Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Lisa

Eleven years a parent

This night always makes me a little bit nostalgic, more than even tomorrow, the day our ginger girl arrived in the world. I never get tired of telling the story. How I went to work that Monday as usual and when I left for the day, a co-worker asked me if I was going to work right up till the baby came.

“That’s the plan,” I said with a laugh. We still had five weeks till my due date.

The next morning my water broke and I woke my husband and we called the doctor and we drove to the hospital and I was admitted and IN LABOR even though I wasn’t having contractions yet. Today, eleven years ago, I was biding my time in a hospital bed, waiting for something to happen.

Meanwhile, the maintenance man for our apartment was finishing up a job at our place that had taken longer than expected and my mom and grandma left our hometown for a three-hour drive south with a stop at Target on the way because bless our hearts, we didn’t even have a crib yet for this bundle who was about to make the world a better place.

I’ll spare you all the labor and delivery details but our baby girl arrived in the wee hours of the morning, a redhead, five weeks early. Unexpected and surprising in all the best ways.

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I can’t say I was born to be a parent. I have had to grow into the role, and when they let us leave the hospital with a newborn just a few days later, I panicked, thinking for sure they had made a mistake letting us go home. I was certain of it when two days later we were back in the hospital because our baby’s skin was yellow, a sign of the jaundice they told us to watch for. I spent that night barely sleeping while my baby slept under a lamp that would bring her bilirubin numbers down. (I still think bilirubin sounds like someone’s name. Maybe a jazz singer.) It was the most frightening night of my young life and even though the nurses assured me all would be well, I wouldn’t believe it until we had been released for a second time.

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But let’s be honest. I’m still terrified at times. Parenting has been the most surprising, humbling, unexpected, panic-inducing ride. Most days I think I’m just okay at it. And I’m constantly wondering how I’m messing this whole thing up.

I’ve heard that parenting doesn’t get easier as your kids grow up; it just gets different. With an 11-year-old, I feel like “different” is the word to describe it, but I won’t tell those stories here. The closer my daughter gets to someday having her own social media account, the more aware I am of what is hers to tell and what is mine.

With an 11-year-old, there is a shift that is happening in my parenting style. I am letting go a little more while also trying to cherish what I’m not sure will last.

“Will you still hug me when you’re a middle schooler?” I sometimes ask her just before the bus comes to pick up the kids. She is our affectionate one, free with hugs and kisses, but I know the days of fledgling independence are coming. I tuck every “I love you, Mom” into a pocket in my soul because we have already seen glimpses of the “I hate you” dragon that seems intent on driving every family bonkers for a season.

I will not wish for time to stop or for the years to reverse. I have loved and loathed the years past in a fluctuating rhythm. Time does not stop. Nor does it reverse. I want only to remember yesterday and celebrate today and plan for tomorrow but I don’t want to rush any faster than it already goes.

How can she already be 11?

And how do I still feel like I have so much to learn?

Everything I know about living a beautiful life

It was Monday, and the world had been painted white with snow. It clung to the trees like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Few surfaces were left uncovered.

Our family had spent the previous day watching the snow fall, wondering when it would stop, guessing how many inches would accumulate. While it was coming down on Sunday, we observed one accident happen on our road (no injuries but it was a hit-and-run), two fire trucks respond to a call at the nearby apartment building, a utility truck parked near where the hit-and-run accident occurred, and a couple of Amish buggies pass by like it was just another day.

When we went to sleep, it was still snowing, and we already new our start to the week would be delayed.

A two-hour delay for work and school meant extra time for shoveling the driveway and clearing the car along with all the other getting-ready-for-school-and-work tasks. There was also extra time for social media and viewing what felt like a zillion posts about the snow.

“A winter wonderland!” the pictures were captioned with one man even suggesting everyone go outside and take a walk WHILE IT WAS STILL SNOWING. I have no doubt that it would have been magical, but not even the promise of wonder could entice me from my cozy jammies and warm house.

It certainly looked pretty from inside my house, but the beauty of it was lost as I grumbled about the work yet to do. After my husband had been out to clear the driveway for half an hour, I went out to clear the car. Not much about my attitude had changed as I pushed and brushed and swept snow off the roof and the trunk and the windows. I stopped for a moment and looked at the tree in front of our house, the one that marks the seasons, whose beauty first welcomed us when we moved in.

When the car was clear, I went back inside to get my phone to take a picture. Documenting beauty is an occasional practice and I was out of practice.

Everything I know about living a beautiful life is found in these photos.

If you look close enough, just past the tree displaying its winter splendor, you’ll see the trash can and recycling bin. Mondays are garbage days and before I took this photo, while my husband was shoveling the driveway, I dragged the can and the bin to the street. Usually I cut through the yard but I didn’t feel like traipsing through snow up to my calves, so I walked the short distance from the driveway to the road sign where we place the bins for pickup. Only once did I have to dodge traffic.

While I was taking these pictures, one of our neighbor dogs was barking at me. It is the loud and annoying yipping that accompanies any outdoor activity and prompts the neighbors to then yell at the dogs to “shut up.” And inside, my husband was negotiating with the kids about who was going to take the first shower like it was a hostage situation. Anxiety was building inside of me because this was only Monday and it was going to be a long week.

I took these pictures to capture the beauty. Maybe I was even feeling a little bit left out of the perceived serenity of the winter wonderland pictures.

I did not feel serene as the dog barked and the children fought and the snow slowed my routine. But that didn’t make the scene in my yard any less beautiful. The truth is the beauty of life is smack dab in the middle of the ordinary. Sometimes it’s even in the middle of a mess.

I used to think living a beautiful life meant having a perfect life. That an Instagram-worthy life was evidence of a beautiful life. That poetic words and portraits of a well-kept home were the proof that life was beautiful. I used to think a beautiful life was beyond my reach. Or that I’d have to wait for “someday,” when everything fell into place.

But I’ve changed my mind. I think that a beautiful life happens when we choose to see the beauty right now. When we stop to take the picture of the tree while the dog is barking and the kids are fighting and the garbage can sits at the curb. Beauty is in the ordinary. Beauty is in the mess. And I’m not saying that you have to see garbage day as a gift or adopt a thankful attitude for the tenth load of laundry, but I think we can find a way to notice how the sun streams in through the mud room window while we’re doing laundry or take an extra second to remember how the snow-covered tree looks in spring. To see the white clouds and the blue sky and the snowy limbs stretching up and out and ask yourself if what you’re seeing is even real. (I could have sworn we were living in a painting.)

Sometimes a beautiful life is seeing what’s right in front of you and sometimes it’s hoping for what you can’t see. (Like spring when it’s snowing in March.)

A beautiful life is not a perfect life, it is a life being lived. Even when that living includes a sink full of dishes, an overflowing mound of laundry or a garbage can being hauled to the street.

This is the stuff of life. The wonder and the work. The ordinary and the extraordinary. The perfect and the not-so-perfect. The tidy and the messy.

All I really know now is that I can’t wait to have a beautiful life because I already have one. A beautiful life isn’t beyond my reach; it’s right in front of me.