissa and Ayla took it really well; I took it less well. Michael told me about it in the middle of schlepping all of our things out of the Ocean Rd house for our new tenant to move into—a task which was a hassle and which holds our mixed feelings (really nice tenant and great to have it rented, but would be better to have it sold!). So I was grumpy (stuck inside grouting and nit picking and moving on a spectacular sunny warm day) and Aidan was being, well, Aidan. He assisted in the move by begrudgingly carrying things into the house. One trip for a hat, one trip for a book, one trip for a water bottle. When I suggested that perhaps he could carry things in two hands, he stomped into his room, saying that everyone was criticising him. I gave him a couple of chances to come back and help, but in each case he decided he’d do a better job lying on his bedroom rug and reading his new library book. By the time the old house was emptied and the new house was piled with all the detritus of our lives, I was fuming.

Aidan came out at the wrong time, asking what I was making for dinner. I suggested that perhaps he reconsider asking me what I was doing for him when he had done so little to help. He offered to help now and I waved my arm at all the things in the house now. Too little too late, baby. He asked what he could do to get out of trouble, and I was seriously stumped. “I don’t know,” I told him. “I’m grumpy and tired and mad at you, and I don’t have any ideas right now.” He walked away in a hurry, went into the living room for a while, and came back to hand me a piece of paper with his neatest script writing:

I love you mom can I pleas get out of truble I am really sorry I hope you forgive me

I felt my whole body melt and I sank down to my knees in front of the fridge and hugged him and hugged him. “Does this mean I’m out of trouble?” he asked, nuzzling into my neck.

“You’re out of trouble for the move, but you’re still in trouble for Ayla’s hair,” I told him. His smiling face crumpled and he began to cry. We sat in front of the fridge and I held him as he told me about it, about how he had gotten angry and mean and then she had said something mean and he had suddenly he had cut a lock of her hair off and known that it was terribly wrong. He was horrified for the two related issues of 1. knowing how bad it was he had done that in the first place and 2. also knowing he would be in big trouble and get “a consequence.” We took the first one first.

“I’m the meanest boy in the whole world,” he told me. I told him that sounded like a hard way to feel and wondered if he really believed it was true. He nodded.

“You reckon you’re the meanest boy in your school?” I asked.

He thought for a minute and shook his head. “But I am the meanest one in the family,” he asserted. Naomi, who had been hovering close by, came and sat on the floor with us, hugging Aidan from behind as I hugged him from the front.

“Sometimes I’m really mean,” she told him.

“Not as mean as me,” he said, crying.

Naomi told a story where she had been mean as a little kid, and Aidan argued that she had grown out of that stage. Obligingly, she told him a story about when she had been mean this month.

“Wow, that IS mean.” Aidan stopped crying and looked at her and then began to cry again. “But Mom doesn’t do anything mean.”

I said of course I did, everyone did, and he wanted an example. “I’m not mean with scissors or pushing,” I said, “but I’m mean with my words sometimes. Sometimes I’m grouchy and mean with you two, and that’s not OK.” Aidan hugged me hard and Naomi kissed me on the head, comfortingly.

“We know you love us anyway,” she said.

Aidan started to cry again. “I can’t stand being mean!” he said.

“It’s ok,” Naomi told him. “Don’t feel bad.”

I told Naomi that it wasn’t OK what Aidan had done, and that he should feel bad about it. It wasn’t a forever problem, but it was a bad thing to do. The hair would grow back, but Aidan had the right to feel bad about it—and we would be upset if he didn’t, even. He stopped crying and we went back and forth about the "consequences" he'd face. Finally, frustrated with the idea of consequences and with himself for deserving them, he began to cry again.

“It’s ok, er, to feel bad, Aidan,” Naomi tried this time. “You did a bad thing. But you can learn from it and never do anything like that again. And you can know that no matter what, we’ll love you anyway.”

I sat on the kitchen floor, holding these two marvellous children, and I figured that’s actually the wisest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. Sometimes we mess up and hurt other people. We should feel bad about that—and we should allow those we love to feel bad if they hurt others. That bad feeling helps us learn from our mistakes. But it takes the sting out of it all if we can only hold on to the truth that those who love us will love us through our mistakes. If my kids can hold on to that—if I can hold on to it too—we’ll all make it through ok.

We spent that night cuddled up and watching the first video I've watched in months--a stupid movie the kids picked out. None of the stupidness mattered, though, with Naomi sitting next to me and Aidan curled in my lap. No matter what--how bad the transgression, how un-funny the movie--we'll all love each other anyway.

