Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 71

The End Game of Motherhood

The endgame of motherhood is to make yourself obsolete. This is how you know you’ve succeeded, when they launch into their own lives and no longer need you. It is a hard thing. It is why I find myself crying on a sunny morning in a bright new year feeling sadness because we’ve just concluded the final holiday season when all the kids live at home. Kiki will come home for Christmas next year. I know she will. But it will be different. I don’t know about the year after that. Too many changes loom in the next few years for me to be able to predict what life will look like. I don’t want to stop. I don’t want to go back and redo anything I’ve done in the past seventeen years. No major regrets haunt me. I just wish this holiday could have lasted longer, that I could have savored it more, or stored it up for later. If only moments could be preserved like home canned food. I try with blog entries and photo books, but the memory of a moment is not the same as the moment itself. All of the moments for this holiday are gone.

The future is bright and full of possibility. I’m excited to see where Kiki will fly. I’m excited to launch the other kids into their futures too. But I now know–in a way that I did not before–that I will cry. Again and again I will cry. Because it feels like I am departing the heart of my life and I don’t want to. I’m going to miss this. Life will be different and I will find new ways to enjoy it. But just now I can’t imagine it being any better, because this part has been the best bit. I finally understand all those fervent exhortations to “Enjoy them now. They’ll be grown before you know it.” It was usually spoken by some stranger to me when my toddler and baby were climbing precariously in a shopping cart. I thought the advice givers were wrong. They were and they weren’t. For some mothers the best bit is when the kids are little, that is the heart’s home that they miss. I don’t miss the baby and toddler years, though I enjoyed them while I was in them. Right now is what I will miss. I’m going to miss four at home, two teens two kids, all of them running in different directions, squabbling over the cat, and the incessant sound of video games. This is my heart’s home and just now it feels like I will spend the rest of my life missing home.

I have eight months left. No wonder I have no desire to travel anywhere. I just want to be at home while home is still here. There is time afterward to figure out which new dreams will flow into the spaces that are opening up in my life. New happiness will come. Old dreams will become possible again in ways that they aren’t when I have primary care of developing human beings. I will find laughter and adventure. Things will be good, but they will be different and I can’t quite picture how it will be. So today I cry a little. Then I wipe my eyes and proceed with the day. No sense wasting what I have by grieving for what has not even happened yet. Once the kids come home, they hug me and all is well for now.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Halfway Out of the Dark

“I don’t want to put the Christmas tree away.” Kiki said on January first. She wasn’t the only child to express this sentiment. It was not mere chore avoidance, the kids honestly felt wistful and sad about putting away the trappings of the holiday season. I felt the same myself, but we proceeded, because the New Year was already marching on us and we had to become ready for it.

There have been years where Christmas was scoured from the house on Boxing Day, mere hours after the holiday was complete. Other years it was allowed to linger until New Year’s Day only on principle but my fingers were itching to put it away. This year we all left the holiday reluctantly, wishing for another week of setting our own schedules, another week of brightness in the dark. I pulled out the boxes and began putting things away, hoping that the actions would help us all re-set our brains into a non-holiday mode.

“Hey kids,” I said drawing four sets of eyes to focus on me. We were at the dinner table, which I find is a good place to make announcements since they’re all seated in the same room and relatively quiet. “School starts tomorrow, so after you eat I need to to pull out your backpacks and go through them to make sure that you’re ready.” This is the sort of announcement which often triggers a scrambling panic as one child or another remembers that there was this homework assignment they were supposed to do. Instead, four sets of eyes blinked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. What is this school thing, and how does one prepare for it? They’d packed away their school thoughts so thoroughly that they didn’t even know where to start finding them.

I sympathize. We used to get up how early? 5:30? Really? How did I do that? I rolled out of bed to the blaring alarm and had to carefully remember which steps came next: put on robe, wake Kiki, make breakfast. In October, November, early December these steps were habit. Now the habit feels rusty, as if it belonged to someone else and I’m trying to fill her shoes. I didn’t think the holidays were particularly transformative, but somehow they feel like a watershed, a turning point, instead of a pause. It is as if everything before belonged to a different era. “It’s weird, Mom,” said Kiki “but I kind of feel like I ought to be starting college, not going back to the last semester of high school.” I don’t think it is weird. Or if it is, then I suffer a similar weirdness. I want to move onward because there are things coming which I hope to reach. Yet I don’t want to leave the holiday break because the ground is cold and dark between where I am and those things I want to reach.

“Christmas, halfway out of the dark” proclaims Doctor Who A Christmas Carol. It is a ridiculous show which defies logic and delights me year after year. I think part of the reason it works for me is because of that phrase. It acknowledges that winter is a long dark journey. We celebrate in the middle by stringing up extra lights and singing special songs, but then the lights are put away and I have half of the dark journey left to go. It is the harder part because I am traveling away from the bright holiday season instead of toward it. I’m headed for spring, but it is hard to believe in spring when the world is frozen solid and I have to remember the steps to getting up at 5:30 am.

