love big. love hard.
We lost much this past year.
We lost graduations and weddings and funerals. Backyard barbecues and big Thanksgiving dinners.
We lost our sense of normalcy, our sense of connection – physical and emotional. We lost the security of schools and jobs and routines and the daily interactions we didn’t realize meant so much.
We lost faith. In our institutions, in the people ho were entrusted to run them, in our fellow man. We lost the idea of absolute truth. Of science. Of civil responsibility.
We all have roles that require more of us than we think we have to give. Not because we are martyrs but because there are people and events that are bigger and more important than we are.
This is one of those times.
And while it is tempting – while it is human nature in fact – to curl into a ball on the bathroom floor and curse the fate that has befallen us, we must rather pick ourselves up and simply do what must be done, however best we can do it.
So go ahead and eat all the Oreos and the Doritos and whatever makes you happy. But also eat some vegetables every once in awhile because they’ll make you feel better.
100 years ago, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the War to End All Wars ended in an armistice. But the terms that came out of the Treaty of Versailles months later were not an end at all. They were a beginning. When punitive measures, humiliation, and isolation are the only party favors doled out, you don’t end wars, you simply sow the seeds for new ones.
There was no one who thought Germany shouldn’t be punished for their malfeasance and aggression. There was no one who thought that inclusion – not exclusion- was the way to build a new world order.
We expend so much emotional capital waiting.
Waiting for the weekend, for a new job, for when we have more money, for Christmas, for the right timing, for some magical time and place where the stars align.
But the truth is, friends, happiness isn’t a destination. It isn’t a date on the calendar. It certainly isn’t a notch we check off on the imaginary to do list of life. And all that waiting just blinds us to the happiness staring us right in the face.
Don’t wait for Christmas to make your house glitter with lights.
Don’t wait until you lose ten pounds to put on a bathing suit.
Don’t wait for a special occasion to use your fancy china.
Don’t wait for a birthday to eat cake.
Don’t wait until your kids are older to enjoy their company.
Don’t wait to have friends over until your house is immaculately clean.
Don’t be tricked into thinking I’ll be happy when…
There is no perfect time. There is no magical day happiness will walk up and knock on your door.
Stop whatever you’re doing right now. Just stop. Take a breath and look. It’s all around you.
It’s in unexpected snowfall and lazy days on the beach.
In the first lick of an ice cream cone and the first sip of your morning coffee.
In the hand that rests on the small of your back and the smile of a stranger on the street.
In the Tuesday night impromptu dance party and the kind of laughter that makes your sides hurt.
In the way that your kids make up after they fight and the comfort of a friend who knows what you’re thinking before you can open your mouth.
In the mountain of casserole dishes lining your counters after you’ve had a new baby and the handwritten notes that slip through your mail slot when you lose someone you love.
In the wafting scent of spaghetti sauce from your stove and the sound of rain falling on your roof.
In the puppy curled at your feet and the sight of your parents holding hands.
In the grace of forgiveness and the gift of acceptance.
In those small moments when someone has the courage to share a piece of their soul with you and you share a piece of yours back.
In loving hard and knowing you are loved in return.
That is the greatest happiness there is friends.
Don’t wait. Don’t wait for Friday. For Christmas. For that promotion. For an apology that will never come. For other people to validate you. For a magical date on the calendar.
Don’t wait for the days to pass you by in a blur thinking that something on the horizon will finally be the key to happiness.
Stop waiting. Start looking. Happiness is all around you.
#LoveHard
#LookHarder
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We make things. A million times a day.
We make beds and appointments and late night trips to the drugstore for ibuprofen.
We make time, even when there is none. For the school project. For the friend who needs to feel loved. For the little hands reaching up for help.
We make meals. Sometimes 3 different ones on the same night. Sometimes it’s a stop at a drive-thru. Sometimes it’s an all-day elaborate affair.
We make mistakes. We fumble and fall and fail. Sometimes we laugh them off. Sometimes we see the lesson, even if it stings. Sometimes we make things worse.