Netting excellence

My kids have played sports since they were five years old. Naomi was in gymnastics until the mother of a friend of ours—a woman whose parenting I trusted enormously—said, “I think it’s time for Naomi to be on a team sport.” We signed Naomi up for soccer and never looked back. When Aidan was big enough, he signed up for soccer too, and then autumn Saturdays became a matter of schlepping from one field to the next—both in DC and now here in New Zealand. My kids are competent players—neither the best nor the worst on the team—and so I’ve been a middle-of-the-pack mom, hoping they’d play well enough to please themselves, counseling them not to be too hard on themselves when they lost and reminding them that they mustn’t be too hard on the other team when they won.

I have, of course, known the parents of the best and worst players on the team, the parents whose children are more responsible for the wins and losses on the board. Naomi had a friend whose biggest achievement was when she didn’t panic and kick the ball towards her own goal; missing it was an improvement. Aidan’s best friend in DC for a while was a boy who was a sports genius, a boy whose every move was skillful and intuitive, who scored most of the goals on the team and also somehow had a hand in our best defense, too. I talked to his parents admiringly about what it was like to have a brilliant player like that, and saw both the glory and the misery of it. This little boy was already being recruited to play on travel teams (which are no picnic for parents) and was very hard on himself for those times when he didn’t excel.

I have never been related to these children though (except for my cousin Garvey who has been a brilliant hockey player his whole life). That might have changed.

This year Naomi has given up soccer and traded it in for netball, a Commonwealth game related to basketball but with a funky set of rules. (For more on those rules, click here.) I was bummed when she gave up soccer—she was getting better each year, and I liked the team she played on as well as enjoying the crisp Saturday mornings at emerald green fields across the region. But she had been urged by the coach and some friends to give netball a try, and now she’s done it. Because it’s her first year, she’s been put with the younger kids, many of whom have been playing a year or two already. For a variety of reasons, I’ve not seen any of these games yet. On Saturday I promised her I’d go and watch her, and so I found myself in the vast netball complex in Paraparaumu at 8.45 in the morning, the early morning sun (remember, it’s winter here) slanting over court after court of chilly girls bouncing or jogging to keep warm in their polo shirts and netball skirts.

When the game started, I saw something I’ve never seen before. My kid was the best one on the court. Naomi reaches out for the ball and it comes to her like magic; she passes it and it flies straight and true into the hands of her teammate. She positions her body beautifully, watching the play, anticipating the ball. Instead of the little jangle of nervousness I feel whenever one of my kids controls a soccer ball (will he keep control of it? will she pass it when she needs to?), I felt a calm assurance when the ball was momentarily in Naomi’s hands. It would all be ok. For this moment, the ball was going to move smoothly up the court towards the net.

Afterwards, I was the parent the other parents made comments to. “I bet you’re pretty proud of your daughter!” one told me. “She’s amazing—how many years has she been playing?” another asked. Her coach talked about the easy and natural skills Naomi brought to the team. Everyone is shocked that not only has Naomi never played netball before, she’s never played basketball either. She’s never played a sport with her hands at all. To go from middle-of-the-pack in a sport you’ve played for years to the best on the team in a sport you’ve never played is quite a distance traveled. She takes it easily, smiling with the praise and knowing that she’s not the best at all on the team with the kids her age who have been playing for years. She practices with both the younger and the older team, and really cares about sharpening her skills. It’s all new to me.

I was noticing the ways this changes my experience of watching sport. One data point in a kids’ game isn’t going to change anyone’s life, but I have been wondering about how this could continue. Really skilled kids are the ones on the travel teams, they’re the ones who practice several times a week, and put pictures of sport stars rather than movie stars on their walls (this would be an improvement). Parents need to think differently about these kids and decide how to support them. This is a common experience for parents all over the world, but it’s a new experience for me. While there are no new questions for me to ask yet, there is the potential for new questions down the road, the potential for a variety of new decisions that middle-of-the-pack moms don’t need to make. And then there’s the bizarre moment of pride when MY kid plucks the ball out of an arc high above her head and passes it neatly to a waiting teammate who tries and tries to put it in the net. (Why on earth would I be proud of that? I did nothing to make that pass happen. It has fully nothing to do with me…)

We came home from the game Saturday and I made her a second breakfast, which we shared in the bright morning sun. “I love you so much,” I told her, watching this big girl of mine, her endlessly long arms and legs with no hint of the rolls of fat from her spherical baby days. “You know Mom,” she told me earnestly, “I love you every bit as much as you love me.” We beamed at each other in this calm before the adolescent storm. A tie is my favourite score.

