Growing up

My brain got to thinking today ....about childhood and young adulthood and adulthood---- and that journey......

Do you remember how magical your childhood felt at times??  I do.  I can remember the excitement of the first day of the school year and all its possibilities.  I can remember thinking that Santa was amazingly strong to carry all those gifts around the world.  I can remember the warmth of a beach trip and thinking that the coast was always bright and filled with great restaurants (I LOVE other people cooking me food).  I can remember watching movies late at night or tickle fights with my sister.  I vividly remember drama summer camp (because I was a theater geek and it was heaven to me).  I remember all the little details that made my life possible.

Childhood is filled with magic.  It cannot exist in any other form.  Every day is exciting and new and is an adventure and is warm and bright and full of the crazy impossible.  I don't know exactly where it comes from but it's best witnessed when an 18 month old wakes from a glorious long nap and jumps up excitedly (with damp head curls and droopy eyes) to see what magic is happening outside her bedroom door.  It's as if the entire universe has been flipping over and reinventing itself during her slumber and she absolutely must see the transformation immediately.  (In actuality, her 2 hour nap consisted of a load of laundry, a perusing of Facebook and 40 rounds of Candy Land with a 4 year old who must ALWAYS win).  As a child- life, in all it's reincarnations, is absolutely possible.

Then comes puberty and young adulthood.  It's where you learn about bullying and death and mean girls and belly fat that actually matters to other people, and heart break and self conscious nerves and failing at important things and disappointment and insecurity and all the ugly truths about being human.  Sadly, to be human means feeling all these things on every level of who you are.  I remember being asked out by a 'popular boy' in middle school and discovering it was a 7th grade prank.  I remember not being cast in the role I so badly coveted.  I remember not being liked by the boy I had a crush on (many times).  I remember worrying about the belly fat I couldn't seem to get rid of.  I remember being ridiculed by a teacher for not being a good enough singer.  I remember all those details of being human....of being not quite myself....of being not quite whatever it was I was supposed to be.  

Then comes adulthood.  Beautiful, sweet, well-deserved adulthood.  Adulthood with its adult bills, cars with flat tires that Daddy doesn't come to fix, adult family decisions about moving where my opinion is actually the important one, dinner decided and cooked by me, adults dealing with small children, adults trying to get a good nights' sleep, plumbing explosions handled...by me, adults trying to make all the puzzle pieces they have picked up along life's journey fit together.  After everything I've been through (both boring and a little extraordinary), I've realized that I just want my kids to enjoy their childhood for as long as is absolutely possible.  Later on, I want them to realize what I have recently realized: that the magic of their childhood will be created by the people in their life who love them the most.  Above all the bullying or stressful situations or awkward belly fat or bad acne or bad life choices, the people in their life who love the essence of their soul will be the key to the magic of life.  It's kind of cool to realize that magic totally exists....in the space between you and the people you love.  It would be great if we could all get away from laundry and paying bills and walking the dog long enough to work on that magic just a little bit.  But-either way-- I will do my very best to give my kids a magical childhood that will empower them to get through the terribly awkward young adulthood years that we all must suffer through so they will have a story to tell when they are older.........

Awhile

It's been awhile I realize.  As many of you know (and some may not), I've started teaching piano and voice lessons.  I have 12 students and I'm 8 weeks in.....it's been exhilarating, exhausting, emotional, challenging and truly energizing.  I may have found my 'thing.'  But all those thoughts are for another post.....of which I will never find time to write now that I'm wiped by 8:30 every night, eating sleeve after sleeve of Girl Scout cookies and reading books about vocal technique in my 'free' time.

It's been an interesting journey to go back to work after 3 years doing the mommy thing.  That's been a roller coaster ride in itself.  I've been teaching and glanced over my shoulder at a noise and seen my 4 year old and 18 month old standing on the precipice of our office (aka teaching room) drinking juice and staring at me.....old enough to realize I'm not available to them....but also sooooo close.  I don't think they fully understand what is going on.  There are 4 year olds and 6 year olds and 9 year olds getting a lot of attention from Mommy and I won't invite them in.  So weird.  It's weird for me to hear the dog get loose upstairs and start tearing down the stairs to find the action while hearing the babysitter running after him throwing treats.  It's weird to glance out the window and see my kids going for a wagon ride down the street.  It's weird to be thinking of songs for my students while making my 10th grilled cheese sandwich of the week.  Those kinds of things are taking some adjustment.

But I love it.  I actually really do.  I feel busy, truly busy, unabashedly busy, actually too busy to call or email busy for the first time in years.  Who the hell starts an at-home business with a 4 year old and an 18 month old?!

I know I'm busy because I watched the Oscars the other night and laughed and relaxed and fell asleep before the big awards.  (Full disclosure- I think of myself as a tried and true feminist.)  The next day, I awoke to the scathing reviews of the sexist jokes and terribly awkward telecast and how they are setting women back and how it's a shame that these jokes are still allowed.  My first thought (albeit not very feminist of me) was 'who gives a crap?!'  I'm too tired, too busy and I don't care what a bunch of men in Hollywood think of me.  I  just don't care.  I know that the large majority of the Hollywood machine are trying to create really intriguing forms of art, tell interesting stories, feed their families and find their place in film history.  And that's when I realized I've moved into a new dimension of my life:  too tired to stay awake for the Presidential election results in November, too tired to give a crap what Bruce Vilanch (the head writer for the Oscars) has to say in any given February, too tired to do much of anything but care for my family and treat them and my students with the utmost respect and consideration that I possibly can.  I hope I'm able to teach my daughter and son two things in life about people: 1. Life is too damn short and you should be too busy to give a crap about what people think about you and 2. Treat everyone you meet with respect (not how YOU want to be treated but with a genuine, unearned, heartfelt respect-it will empower everyone involved).

Watching the Oscars made me realize I've really started the cross over into not caring what people think and teaching my new students has made me respect everyone I encounter in a new way.  I have a feeling that not thinking about the first will make me really good at the second.  And that's a satisfying way to spend your life...respecting every opportunity and not giving a crap about the rest.