Briar looked at me nodding, “Of course we do, Mom.” I smiled remembering her first day of school and the blur of firsts and lasts that followed.

Avery looked up at me after lacing her shoes. “Yeah, I want to go, I can tell them how much I know about beavers.” The timidity she began school with has been replaced by a brazen confidence, but her inimitable Averyness is still there in spades.

Finley said, “Girls, girls, listen, it’s going to be great. I will show you all my classmates. Right, mama?” She still struggles to make an r not sound like a w and when she wants to look serious she tucks her hair, that I used to pull in messy twists, behind her ears.

The thing I’ve learned over the nearly nine years I’ve been throwing this clay pot of working mom, is that I can’t plan for everything. The truth is that I navigate the school year with a combination of high heels, work gloves, and tissues for my tears. I sign up for some field trips, while others I don’t. Some days I snap pictures of every little thing, other days I put the 18th connect-the-dots worksheet from school into the recycling bin.

This particular field trip is one that I attended several years ago with Avery as the student and Fin as the tag-a-long sister. It was a buggy, overcast day. It was also the time when dragon flies hatch. I’m comfortable saying that I enjoy being in nature, but I am not a fan of living, breathing, flapping nature being on me. My attendance became legendary, as one teacher often reminded me at morning drop-off, “You were just so afraid of the bugs, weren’t ‘cha?” laughing and elbowing in my direction at morning drop off. Over time I stopped caring, playing along and laughing, “You bet, I’m a big, old bug hater.” There are other comments too, “You won’t forget Pajama Day this year, will ya? No, you’re a good mom, that time you forgot you ran right out and bought some.” I wince, owning that details slip through the cracks when a backpack travels in different cars to and from home, school, Nana’s and home again and between dinner, bedtime, and the morning sprint.

But do we have to go back time after time and replay it? Monday we did. She greeted us with a huge shout to the other parents, “Look at Amanda, she’s got a whole pack. Remember the time you came and you were so afraid of the bugs? She’s prepared this year!” I laughed and brandished our Bite Back bug repellent.The big girls raced across the beach busting with pride that as the oldest kids they could tear away from the pack.

As Finley played, the teacher came over and said, “You made it? Remember when you had to miss Avery’s graduation? Remember how upset you were?” then she just walked away. I looked out at Briar and Avery, not wanting to reveal just how fully her words had knocked the breath out of me. It was three years ago. I’d had an awards ceremony to attend for work. Yes, I was disappointed, but we worked through it as a family. I attended the rehearsal with Sean and Finley, we arranged for Nana and Jeannie to accompany her to her official ceremony. I could show more pictures, share more stories, but somehow that doesn’t matter. Other moms swat at the bugs, but I get singled out.

I don’t know when we started graduating from every grade, celebrating every obscure holiday with gift bags and costumes. I don’t know when it became ok to judge parents for not going to every single event. Who gave the green light to the idea that one contribution is worth more than another?  We pay for preschool programs to enrich our children’s minds, expand their social experience, and begin to establish a comfort with the concept of parents going away and coming back, right? Instead, here we are, conducting a twisted neener-neener game. I admit that I have had my moments of envy and even a bit of resentment when I see stay-at-home moms chatting in the parking lot, rather than rushing from one place to the next. At the end of the day, we all have laundry to do, toilets to clean, and tweezers to find.

Part of what motivates me during my work day is my desire to be a strong role model for my girls. I don’t want them to think that every opportunity in life is going to come with clear pros and cons so that they can make snap decisions and never second guess themselves. Life isn’t like that. It’s beautiful and magnificent and yours for the taking, but it isn’t black and white. An auditorium seat that one person perceives to be empty, may very well be the symbol to a beaming kid that their mama is out receiving an armload of trophies that represent the efforts and triumph of the entire family.

I am a mom who works.

