Rhena Writes

Tag: writing

  • (ekphrastic x glosa) ÷ cento = patchwork quilt poem



    Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
    Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme
    — John Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

    I could build a container to carry this being the way I move
    in my mind, unencumbered by beauty’s cage.
    Stopping at a bronze shard
    she examines it/ the sea, the red cliff, my love
    getting lost in a firebrick landscape of his
    and said, fully of an awe full of sadness,
    She touched this, her skin was inside of this.
    she was forever fascinated by putting the pieces
    together I was a mask, made a mess
    Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness

    you thought this made you special. your silence was exquisite;
    a vessel of mortal emptiness broken into a hundred thousand little pieces
    You will know each fissure as it breaks open your life
    breaking through, breaking blue and we open our mouths to
    finally celebrate it. A celebration should leave a mess —
    truth is the dead who leave everything behind
    Some paintings make me cry./I Like Crying
    I will keep broken things:/ the big clay pot
    And soft captivity involves the mind.
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

    Silence kneads your fear
    to know how utterly I have slipped its gilded
    hands go back where it came from. clean the room.
    Around her, what must be evidence of
    this was all sentimental crap, you
    sweeping the broken … / glass from beneath my feet with such/ Tenderness
    she was forever fascinated by putting the pieces
    together as in. I had no idea I would be here now
    Live coiled in shells of loneliness,
    Sylvan historian, who canst thus express.

    I am a continuance of blue sky
    This body is a song-/ bird in a kiln.
    my body is not just my body, but that I’m made of old stars and
    a broken pot bright as the blood/ red edge of the moon
    Read your grief like the daily newspaper: “Fragment of a Vessel,” it read
    You are Resplendent. You are Radiant. You are Sublime.
    Then on your skin a breath caresses
    The salt your eyes have shed
    when the time came to stand and climb
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme


    This cento is comprised of lines originally composed by the following poets: Claudia Rankine, Ada Limón, Adrienne Chung, Staceyann Chin, Natalie Diaz, Nadia Alexis, Ama Codjoe, Nikki Giovanni, Donika Kelly, Kai Cheng Thom, Samantha Gadbois, Lisbeth White, Destiny Hemphill, Mai Der Vang, Maw Shein Win, Alice Walker, Phillis Wheatley, Toni Morrison, Patrica Smith, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Natasha Tretheway, Dr Jayé Wood, Ariana Brown, Maya Angelou, Joy Harjo, Athena Nassar, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Deborah A. Miranda, and Kimiko Hahn. Arranged by Rhena Tan and inspired by the artwork of Pleasure Faith.

  • Keeping the home fires burning

    The deal around this house is that if the temperatures go into the fifties or above, we don’t have a fire in the wood stove. Sadly, today is one such day. I’m still sitting next to the stove even though it’s little more than an empty metal box right now because it’s still a comfy spot, just not quite as cozy as it is when there’s a hot glow emanated from the box.

    The fire is one of the ways that I get myself through the winter, especially in these fewer and fewer minutes of sunlight each day. I know. In this day and age, what’s the problem? We have plenty of indoor electric lighting and, yes, I do turn on many lights during the dark evenings, but somehow the glow of the fire just heals me right up. It sparks something primal and constant in me. It serves as a reminder that my ancestors made it through winters with little more than such a fire.

    The fire is also deeply satisfying because it’s something that I have to build and tend to: splitting kindling, carrying in wood from the stacks outside, making the fire starters. I couldn’t explain how to take care of the fire to someone else, it’s just becoming the second nature that arrives only with much attention and experimentation. Knowing what piece of wood needs to go on next, whether the damper needs to be opened or the embers merely stirred up. Yes, the smoke alarm went off as recently as the last week when I wasn’t being attentive enough but even those moments are becoming fewer and further between. There’s even work for the kids: stacking wood, unloading it, checking the moisture levels. And it’s particularly satisfying when one of them curls up for a nap on the nearby couch, stands in front of the box to warm his hands, or just stares into the flames. Yes, much of the time, they’d still choose looking at a screen (they are human children, after all) but I know that at least having the option of resting their eyes on the fire through the winter months kindles something in their imaginations. I’m guess anyway. And I’m projecting. I know that glow of the fire does something that no screen can do.

    Last week, we heard a strange noise which inspired me to call the company that installed and maintains our wood stove. I call it a company, but it’s a guy and a few employees. Anyway, it turns out that the owner has the same stove model that we have. So on the phone, he was leading me through some options of what the noise might have been and then told me how to remove a part of our pipe in order to take some pictures. Once I sent him the pictures, he said we could go ahead and start having fires again as everything was in working order.

    But two things happened in the course of that morning. The first was that I was able to get the pictures he needed. It feels quite good to be able to take care of things around my own house. The other thing that felt nice was just to have a chat with someone knowledgeable about these sorts of things. We swapped a few stories about our wood stoves and it was just, well, pleasant.

    I know that maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but I’m a stay at home mom. Many of my days, most of my social interaction is with my husband and kids. And while I do actually love my alone time and wouldn’t have it other way, that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the occasional chat especially one that is about something else I enjoy. Namely: owning, using, and learning about this wood stove.

    I feel competent (in fire building, in home owning, in creating a homey atmosphere for my kids). I feel connected (to both ancestors and other people who are excited about things like wood stoves). I feel cozy and even creative. I get to use my body to build fires but I also use my brain.

    This post is not some sort of an advertisement for wood stoves (even the high efficiency ones like ours). What I’m trying to do here is to examine the things that bring me joy, to break them apart into their component parts so that I might more clearly feel that joy not just when I’m sitting in front of my wood stove. But in every moment. In every breath.

  • If a gift falls in a forest and no one is there to receive it, does it make a sound?

