Monthly Archives: March 2023

appreciation, living and growing, mothers, photographs, remembering

Captured in a Photograph

I keep this picture of my mom on my desk. You can see her standing just outside of her front door. She’s leaning casually against the railing and there is a big smile on her face.

It’s one of my (many) favorite pictures of her. It personifies who she was and how she lived.

If you were someone she loved and you appeared at her door you would be greeted with an exclamation of how delighted she was to see you. Then she would hug and kiss you.

Sometimes she would be so excited to see you that she would forget to say hello. So a few minutes after your visit began, she would stop whatever she was doing, look at you and say ‘hello‘. I can still hear her, “Hello, Beth“. It was as if her excitement at seeing you got the best of her and when she started to calm down she would remember the importance of a traditional greeting. Of course, no one who received her warm welcome thought twice about her skipping the formal hello.

This picture captures how she loved. Behind the glass screen door is the front door but you can’t see it in the photo because it is wide open. That openness embodied how she loved. You were welcome anytime. The door to her heart was always open.

There are other things I’m reminded of when I look at this photo. She often looked younger than she really was. She dressed casually and it gave her a youthful look. She never quite mastered the art or desire of dressing up. And her hair….once a startling red….had dimmed to a soft brown. It never truly turned gray. All these things, along with her quick and easy smile made her approachable.

Her casual lean against the railing belied how her body felt. Her smile was genuine but her body was often uncomfortable and in pain. In the picture you wouldn’t guess it looking at her and that was just like her as well. She rarely complained and when she did she quickly felt badly both for burdening you with her struggle and for not being able to handle her discomfort without expressing it.

She felt weak when she complained. But there was nothing weak about her. She was happiest when she could help relieve you of any part of your own burden. She was rarely one to try and solve your problems. But oh how she could listen!

She would often be surprised when a total stranger would open up to her and share some struggle they were having. But to those of us who knew her, it made perfect sense. Strangers seemed to sense that she was someone that they could trust. Her openness would never betray that trust. You could tell her anything and if you asked her not to tell anyone, you could rely on her keeping it to herself. Not once in my entire life did she ever betray my trust. Even once her battle with dementia began…she continued to be the best secret keeper I have ever met, never forgetting what she shouldn’t share.

It’s not that she was without fault. She would be the first to tell you she wasn’t perfect. But this photograph captures all of her best traits. When I look at it, I am reminded of her warmth and generosity. I see a kind and good person whom it was safe to be yourself with.

All these things….so much love…captured in a single photograph.

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imposter syndrome, living and growing, owning it

An impostor, no more

I’ve never forgotten it. The first time I took my first born, infant daughter for a walk.

She was in a stroller and as I was pushing it, I felt as if all eyes were on me. There was no one around me, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that if anyone saw me they would know I was an impostor.

They would know that there was no way THIS baby was mine. No way I was a mother. They would know just upon seeing me that I was only pretending. This wasn’t real.

I was suffering from impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome happens when someone doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and worries about being exposed as a fraud. They can feel this way despite evidence that they are indeed competent.

This feeling continued for the first few weeks after my daughter was born. And then one day, it was gone. The odd thing about this was I only felt this way when I was outside with her in her stroller. The experience seemed so foreign that it felt unreal.

I haven’t thought about that too much over the decades since. But it strongly came to mind the other day. I was out with my grandson. We were going for a walk and he was seated in a stroller. We had walked for quite a while before I remembered that old feeling. It dawned on me that even though this too is a new situation, and I am still a newly minted grandmother, I have no feelings of being an impostor.

I expect that people look at me and see a grandmother out for a walk with her grandbaby. He is real. He is mine and I have no doubts about my competence. I have trained for this for decades.

I am most assuredly, an impostor no more.

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clarity and direction, family, happy place, living and growing

Happy Places

Last night I was listening to a meditation app designed to help you fall asleep. As it sought to guide me into a relaxed state it asked a question.

What is your happy place?

I thought for 1/2 a second and couldn’t think of one. I chastised myself and insisted that I think more on this.

And then I saw it. It was a large table with all my kids around it. Son-in-laws and grandbaby all fall under the umbrella of ‘my kids’. Ten of us…together.

We were laughing. Some of us so hard that we were crying. There was no undercurrent of discomfort for my empathetic heart to pick up on. Only enjoyment in each others company.

My heart was happy imagining this. I had discovered my happy place.

This was kind of big deal for me. And here’s why….last month my husband and I went out and purchased a dining room table. For me, it is the first brand new dining room table I have ever owned. We’ve been married a long time. And in that time, including our new one, we’ve now owned 5 dining room tables! Three of them were given to us. One we bought second hand for $250 dollars and used until it fell apart.

But table number 5 was different. We were buying it new. The sticker shock was substantial. After we bought it, I came home and had a bona fide panic attack. My husband and I have always been practical people. We never minded second hand things, if they worked we were fine with them.

But our family has grown. Our table no longer fits us. And that didn’t jive with my image of family times spent together. So we went out and bought a table, that fits all of us with room to grow. I also made sure that it was a beautiful table and one I would not need to replace again.

But beauty often comes with a price tag, literally and figuratively. This was not a table for finger paints or playdoh or hot wheel races. Did I mention we were a practical people, use to second-hand things? With a new grandbaby, this table fit us but we would need to treat it with care. Hmmm. That would be an adjustment.

But I made my peace with it. Because more than anything, I wanted us all to be able to sit around that table.

Then last night, that meditation app asked that question….what is your happy place?

And I realized in that moment, I hadn’t just bought a table. I had invested in my happy place.

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