Kenison - The gift of an ordinary day: a mothers memoir

Copyright 2009 by Katrina Kenison

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Springboard Press

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First eBook Edition: September 2009

Springboard Press is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing.

The Springboard name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Clarissa Pinkola Ests: Excerpt from La Curandera: Healing in Two Worlds, by Clarissa Pinkola Ests. Copyright 2009, reprinted with kind permission of the author, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Ests, and Texas A&M University Press.

HarperCollins: Excerpt from Grasshopper on the Road, by Arnold Lobel. Copyright 1978 by Arnold Lobel. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins, New York.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company: Excerpt from St. Francis and the Sow from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words by Galway Kinnell. Copyright 1980, renewed 2008 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing

Company, Boston and New York. All rights reserved.

Paulist Press: Excerpt from Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus. Copyright 1972 by Trina Paulus. Paulist Press, Inc. New York/Mahwah: NJ. Reprinted by permission of Paulist Press, Inc. www.paulistpress.com.

ISBN: 978-0-446-55809-9

Also by Katrina Kenison

Mitten Strings for God

For Steve, unsung hero

Every step in the dark turns out, in the end, to have been on course after all.

JOHN TARRANT

T he book you hold in your hands is not the book I intended to write. What I envisioned was something shorter, simpler, and less personal.

Ten years ago, when my sons were six and nine, I wrote a small collection of essays about my efforts to slow life down in a world that seemed to be moving too fast. As a young mother, I wanted so much for my children, and I expected quite a bit of myself, too. And yet, somewhat to my surprise, motherhood was forcing me to reexamine all of my preconceptions about what it meant to live well and to do well by my family. Trying to do it all, have it all, and give it all to my children, I realized that in fact I was setting a pace that left us scattered and exhausted.

It dawned on me that what I really wanted was to enjoy those fleeting years with my husband and our sons rather than race through them. Writing was a way to remind myself to savor the quiet pleasures of everyday life, to pay more attention to people than to things, and to allow my young sons the time and space to play, daydream, and begin to figure out for themselves who they were and what they cared about.

The book grew directly out of my own experiences with my two little boysbaking bread, sleeping in a tent in the backyard, telling stories at bedtime, coloring Easter eggs. I felt so certain then that a good life was right at hand, if I could only remember to keep it simple and unhurried.

My book, Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, didnt really say anything about slowing down that hadnt been said before. I simply offered a few more thoughts on the matter as it pertained to children. My husband and I had a joke that year that while he was downstairs after dinner taking care of the kids, I was upstairs writing about them. The good news was, it didnt take long. The book almost wrote itself.

It also struck a chord with other mothers who felt as I did and who shared my desire to run around less and stay at home more. In a culture that emphasizes activity, enrichment, and early competence as the tickets to adult success, we tend to equate full engagement calendars with full lives. In a few brief essays, I tried to offer a glimpse of another way. A decade later, I still receive letters from mothers eager to share their stories of how my book inspired them to find more realistic, livable, enjoyable rhythms for their own families.

Meanwhile, my own little boys grew up. The five-year-old who once nestled himself under my arm while finger knitting a long blue mitten string for God is sixteen now, shaving and driving. His older brother, who used to climb into my bed with his beloved copy of James and the Giant Peach, is reading Plato at a college halfway across the country.

I always thought that someday, when my sons were older, I would write a second book, a kind of sequel to the first. But as my sons grew into adolescence and our family life became more complicated, I felt less and less sure of my ground. It was one thing for my husband and me to decide that we would opt out of T-ball and elaborate birthday parties in favor of pickup baseball games in the backyard and unscheduled weekends. But it is quite another to try to shape family life with two teenage boys who have their own agendas, social plans, and strong opinions.

My original intent was to write about the unprecedented expectations and pressures experienced by todays teenagers and parents and how important it is to offer an antidote to that pressure at home. I wanted to remind myself as much as anyone that there are alternatives to our cultures narrow definition of success, and to suggest that wed be doing all our sons and daughters a service if wed relinquish some of our collective anxiety over their unknown futures and simply trust them more to find their own way.

But as my two sons became teenagers themselves, our stable, orderly life flew apart. Instead of growing in wisdom, I was searching for answers. The idea of trying to offer anybody advice about anything seemed ludicrous. When I tried to write, what came out seemed messy and complicated, as messy and complicated as our own everyday lives. So I realized that I had a choice: I could give up on my idea altogether, or I could take a longer, more circuitous route. I could try to tell my own midlife story of living, loving, and letting go, knowing that doing so would also mean owning up to all that I dont know, all that Im still trying to figure out.

Unlike the first book, this one hasnt come easy. For one thing, writing about teenagers, I soon realized, is even harder than living with them. They are extremely private creatures, after all, demanding of respect. There were many lines I could not cross. As for myself, I am not a parenting expert or a therapist or a teacher. Im just a mother confronting the vicissitudes of middle agechange, loss, a twenty-one-year-old marriage, children leaving home. And none of it is smooth sledding. All I really have to guide me these days is my own responsejoy, gratitude, sadness, fearin the presence of all that seems most precious now, as my two nearly grown sons strain inexorably against the ties that bind us.

It is, of course, a universal dramachildren grow up, they leave home, clocks tick in empty bedrooms, and untouched gallons of milk turn sour in the fridge because no ones there to drink them. Parents mourn the loss and, at the same time, discover the will to reinvent themselves. I know Im not the first mother whos found it hard to let go, whos yearned for change only to resist it when it comes, whos found it painful at times to accept the fact that my sons are pulling away, moving out into lives of their own. Nor will I be the last.