Briar, Avery, and Finley are my first thought in the morning and the last thank you on my lips at night. If that leaves doubt in someone’s mind about how I feel about them in the moments in between, then so be it.

The truth is, while the judgement genuinely hurts, I’m caring less and less about what someone else thinks of me.

]]> http://amandamagee.com/2013/05/truth-hurts/feed/ 0 http://amandamagee.com/2013/05/truth-hurts/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/amandamagee/kAPL/~3/S3-ZWkjIZ0M/ http://amandamagee.com/2013/05/broken-plug/#comments Tue, 14 May 2013 20:47:07 +0000 amandamagee http://amandamagee.com/?p=4431 The concept of unplugging is a thing of beauty. Set aside the phone, close the laptop, hide the remote, and give yourself completely to the three dimensional. The pressure to unplug and the judgement of not doing so has become an oppressive blanket. The divide between those of us who use the online realm for work and those who don’t is a rapidly growing chasm. Essays on “That mom at the playground” abound. Luckily, of all the things I take to heart and struggle to overcome, this kind of judgement isn’t one of them.

I want to unplug. I set my phone to silent and tuck it beneath the lamp in my bedroom. The tv isn’t an issue, it holds no real draw. Laptop, stowed. And yet, it isn’t the pulse of social media or the persistent tickle of email that tether me. All of that I can easily power down, it is the hamster wheel in my head that runs toward closure and things making sense that I cannot stop. My mind, no matter how pressing the details of my life are, seems unable to terminate the way it is set on repeat to fix things.

“Once I figure this out, I can let it go.”

Friday was a bad day full of loose ends and unpleasant moments. Sean had a late night gig and the weekend was forecasted to be a wash out. I came home in a bit of a fog, wasted from the week and filled with a gnawing dread of being cooped up with the girls just as spring fever had really set in for all of us. Around 6 o’clock Sean took the big girls to their piano lessons and I went about making dinner while half-heartedly playing family with Finley. I put meat in a marinade for Sean to grill and chicken in the oven for the girls. It was a classic case of going through the motions, not because I wasn’t interested, but because as unplugged as I thought I was, I wasn’t.Lately my plug has been broken, irrevocably stuck in the on position.

After dinner, Sean gone and the steep climb of bedtime looming, I walked out of the kitchen and found a pile of discarded cardboard boxes. Suddenly all three girls were upon me. Boxes, you see, incite in my girls a kind of excitement and wonder rivaled only by bubble wrap. “Can we have those? Can we have every single one of them?” They were breathless and purposeful and, I saw quite clearly, filled with undiluted hope.

“Sure.”

They carefully inspected the boxes, turning them this way and that to determine their potential. They flirted with fighting, but kept moving, tearing out of the room exclaiming over the superiority of their picks. I puttered past the stairs and in to the laundry room, so much laundry, I turned back. Finley called to me from upstairs. She wanted me to play. I feared being distant, because at five she would prefer that I not play if I am only going to gaze off into space or check my phone. I trudged up the stairs thinking I’d play for a couple of minutes and then start bedtime.

At the top of the stairs I felt myself cross a line. The girls were scattered, each doing her own embellishment to the cardboard. They were getting along and I suddenly understood how intimate this was, how sacred our home can be if I let it. I didn’t want ghosts here, couldn’t abide the thought of the bitterness I have roiling around so close to these girls. Protecting my family goes beyond the surface, because everything I carry inside of me, I bring back to them.

“Girls, what do you say we build a fort around you and actually design the boxes? I even have another box downstairs that I can cut to make a privacy wall.”

They tried not to look surprised. They tried not to rush me in their excitement. They watched me and waited, three sets of blue eyes and three pairs of hands, still small enough to catch my breath. I gathered supplies, unpacked fabric, and set about transforming the hallway and my heart. Each loop around the banister loosened my shoulders, each squeak of the marker against cardboard cleared my head. I watched them purse their lips and grip the scissors. Dots of green and smears of blue were everywhere, on noses and cheeks and even the carpet. I felt a kind of Christmas morning giddiness. We kept going, with Beso curled up happily on a stair and bedtime miles from any of our minds.

