Shoulder Pads
The weight of the world rests on my shoulders.
I have been carrying it on them for some time now. Maybe longer than I realize. Worse maybe even longer than anyone cares to notice. We’re all caught up in our own shit.
Occasionally someone will catch a glimpse of our imbalance and stop to ask about our shit, help us through it, but most of the time it’s a singular thing. Either we own it or get buried under it.
September, October and November have been an interesting autumn— they came and they went. Im not saying they weren’t filled with memories and milestones and chaos and celebrations and the mundane everything in-between, but they where tangled up in the changing leaves.
I never had such an appreciation for leaves in a long time. The leaves begun to really take on the rainbow I have been seeking and the shift in my perspective of who I am and more importantly who I desire to become, after I thought I became someone else, have begun to paint a new hue in my line of sight and landscape.
After almost a decade of reminiscing about the days when I was something and someone else (before I became the biggest someone else to two someone elses)… I decided to get dressed up for somewhere other than the supermarket and pick up and drop off at school and go back to school myself. Not as a student but the teacher… again. But differently this time.
My rèsumè has changed in the last ten years in ways I can’t find the right LinkedIn verbiage to use.
Maybe it was time for a new lesson plan…
When I became a mommy my professionalism was less about what I already knew but what I was about to learn I had no idea about.
I read— “your greatest contribution to the universe may not be something you do, but someone you raise.”
I’ve spent almost a decade being a “stay at home mommy” and raising my sons from scratch (next to my Michelin – rated grilled cheese and boxed buttered Al dente noodles) I never made anything with my own ingredients until I had my boys.
I know will spend many more decades raising them but ironically they were helping me have another version of growing up myself... finding our electric youth together is as important as our golden moments.
We both have a lifetime to go before we are all grown up— but I realized that quote wasn’t just for my children but it’s also how I raise myself that really is my contribution to this universe. My children and I are our each other’s reflection to society. You see how hard it is to put a letter of recommendation for myself and find the words of “why” sometimes.
Don’t get me started on the scrapbooks…
I have a phone full of photos but no organized tangible albums. Thankfully the are chronologically categorized computer generated. They give me time to look back and forward think.
It was almost a lifetime ago before I knew anything about raising anyone, I dreamed of being a star. Not a local bravolebrity but someone with international acclaim. What it would be like to be something to someone else. Anyone else…
I used to think being a star meant world-wide fame. Notoriety. Esteem and admiration. But then in a small nook tucked behind the curtains of an elementary school stage, I found my stardom. More about that later…
With cardboard, contact paper, crayola crayons and creativity I penned my first children’s book at the kitchen table. No! Not the kitchen table that my Michelin- rated grilled cheese and Al dente boxed butter noodles get plated around 5:45 nightly, but the one of my original electric youth.
Well it wasn’t a children’s book it was a book written by a child— me! I think I was in 4th grade. I had just discovered chapter books and female heroines who were close to my age. In a few years it would be the Judy Blume books I would become the most connected to. Before then it was board books and my mom, who can balance being the hardest working mom and full time mom, was my role model in real life. To this day she still remains the star of my own reality show. But I was seeking something I couldn’t find, my own star quality. I was under the fierce impression that I had to be a star to be a star.
But it would be decades later, on that stage, in the cafeteria which happens to moonlight as an Auditorium of the elementary school I now work in, I had the epiphany that I don’t have to be a star to be a star.
Like fingerprints and snowflakes and even those autumn leaves from the same tree we are all unique in our own individuality and there is no one just like us. I am a star. And I do, too, shine bright on the darkest days.
December has been an oxymoron of sweetness and sorrow and antisemitism and celebration. There have been moments of reflection of live cut too short. The same people who taught us how to dance in the dark lost their own rhythm. Tragic reminders of why we always end a conversation with “I love you!” and begin the same one with “how are you?” To be present for ourselves is actually the gift we give.
10 years ago I was just cradling my belly and protecting my only world, I would soon learn I would be doing that for life. To shelter the ones we love is our responsibility.
As I look at my children and the backdrop of the year of 2022 is quickly approaching I have really embraced all the feels.
After the past few months I have kinda figured out how to balance the one thing that I wasn’t sure I could— mommy and working full time. I think in some ways I’m better at both because of both. Yes! Some days it’s extra dry shampoo, concealer and extra coffee. Take out and left overs. I like this new chapter I’m writing for me and my family. It’s the authenticity of who I am becoming now that I was seeking.
Something my own mommy still teaches me—there will always be a delicate balance between being a working mommy and working as a mommy. They are both a conscience career choice and will have better symptomatico if you allow them to work for you.
I am so proud of how far I’ve come and looking forward to how far I can go. I’m in the lesson learning business and yet I am the best customer this year.
What I learned the most from this year is as fulfilling is it is to be someone’s something you have to also be someone to yourself, too.
Maybe now I’m the star of my children’s own reality show. I know I always made them proud but this year I think our report cards reflect how hard we worked and how equally hard will continue to work. How “magical” it is to now talk and share about what we learned in school each day—
Maybe I have always had the star quality what I was seeking but needed to get over my stage fright to shine.
On the cusp of a new year for both me and the calendar I don’t know what 2023 will look like just yet…
I am going to promise myself and my children to keep my light and shine it bright and most importantly help them keep their own star quality and eternal light…
“Never let anyone dull your sparkle— especially yourself…”
Oh and shoulder pads aren’t the only iconic thing to come out of the 80s…