You Know it's an Extra-Cold Winter

when:

• your kids ask at least once a week if their wool socks are washed yet.
• "more wool socks" is the first entry on your Costco shopping list
• your fingertips abruptly crack open and start bleeding, just enough to A---ruin the layout you were working on, B---spot your Christmas quilt, and C---make your five-year-old shriek
• "band aids" and "bag balm" are the second and third entries on your Costco shopping list
• your bed is piled with blankets
• the snow that fell three days after Christmas hasn't melted and every parking lot is an ice-skating rink
• Your Christmas tree and decorations are still up*
• your annoying brother-in-law sends emails asking when global warming is going to start
• "hot chocolate" is the third entry on your Costco shopping list
• your diet consists mainly of liquids: Mormon mocha and hot soup
• "soup" is the fourth entry on your Costco shopping list
• the only shoes you're willing to wear are your hiking boots (with wool socks, of course), even if they do look stupid with the rest of your outfit
• you've found all your missing gloves and keep them (paired) in a basket right by the door, ensuring that the cold air never actually touches your bloody fingertips
• you've said "it's so cold my face hurts" more than 27 times
• you're afraid to get your water bill, considering how many hot baths you've taken just to defrost your toes
• your husband is starting to get annoyed at you wondering if your heater actually works or not

We did find one remedy for this winter's exceeding cold: we completely rebedded our bed. New flannel sheets and down comforter (since our old one had been bleeding feathers for months now) and one of those thick memory foam things. I slept better last night than I have in months. Mainly because I wasn't freezing. This did create another problem though: now I don't want to do anything much except stay in bed reading.

*This, my friends, is how an extra-cold winter leads to your Christmas tree still being fully decorated on January 6.

on Mothers and Daughters

My mother went to high school in the fifties. Poodle skirts! Elvis! Trips to the local malt shop! I make her into Sandra Dee in my head when I think about it. I went to high school in the eighties. Big hair! Stretch pants! Swatches! I could have been a character in a John Hughes film. I'm not sure how to characterize Haley's high school years yet. Skinny designer jeans? What I do know is that the difference between my mother's high school experiences and mine seems much larger than the difference between mine and Haley's. Perhaps we could blame it on the sixties.

When I was Haley's age, I am not sure I ever considered talking to my mom about anything I was dealing with. I didn't even think "maybe I should talk to my mom" and then reject the thought. It simply never came into my head. The thought of her experiencing what I was experiencing—the boy troubles and the friend troubles and the vicious highs and lows—wasn't a concept that made any sense. My mom was simply my mom, a person who worried about whether or not I wore my coat, fought with my dad about money, and liked buying shoes. I couldn't fathom her having in her past any of the experiences I was having.

Now I'm the mom of a high school sophomore. I'm on the other side. I watch her struggle with things. I ask her what's wrong; I glean details from facebook statuses and blog updates. Sometimes she tells me and other times not. Sometimes we are able to talk and sometimes we can't. I wonder: when did it grow so hard? When did she stop telling me? How can I be  around her so that she can trust me? I think about what I know of her experiences by way of my own. I wish I could translate it for her. I wish she could know: I know.

Sure, the details have changed. Clothes, hair, music, watch styles. There are cell phones and texting and tweeting (all stuff that, honestly? I'm glad I didn't have in high school because they make you that much more vulnerable to ridicule). The texture of her life is different than mine was. But the landscape is the same: she still has to traverse boys and friends and homework and temptations and figuring out who she is, what she believes, who she wants to become. I didn't manage my adolescent journey well, but that isn't necessarily a weakness; I know where the dead ends and the steep falls are.

The landscape is the same. But so is the resistance to the mother. I remember that, too, the way your mother seems when you are a teenager: soft, aging, unconnected. Starting to wrinkle, to sag at the arm and at the belly. Concerned with stuff that doesn't really matter to who you are; prone to get annoyed at the completely inconsequential thing; a barrier you have to cross to get where you want to go. Mothers didn't get it. They wanted you to stay home from the party. They said stuff like "nothing good ever happens after 11:00" and "you call that  dancing?" They embarrassed you by insisting you wear your coat. The only thing they had in common with you was living in the same house.

They'd never experienced what you were experiencing.

At least, that was how my mother seemed to me. Did she have to choose whether or not she'd party because her friends did? I couldn't imagine. Did she stand in front of the mirror and wish everything about her was different? My mother seemed secure in her skin, not questioning. Did she ever feel that horribly amazing constriction that flashed from your throat to your fingertips to the roots of your hair to your toenails to your teeth when she saw The Boy? Who wants to think of their mother feeling that? Disgusting! I couldn't imagine her ever feeling what I was. Even though she probably did.