Sometimes things don’t make sense and letting go has to come from a place that allows the reality that nothing I could have done would have changed the outcome, other times letting go can only really be found in holding on to something else.

Holding on to my dear life and loving it.

I want to find expressive, profound words for what has happened, not the bad stuff, but the good stuff. I needed help. There was a huge mountain of dread between me and asking for help, but the other night I did. And just like that I wasn’t alone.

I think all I really need to say is thank you.

I winced. I wouldn’t say something like that, even on my worst foot-in-the-mouth kind of day. It hung there in the air between us and I thought of the wrinkle between my eyes, the way my cheeks have hollowed and the way that at certain times my shoulders have gathered—not in the strong way that you are taught in Pilates to isolate muscles, but in the self-protective way that you do when you try to make yourself smaller, when you try to make an awful moment pass more quickly. I effortlessly catalogued in my mind the spots on my face and the new cowlick that gyrates with frizzy, maddening abandon front and center above my face.

I raised my head and looked myself dead in the eye in the mirror, measuring my words before letting them out, because one path would go irrevocably to a place without return and the other would lead to tears. Luckily as I worked through my hurt and defeat, she filled the silence with more words. It was over, but the moment trudged alongside me for the rest of the day. I manage and control so many things in a day that some twisted part of me seems to think that I should be able to control me. I should be able to overcome tendencies toward, if not complete self-loathing, dissatisfaction with my appearance.

Lately though, I can’t.

I cannot leap out of bed like I used to.

I cannot shake a hurt like I I have before.

It is hard to not feel less-than because I am not effortlessly vivacious.

I do not fill things out like I used to—not a top, not a bottom, and not a room. I find myself, despite my best efforts, looking furtively around restaurants and other public venues. I flinch when I sense one of the young sparklers walking by. I don’t want to feel envy, I don’t want to catch wandering eyes that make me think of what seems like the inevitability of temptation. My husband adores me, my daughters worship me, and yet…I compare myself to days that have passed rather than looking forward to days that are to come, or simply the days that are here. It deflates me and adds to the relentless cycle of feeling disappointed in myself.

“The world is as we are.”
Deepak Chopra

“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
Henri J.M. Nouwen

I realize that this is a bit of a recurring theme, but as I look toward the days ahead, I am not going to beat myself up—not for being older than 25, not for wishing my skin was more taut, and not for spending time trying to work through these feelings. Just as my youngest faces the exhilarating milestone of kindergarten, I will reach milestones. There is no handbook for turning forty or for tucking your diaper bags away, stopping breastfeeding after 6 years, and realizing that you and the world have changed.

So as we all slog through another Monday, maybe you started yours with an emergency trip to the dentist for your child like I did (which let me tell you, there is nothing that brings the sense of failure as a parent to the surface as a toothache and , “Hmm, looks like you haven’t been here in almost a year,” tsk tsk tsk from the dental hygienist) or maybe you were desperately trying to wrangle a snack for pre-k that fell within the guidelines of no sugar, no tree nuts, pre-washed, cut and portioned, or you were looking at the clock trying not say, “You’re fucking kidding me, we missed the bus again,” however it was that you started the day, let’s all agree to dial the disappointment in ourselves back a notch.

Because honestly, chances are there is a big old line of people willing to do the judging for you. Save yourself the trouble and just consider a day without bloodshed a win.

