“What would it be like if I could accept life – accept this moment – exactly as it is?”
Tara Brach
Dear Momma,
This wasn’t about you or your parenting in any way. Your daughter is fine. You are learning alongside her.
You got her tickets to see Laurie Berkner perform live in Hartford, CT. Her favorite artist! You blocked off the day. You carved out precious time for your family. You agreed not to invite anyone else so this could be a true family outing. It was just her, Mommy and Ima. You made every contingency plan necessary, got everyone out the door in enough time. Checklist–snack, diapers, hands, face, teeth, shoes and socks. And managed to get another pair of pants and socks on when the first pair got wet from stepping in your dog’s water bowl.
You bought these tickets months ago and were thrilled to give this experience to her. As a gift, a memory she would never forget.
And yet, when we settle into our seats and you look around, you can tell she seems unsettled. Maybe overwhelmed? Unsure what to make of her surroundings? A baby born during the pandemic, this is possibly one of the largest crowds she’s been around.
Laurie comes dancing down the aisle with her guitar and sings a familiar tune… “When I woke up today…I shouted out Hooray!…” My eyes light up and my ears can’t believe what they are hearing. Is it really her? Live, in the flesh? Strumming her guitar 20 feet away. Unbelievable.
I glance over and see my daughter melting to the ground. Shrinking into a cocoon. Eyes glazed over, lying on the floor, attempting to do a summersault in the aisle and trying to get away. She seems somewhere else. She doesn’t know what to make of it perhaps? Looks out at Laurie a few times and tries to take it all in, but then retreats again. Too much? Tired? Hungry? Cautious? Worried? I may never know.
Maybe she is unable to express how unbelievably strange it is to see this icon live, a blink of an eye away, after only seeing her on a screen or dancing to her music on Pandora. Yes, Laurie Berkner is real. She’s a person too.
I’m so incredibly disappointed in that moment. Yet, in reflecting back, I realize that as much as much as I want my daughter to fall in love with Laurie Berkner in concert, to jump up and down to “Chipmunk at the Gas Pump,” like the other kids, that’s simply not what she is feeling today. She is being her authentic self.
Perhaps to be accepting of my own thoughts, feelings and actions is an admirable goal for myself too. To share our emotions with our children and allow them to share theirs with us. And to be validating and at peace with the “let downs” and inevitable perplexities and complexities of childhood and parenting that will come.
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A few weeks later, this experience helps me stay much more grounded on Halloween night when my daughter refuses(!) to put on her Halloween green dinosaur costume to go trick-or-treating. She has been talking about this costume for weeks and practically every day leading up to Halloween. And yet, when push comes to shove, she decides that she doesn’t want to wear her costume and instead prefers to walk around the neighborhood and simply ask for candy.
Yet, what starts off as another huge “wait, you have to like this” (oh, what did I do wrong?) moment ends with a renewed appreciation for my child’s intuition. We must trust them, to know what’s best for them and find ways to trust ourselves in the process too.
Ultimately, my daughter decides that instead of wearing her dinosaur costume for Halloween she is going to cart it around the whole night in her blue car. It will go trick-or-treating with her!
Thank goodness for children’s creative spirts and our ongoing practice as adults to stretch — and be true to ourselves — alongside them.
Taking a Pause at 40 