I am a failure in a hundred ways every day, but I think I am victorious at more.
I am loud and opinionated and at times bursting with bravado. Yet a careless word or a cold shoulder brings me to my knees.
I am a mother, a keeper, and a fixer but I am also a child, dazzled by multicolored lights and desperately wanting someone to tell me everything is going to be okay.
I am a rule follower, a stickler for details, yet I am always ten minutes late and perpetually forgetful.
I am the product of my DNA but also of circumstance, of experience, of coincidence, and those who have loved me by choice.
I am forgiving to my own detriment for transgressions committed against me but I am unable to get past wrongs done to those I love.
I am confident in my own skin but I am also plagued with doubt about whether I am the mother, the wife, the daughter, the friend, the person I think I should be.
I am too much coffee, too much chocolate but I am equally whiny that my pants are too tight.
I am pajama pants on Friday night but black tie on Saturday.
I am at once questioning and answering, doubting and believing.
I am all the things and none of the things.
I am even-keeled and chaotic, apathetic and passionate, joyful and melancholy, good and bad. And sometimes I am all those things at the exact same time.
We all are.
And the truth is, we don’t have to be one or the other. We don’t have to define ourselves by a day, by a mood, by a flaw, or a contradiction.
The truth is, it is those very contradictions which make us interesting. Which make life worth living.
We just need to try to do the best we can, with what we can, today.
And today I choose to love hard.
#LoveHard
#LoveWhatMatters
241 years ago, our founders created a country based on the radical view that liberty was not doled out by a self-aggrandizing monarch but was an inalienable right. The heirs of that spirit of liberty fought a Civil War to protect it, to declare it sacrosanct.
80 years later, another generation volunteered in droves to safeguard that same spirit for men and women across the world that they had never met. They knew, perhaps better than anyone in history, that it wasn’t just the fate of the war that hinged on their utter selflessness. It was the fate of humanity.
20 years later, men and women gave their lives for another civil war. One that wasn’t fought on rolling hills of grass but on the steps of schools, the seats of a bus, and the stools of lunch counters.
Evil knows no geographical boundaries. It is not confined to one race, one gender, one country. But neither is love. Neither is the fervent belief that liberty and justice belong to all and not just a few.
Since its inception, since its radical birth on the tongues and pens of Enlightenment thinkers, this country has seen its share of evil but it has also always been filled with men and women who believe that humanity is worth fighting for. Who choose to call evil by its name. Not just when it is easy but also when it is hard.
Meeting hate with hate will always end with more hate. At some point, it is not enough to isolate it, to sweep it to the side, to disenfranchise the people you find abhorrent. Truman and Churchill recognized this. They knew that in order to build a new world order from the ashes of Europe, they could not afford to repeat the mistakes they made after World War I, when punitive measures were the only party favors doled out.
They had to give those who some viewed as wretched and undeserving the tools to build a different life and, more importantly, the will to see the possibility of that different life.
They met hatred with grace.
Yes evil needs to be decried. And yes punitive measures need to be taken. But that isn’t enough. If we are going to change the course of history instead of repeating it, we have to do more.
You don’t change the minds of people with hate. You change it with love. If you want to get all biblical, that’s kind of the point Jesus was trying to make.
When my kids are fighting, I always ask them two simple questions: What is your goal? And are your actions getting you closer to that goal?
Is your goal simply to punish people who have hate in their hearts or is it to change their minds? You can tell them to get out of our state. You can tell them they don’t belong here. And you may be right but that doesn’t solve the problem. It just moves it. It pushes it into someone else’s back yard.
So if your goal is to have a community or a world in which people don’t hate other people for the way they look, the people they love, or the religion they practice, then ask yourselves how do we get there?
How do we change the mind of a man who is brandishing a tiki torch from Home Depot and spewing slurs at people he doesn’t know?
I don’t know the answer but it’s going to take a lot of courageous people to show grace alongside of indignation. To meet the hatred with love.
It’s radical for sure. It isn’t easy. It will make you uncomfortable. And it will take time. But mostly it will take grace.