The decorations are tucked into the closet under the stairs and the tree is stashed away for the year. I am left with a front room which feels bare and in dire need of a new coat of paint. In the next few weeks I intend to supply that paint. It is one of the January projects I will use to give myself focus. Things I can focus on and accomplish in the short term as I step day by day into a time when the sun gets up before I do.

“I think we should have a two-month-long festival of lights.” Howard said while looking out the window at the first grayness of dawn. He did not want to put away the holiday brightness either. But we did. And the kids went to school, landing us on a Thursday which should have first-day-back-to-work enthusiasm. Except Thursday is when I usually begin winding up a work week. It is the day for finishing off and reassigning, not for beginning. So I light a candle despite the daylight which finally showed up outside the windows. Then I begin to feel my way through the day, with many pauses while I try to remember what should come next. Task by task, step by step, slowly traveling out of the dark.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Making Books

My blogging has been brief the last few days because I’ve been putting the last of the 2012 entries into my blog book for that year. Any time I’m placing blog entries into one of these books I spend some of that time wondering why on earth I’m so very wordy. The book for 2012 is 496 pages long, which is a full 96 pages more than the 2011 book. I wrote more this year. The project is packaged up and off at Lulu.com for printing. While I was in my Lulu account I paused to count. I’ve created 22 books through their website. These are the family photo books, blog books, and a couple of other personal projects. Add in the ten books I’ve produced through offset printing and I’ve created 32 books in the past eight years. It is amazing what accumulates when I’m not looking.

While I was doing layout, I noticed that Lulu had an option for pocket sized books. I’ve always been a bit dissatisfied with the trade paperback size of Cobble Stones. It is a sampler book meant for gifting or as something small to be taken along. A smaller book with the dimensions of a mass market paperback would be better suited to the material. So I spent a few hours and re-packaged Cobble Stones into a pocket sized format. While I was at it, I added 2011 to the title so that it will match the Cobble Stones 2012 book when I release it later this year. This project was one of those moments when I realized that I’ve accumulated some significant skill in producing books. A similar moment occurred when I assembled a cover for my blog book in only a few hours. Last year’s cover took hours and hundreds of pictures while I figured out how the format needed to work. This time (Thanks to a nicely placed snow bank and some fortuitous late afternoon sunlight hitting that bank of snow) I think I’ve got the cover shot I need in a single photo session. Next year may require more effort, but I’m trying to just believe that I’ve learned and grown as a maker of books.

I’ve got four book projects in process right now. The Body Politic is the next Schlock book and my role there is pure graphic design and art direction. Howard does the heavy lifting on creation. For Cobble Stones 2012 I may already have a cover, but the editing has only begun. I need to finish selecting and arranging essays. After that will be critiques, revision, and copy editing before the book is ready to print. Putting together the book Strength of Wild Horses will be fairly simply for me, but before I can get to that fun part, I have to face the Kickstarter process to secure funding for the book. Also in the beginning stages is the 2012 Family Photo Book. I’ve collected the stories, but I have to select pictures, scan pictures, and then take time to lay out everything into pages. It is a massive project every year, but one which I always enjoy. Even better is when I see the kids sitting down to read the stack of photo books from previous years, re-living the family stories from their earlier childhoods.

Bit by bit all of these projects will become books. After that there will be new book projects. Because I like making books and intend to keep doing it for as long as I like it.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Contemplating a Year of Growth

The first day of a new calendar is a good day for looking forward. It is often a day when I put up the wall calendar and survey all the landmarks ahead. Sometimes it was a day of calculation as I tried to estimate when our lives will be busy and when they will be calm. Even when I am not scanning and planning, I often find myself focusing my intentions for the new year, feeling what is to come. I’m convinced that such focused attention at the beginning of a year, has a long term effect on what comes after. There have been years where I shook the old year off and vowed that the coming year would be different in specific ways. And it was, because my intention shaped my goals and my goals shaped the year.

This year I’m thinking a lot about something I read in Naomi Remen’s book My Grandfather’s Blessings. She wrote an essay about her grandfather and how he often frustrated her because when asked to plan anything, even so small a thing as a lunch appointment, he would answer with “God willing.” The implication was that all our lives are in God’s hands and who knows what would happen between now and next Wednesday to change the possibilities around going to lunch. I’m not so resigned or so faithful that I can put all my life into God’s hands. I have a calendar. I’ve written lots of appointments on it. In ink. Yet the longer I live the more I see that I can not predict and plan everything, even if I would like to. I can not prevent all the things that scare me. I can not guarantee that I’ll gain my desires. So many things that I care about deeply are not in my control. I spent a long time trying to steer my life through sheer force of will. I got very tired. Now I think I am more ready to say “God willing” so long as I combine it with concrete goals. I can write words and trust that I will find good uses for those words whether it is sale to a publisher or healing my own heart. I can teach my children and pray that they will find their own good paths. I can love my husband and trust that he is strong.

