A Mom's Lesson to her Unbrushed Princess

We don’t brush Hollie’s hair on Sundays. Well, not if we can help it.

Every weekday morning after she’s prodded from bed, stuffed into clothing, and dragged into the hallway, Hollie is propped up at the bathroom sink for a teeth scrub and a hair styling.

She hates this.

“I’m sooooooo tired!” she wails.

“You’re hurting me!” she grouses.

“Oowww! MOOOOOM!”

There are no witnesses to this nonsense except me and someday these mornings will be long gone and I’ll get nostalgic thinking of them. But as they’re happening, I feel like Eleanor Bear in Brave.

“Och, you’re acting like a child!”

Of course she is.

I like to let her be one as much as I can. I like to let her be petulant and reluctant and pouty and emotional as much as I can.

There will come a time when she must control these emotions. When she must conceal her frustration, her annoyance, her anger. 

There will come a time when she will be so busy being polite that she’ll forget to be herself.

She may one day catch herself in that moment and think, “How have I become the silly woman who smiles and nods while I’m screaming inside?”

It’s taken me a long time to define the boundaries between being myself and being someone others find acceptable. For years I lived under the mantra of “Be Yourself,” and believed that in all things, myself was good enough.

Then someone told me it wasn’t.

And I believed that person.

I know there will come a day when Hollie thinks being herself isn’t enough. I hope she’ll ask me about it. I hope she’ll say, “Mom, what should I do?”

So that I can say, “You’re more than enough. You’re amazing. You’re brilliant. You’re lovely. If other people don’t like you for who you are, that’s their own problem.”

Because, really, the very best lesson I can teach her is to have the grit to persevere. She shouldn’t kneel before adversity and hope to be blessed by others’ power. She should stand tall, take aim, and loose another arrow. 

Aye, keep shooting until the Self-Doubt and Insecurity are vanquished. 

On Sundays, she gets just a little taste of that. She gets to be a ragamuffin: tangled, tousled, knotty, and free. She gets to be herself in all her untamed glory.

It’s as much a break for her as it is for me. One day a week I don’t have to hold her down and rip the brush through the knots. One day a week where I have to forget about what others might think of the ragamuffin we’ve brought to Applebees or to Publix.

One day a week when I have to remind myself that it’s no one else’s damn business why she looks like a disaster.

Fuck them.

One day a week that I get to remember when I got my tattoos, when I pierced my tongue, when I started cussing in front of grown-ups and stopped pretending to have a faith I don’t.

I know she’s a child. I know it’s my job to teach her how to behave around others. I also know that she’s learning that. Really. 

I get manners. I get polite company. I get that she needs to be able to move among society and that people’s opinions of her will largely impact how successfully she is able to do that.

This un-brushed hair thing is a phase, like wearing two different shoes was. She’s outgrown that and she’ll outgrow this. But I let her wear a boot and a sandal. A flip flop and a sneaker. A sparkly red shoe and a sparkly black shoe because those small freedoms built her confidence.

She’ll match her clothing someday.

She’ll brush her hair.

She’s a child now but she will not always be.

If I have any say in it, though, she’ll always be original, confident, and willing to be herself even when others disapprove.

Just so long as she does not place her weapons on the table.

Going the Distance

We ran 4.5 miles on Sunday, my younger sister and I. We left my driveway, headed East and followed the main roads out of the neighborhood. 

I’m much slower than she but she stayed with me anyway. We chatted a little which is unusual for both of us as we typically run solo.

I told her about our Lean In Columbia group, who had joined, what our plans were, and how excited I am about the future.

We crossed over the community road and into another neighborhood where we ran the back side of the top loop and then down into the bottom loop and made the full circle.

We talked about our running habits, what we like about running, how we motivate ourselves, how we keep warm.

At the bottom of the first big ascent I stopped to find inspirational music. I chose the Rocky song "Going the Distance."

We made it to the top and I said, “I feel lazy today. I really don’t want to run anymore.”

We were in mile three. We kept the pace. At the stop sign we turned right and took the long way home.

“Go that way,” I said, “Just because I don’t want to run doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.”

Bell Jars and Recovery

I spent yesterday in the Bell Jar.

Photo by Camel & Yak via Pinterest

Wednesday morning Charlie left early for Charlotte and I stayed in bed until Hollie came in to wake me. It was 9:20. She had to leave for school by 9:40.

When one begins the day that far behind, playing catch up is futile.

So I crawled back in bed and stayed there.

What my day in the Bell Jar taught me is that nothing makes us immune from low points.

Not education, not optimism, not even ambition. Low points come. Worries wash over us and knock us down and sometimes it’s easier to just stay down for a day and regroup.

So now I’m all regrouped and I have a plan to make a plan.

I said to myself, “I’m a writer. I should write. That’ll get me outta this.”

I didn’t worry about what to write or where I would put it. I just told myself to write.

