Graceful Adulthood

Whenever I return to my husband's little hometown of Fuquay-Varina, NC, I'm always amazed that people actually do grow up.  The little children who once ran down the aisle for children's church now hang back and talk about politics and sports.  The young girls who once tugged on my sleeve announce college acceptances. The high school students I used to know now have careers and spouses, and to my amazement and delight, new babies!  

Children do become adults in this little town.  And at least here, they don't seem to mind.

I've been studying theories of emerging adulthood this month.  Researchers worry that many adolescents in this generation do not transition well into adulthood.  They seek pleasure, fame, and ease and delay assuming the adult responsibilities of financial independence, marriage, family, and careers until well beyond 30 years of age.

Nobody wants to be an adult anymore.

But not in this town. This community celebrates, encourages, and teaches the graceful transition to adulthood.   It's a privilege and a joy to raise children, work hard, and serve your community.  Your own father did this, and his father before him.  Your own mother did this, and her mother before her.  You welcome the hard work of it.  You welcome the blessing of dying to self and raising up the next generation.

I'm sitting quietly in the pew, watching the new generation.  I feel old but full of peace and joy.   There's something so right about growing old and serving others.

Maybe the researchers need to come visit this town.  Some American children do grow up well.

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Do you worry that children aren't growing into adulthood well?

How to Survive the Waiting

This morning, a boy turns to me and asks, "Can you give me any tips on how to wait for something?"

I'm stumped.  I'm floored.  I'm overcome with how sweet (but so important) this question is and how many years of his life he'll be waiting for something.  Here he is--just a boy--already waiting and needing to know how to survive the wait.

I'm overcome with how much of life is about waiting.  I think every person I know has something they are waiting for.  My own waiting--for the dreams of my children, for the plans I've made with my husband, for my own novelist longings--are equal parts delight and despair.  Waiting is the not yet.  It's a yes and a no at the same time.  It's the impossible focus on two dimensions:  hope and the reality of now. 

It's the grand universal Maybe. 

I tell the little boy (he's not so little now--we're on our 4th year of walking to school together) that all I can offer is this:  Focus on the great things right in front of you today.  But then I correct myself.  I remember the beauty of longing, the joy of waiting because something is coming.  I run up beside him and tell him that it's a great thing to wait.  It's the best thing in the world.

Something is coming.  It's just around the corner.  Living with flair means we delight in the Maybe.

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Journal:  What would you have said to this boy? 

What a Child Needs to Hear from You

I'm visiting with my dear friend, the one who told me that the sign of a happy childhood is dirty children.  This is my same friend who raises five children without a television set or computer games.  I'm always eager for what new parenting advice she'll impart.

Today, I watch and listen.  Over and over again, I hear her tell her children, "I just love to be with you."  Her teenage daughter comes to sit next to her, and she says, "I'm so glad!  I just love to be with you."  She still walks with the teenager to school, she says, "because I just love to be with her so much."  She says it so that daughter can overhear her. 

The teenager's beaming face lights the whole kitchen.

Later, we leave to go on a walk in the neighborhood, and the oldest children want to come along.  Their mother says, "Of course!  I just love to be with you!" 

That's the phrase I hear the most coming out of this mother's mouth.

I make lunch with my daughters later, and I tell them, "I just love to be with you."  I walk outside and push them on the swing and tell them, "I just love to be with you."

Something's changed between us already.  

I wonder if children would make better choices, grow in confidence, overflow with happiness, and connect better with their parents if we practiced saying, "I just love to be with you."  I want my children to overhear me tell the neighbors this.  I want my children to know I'd choose them.  I want my children to know that those words reflect the boundless love of God who adores and delights in them.

I'm going to tell more children that I love to be with them.  

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Journal:  What child in your life needs to hear the words, "I just love to be with you"?  

Espionage!

Our morning routine includes espionage.  We have to scour the backyard for secret information.  

Even in our bare feet, we tiptoe across the morning dew to snoop on the strawberries.

Then, we plunge inside the winterberry bush to spy on the Northern Cardinal who built a nest there this past week.

It doesn't stop there.  "We have to check on the beans!  We have to check on the beets!"   And we whisper because this is a garden reconnaissance mission, and I haven't even poured my coffee yet. 

That's what we do now.  After school, we'll investigate to see if the eggs have hatched at the vernal pond. 

I'm right there with them.  Living with flair means I'm spying on Spring.  We quiet ourselves, walk gingerly, and peer into secret processes.  You don't outgrow this kind of wonder.


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Journal:  How can I find some wonder outside today?

Come See This!

At Fitness Group, the children huddle around me and tug on my sleeve because they have things to show me.

One boy has drawn a dragon out of chalk that spans the length of 3 cars.  He drags me over to his drawing, insisting that I observe the scales, the teeth, the wings, the claws.  With precise detail, he explains his work.  "You have to see this!" he cries and points to the "primary set of claws."    

Others alert the parents to ducks that have landed in the far corner of the parking lot.  "Watch me chase them!" I hear.  Still another displays a kite in the shape of an owl.  "Come see this!" she calls out.