Charlottesville is my special place. It is where I met my husband and where we got married. It is where I studied the law I so revere. It is where I feel my dad next to me and my boys every Saturday in the fall. It is where a basketball team and their coaches gave me a court on which to mourn my loss and celebrate our love.
Charlottesville is my grace. Where I give it and I receive it. It is where I love the hardest.
May it give us all the grace to love hard in the days and weeks ahead.
#charlottesville
#LoveHard
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The nurse wouldn’t even let me through the doors of pre-op until she had slapped a bright yellow bracelet on my arm proclaiming FALL RISK. Honestly, I didn’t know whether to be insulted or impressed that she knew me so well. I went with the latter.
If there are two better words in the English language to describe me, I haven’t yet found them.
I am, of course, a literal fall risk, even when I’m not on anesthesia. I am clumsy and uncoordinated. I fall down stairs. I fall off my bike. I trip on chair legs, sidewalks, even air. I prefer to think of it as a talent rather than a liability. At any given time my body is adorned with more bruises than jewelry and, usually, I have no idea where they came from.
In case you’re wondering, Miss Manners has not yet expounded on the topic, which, frankly, surprised me considering she once deemed “business casual” to be less of a dress code and more of an accounting practice accessorized by handcuffs.
Look. I understand that this question seems ridiculously inane, even for someone who is regularly consulted on matters of traditional, albeit arcane, fashion etiquette.
Do you, for example, dress up for the occasion in symbolic – yet dignified -defiance of this distasteful task to which you have been summoned?
Or do you instead go super casual, a demonstration of sartorial ennui that you hope matches your attitude?
I agonized over it – even as I remained entirely unconcerned about the results of the tests themselves – vascillating between pearl necklace solemnity and multicolored infinity scarf insouciance.
I don’t know why it mattered to me, except in the obviously boring way of attempting to exert control over an uncontrollable situation. Or being able to channel my anxiety into a well-defined task with a beginning and an end.
Yawn.
This was not my first rodeo (recall my ridiculous insistence on wearing an orange dress to my dad’s funeral) so I knew exactly what was going on. And, if I’m being honest, I was a little disappointed that the psychological manifestation of my anxiety wasn’t a little more creative.
It’s kind of my superpower.
I made everyone laugh. So loudly in fact I was told by the front desk they had never heard so much fun being had in the hospital.
I actually made real friends with my radiologist. If you’re reading this Dr. P, I love you man.
I was given an A and a gold star for following directions and being a great patient during all 4 sets of tests (yes of course I asked to be graded – don’t you know me?).
I had dominated every part of the situation I could in the only way that I know how: I killed it with kindness.
Feel free to ask my mother, who has spent 40 years telling me to lower my voice in quiet places like, well, everywhere.
Or ask my former teachers, who had no choice but to give me an S- or N on my report card in “Cooperation and Consideration” because I used my voice, well, all the time.
Or my exes (all of whom are still close friends), who will tell you that I do indeed say everything I feel the exact moment I feel it. Even if the timing is, well, inopportune.
Or anyone who has ever sat next to me in any meeting ever. I get in lots of trouble at meetings.
If you’re one of the aforementioned, feel free to agree with me. And bless your hearts.
My voice has always been too loud, too much, too honest for some people. And that’s okay.
There have certainly been times when all of those things have worked to my benefit. On stage. As a lawyer. As a mom.
But I had never thought about my voice in the way that writers often do. The truth is I had never thought of myself as a writer, just a dilettante.
Writers are professionals. I write extemporaneously when something moves me. Writers have formal training. I was a history major. Writers write stories that other people actually read. I’m pretty sure most of my friends and family don’t even subscribe to my blog.
As much as I had allowed social media to distract me from being fully present, I had also let its algorithms and formulas influence the way I viewed myself. The way I viewed success.
For a brief, albeit confusing, minute I equated numbers with value.
I had to decide what success was – was it making a living or making a connection with someone? Was it the number of subscribers or was it the number of times a stranger reached out and told me something I wrote resonated with them?