I have hopes for this new year. I would like to have a quieter year with less travel and disruption. Yet, as much as I would like peace and calmness, I feel like there is growing to be done and growing is often a difficult process. I want that growth, because I can see how much better things are now than they were. I’m willing to go through some more difficult things if I can say the same at the end of this year. So instead of declaring what kind of a year I want it to be, instead of trying to enforce calmness and peace, I will instead try to accept each challenge and joy as it comes. 2013 will be a good year, God willing.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Final Sunset of 2012

Farewell to 2012, you were too complicated to adequately summarize. Though I can’t complain, because while traveling through 2012 was often unpleasant, I like where I am now in comparison to where I was a year ago. The same is true for Howard and the kids. Hard is not necessarily bad. And there is no denying that 2012 had many good things too.

I have no plans for major resolutions or course corrections. I have enough goals in progress that I don’t need to add any more. Instead I’ll just leave with this last sunset of 2012 while snow falls quietly at my house.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Ice and Snow at the Tayler House

Nine inches of snow means that the next week is going to be all about icicles.

For today, the snow is all about sledding. Gleek and Link have been out sliding down the hill for the past hour.

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That Sort of Day

Some times I get up early in the morning after having trouble sleeping. Then I do all the laundry, assemble a dozen packages, drive them to the post office, go to the gym, go to the bank, do the accounting, drive my daughter to two different craft stores in search of the perfect mosaic beads, and go to the bank again. After all that I sit down to write, but the words I can think of sound tiresome. So instead I sit down to re-watch episodes of Community.

Today was a day like that.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Facing the Fear

This morning I sat in Howard’s office while he worked on painting a miniature. His hands are busy, his ears are available, and he’s likely to stay put rather than wandering off to go work on a project. I enjoy talking to Howard while he’s painting. I’m not sure whether he can say the same, because the times when I’m likely to sit down and just talk to him are usually when I need to sort my brain about something. Otherwise I’m off and running around tending to projects. We’re a pretty good pair.

I wanted to talk about one of my intended projects for January. I’m planning to run a Kickstarter for Strength of Wild Horses and the thought frightens me. I’m not at all certain that I have enough skill or social media reach to get a picture book project funded. I think what I hoped for was that Howard would take the role of cheerleader, that he’d pour encouragement on me and I could use the borrowed energy to proceed. Instead Howard stayed firmly in the role of business partner, discussing options and likely outcomes. He’s not sure we can pull it off either. He also spent time as Good Husband, expressing his intention to support me through all of it. Even the parts when I go neurotic or weepy because things are hard. I had to walk myself onward into the day because there was no tide of borrowed enthusiasm on which I could surf. I really wanted that tide, because the day just seemed hard and all my projects of questionable utility.

I was supposed to focus on shipping, accounting, and house cleaning. Instead I sat and thought for a bit. I came to some conclusions. I can either be a person who depends upon others to help her believe in her work, or I can proceed as if I believe because I probably will at some point in the future. Also, fear of failure is a bad reason to give up something I want to do. Howard is willing to follow me through this Kickstarter venture and catch me if I fall. That is a huge expression of love and trust. I need to see it.

Thoughts sorted, I went to my computer to begin accounting. Except once I got there, I opened up my 2012 One Cobble book instead. This is the layout project where I print all of the 2012 blog entries into a book for my own reference. While doing so, I was also collecting stories for our 2012 family photo book and for the 2012 edition of my blog sampler book. I happened to be working on the months of April and May, which were just about the craziest months out of this year. I took a trip to see my sick Grandmother while simultaneously remodeling my office, I taught at a conference, hosted my mother as a visitor, went to the Nebulas, helped my son through a diagnostic process for learning disabilities, managed the end of the school year, managed pre-orders for the latest Schlock book, and sent Howard off for a trip. It was the craziest mish-mash of business and personal that I could possibly arrange. Yet, as I placed the entries onto their pages, I began to see how books I’ve created in the past made a difference and how me continuing to make books will play a part in our future business. I remembered why this project matters and why Kickstarter is the best shot it has to succeed. I found, not a tide of enthusiasm to carry me, but some firm ground to stand on while I continue forward.