Later I’ll run. Not worried about distance or time. Just run.

I have faith that if I keep doing what I do, eventually the effort will equate to progress.

It’s the not doing anything that keeps us in the Bell Jar.

So do something resembling anything of value. We’ll worry about how to get paid for it later.

Ever had a Bell Jar day?

Let It Go

I have never been a pack rat. I don’t collect things or keep things that have no use. I have never been one with regrets, the past is in the past and I don’t let it weigh me down. And yet, this year, I have learned three very powerful words:

Let it go.

If you can fix it, do. If you can change it, do. If you can’t, let it go.

I like to have themes in my year. In 2012, I said “Enjoy the process.” And in 2013, I planned to use “Never be afraid of hard work.”

But, magically, a new theme emerged right when I needed it most. I didn’t plan for the phrase of 2013 to be Let It Go, but it was.

My older sister has changed her phone number, refuses to speak to us, and is very possibly in an abusive relationship. Yet I cannot help her.

Let it go.

My Nana’s long battle with pulmonary fibrosis finally ended and she died peacefully at home surrounded by family. Except me. I was 5000 miles away.

Let it go.

My seven year journey for a PhD ended with the words I dreamed of hearing, “Congratulations, Dr. Whitener.” That struggle is over.

Let it go.

When the weight of life threatened to suffocate me into inaction, pity, grief, guilt, the words came, “Let it go.”

Thank you, 2013, for delivering such a powerful mantra. Thank you for giving me the courage to move on.

They Just Keep Moving the Line

I’ve been toying with an idea for several months now. It would be a series of essays written as letters to my favorite Pulitzer Prize winning writer. When we met nearly two years ago, he and I had an interesting conversation about empathy.

My idea is to pick up the debate we were having and explain myself. It’s almost one of those, “What I should have said,” series. Kind of like every unrequited love poem ever written.

As I was describing the idea to a writer friend not too long ago he responded very candidly,

“Who would read that?”

He had a point. There are two ways to address this so I’ll do so as if this blog allowed you to Choose Your Own Adventure. To see the topic addressed as, “If no one reads it, is it worth writing?” Click Here. To read the topic addressed as, “Shouldn’t we all want to explore the topic of empathy?” Click Here.

Angels on High

My cousin Ethan is tall enough that on Friday as we decorated our Papa’s Christmas tree, he was able to reach the top to affix the angel.

Papa’s angel is a happy sprite, a white dress, brown yarn hair, rounded plastic cheeks and a tight but friendly smile. I’m sure Nana bought her at Big Lots or Dollar General or something. 

I can’t remember having seen her before, having noticed her before, but I know there’s always been an angel on top of that tree.

My parents’ tree had an angel mom bought at Dart Drug in Salisbury, Maryland during their first or second Christmas season.  I remember thinking that angel was beautiful. We were not allowed to touch her; Dad would put her on top of the tree after we’d finished decorating.

The angel on mine and Charlie’s tree is a CVS purchase; she wears stiff gold wraps that make her look as if some heavenly wind is holding her aloft. She still has some sparkles left and she attaches to the tree with the wire twist tie that once held her upright in her box.

After helping Mama with her tree, Hollie visited Little Papa and reported that his tree has a star on top. A star! She was amazed. She didn’t know trees could be topped with stars.

It’s one of the many changes over the last year: Little Papa has his own tree at his own house, Aunt Lesli refuses to speak to her sisters, and Big Papa’s Christmas decorations were unpacked and assembled by his grandchildren, without Nana.

Have Faith

So much happened in October that I hope to spend November bringing you all up to speed. Here’s one story from last month:

I had the privilege of hearing my friend Anna Courie speak. She has published a book, Christ Walk, which is a spiritual approach to physical fitness. You can read more about it here.

Anna and I met in college. We had some common friends and have often been at the same weddings and football tailgates. Anna was one of the visitors we had in our June family experience the result of which was realizing how much we are loved.

Nana's Hibiscus - photo by KDW

Anna’s speaking engagement was part of my local writer’s group’s Christian Writers’ Showcase, an event I originally declined to assist with because Christian writing is not my genre. I did end up speaking on self-editing, giving a basic English professor’s take on preparing your work for publication. Also, I recruited Anna.

In all the years Anna and I have known one another, I have never heard the story of how she became a Christian, nor heard her experience of being rendered deaf by an illness when she was very young. She shared both during her talk on Saturday and I found myself moved by her story.

I also felt a slight envy toward Anna’s conviction in her faith. She felt wrapped in it, strengthened by it, meant to be part of it and meant to have it as part of her. I thought about the intellectuality with which I approach my faith and felt a small regret that I didn’t have a passionate, acute-transformation story like hers.

Then I wrote this down on the paper I had in my lap:

God is the source of life.

God is the source of love.

God is the ground of being.

And I remembered my faith story. I remembered the moment in which I first came to my faith.