So I took a breath. I took a break. And I realized that for me success isn’t about making a living. It’s about making a connection with someone.
It is choosing to be present. Not just physically present. Emotionally present. It means being unafraid to give voice to how I feel at the exact moment I’m feeling it. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Because someone else is probably feeling it too. And everything – whether it be joy or sorrow – is always better when you’re not alone.
When all is said and done, the only thing we are left with at the end of our lives are those small moments where we shared a piece of our soul – a piece of our heart – with another human being.
And if that isn’t grace, friends, then I don’t know what is.
Right in the middle of all of this soul-searching, I got an email telling me I had been selected by BlogHer as a Voice of the Year for this article I wrote titled “This Is The Me They Love.”
You know how much I love a good metaphor or a sign from the universe. For better or worse, I took this as a sign that I made the right choice.
For the first time in a long time, my voice wasn’t getting me in trouble. Maybe my voice was doing something right after all.
Thank you for those of you that have been on this road with me from the beginning and those of you that have joined along the way.
Thank you for letting me share a little piece of my soul with you and trusting me with a little piece of yours…
#LoveHard #SpeakLouder
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Judging by social media over the last few days, 2016 was apparently the worst year in all of humanity. The rash of posts and tweets heralding New Year’s Eve as the end of all the ills that have befallen the world left me a little befuddled (which, admittedly, is not hard to do).
This symbolic adherence to New Years as the closing of one door and the opening of another has always struck me as a little contrived.
Maybe it’s because I have always marked the passing of time by the school year, not the calendar year.
Maybe it’s because New Year’s Eve always seemed to be the most overhyped and underwhelming of all holidays (except for the one where we got enagged of course).
Maybe it’s because so many people seem to put pressure on themselves to go to bed on New Year’s Eve and wake up a radically different person 8 hours later.
Maybe it’s because the turning of a calendar page doesn’t really change anything, except the date you write on a check.
New Year’s Day, after all, is not like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. It does not erase all of your sorrows or purge all of your sins.
A calendar year, after all, is nothing but an artificial construct. It is simply 365 days in a row.
And it seems silly to me to chalk up an entire year as good or bad just because there were moments that were…challenging.
If I were being lazy, I could easily say that 2016 was a hard year for me. A year in which I struggled, openly and vocally, with questions about my place in the world as I hit midlife.
About the challenges I face as a mother as my boys transition from little kids to adolescents.
About the sting that comes from being disappointed by friends you expected more from.
About winning and losing and the team that gave me a conduit for the grief I needed to process.
But if I allowed those doubts, those difficulties, those heartaches to color the whole of 2016, I would be trivializing all the good that happened too.
And when I think about it, when I really think, the good was so much bigger than the bad.
The truth is, every year, every month, every day is filled with disappointments and failures and heartbreaks. It is equally true that those very same years and months and days are also replete with joys and victories and happiness.
What if we stopped thinking in terms of years or months or weeks or even days and just took each moment for what it is?
What if we allowed ourselves to accept that every day is filled with varying combinations of good and bad moments? Then we wouldn’t have to throw out all the good ones with the bad when we flip the calendar page.
What if we just remembered that January 1st is nothing more than the day after December 31st?
We could simply accept each day as it comes and know that even on the bad ones, there is good to be had.
That every day is a chance to try again, to be better than we were yesterday.
And that as long as you choose to love hard, you’ll never feel the weight of regret.
Love hard friends. Happy New Year…
He’s made those casual comments a few times before. But his voice – which is always so resolute and certain when he is making a pronouncement about the leading rusher in the NFL or the way to reduce fractions – shakes a little when he tests the waters of doubt.
I know, in the way that you always know your child, that what he wants is for me to tell him he is wrong. Dead wrong. That the Tooth Fairy flies into his room and Santa Claus shimmies down the chimney and I am not the Elf. I know this because if he didn’t, he would simply ask me point blank, the way he does with everything else. No, what he wants me to do is tell him magic is real.