One point five

I am trying to make my way back towards actually living where I live. I have been reconnecting with people too distant after my weeks away and doing odd jobs around the house, organising and getting things settled in their own way. And there has been what Eeyore calls “the social round and whatnot”—a variety of people coming to our house for lunch or dinner or to make use of the new comfy guest room (which was filled four out of the first seven nights of its life as a guest room). Just for the record, I love that.

Somehow, in living my life here, I’ve neglected to notice that more than a week ago we passed our one-and-a-half-year anniversary of living in New Zealand. I thought about that today on the walk down the hill to the train from a day of seriously interesting meetings. One year ago, we were just barely settled here, our things relatively newly arrived, relationships still in the early days. And now somehow we’re knitted in to life here. In the Board meeting today for the research grant NZCER administers, I actually sounded like I knew what was going on in educational research in New Zealand. And that is, in part, because I do. The Jews talk each Rosh Hashanah about being “inscribed in the book of life” for another year. I’ve realised that I’m inscribed in the book of life here in New Zealand. For now, we’re writing our story here.

There are little newsy bits to say as I watch the moon rise over Wellington harbour in the soft pink of dusk (after watching it set into the sea from my bed this morning). Naomi came in 2^nd in the cross country race at school. Aidan’s team won their soccer game on Saturday 4-0, even though Becky and David weren’t there to help. I met with the chief justice of the entire country (and a whole bunch of other seriously important judges) to help them decide whether or not they want to pursue a very cool leadership development programme with me (the answer, after seven months of meetings and discussions is still maybe).

But the most important news of all is that this week I tiled the wall behind the hob (=cooktop) in the kitchen. This, for a woman with little handy ability and practically no artistic ability at all, was a joy.

I love to tile. At Dad and Jamie’s house, the bathroom is a monument to my love of tiling (and my love for Dad and Jamie). We tiled in Georgia and Massachusetts. I’ve done a little tiling in this current house—the back wall of the shower in the main bathroom. But this wall behind the stove was something else.

The hardest part of tiling is deciding on the pattern and knowing where to lay the first tile. For a floor, you just snap a couple of chalk lines and move the tiles around until you get a pattern you like. For a wall, though, it’s harder—and this wall I wanted to be a little playful. So I made a paper template of the wall and laid tiles out on that. I wasn’t pleased with what I came up with. Michael pushed them around. Rob made changes. Still not perfect. In bed that night, I tossed and turned thinking about how to deal with pesky design issues. And then, at 4am, I came up with the solution to the problem—and I slept like a baby the rest of the night.

We began just before dinner on a day filled with visits from people we love. Melissa came and went. Karen came and went (and came back). The kids wandered in and out, checking progress while getting snacks for their movie. Michael and I fell into the rhythm that has carried us through sixteen years of tiling projects. He cuts, I lay. Then, in not so much more than the time the movie took, the tiles were on the wall, the pattern almost magically successful (my planning mind is decent but not fantastic, and when things turn out well I get a jolt of such delighted surprise that I realise I consider myself mostly incompetent). And now, even in a week with other setbacks, when I pass through the kitchen, I feel a little burst of pride. It’s not the cathedral in Milan. It’s not a concert of 200 voices. It’s not a painting or a necklace or a sculpture. But every time I scrub oily burnt bits or other forms of crud off the walls, I’ll do it with a kind of tenderness and delight. I bet Michelangelo didn’t have that satisfaction.

(Pictures today are obvious. If you’re lucky, I won’t even write a blog about grouting. You think tiling is fun? Ah, how I love to grout…)

Visiting

One of the great joys of living in New Zealand is when folks come to visit me here. It is a joy when folks visit me anywhere (I love having people stay), but here it’s a special joy, because everyone is so gobsmaked at the beauty that surrounds us every day. We had nearly four months of that with Carolyn and Jim, the constant conversations about “can you believe…” and going on about how kind the people are, how straightforward and simple the life, and always always always, how magnificently beautiful it is.

We dropped them off on Friday night at the airport with copious tears, moved in the wind and rain all day Saturday (noticing how much it felt like Jim and Carolyn’s house we were emptying and not our own—and noticing, by the way, what a really nice house it is). On Sunday, after breakfast with Melissa and hanging pictures at last on our formerly-bare walls, we drove to the airport again, this time joyfully to pick up my uncle Tom. We haven’t spent much time with Tom in the past. Family gatherings are loud and full, and I’ve only spent a day with him on my own at his house in Seattle. This was going to be a tiny time—Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning on his way home from Australia—but was going to be longer than we had had before.

