The short life of this blog

Ah, the fickle mind of the teacher on summer break. Do I spend my time blogging or do I spend my time creating lots of great memories and then trying to get some sleep to balance it out? This blog thing...it's created some drama for a few, and the drama has killed my drive to do it. One may then question, where was this drive coming from if it was so easily demolished by a couple of righteous, overly sensitive, guilty-feeling narcissists who don't want any ill feelings about them out in the public eye for scrutiny? Was I looking to defame them after all? Was I hoping for their humiliation?

I can assure you that I was not. I was looking to share my experiences, to express the frustration I felt about certain situations. I was hoping to lay the good and the bad out there, and watch myself grow stronger and more focused on the good over time. I have connected with a couple of other great, strong women going through interesting life transitions initiated by someone other than themselves, and this has been a good way to feel supported and understood by others in similar situations.

However, as I feel the anger and the angst in my life slipping away, the need to express myself in this format is dissipating. The responses to things written on-line can be taken so personally, and I've found myself amused by the legal steps taken by individuals who attempt to intimidate me because of what I write. There are upstanding professionals who believe in free speech until an unsavory word is spoken against them, at which point they run to the closest lawyer and tattle on the "mean lady at the keyboard" who dared speak against them.

I find myself less inspired to write, here. I will continue to write about the adventures of my children on their blog, if for nothing else than to record moments of their childhood for their own enjoyment, later. That blog needed to be privatized to protect the egos of others, which is just fine. Who is going to read it besides the people I invite to it, anyway, and even then it's mostly read by family who probably feel obligated.

So this particular blog may have been a short-lived one. I may rethink that at some point and pick it up again, but for now I'm going to say I'm signing off of the blog thing, and spending my energy on getting more sleep.

We are the Ones

I like Sweet Honey in the Rock. There's something incredible about their singing that I can't even begin to describe. Soulful, They have a song with the words, "We are the ones, we've been waiting." I can't remember what it's about right now, but I think about it in regards to my kids. This could be their song. "Hello, Mama...we're the ones you should be spending energy on! We've been waiting for you to come back to us."

Today we made the choice to not hang out with friends. Normally we enjoy every possibility for social contact with the outside world! And this evening was the annual Children's Festival in a town not too far from here, a festival filled with activities and crafts and friends. We even had a plan to meet up with another family, but in the end I canceled. I wanted to spend an entire day solely in the company of my children. Sure, we went to our favorite coffee place and treated ourselves to lunch and games, but other than that we were pretty much our own little pod. We read books, we played games at lunch and a new game at bedtime. We worked in the garden, we ran errands, we had a nice dinner by candlelight.

Ah. Now I remember. The title is "We are the ones we've been waiting for." Maybe that's even more appropriate. We can't find this kind of happiness and connection outside of ourselves. We can't find it by going on just the right adventure, or by connecting with just the right group of friends that will make our days and nights fun-filled and less lonely. We're waiting for ourselves to sink into comfort with just ourselves. We ARE the ones we've been waiting for.

Respite

It gets hot in this valley. A common way to soothe oneself is to head to the coast for a break from the heat, which is what we did last week. We found record breaking temperatures (108 degrees...on the coast....really?!), numbers that hadn't been approached since the 1970's, and then it only hit 103.

And then Wednesday came along. Anticipating another hot day, I started the day with a swim in the Chetco River. A beautiful swimming river. I submerged, I splashed, I swam upstream while my kids watched from the shore, cheering their Mama on and directing my course. "Swim to the other side! Come over here! Go over there!" It was my birthday swim, my rebirth, my stepping into my life in a refreshed way. I thought to myself, "This is it. This is what's going to wash away my pain. I'm going to feel so different when I get out of the water." And I did feel great.

But what I realized over the course of the day was that it was the entire day that shifted me. The 108 degree day on Tuesday was like the really painful part of birth before the baby finally pops out. It was like the final stages of grief before acceptance. The last bit of excruciating pain. And my great feeling didn't come from that one swim. It came over the course of the entire day. The 108 degree heat had dissipated, and we had beautiful weather on the coast. Calmer temperatures that we could play in. I followed the river swim with long bouts of ocean play, running in and out of the waves with my kids and my mother, Dad asleep in a chair in the sand. I followed that with a wienie roast over a campfire on the beach, something I hadn't done since the 70's as a kid, and something I was able to watch my 81 year old father truly enjoy.