]]> http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/i-said-it/feed/ 15 http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/i-said-it/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/amandamagee/kAPL/~3/q_W9nLVpR48/ http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/plan-for-detours/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:13:50 +0000 amandamagee http://amandamagee.com/?p=4398 The other day I was driving toward our house to meet the bus. I was coming around a bend that always gives me pause, something about it makes me brace for a child darting into the road. One night, I was coming home very late, just as I came up the hill to the bend, a massive deer loped into the road. There were no horns, but it was massive, so I always refer to it as a male in my mind. The speed limit on this road is 45, but I always go a bit slower. I took my foot off the gas as he stopped in his tracks and looked at me. A huge moon shone down on us and time seemed to stand still. After a time he walked on toward the far side of the road and disappeared into the woods. Just beyond the bend and in sight of the bus stop I found myself looking to the end of the road.

My mind was swirling with how no matter the intensity of our belief that our story is central, there are other people fighting a fight, nursing a hurt, or accepting the unthinkable—the fifth day after your wife has died, a promise of a few months cut short by a swift, hospice supported march to nevermore, a pink slip. The list really does go on and my own rhythm of ruminating on the what ifs was cut short by the idea of people lined side-to-side and down the road as far as my eye could see. Each person, from their feet to their head, distinct from the one beside them, but each with a story as important and as raw as the next.

I shook my head feeling silly. How do you explain that a vision of bodies in the road reminded you that we are all indeed precious? How do you articulate that for one brief moment you had total clarity that your life can matter and your heart can hurt and that even as you endure that, you can acknowledge that others experience things, some worse, some more wonderful than yours, without diminishing your own struggle? Realizing the vastness of things, the number of people here and gone and still to come, doesn’t make my sorrow fade nor does it temper the exquisite joy of making the house ring with the peals of my daughters’ delighted laughter, what it does is it lets me breathe.

I am not the only person who careens through the day trying to manage the details and demands of school, while also trying to locate and hang on to the place between anger and apathy. The truth, gleaned from the emotional uncorking of friends and the strange roadside realization, is that everyone is just getting by, enduring rough patches and devouring joy as it comes. There is no failure in what we are doing, it really just is.

This afternoon I was sorting papers and trying to get myself transitioned from work to home, I’d set the girls up in the back yard, the dog was happy, my work to-do-list was done, and I was almost there. I was headed out to join the girls when I saw one last paper. It looked like it had a chart on it and I thought that maybe it was work notes. As I stepped closer I saw that it was written in Briar’s hand, her recently, more legible and exacting hand. It was titled, “Watermelon Plan.”

I was so completely caught off guard. We’d sat together doing the seed prep, filling the containers with soil, poking little holes, and then painstakingly placing the seeds in them. Briar had been in charge of the cucumber seeds, so it hadn’t occurred to me that she was paying any attention at all to the other seeds. After 45 minutes of effort she asked to play with her sisters, upon hearing us say yes, she darted out and was gone. I have no idea when she made the watermelon plan or whether her sisters were with her as she did it.

I do know that she beamed when I told her that I found the plan and photographed it. She looked at me with those blue eyes of hers and said, “You found it? How? Where? When?” I smiled and shook my head as I do when she rapid fires questions my way. “I like cucumbers and I am glad that I planted them, but I really love watermelons. So even if they don’t grow, we can get some at the market, maybe those seeds would work better. The plan is good, but we can change it. You can always change your plan, it’s just a start.” And just like that, she dashed back out to a rousing, made-up game of perilous tag she had invented with her sisters, leaving me standing by a hopeful flat of planted seeds.

The plan is good, but we can change it.

Whatever we are doing or conquering or fearing somehow falls loosely into our plan, which does not succeed or fail based on how closely it sticks to our first understanding. Plans change and people change every single day.

It’s ok. We are ok. We just need to change the plan.

Safest your kids will ever be, is right there in your belly.

The days are long, but the years are short.

Just wait ’til she’s a teenager, she’s gonna hate you.

You’re going to miss this.

It’ll be over in a blink.

I’d like to think that I was somewhat graceful in how I received these things, at least on the outside, though I’m sure an occasional lip snarl was visible. As the years have gone by, faster than even those strangers promised, I find myself reconsidering what they said. I soften, toward them and toward the inevitable ways we resist the advice of those further down the path. Wisdom tickles at my own lips as people around me lift a toe toward ground I’ve trod. I hold back, but only barely.

