Inhale Grace

Our school does school pictures twice a year. The procedure for fall pictures is slightly different than the procedure for spring pictures. In the fall, they assume competence. It’s still early in the school year. The kids have some decent new clothes that fit. Some parents are still on top of checking the homework folder and the agenda and reading the school’s 17 billion weekly emails. So in the fall, they send home the notice. They send you a form to complete and send back with your check for exorbitantly priced photos. A bunch of kids come to school dressed nicely, with their hair combed. Kids bring in a little envelope and a check. It’s all very organized.

In the spring, the photo companies assume (correctly) that the parents are burnt out… so this round plays on parental guilt. I assume a notice is still sent home, but the expectation isn’t that you order ahead of time. Instead, they take the photos, print them out, and send them home with your kid. And they don’t just send photos. They send magnets and weird ID cards and photo key chains and all kinds of crap that nobody wants. In these photos, your kid is probably wearing a hand-me-down Mickey Mouse t-shirt that doesn’t quite fit right, and he desperately needs a haircut. At this point, you have two options. You can send the photos back, so these heartless bastards can needlessly shred expensive portraits of your special little cupcake (this option also includes endless whining from said cupcake about how s/he NEEDS a weird photo ID card or cheap keychain of their own face). Or, you can send these scheming asshats another exorbitant check and add these photos to the pile of papers on the kitchen table (with every intention of at least framing one and sending a few off to the grandparents) only to find them still there in the envelope eight months later when you finally get around to going through that particular pile of crap.

I should admit that my response to school pictures has evolved over the years. When my first was young, I was all over school pictures. We had a nice outfit. I filled out the form and sent in my check and reminded my little nugget to smile nicely. Some of these early photos were cute. Others were less so. But I felt confident in my ability to handle this school picture thing. The first time I forgot school picture day, my oldest was in third grade. That’s not an awful record, right? Except my youngest was in Kindergarten. How could I possibly forget about his KINDERGARTEN school photo? I left work on my lunch break to bring in the form and my check to make sure that my precious pumpkin got to bring home some photos. I felt like a failure. But I quickly grew accustomed to it.  In subsequent years, when I realized I had forgotten yet again, I’d reason, “They’ll send me photos in the spring. I’ll just wait for that.”

But this year, something changed. I now have a teenaged girl. This young lady is gorgeous. She’s crazy beautiful. And she hates having her picture taken. She covers her face. She hides. She yells and cries if she thinks I’ve snuck a picture of her. So now, the school picture has become infinitely more valuable. And I decided to do something differently.

I put the date in my smartphone calendar. And this brilliant little computer dinged to tell me that today was picture day, and when I realized that I was out of checks and couldn’t find the form, I looked back in my email for a link where I could enter my credit card number. You guys, I REMEMBERED school picture day.   Isn’t there some kind of parenting award for that?

There is a weight on my chest today, making it hard to breathe. It feels like a combination of heartburn and fear, but its source is a little elusive. There’s no reason for me to be anxious. Life is good.

I recently shared with a friend (as if it were a shameful secret) that things are going incredibly well. My marriage is solid. My kids are thriving. I’m feeling organized and successful at work. I lost two pounds this week (only 78 to go!) and I launched my blog yesterday. And then, I shared my fear that all this success isn’t sustainable. As if I were over-cultivating my garden. I’m enjoying this harvest, but I can’t expect it to last.

So it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. This fear of things falling apart leads me to perceive that things are falling apart. A rather innocuous email from my son’s teacher feels like an accusation (“Did I see the homework agenda last night?”). An overcooked dinner feels like a personal failure, and a simple observation from my husband on the phone (“You seem distracted”) feels like an attack.

This unease and anxiety is contagious, and I find myself in the unfortunate position of dealing with a crying, stressed out child in the midst of battling this weight on my chest. Even the dogs sense my mood; they beg for affection that I’m unable to give.

So I breathe. I pour a glass of chardonnay or a cup of tea. I pet the dog I don’t feel like petting and I hug the kid who isn’t acting particularly lovable. Sometimes I cry and explain to my kids that grownups have feelings too. Sometimes we commiserate, because these perceptive children also occasionally confess to me that they feel like crying, but they’re not sure why.

It seems like it should be so simple. My brain clarifies that there is NO ACTUAL PROBLEM. There are imagined slights and differences in perspective and heightened sensitivity. There are anxieties and fears but none of these things have manifested into anything real. They exist only in my overactive brain and I should be able to control them or at least turn down the volume of the noise. But this does not always come naturally.

I have a bedtime routine with the kids. They’re too old for it, but neither they nor I seem to want to let it go. Each night before bed, they get ‘mom cuddles.’ Sometimes this is a chapter from a shared story and tickles and slow, sleepy stories about what happened at school. Sometimes it is shouting and nagging and frustrated reminders like, “I love you, too, but for the love of God; please stop talking.” Most often it falls somewhere in the distracted middle of motherhood. I sniff his head and remember that I forgot to remind him to shower. I make a mental list of the tasks I will accomplish once they fall asleep. I beg for them to stop moving and talking and asking rhetorical questions.

But the beauty happens as the squirming stops and the chatter subsides. Their breathing slows and, instinctively, mine does, too. This is a moment of peace. The simplicity and beauty of sleepiness swirls around with a gratitude that is hard to find at any other time in my day. This is why the ‘mom cuddles’ continue, and why my heart will break a little when they end.