I have never lied to him. I usually laugh and say something like “Man, you must think I have a lot of extra time on my hands.” And he laughs too and we both move on.
But this time was different. He watched me, silently, get up from my desk, open one of the ornament boxes in the den, and pull out a small Ziploc bag containing an old gift tag tied to a silver ribbon.
I put it on the table and sat down across from him. His eyes were wide and his whole body vibrated as if he knew I was about to break his heart.
“Do you know whose handwriting this is?” I asked.
He shook his head imperceptibly.
“It’s my dad’s.”
And I did what I said I was going to do two years ago when I found this gift tag. I told him the story of how, two years ago, I was exhausted, afraid, and heartbroken. How all I wanted for Christmas was to have my Dad back, even if just for a minute. Of how this Christmas magic landed in my lap. Of faith in the midst of doubt, love in the midst of pain.
And then I let him decide. “Now,” I whispered, “You tell me. Do you think Santa isn’t real?”
A torrent of tears escaped from his eyes as he scrambled into my lap and clutched at my shoulders. His 10 year old legs dangled down but I tucked them under my arms until I could hold him like I once did when he was smaller and empty of doubt.
“I need you Mom,” was all he could manage to say.
“I need you too Bubby,” I whispered back, “We need each other.”
We both still need to believe.
Before he went to bed, he left this letter for our Elf apologizing “1,000,000 times” for his disbelief. The sweetness and love in his heart left me raw.
I stayed up until the wee hours penning a response from Elfie. Just as before, I didn’t want to lie to him. But I also wanted to protect his heart from truths he does not yet want to know.
It isn’t my job to force these truths upon him, to toughen him up for the realities of a world that scoffs at vulnerability, derides magic, and laughs at innocence.
No. It is my job to protect it for as long as I can, with all that I can, so that one day it will protect him. He has trusted me with his heart – sometimes blindly, sometimes knowingly – and that is both a gift and a responsibility.
And so I wrote. Through tears, through fear, through doubt. I wrote the truth. That the magic of Christmas is how everyone cares a little more, hugs a little longer, loves a little harder. That just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. That not all mysteries have to be solved.
One day he will ask me the question because he wants to know the answer. But not today. Today the world is still magical.
Or maybe he never will ask. Just like his mother never did. Maybe he, like me, will never be ready to let go of magic, because a part of him knows it is real, even if it seems silly or irrational. Even if no one else can see it.
And maybe, one day, long after I’m gone, he will open up a box of bows and ribbons and pull out a tag with my handwriting.
Maybe he will sink to the floor and remember the night I pulled his gangly legs onto my lap and gave him the gift of faith.
Maybe he will remember that love is bigger than anything. Even death. That there are some mysteries that don’t need to be solved. That faith is believing in something when common sense tells you not to.
Love hard friends. And always, always believe.
Without my prompting, the boys rushed to open the door for him. He seemed genuinely touched and told me what gentlemen they were.
For some reason, I could not stop glancing over at the man as he waited for his takeout order at a nearby table. Perhaps it was his eyes which bespoke a quiet, gentle loneliness. I know that look.
I have felt it.
And I wanted to do something to ease it.
As we were paying, I asked the waitress to put his tab on my bill anonymously. The boys were oddly overwhelmed by this and asked if they could pay for his dinner with their own money. I felt proud of their reaction to be sure. But I also felt…uncomfortable.
It is nice to pay for someone’s dinner. To pay for their coffee. To give anonymously. But if we’re honest with ourselves, that’s often the easy way out. We can pat ourselves on the back for doing something good without having to get involved.
But sometimes what people really need is not a 5 dollar cup of coffee, but 5 minutes of human connection.
So I listened to the discomfort and walked over to his table to say hello. We chatted for quite awhile, about the holidays, the new Star Wars movie, his tenure chairing the Biology Department at ODU, and his grandkids.
He said, my wife and I had 6 children. I lost her this year, he added quietly.
He held my gaze and I saw the loneliness from earlier in his eyes. But I also saw something else.