First, his introduction to the winter of New Zealand coming from the super-temperate Sydney. Off with the shorts, on with the jeans and another fleece, Aidan chattering delightedly to him all the while. Then it was off to climb a hill and take in the views. The horrible wind and rain that had been blown in to mourn Carolyn and Jim’s departure had scrubbed the sky clean and dumped snow on the mountains, so the top of the hill we climbed gave us long views out to big and copiously snow-covered peaks in the south island. Tom was the perfect audience: totally appropriately oohing and ahhing at each of Wellington’s folds, brushed with houses, tumbling into the sea. We laughed and talked about whatever came up and I searched for—and found—pieces of my dad in this, Dad’s youngest brother.

And he was like Dad in his delight and his exuberance. Climbing hills, picking our way over rocks and searching for starfish, winding lost on lovely roads that hug the coastline—all things were interesting and fun for Tom (or else he hides his frustration well). And while he didn’t feel good on Monday (some Aussie bug he brought over), he was totally cheerful in his misery and wandered his way miles through the park and had enough energy for kicking the ball around at Aidan’s soccer practice. Not well enough to go out to dinner on Monday night, he was fantastic company for the yummy dinner we threw together. He told stories of his childhood and mine, and I saw his family through a different set of eyes—neither the eldest son perspective of my father nor the adoring granddaughter perspective I bring to things. All in all, a seriously lovely time together—if unhappily brief.

He says with assurance that he’ll come back, and I am reassured. Because missing family and friends is the key sadness of life here, if we could find a way to bring them to us, to experience their reveling in delight in our lives, to cook for them and laugh with them, would things be perfect here? How about if the rest of you come on down and visit us and let us test the perfection hypothesis? I promise we’ll all have a good time in the discovery.

(pics today of a rainbow on Jim and Carolyn's last day, Tom at the top of the hill and then resting with a cup of tea at sunset)

A love letter to the Coughlin Harris family

On the eve of their departure

My dear friends are heading back to the US tomorrow after 4 months here in New Zealand. I knew I would come to love them, but I did not know how much.

For Becky

I love you because you laugh like a sailor with a deep belly laugh that suggests whiskey-filled smoky rooms and the click of poker chips but you have the face of an angel. I love you because you are sunshine and then storm and then bright sun again like the New Zealand weather. I love the way you can be 7 and sardonic at the same time. I love you because you make me laugh.

For David

I love you because you love the orange striped chair so much. I love you because of the way you love Becky, your eyes on her happiness as much as your own. I love you because you’re are a silly racing running little boy, and then you bubble up with warmth and affection and delight. I love the way you love to weed the garden and point out birds to your dad. I love the way you bring love to everything you do.

For Abby

I love you for your singing bright beauty. For your straightforward honesty that is so much like your mom’s. I love you for the freckles across your nose and your dramatic poses. I love you when you’re totally un-self-conscious, and when you’re totally self-conscious. I love the way you tell stories and write plays and make up dances. I love the fast-talking Jersey girl and the self-composed young woman I see. I love you for who you are and who you are becoming.

For Jim

I love the way you tease yourself as much as you tease others. I love your easy-going, go-with-the-flow nature. I love your passions: for your photographs, your birds, your school—and most of all for your family. I love the quiet intensity of you studying rugby moves to learn all the rules and strategies just through watching. I love your devotion to helping us out and the way you seem to get actual joy from making our lives better. I love the way you face your life so openly and curiously, with your defenses down and your warmth reaching forward. I have loved having you as my work buddy and watching you unfold as a researcher.

For Carolyn

I love the way you can tell me what’s going on for you—whether you’re sad or mad or overcome with joy—and we both know that it will all be ok. I love that I love that you and I are so aligned in doing things for one another that we can ask and ask for favors and never feel guilty about it. I love the way you made beds in order to sell my house and made financial models to see if we should take the offer. I love watching you get grounded here and delight the folks in New Zealand with the easy warmth that has delighted folks in the Americas for the rest of your life. I love the way you inhabit this place, your love of the people and the sea and the ever-present rainbows. I love the way you listen so intently to someone in pain but don’t notice the cacophony that surrounds us when our five children get together. I love that you collect grocery-store bags, make your own yogurt, and have learnt to cook. In fact, I’m pretty sure I love everything about you.

Your family has become my family in these months. Who knew I could love you so much in such a short time. I hope your New Jersey life enfolds you with love and delight, that your days at the lake are filled with beauty and bliss, and that you remember each and everything you love about the US. And I hope you come back soon. We’ll keep the house ready for you.

Another birthday

Oodles of fun this birthday weekend, but not much time to write about it. Let this picture be your guide until I can get to a fuller description.