Perhaps, though, her relating is inconsequential. Maybe the fact that the landscape is the same doesn't matter. Maybe seeing your mom through the lens of annoyance and frustration is a key part of growing up; maybe it allows the daughter to let go of the connected closeness of childhood so that she can become her own person instead of a younger version of her mother. Maybe she simply needs to find her own way.

So I watch. I try to offer what I can, when it is acceptable. I try to not be annoying and to only press for the important things. (If she doesn't want to wear her coat, she can choose to be cold.) I look for openings. I also see. I see when she is hurting over something, and I wish. I wish she could know I have gone down that same path. My knees have bled too, from stumbling. I wish my knowledge, scarred as it is, could be the thing that pulls her up and steadies her. But she pushes back; she pushes away. She walks alone, as maybe we all must. She has to make the journey, and when she will not allow me to walk beside her, I try to let her see me on the side of the road, encouraging her.

And I hope. I hope so hard that somewhere further down the trail lies a landscape we can truly walk together through. I have seen it in dreams. I hope we make it there.

2011 Write Every Day

Ah, January. The month I switch Bath & Body fragrances (from Midnight Pomegranate to Twilight Woods), and get all sorts of inspired to do little household projects (like reorganizing cluttered kitchen cupboards, cleaning closets, and sorting my bookshelves), and try to make positive changes (probably after two months of being a potato I should start exercising again, yes?). It's a month that inspires fresh starts and resolutions.

One of the goals I will be revisiting this year (who am I kidding? I am always revisiting this goal) is the one of writing every day. This is a binary system of goals: writing for publication (perhaps this will finally be the year I am noticed?) and writing for getting down memories. The publication part is an entirely different post—this one is focusing on the memory part.

Last year I introduced my W. E. D. concept. The basic concept is similar to taking a photo every day, except for this one you do with words. I've managed to fulfill my goal of writing every day in my WED notebook and I am in love with the things I have recorded, many of which would have been forgotten. Funny things said by kids and other family members; bits and pieces of conversations; ideas for blog posts. I've written down my reactions to TV shows, or the title of a song I caught on the radio while brushing my teeth before bed; little reminders of things to do tomorrow, snippets of dreams, feelings I didn't want to forget (both negative and positive!). I've striven to get down the essence of a day into words. Writing in my W.E.D. notebook became not about writing well so much as writing exactly, using words to communicate one important thing.

I've learned many things from my W.E.D. experiment, but the one I think will linger the most is this: the key to sticking to a goal is to simplify it as much as possible.  Especially when we set our scrapbooker side to something, it's easy to make it complicated—to make it about the products & the pretty paper & finding the perfect pen. The Write Every Day notebook strips all of that away. It isn't fancy or complicated; it's simple and utilitarian. Once you print and bind it, you're finished. Your pen doesn't have to be archival or special in any way. You just pick up your notebook every day and write a little bit.

That "little bit" is important, too. The notebook doesn't have a ton of space each day. Just enough for three or four sentences (depending on your handwriting, of course!). Having a small space to fill helps you overcome some of the fear wrapped up in writing. You don't have to start with the history of everything. You don't have to tell an entire story. You don't have to fill an entire blank page. Just a friendly little rectangle. You fill it up with the thing that felt most important that day, and then you move on.

One last thing I loved about this process: using my own handwriting. Truly, my handwriting is awful. It's not quirky-cute at all. It's uneven and random and rough. But seeing pages of it again (after years of blogging and journaling on my computer) feels more personal—feels more like me caught on paper.

Suffice it to say, I am doing this process again this year. I imagine I'll do it every year! If you'd like to join me, here's how:

1. Download the 2011 WED calendar: Download 2011 write every day calendar
2. Print it double sided. If you're not lucky enough to own a printer that does that for you, simply print the odd pages first, then re-feed them and print the even pages on the back. (Test this out on your printer first, since they all feed paper differently. Make sure you're printing the right week on the correct back!)
3. Pick two cardstocks or thicker patterned papers you love. Double sided papers are awesome here! One will be the front, the other the back.
4. Take this all to a copy store and have them spiral bind it for you. (Unless you own a coil binder. Then you can do it yourself.)
5. Write. Every day!

I write in my W.E.D. every night before I go to bed. There were a few nights last year I forgot, or was just too tired, but not many—fewer than 20 in the entire year, I think. When that happened, I wrote first thing the next morning. I kept it in the table by my bed, with a handful of pens. Now it's stored with the rest of my handwritten journals, and 2011 has taken its place.

Happy writing!