What was her name? I asked. Somehow it was important for me to know. And I knew it was important for him to say it.
Mary, he replied. We were together for 63 years.
I held out my hand and said, I’m Cameron. He looked me in the eye and said, I’m Joseph.
And then he laughed – a big, full laugh – as the looks registered on our faces. Yes, he said, Mary and Joseph.
He did not let go of my hand, even as he turned and looked at the boys and told them what joy they had brought him. Perhaps he had sensed something in my eyes too.
Later, when we were bundled up in bed together, all of the feelings that had been roiling around inside me seeped out of my pores and sat on top of my skin.
The boys asked why I was crying and I told them simply that sometimes God brings people across our paths for a reason.
I don’t talk about religion much but I do not doubt that we were meant to meet this man, this Joseph and his Mary.
To remind me that we are all walking through the night, tired and alone, in need of a place to rest our heads and our hearts.
To remind me that all of us who have lost someone we love are part of a team. We don’t have uniforms, we don’t have a coach, and we certainly don’t have a game plan. But we can recognize each other.
To remind me that it is our job to be the innkeeper who opens the door.
It is so much easier to be the innkeeper who says, I’m sorry. We don’t have any room. It’s not my problem. It’s not my business. I’m too busy.
But that night I was reminded of what happens when you open the door and say, I will find a place for you. I will make room.
That night we were the innkeeper who said yes. But so was Joseph. That night we walked each other home.
Love hard friends. And always be the innkeeper holding the light who says yes…
Instead of engaging in a reasonable discussion where differing viewpoints were acknowledged and debated respectfully, my household was filled with a barrage of insults, voices shouting over one another, and eye rolls.
Frankly it reminded me a lot of how the entire country is behaving right now.
When everyone’s tops had blown (including mine), after the tears dried, after apologies had been remorsefully doled out (including mine), I put the boys in the car and drove up 64 to Yorktown. To the battlefields where we wrested independence from the British 235 years ago.
Growing up in southeastern Virginia, the birthplace of democracy, we spent countless Saturdays roaming the hills of Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Jamestown.
It is where my love for history was born. Where I learned the difference between a brigade and a battalion, a howitzer and a mortar, a redoubt and a siege line.
Where I learned that history is found not only on the pages of a textbook. It is in the scratched metal of a cannon, the paths etched in grassy hills from thousands of heavy footsteps, the bold flourishes of a quill pen imprinted on yellowed parchment, the chipped bricks within whose walls the whispers of men became the flint of revolution. They will all tell you their stories if you let them.
It is also where my love of words was born. The understanding that the right words, delivered in the right way, have the power to inspire, to exhort, to hurt or to heal.
Friday we climbed the hills where Washington’s troops surged in the cover of darkness.
We talked about alliances and cooperation, of courage and conviction. We saw the tent that hung over Washington’s head as he mapped out his final strategy for taking Yorktown. We sat in the grass and stared up at Lady Liberty atop the 80 foot monument to America’s victory and marveled in her beauty, both real and symbolic.
That was where I knew my boys got it – the breathtaking audacity of a group of thinkers who created a nation and the men who left their families to fight for it.
And that is what makes America what it is. We did not lay claim to liberty as our own. The words and ideas that were the catalyst for our own revolution became the catalyst for others, for the simple idea that government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Not in spite of them.
The morning was ugly, the kind of ugly you hate as a parent and a human being. But we pressed the reset button. We allowed ourselves the courage to admit our mistakes and the grace to fix them.
And if two kids and a 40 year old can do it, I’m pretty sure the rest of the country can too.
So on the eve of the election America, please let me remind you the same thing I reminded my children Friday morning: take a deep breath and chillax. Stop denigrating those with differing viewpoints, for even if you don’t agree with them, they are valid to those who hold them.
Be gracious in winning or in losing, because on Wednesday morning, we are still one nation. And we need to collectively press the reset button.