I come home and think that I should remember those words, I should heed the advice of people intimate with just how quickly one day becomes I should have. I have the best of intentions, but even the best intentions can fall victim to the cumulative weight of 8 hours of being pelted by one thing or another. When the trek from the driveway to the mudroom has the ability to spark squabbles between the girls over, from what I can tell, absolutely nothing and when the dog vies desperately for my attention when all I want, for-the-love-of-all-that-is-good, is a moment to finally pee, I wonder if my priorities are completely out of whack. Defeated, frustrated and frozen because I just want the chance to pee after unreasonably setting aside that most basic need to take another meeting.

This moment, which doesn’t happen every day, makes me feel the deepest kind of shame. I chose everything that I have—daughters, business, people who love me. How dare I wish for those things to fall away entirely so that I can what, go to the bathroom and then linger to obsess over my deepening 11 wrinkle?

Yesterday I was in the blurry moments of transition, when I leave the office to meet the bus, but my responsibilities don’t end—emails still come through, calls flash on my phone. I was about to close my laptop when I saw the news about Boston. I didn’t at first know what it really meant, so often do horrifying headlines flash from the screen. I clicked and began to understand. I thought back to Sean and Ave at Fewnway on Saturday, then I thought back to September 11th 2001 and being on our way to Logan. I thought of Newtown, of Ransom, and of Dawn, I thought back to my accident, and I felt everything slip away.

I tried to understand what it was, but the best I could do was sense a letting go, detachment coursing through me. Again. Like unwanted wisdom from the universe. Doesn’t matter how good. Doesn’t matter how pure. Lives will end, abruptly and without notice. Moms will die. Sons will die. Senseless tragedy will strike even as you feel as if you are still grieving from the last time.

What is the lesson?

…to anticipate inevitable loss?

…be grateful for every moment?

…to hate those who do evil?

…to lift up those focused on good?

I want this time to be different. I want to remember what has happened and be conscious of my blessings in every moment. I have no doubt that I’ll try. I’ll continue lingering over my sleeping girls, I’ll be kind to those around me, and strive to focus more on good than evil. I hope I will always be surprised when evil visits, just as I hope I’ll have the discipline to focus on the very good things that exist in the world but don’t hold the headlines quite so long.

I suppose this is all a longwinded way of saying that perhaps the pearls people try to give us, no matter how crudely, are in fact gifts. Just as life is, in each moment, whether we are aware of it or not, a beautiful thing.

Be tender to all those you meet, because as the saying goes, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

I use Pinterest to talk to myself in ways that I can actually use. I know that for every 100 great ideas I find to quell my working mom guilt and use for awesome projects with the girls, I will try 3 and fail at 2. I will confess, I am in the midst of a 30day squat challenge. It first drew my attention because there have been some shitty things going on in my life lately and the word squat has been synonymous with going to the bathroom since we introduced the girls to camping. The title made me think about crap, moving on, and endurance. And, just maybe, about my backside and the rapid approach of boat weather. This is all to say that I think we should take the challenges with a big, old grain of salt and see ourselves as the real opportunity for change, because the secret isn’t in the gorgeous girl representing the 10 minutes a day that will make you leaner. That girl, that secret: it’s you. Seriously, forget the 22 year old in the picture and have a talk with the whatever-year-old in the mirror.

There is no pin, no pic, no magic list of things that is going to change you. The thing that will get you closer to these things that we all seem to covet, is making a pact with yourself that you will. My squat challenge? It was my attempt to crack through (bwahahaha) a really dark time and to do so in a way that would not leave room for failure. I know that I can slip away unnoticed for 10 minutes to do a set number of squats in my bedroom or the bathroom without needing to schedule it. No gym, no equipment, nothing but a promise to myself that before the day is done I will have squatted. Clearly for me there is also humor in this particular challenge, it speaks to me on various levels and as I am doing it/them, I focus on moving ahead.