So, come January I will make a video of myself talking enthusiastically about Strength of Wild Horses. I will feel awkward and will dislike the result, but I will post it anyway. Then I will be sure it will all fail even while secretly hoping it will succeed. It will do one or the other and I will manage the aftermath, which will either be scary or sad. I’ll do all of this because I think it is one of the right next steps for me to take. There are other steps for me to take: finishing a novel, continuing this blog, supporting Howard in both his prose and his comic, teaching and guiding the kids, fulfilling my spiritual responsibilities, submitting for publication. All of these steps together are taking me places. Hopefully there will be wonderful places after the hard and scary ones that I can see. I’m scared, but that won’t stop me from moving forward.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

The Things on our Walls and What they Tell

Our decorating scheme for this house has been pretty haphazard in the fifteen years since we moved in. The walls are white because we’ve never spent the time or money to change them. We hung up some portraits and a picture of the temple because that is what one does with the walls of a house, also because I believe that sometimes we need visual reminders of the important things in our lives. There is a large picture in the kitchen of a gargoyle leaping to catch bubbles. I still love that picture. Howard and I bought it together one day after we received an unexpectedly large tax return. However the wall hanging we picked up in Africa thirteen years ago was a purchase made because we were in Africa and felt the need to bring something home with us. Then once it was here we needed to display it. Many of the other ornaments in our home have lingered for similar reasons. Our whole decorating scheme centered around things we acquired or inherited randomly that were sort of cool. Yet this past year I’ve placed more focus on noticing how small shifts in our surroundings can add to the general happiness in our lives. The African wall hanging long ago stopped causing us to feel happy. It was time for something new.

Our walls don’t just speak to us about places we’ve been and what matters, they also speak to those who visit. Mostly what our walls have been saying lately is that we are busy people who don’t take time to clean or to create a cohesive feel to our spaces. Howard had an idea to fix that, at least for the family room. He used some reward points to get Nintendo game posters. They showed large images of games that we’ve loved. Looking at the posters made us happy. We talked of having them framed to hang on the walls. Yet we didn’t. Mostly the delay was due to concerns about the cost of framing, but I confess I also worried a bit about what our walls would say to others.

Our family room is set up for video games and movies. The big TV is mounted on the wall and the cabinet below it is stacked with multiple game systems and shelves of the games that we have accumulated. Sometimes I feel very aware of all of these things when a visitor walks into the room, particularly if that visitor is one who has expressed the opinion that video games are a waste of time. That room makes it very obvious where much of our discretionary money is spent. Do we sometimes spend too much time and money on video games? Yes. But I know that the games bring happiness to our lives. We have as many happy memories and shared experiences over video games as other families do over soccer matches or trips to theme parks.

I have been trying lately to add small happiness to life, to recognize which things add to that happiness and which subtract. For Christmas this year I measured the posters and bought frames at Target. They were relatively cheap, simple to assemble, and did a good job of displaying the posters. This afternoon I took down the other displays and hung the posters. The room no declares clearly that the games do not just belong to the kids, but also to the adults. Not only that, but that we consider the games to be art worthy of display. With this one simple act we truly own the room, the games, and ourselves. Even more important, I when I watch Howard or the kids enter the room, their eyes flicker to the pictures of Zelda or a Skyrim map and their mouths quirk in a smile. A tiny piece of happiness has been added to our lives. We are glad to walk in that room now. It is good.

We’re not done. I expect that we’ll trade out the posters periodically as these ones begin to feel stale and new ones arrive. I also know that a particular pairing is not quite working right. It would also add to the room if we were to put a fresh coat of paint on the walls. These things will come, and they will add to our happiness.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

After a Good Christmas

Morning dawned on the day after Christmas and I dove back into work with a sigh of relief. It is not that I dislike the holiday, but I am in the middle of many projects which were interrupted by festivities. Perhaps this is why I was not able to fully develop a holiday glow in which everything felt lovely. I’d start it, but then Kiki would need to unburden herself of concerns about upcoming art projects, or Link’s youth leader would corner me to talk about scout stuff, or I’d get an email reminding me that both Gleek and Patch have some testing coming up in January. The source varied, and I was reminded that there was much to do, only I wasn’t supposed to be doing any of it. I was supposed to be in the moment, treasuring the time right in front of me. I did in snatches: Gleek hugging her new spiral draw set tight. Kiki pulling (and pulling and pulling) to free her new giant scarf from the stocking. Melting wax on a candle. The shifting patterns from the Christmas pyramid as they played across the kitchen ceiling. Sitting by the Christmas tree. Singing a carol. These moments brought peace and joy in the season.

At this point I can almost hear the worried friends and relations, concerned that the did not do enough to make my Christmas marvelous. They need not fear, or feel bad. I had a good Christmas. It was everything it should be. The requirement to make sure that Christmas is magical puts too much pressure on everyone. It is the source of the stress. Good is enough. A magical timeless glow either arrives or it doesn’t. I caught it sometimes and others I didn’t. This is fine. For now, I’m ready to turn my thoughts toward making good use out of what is left of 2012. The minute I hit January I need to be ready for 2013.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.