Others jump rope and tell me I have to watch them. 

I consider how beautiful this insistence to come see this! is.

It won't always be this way.

At some point, they'll stop showing themselves--and their discoveries--off.  They'll become self-conscious and internal, hidden away and private.  The world becomes a critical judge, and they'll hide. They'll become embarrassed and worried about the crowd.

They'll produce things that deserve our attention, but we won't know about them because they won't dare tell anyone.

I know because I teach college seniors.  Dragon drawings will stay hidden in notebooks.  Nobody admits to chasing ducks or wanting to fly an owl kite.

I wish we all did. 

Living with flair means we build communities where it's right and good to cry out, "Come see this!"  We build communities where we invite others to show us what they've made, where they tell us what they're thinking, and where we watch and listen intently.  That's why I love Saturday Morning Pancakes and Creative Projects Night Out with the Ladies (what we did for my birthday in autumn).

In these spaces, we celebrate one another and rediscover that child within that once drew dragons, chased ducks across a parking lot, and told everyone about it.  Come see this! 

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Journal:  What have you made or been doing that you can tell others about?

You Cannot Contain This

My morning begins by watching children race down the street so the speed limit monitor sign records their speed.  I still haven't had enough coffee to move properly, and these kids are racing.  They know how to walk to school with flair.   I secretly want to record my own speed.  I still might, but I'm too busy trying to contain the activity. 

Turkey Masks

Then, I volunteer in the kindergarten classroom.  The teacher puts me in charge of the Turkey Masks for the feast the class will have next week.  I'm the monitor, and I can't contain this project; the children smear glue everywhere, and feathers are in their hair, on their shirts, and attached to their jeans.

Eventually, we produce these fine specimens. 

However, nobody can see anything once the mask is on.  I wonder about this, but then I see kids delighting in darkness.

Apparently, this makes the feast more fun and uncontrollable.  

Meanwhile, I monitor the purple glue sticks and question how in the world they go on purple but dry clear.  The chemistry behind this phenomenon has me stumped.

Something dries out, and the purple disappears. Who invented this great item?  Maybe the same person who, as a kid, would have raced towards the speed limit monitor sign.

Lord, let me monitor my own joy today.  Let me race down streets, wear turkey masks even when I can't see a thing, and stay vibrant purple.  Let me not be contained.  Let me have turkey feathers even on my jeans. 

I'm on my way to run in front of the speed monitor.   

What $5.00 Bought Me This Morning

My 10 year old neighbor has started a garden and pet care business.  His flyer says he's "responsible, caring, and dependable. . . since 1999."  This morning, I hired him.  He said he could groom my cats, empty litter boxes, and play with the cats for exercise.  He said he would charge me $2.50 for his work.

I've used this service before.  At the beginning of the summer, he came to my house as a garden consultant and advised me about the placement of my beds and compost. 

This morning, I paid him $5.00 because not only did he care for all the pets, but he decided he needed to vacuum the basement.  And then, he wanted to help me make cranberry bread.  He needed to wash his hands first, he told me, because every proper chef washes hands before he handles food.

He's still here, occasionally checking his bread in the oven.

I told him he should run for President.

He said he probably will.

I told him I was going to blog about him today, and he wasn't interested.  He's not into fame or recognition.  Right now, he's into dragging the yellow rope around the house to exercise my cats.   He wants to make sure he fully earns his pay.

I hope he never loses whatever it is he has right now.  It's the kind of flair I want all the neighborhood kids to have.  When I asked him why he's starting a business, he said he has stuff he can do, and he can earn money and not be bored.  He's not watching TV or lounging around this summer, and he's not exhausting his parents' resources by begging for trips to Disney World or expensive summer camps.  No, he's going to run a business to help neighbors with their gardens and pets.   I just love that.

Swimming Beneath the Geese

I'm swimming in a lake with my daughters, and another family nearby starts feeding the geese.  Within seconds, a gaggle surrounds us.  They come from every direction, leaving the shore and their organized formations across the lake.  Our heads bob along in the water right against their soft, wild feathers.  I'm so close that I can look into those deep black eyes and touch the fuzzy heads of the goslings.

It doesn't seem right how close we are. It seems other-worldly. We aren't separate from the wild; we're swimming along with it. 

The family with the goose food offers me a handful.  If I'm still enough, someone tells me, the geese will eat from my hand.

And so I am.  And so they do.

I'm told we can swim under the geese and even touch their webbed feet.  Because the geese are used to floating logs and debris, they don't mind when you hold their feet.  My daughter tightens her goggles and dives under the surface to swim beneath the geese.

My five year old has pink goggles that sit on the pier.  My husband tosses them out to me, and I dive deep under the gaggle, turn myself over, and look up towards the heavens.  It's all feathers, little webbed feet, and the jeweled water swirling above my head as the sun shines down.

I stored that experience away, like I hope my daughters did, in that place in my imagination reserved for the magical, the heavenly, and the purely happy.  Maybe one day, when life bears down on my children with that weight of sadness that comes to us all eventually, in its own way, they would recall this morning swim beneath the geese.  They could live again in that moment when something rare and beautiful happened.  And they'd catch it--all feathered, webbed, and jeweled--in their hands.