Now, as I embark on this particular challenge and I leave the others alone, I also don’t kid myself into thinking that I will miraculously get calves that can fit into the kicky capris and skinny jeans that seem to become all the rage each summer. My legs, despite any number of sure thing workouts, will always be shaped in such a way that either the fabric is so taut at the calf that it does not touch the back of my knees or the waist sits permanently at my hips giving me a modified MC Hammer pant situation. I will not pursue anything that promises otherwise. I also know that there are some things that I can forgive quite happily and move on, there are others that, while I can appreciate the value of forgiveness, I am going to keep. For me keeping a tiny scorch mark that I can see, keeps me from making certain mistakes twice.

We don’t have stay away from Pinterest or quick fixes, but we do need to give consideration to an every day challenge:

Can we agree to assign realistic goals and keep our promises to ourselves on a daily basis?

]]> http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/30-day-challenge/feed/ 4 http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/30-day-challenge/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/amandamagee/kAPL/~3/DzJYTHTrMu8/ http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/in-what-world/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:40:44 +0000 amandamagee http://amandamagee.com/?p=4360 In what world would you ever justify a crime by laying blame on the victim?

If I leave my front door unlocked does it give someone permission to come inside?

If the door is thrown wide open does that mean that anyone is invited to come and take whatever they’d like?

If there is a can of spray paint sitting next to the garage door which has already been vandalized with “Wash me” is permission granted to spray paint my car?

If someone drives a red car with undercarriage lights and plays profanity laced music and parks outside of casinos does it mean they deserve to have their tires slashed?

If your child is playing on a playground and her skirt gets hiked up is she inviting abuse? What if she purposefully reveal her underpants, does that mean anyone who sees her can do whatever they want?

If a person in a position of authority was shown a photo of a person driving a car that was reported stolen and the photo was acquired via a text sent from the phone of the person in the picture would the lead be pursued?

Or would the person be told, “You cannot prove that you did not give them permission to drive it. You cannot prove that they sent the text?”

What if tens and hundreds of people had seen the photo? Get over it? Just be more careful with your car?

Do we only fail to acknowledge a crime when it involves a woman’s body and her word against a man’s?

Somehow I can’t imagine a world where we’d say, “You invited that robbery,” or “You encouraged that break in.” Yet the fallback in cases of sexual assault seems to be that a woman’s behavior is what sparked the episode. Episode, because most times it isn’t even considered a crime.

Bottom line is it does not matter what a woman wears. It does not matter where she is. It doesn’t matter what she tweets. It is her body, not yours.

If you struggle with that, how about this, the list of deaths on our collective conscience is growing. It isn’t that girls are weak, it isn’t that boys don’t know better, it is simply that men and women are not working hard enough to acknowledge that we indeed have a problem of rape culture and it isn’t going to stop by itself. We have to talk. We have to shift the mysterious, dubious, unfair beliefs about women and their bodies.

We have to acknowledge the world that we live in, the world that we want our children to grow up in, and the distance we need to travel to make the move to a better world.

Are you ready to help change the world?

It absolutely delighted us. Watching her blossom and gain confidence at school as she became a big girl was inspiring. This year she is in 3rd grade. She is still inspiring, but I find myself feeling less like she is experiencing the learning process and more like she is being forced into a very dark and hopeless box. I wrote a little bit about how our first experience with testing has been. I hope that you will visit the New York State United Teachers site to read the post and, hopefully, to leave your comments about your own experience with testing.

I understand that there may be many viewpoints on this subject, but I think we owe it to our kids and the future of our state to talk openly about this as parents, educators, tax payers and, honestly, as former elementary school students.

Head on over.

]]> http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/making-the-grade/feed/ 0 http://amandamagee.com/2013/04/making-the-grade/