And while I didn't walk out of the river feeling like the grief was all gone, I walked away from the ocean later that day feeling exactly that. It's not one instance or action that makes it go away. It's piling up the days in which I live through an entire day feeling only happiness. It's more significant when I realize that it's my birthday, a day that one year ago was the worst in my life as I learned things I didn't want to learn. In some ways, I opened my eyes again this birthday, and while they've fluttered close a couple of times since then, I won't lose the feeling of a hallmark day that was truly wonderful. It was the child being born after the painful birth process. It was my sense of self returning after the struggles of this past year. As the sun set on that brilliant day, a day of respite from the heat and my grief, there we were. Grateful, instead of grieving.

Barack's Father's Day comments

Barack Obama gave a speech on father's day talking about family as a foundation of our society, and the importance of fathers within that foundation. He talked about it weakens our society that there are so many fathers missing from their children's lives.

I looked at his speech and thought about how I can (and do) incorporate into my own parenting the things he identifies as necessary to strengthen our families. In my role as sometimes both the mother and father, I take these words in as my responsibility as much as or even moreso than the responsibility of my children's father.

"It’s up to us – as fathers and parents – to instill this ethic of excellence in our children. It’s up to us to say to our daughters, don’t ever let images on TV tell you what you are worth, because I expect you to dream without limit and reach for those goals. It’s up to us to tell our sons, those songs on the radio may glorify violence, but in my house we live glory to achievement, self respect, and hard work. It’s up to us to set these high expectations. And that means meeting those expectations ourselves. That means setting examples of excellence in our own lives.

The second thing we need to do as fathers is pass along the value of empathy to our children. Not sympathy, but empathy – the ability to stand in somebody else’s shoes; to look at the world through their eyes. Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in “us,” that we forget about our obligations to one another. There’s a culture in our society that says remembering these obligations is somehow soft – that we can’t show weakness, and so therefore we can’t show kindness.

But our young boys and girls see that. They see when you are ignoring or mistreating your wife. They see when you are inconsiderate at home; or when you are distant; or when you are thinking only of yourself. And so it’s no surprise when we see that behavior in our schools or on our streets. That’s why we pass on the values of empathy and kindness to our children by living them. We need to show our kids that you’re not strong by putting other people down – you’re strong by lifting them up. That’s our responsibility as fathers."

And as mothers and teachers and grandparents and any adults in the lives of children. I will strive to make this a reality in my family. You can see/hear the speech in its entirety, here.

It is as it Should Be

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

The ascent

I climbed a mountain, yesterday. We have these nice, peaky volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest, most quite climbable in one day. This one was my first solo ascent since my divorce, for which I submitted my paperwork last Monday. My "Divorce Climb."

Many times during the climb I reminded myself that physical pain is better than emotional pain. Physical pain helps mask emotional pain. Drowns it right out. It felt good to climb this mountain, although a little lonely, at times. I asked myself why I was doing it. Should Mountain Climbing be something of my 20's? Something I gave up once I had a family and settled down? I can see good arguments for it. It's hard! It's less safe to go alone, and there are fewer people I know that are up for the challenge.

And, if given the chance, I could take a gentle walk with another person where I could have pleasant conversation and make or strengthen a human connection that brings me pleasure. So why climb the mountains? Is it just the sense of accomplishment? What do I really gain by being able to say, "I climbed Mt. McLoughlin yesterday. Look! I don't have skin on my heels, anymore!"

I don't know, but I know that I smiled a lot while I walked through that forest alone. I know I enjoyed the smell of the trees and the crisp air, the crunching of the snow (except when I postholed up to my thigh...in shorts...ouch!). I know I loved the feel of the sun on my skin, and I felt proud of myself when someone at the top offered to take a picture of me and the three guys that had summited around the same time, and I was able to say, "I came up on my own." And maybe that's it. Maybe that's what mountain climbing does for me. It gives me the reminder that I can come up on my own. Even if I do go with friends on subsequent climbs, if I have support, it's up to me to get there.

And so it is. It's up to me to get there, and wherever I am, I've gotten myself here. Let those places be heights and accomplishments I can be proud of. I am proud of how I've done as a single mother. I am proud of the kind of teacher I am becoming. I am proud of the genuine connections I make with people, and especially with my children. I've gotten myself to this place, and it's not a bad place at all. Maybe I've just broken through treeline, leaving the slog of the approach and the elusive path (sometimes buried in snow) behind, and the rest of the ascent is the really clean, clear air kind, with the breathtaking views and the people that check up on each other along the way. I'd like to think so.