tiny drops of courage

My 15 yr old woke up this morning super grumpy because all the other sibs were going apple picking with my dad and husband.

She’d been out late with friends - although she claims constantly not to have any friends (“at least none that I like”) and was tired and hates (as always) the fact that its her (15, in school) and them (4 kids age 8 and under, homeschooled). Sunday family outings just dont work. I’ve always had a special bond with her, but am a little bit floundering these days. Her feelings are so intense and I seem to say the wrong thing all the time.

Me: “Oh, that must have felt really yucky.”
Her: “Yucky?? DO you think you’re talking to a 2 year old?”
Me: “Sorry. Just meant that it sounds like you had a rough time in that situation.”
Her: “ForGET it! You don’t know how to parent me at all!”
Me: “What do you want me to say exactly?”
Her: “I can’t feed you lines! Why do I even try??”

So anyway, this morning I decided to step back and let her decide for herself if she wanted to join or what. She was overloaded with school work, and kept going back and forth, deciding to go, deciding to stay. Ever since she was tiny, not having lots and lots of time for changes in plans has driven her absolutely batshit. Truth is, she could’ve been a lot worse with this - she finally decided to go and only acted minimally prickly with my husband “Oh, you don’t want me to go then?” when he expressed surprise at her walking out the door with them.

I’m home, the house is quiet, they’re all there, the baby is asleep. Blessed, blessed quiet. I should be making dinner, or doing laundry, but I just watched a TED talk that my old friend and homeschool mentor sent me, about turning fear into fuel. About how doing nothing is nearly always worse than doing the thing we’re afraid of doing. And I’m pretty terrified of writing. Of having a voice, mostly. Of being judged, of being scrutinized, being deemed unworthy. Or, perhaps even scarier, of being not too bad, and then feeling a burden of weight of having to keep it coming in the face of someone’s paralyzing expectations. I’ve always been pretty terrified of being looked at, of having to perform - you can see it in all the home videos where I run the hell away whenever my dad pulls the camera out. I can dig deep into the roots and causes but it doesn’t much change the fact that although I absolutely love being part of my kids lives in the way that I am, a piece of me homeschooling is also about not putting myself out there in the “real”, adult world, subjecting myself to judgment. I guess my plan is to start with a little tiny thing like an anonymous blog, and see where it gets me, if anywhere. Because I think that as I get older (turning 36 in two months!) and start to feel, in a deep, gut level, that my time is limited, and maybe there’s a dream or two buried somewhere in there that I might find some fulfillment in exploring. Who knows? I hear the baby babbling to herself in the crib. I kind of feel like I’m doing the same.