It could be their flair for that day.

What I Learned About Skin Today

Victory!  I figured something out:  My daughter loves to swing.  More than any other activity, she loves to swing.  Everyday, she asks if I can push her on the swing (she's not good at pumping yet).  And ever since I started writing the flair blog, I've been asking her why she loves it so much.  Living with flair is figuring out what we all love--getting to the core of it--and attaching it to a deeper truth.

My daughters think I'm over-analyzing.  I'm not phased by this.  I'm used to college students rolling their eyes and telling me we are "over-analyzing" that poem or that Shakespeare play.  They hate it when I ask them to tell me why they love something.

"Can't we just love it?  Do we have to know why?" 

Well, yes.  Yes, you do.

It will help you live great lives.

So this morning, I'm dusting my little one's room.  Both daughters are spinning around me, doing their little girl attempts at cleaning.  And I ask once again:

"Why do you love it so much?  Why do you love swinging for hours?"

"Mom, I already told you.  I...don't...know."

"It's not because it's high up or fast or something?"

"No."

"It's not because it feels like you're flying?"

"No.  I just like it.  That's all. OK?"  She's a college student telling me I'm over-analyzing.  She wants to love the poem but not care why. 

But I'm not finished yet. I call the older one, the wiser one who is more prone to accept challenges.

"Why does she love the swing so much?"

"Easy, Mom.  She loves it because it cools her down.  It's the wind she loves."

"But she loves to swing all winter--when she's already cold."

"Well, then, it's because she can feel the wind on her whole entire body.  That's what she loves.  The wind on her skin!"

We pause for a minute and I'm told by my children that the skin is the largest organ and that it feels things for us.

"Right."  My little one pops up and nods rapidly.  "That's it, Mom!  That's it!  I love it because it's my whole body feeling it on my skin."

And the older one says:  "That's why kids like to get dirty.  It gets the whole body into it, on the skin, you know."

I'm thinking that computer games and television don't engage their bodies.  I'm thinking that I want to go get on a swing with them, dive back into the pool (and yes, I did do the diving board yesterday--a liberating front dive to the applause of other moms!), bury them in sand at the beach, run in the rain with them, or roll down a grassy hill to get my whole body feeling something.

I'm probably dying a little bit inside for lack of diverse activities that get every piece of my skin involved.  Living with flair is getting my whole body into something.  And it's getting down deep into my experience to figure out what and why I love it.


(Photo from School of Prosperity)

When You're All Out of Flair

"I'm all out of flair," I said somberly to my sister this morning.  I woke up tired, cranky, and very, very uninspired.  Not even more coffee helped.  But I clung to one little hope, flickering like some nearly expired candle.

My sister said, "There's hope of flair.  Just remember that."

And I did have hope that the day could be great.  After all, I would do the one thing that always makes me feel good in the summer.

I would put on my bathing suit and go swimming.

The summers between ages 10 and 15, I lived at the pool.  I'd walk the mile and a half (in my jelly shoes), with my towel around my neck, show up when it opened, and then close the place down.  Once you passed a swim test, the lifeguards let you come without your parents.  So that's what I did, every day, for the three months of summer.  That little public pool was my whole world those summers. 

I still remember claiming my lounge chair, spreading my towel, and running--with that lifeguard blowing his whistle and booming out the WALK command--and jumping in that pool.  I'd stay until dinner, surviving on snack food from a vending machine, race home to eat a meal, and then return until the sun went down.  Sometimes I had friends with me, sometimes not.  It didn't matter.  I belonged to everybody, and there were goals to accomplish:  a front flip on the diving board, a full pool length of holding my breath, a championship in random Marco-Polo or Sharks and Minnows games, or a successful backstroke.  

No homework, no chores, no mean girls.  Actually, there was a mean girl, and she quickly left me alone when she saw my front flip and my mad skills in the deep end.  I was happy, free, and completely myself, floating on my back with the water holding me up and the sun shining down.

Now, I'm older.  I have kids of my own who race down to the pool.  Our pool has been opened since Saturday, and we've been everyday but yesterday because a storm threatened.

I read that afternoon that Rue McClanahan died.  Summer nights, I watched "The Golden Girls."  In 1985, Ms. McClanahan told The New York Times that the writers of that show knew how to showcase the many layers of an older woman.  She said, “They don’t turn into other creatures. The truth is, we all still have our child, our adolescent and our young woman living in us.”

I thought about that quote this morning as I got our pool towels and bathing suits ready.  I'm happy at the pool, even as a woman, because that little girl on the diving board is still alive in me.  She's in there, sometimes buried deep, and sometimes so quiet I can't remember her.  But when I'm in the pool, she's back.  Living with flair means accessing the child in us (and even the teenager) who loved to be alive--coloring, biking, dancing, jump roping, reading or swimming.  Happiness has something to do with remembering what we loved and doing those things no matter how old we are.

So even though my bathing suit is the kind with the skirt to hide my stretch marks and cellulite, I'm going to try the diving board today.  Who's with me?