Here We Are

When my son was three-ish years old, he would regularly ask me, “Are we here, Mama?” He did so not in the way most kiddos do, not half an hour into a 14-hour car ride, but rather at the most unexpected moments: sitting on the floor stacking Legos, propped on my hip as I stirred dinner, preparing “tea” with his sister in the bathtub. Of course, it made logical sense. He didn’t understand parts of speech, and his verb tenses and adverbs were a little wonky. It was cute, but nothing out of the ordinary for a three year old. 

But if I listened, if I allowed myself to hear my sweet boy and consider my response, I was in awe. There he was, learning and seeing and experiencing everything, often for the first time ever, and instead of allowing that to overwhelm him or distract him, he focused. He settled himself into one little moment and one space, acknowledged it, and asked that it be validated. Are we here?

[Not] How the Magic Happens

When I was in grad school, I remember thinking at one point that maybe I had learned too many things, which is why they didn’t stick with me like they used to. Isn’t that something? And by something, I mean insufferably self-congratulatory? Because another way to say that would be that I thought I knew too many things. That somewhere in the midst of a second master’s degree my mind had reached capacity, inundated and overrun by all the fascinating, sophisticated material with which I had graced it. 

Good gracious. 🙄

Probably it had more to do with the fact that I spent more time scrolling through my Instagram feed than reading books, or that what I so often considered working was actually multitasking, which is not actually “tasking” at all, right? but rather is disjointed, distracted, inefficient wheel-spinning.

If we do all the things at once, then we’re not going to absorb new insights, at least not in any real, whole, sustained way. We’re not going to have memorable revelations. And we’re not going to be convicted or changed. And maybe that’s the point. Not that we won’t learn, but that we won’t have to be present for it. For all of those things to happen – insight, revelation, conviction, change – one has got to go through some shit, you know? It’s not always pretty. It’s not often pretty. But if we listen to music while we’re walking and listen to a podcast while we’re eating and listen to our kids when we’re reading, then we’re not able – ahem, then we’re not forced – to listen to what’s going on around us, to what our bodies and hearts and minds are telling us they need or want or feel or know. And that may be easier, but that’s not how the magic happens.

Augusten Burroughs said, “All improvements, transformations, achievements, liberations; everything you want to change about yourself and your life; everything you want to make happen, any obstacle you want to overcome, any crisis you must survive—the prerequisite is being able to allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel and not pretend to feel something you don’t.”

Where are We?

I distinctly remember riding in the middle front seat of my grandparent’s car. That was a thing, then. The seat that existed where the center console is now and should have been then, because probably no one should ever sit that close to the driver or the windshield. My grandfather, who smelled like tobacco and aftershave, would be in the driver’s seat. And my grandmother, who was more of a Chanel No. 5 kind of lady, with a pocketbook full of tissues and peppermints, would be in the passenger seat. Over my lap, my grandmother would ask in her sassy, southern drawl, “Roy, where are we?” And my grandfather, with his characteristic cool calm, would answer, “We’re right here, Georgia.”

“Are we here, Mama?” my son asked. And, if he could, he might have added, “Or am I here, while you are somewhere else? At work or in your grocery list or anxiously hovering over that last conversation with your boss? Am I here, while you are too many places to be anywhere, really? Come back. Be here. Be right here, with me.”

What a gift it is, to be brought back. To the people around us, sure. But also to ourselves, and to these moments that, no matter how hard or complicated or tedious or mundane they seem, we may learn from. That we may be changed by. Or, at the very least, that we may want to remember. 

Thank you for being here with me, in this new little corner of the internet. 🫶