We need to remember how unbelievably lucky we are to live in a country where we choose our leaders by checking a box instead of wielding a weapon. Where we are allowed to criticize the government without fear of being hauled off to jail in the middle of the night. Where great men – brilliant men – passionately argued with each other about the way our government should operate, but at the end of the day recognized that all those different viewpoints were the very basis of a functioning democracy. That we learn more from those we disagree with than those who share our beliefs.
We are many voices, each protected by a 230 year old document that declares those voices – all of them – are sacrosanct.
We are better than our disagreements. We are bigger than our problems. We are the descendents, actual and metaphorical, of the men who stood on these fields with muskets, those who fought with their words instead of weapons, and the huddled masses and the tempest-tossed who arrive at our borders – all of whom risked their lives, their fortunes, and their honor for the great experiment that changed the course of humanity.
We are all charged with forming a more perfect union.
And it’s high time we start acting like it.
For more information, visit the Yorktown National Park and Colonial Williamsburg.
#lovehard
And for a minute, it felt like salt in my wounds because he’s not here anymore damnit and I silently cursed myself for forgetting to delete his account again.
But then I went on a field trip with 20 first grade boys who were silly and sweet and wanted to feel and touch and learn.
And one of them – one who always has trouble staying out of trouble – seemed to need my attention. So I held his hand while we walked and I gave him my sandwich when he asked if he could have it because he didn’t like his own and I played games with him on the bus to distract him from hitting the other boys.
And at the end of the day, he quietly came and took my hand and whispered “Was I good today?” I realized this was a question he asks a lot and I know what the answer usually is.
I looked in his eyes and the rush of my own loss and pain and love smacked me in the face as I realized my dad is still here damnit. He had been there all day, standing next to me and this little boy, pushing his hand into mine on a day when we were both struggling. On a day when we both needed each other.
The boy saw the look of shock register on my face, mistook it for a condemnation of him, and said dejectedly “I wasn’t, was I?”
I knelt down and held his hand again and told him he was good. He was more than good. And he smiled. A real smile. A smile from some place deep inside where words can not form. And I whispered “Happy Birthday Daddy” as he gave me a hug goodbye.
That was the first of many hugs. Every Thursday, he comes to find me in the Lower School library where I volunteer and gives me a hug.
On Valentine’s Day, he walked in and pressed this into my palm.
He had no way of knowing of course, but Tootsie Roll was what my dad used to call me.
He still struggles. I do too. Maybe that’s what we see in each other.
Since August, I have been grappling with big doubts, big feelings and big questions about my purpose in this world, about whether loving hard is making a difference.
My family and my friends and so many of you have been patient and supportive and loving, even when I could not be those things to myself.
But the truth is, the one person I wanted to talk to most, the person who understood me better than anyone, the person who could calm my heart with a hand on my arm, wasn’t here.
For the first time in my entire life, when I needed him – when I really needed him – he wasn’t here.
Until today, when I walked into the classroom and that same little boy came up behind me silently and gave me a different kind of hug – the kind of hug that lasts so long you need to catch your breath – and whispered “Hugging you is like hugging my mom.”
The mom he doesn’t live with. The mom he misses every day.
I hugged him back, and I whispered, for the second year in a row, “Happy Birthday Daddy. I miss you too.”
It’s really easy to dismiss all these things as coincidence. To say that we who are left behind on this earth are so desperate for a connection to the people we miss that we find meaning where there is none. And I wouldn’t blame you.
But I respectfully disagree.
Over the last two and a half years, my dad has sent me signs to let me know he is still here. He is always here. They come when I least expect them, but when I need them the most.
And perhaps the biggest lesson I have learned since my dad died is that love is bigger and stronger and more purposeful than I ever imagined. It is bigger than life. It is bigger than death.
We have been taught – by society, by experience, by life – to be afraid of love. To view it as a weakness. To think it is valuable only if it is returned in equal measure.
But when we do that, we lose sight of the fact that love is only real if it is given with no conditions, no expectations, no reward. And that is hard. It is hard to be so vulnerable. But the very thing that makes it hard is what makes it true.
Love hard friends. Even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard.
#lovehard