Away Message

I'm Off to Moab...

When it’s late fall and the heat has passed, you find yourself putting away patio tables and moving the sunscreen to the back shelf of the cabinet. You wash and fold swimsuits, beach towels; find storage for that massive sun hat. 

You get to work. You meet deadlines, schedule meetings, organize the pantry. You focus in, hone in, eyes fixed on school year goals, on winter survival, on what feels like a hundred pending projects on the horizon.

And then you break your gaze and hop a road trip to the city of sandstone for one last hot summery hurrah.

Monet will be Instagramming it (#ofcourse). We’ve never been to Moab with our parents, after all.

My mom and dad make it a point to travel together as often as they can, mostly annually, mostly as a family. It’s easy to forget that the world is our backyard, easy to forget to teach us the same. It’s easy to fritter away that hard-earned money elsewhere, on volcano candles or hand cream, chocolate mangoes. It’s easy to choose convenience over experience.

This trip won’t be easy.
(Experience often isn’t.)

I sometimes grapple with balancing what seems like two opposing purposes: to be a fully available mother or a fully available nurse. In this season of tricky teenage emotions and incessant hockey trips, it feels like one must choose. Energy is scarce, and shouldn’t my portion be used up and poured out on the teenager in high-school running around the country? Shouldn’t I be of service to others later? Isn’t my place, my purpose here, now?

It is.

But then I remember that availability isn’t the only goal.  That there is a very real difference between becoming a fully available mother and a fully alive one.

One of my past tendencies has always been to martyr myself, to wring out my days like a dish rag until I’m lying on the floor, a dry and shriveled mess. Used up and useless to any.

I no longer do this (Monet is ever grateful).

And I know that to mother others, we must mother ourselves.

I have learned to allow Markus to see me as a whole person. One with many needs, gifts, responsibilities. One who works hard to prioritize what matters to her. One who loves her family and loves the world, who holds great purpose here and elsewhere. One who is willing to serve when asked.

I will always get homesick for this place, for my own kitchen counter with the fingerprint smudges and toaster crumbs. I will always have a hard time leaving my official post as She Who Makes The Waffles, She Who Bandages Knees. But I know I have the opportunity to show Markus what a mother’s love is capable of – living and breathing, changing, growing, forever spanning the distance of oceans. It is a big love. 

Wide for miles.

I know an empty glass never offered much. That sometimes, you’ve got to pick yourself off the floor and find the rain – fully available, fully alive.

That when you do, you let it flood every corner of your suitcase, wet and happy, and you return home to pour it on the ones you love most.