    Gifts, the having of, the creation of, the giving of, the receiving of: it’s all been on my mind lately. I often talk a big game about the spirit of how I give. Sometimes I’ll make something handmade — mostly knitted — with the intention of giving it to someone specific. Hand knitted items are work. They take a lot of time and a lot of thought. But this is all a process that I enjoy. Knitting nourishes my soul — the act of then giving the item to someone else is secondary to all of that.

    And what I try to keep at the forefront of my mind is just the idea that once I give the gift away, it’s out of my hands. I give in the spirit of not expecting even a thank you in “return”. The intended recipient has rarely asked for the gift, after all.

    One time, however, my philosophy around giving these times of handmade gifts was tested.

    I made an item for someone. As usual, I sent it off. I did track the package (maybe that was my first mistake so I knew that it got at least as far as this person’s front porch. And then: I heard nothing back about even receiving the gift. Not a text, not a note, nothing….

    So of course, I started to make up all sorts of stories in my head. The person hated my gift. Someone stole it. This person was busy and forgot to contact me. I considered cyber-stalking them to see if I could see the gift in any on-line pictures. I debated asking mutuals if they had seen the gift or to try to subtly mention to the recipient to find out whether they received it. I thought about how I could ask the person directly. If someone stole it from their front porch, surely they would want to know that so that they could… what? I don’t know. Around and around I went in circles in my head.

    There was nothing I could do that didn’t go back on my original spirit of giving a gift. I just had to accept that I may never know what happened after it left my hands. And I had to trust that it will land where it needs to be.

    But what I do know is that it did what it needed to do for me while it was in my hands as I was creating it. And even now, it continues to serve me by teaching me lessons about sharing gifts. Of course, I’m talking about both tangible and intangible gifts. It’s no coincidence that the meaning of “talents” in the biblical parable means monetary wealth as well as gifts both physical and spiritual. I have received certain abilities including the focus required to be able to knit. I show my gratitude for these abilities by using them and then, in turn, sharing them with other people. What happens after that, what the next person does with that is out of my hands, literally.

    Of course, I’m writing also about things like creating a blog and sharing it on-line. The time, focus, vocabulary, etc… that I use to write a blog are gifts given to me. And once I send these words out into the universe, I can’t control what happens to them.

    When I sit down to knit, I focus on the tactile sensations of the needles slipping through my fingers, the softness of the yarn and the squishiness of the fabric that’s emerging from the two. I relish in picking out colors and patterns. I sometimes sit back in wonder that my body and brain are able to coordinate to create something that might be useable or beautiful or both. Nowhere in this sheer joy is there any consideration for how anyone else might respond to my knitting.

    It’s taken me a long time to feel the same way about my writing: that it’s the process of using this gift that I’ve been given, of unraveling words and ideas and images on the page. And then, yes, hitting publish or send or share. And to just sit with the process without thinking about where it might land and how it will be received.

    And, yes, of course, I’m also writing about parenting and sending my kids off into the world, trying to be present to them when they are with me and then trusting that they will land where they need to be even if I don’t know where that might be.

  • It was only an inch or two of snow.

    We had a little bit of snow the other day. I really needed to watch my kid filled up with joy so the timing was perfect. As we stepped into a little forested area walking up to his school, I could feel and hear all the stress exit his little body. The quiet and calm of the snow just pulled it all right out of him.

    On the walk back, I had to focus so completely on what my body was doing in order to not slip that there was not room in my brain for anxiety. I was reminded of the rainy season when I lived in Karenni Refugee Camp #3 in Mae Hong Son, Thailand. The dirt paths would all become slippery and my nordic flatlander body wasn’t built for even these slight hills. I’d have to focus completely on each step in order to not slide down the clay-like dirt. But it’s a practice in embodiment that I’ve learned to appreciate. I was turned into the very soles of my feet to guarantee each step was sure.

    This type of hyper-focus on my body, alongside gratitude, and being immersed into this little patch of nature create a castle wall against anxiety. The gratitude comes easy right now: I need only look backwards a little. This time last year, I was still weak from chemotherapy and I still had surgery and (unbeknownst to me at the time) radiation ahead of me. So these sorts of walks, especially in the snow, were much harder. And the knowns that I was facing in my future were much scarier than this year. The trickier, unpaved bits of this walk are lined with trees which make for nice sturdy bodies to lean against when I do need a rest. It’s a welcome reminder that Mother Earth is always holding me.

    Last week, I cried when I walked into a nearby stand of trees and realized that at least four or five of them had been cut down. The tears came faster than the emotions. The thing is that I knew that this was going to happen. The county has been making plans for redesigning that area for years and I’d seen the telltale neon pink spray paint on the tree trunks the week before. Still, I felt their absence right in my chest. And at first, when I started crying, I felt so silly and a little ashamed: here I am a full grown woman, a mother, weeping over trees that I knew were going to have to be removed to move room for something else. I tried to explain it away at first: oh, I’m just tired or hormonal. But then I realized that I was just sad because the trees were gone and dead now. And that’s sad. And it’s ok to be sad about that.

    It was only an inch or two of snow and it didn’t even stick to the streets. But it’s these subtle shifts and changes that can make all the difference.

  • Back being a human on IG

    Well, I started a new Instagram account (Rhena Writes) yesterday or maybe it was two days ago. In any case, I’ve already wasted a bunch of time getting sucked into the scroll. But! I posted one thing on my account. It was a collage-type, multimedia thingy.

    In any case, two observations about my experience taking the leap back into social media. For a while now something (an inner voice? or an outer calling?) has been telling me to get back on Instagram. I have an internal drive towards self expression. This is called, “being human.” And, sadly, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get someone else to see my talents, gifts, and self and to grant me some kind of permission or approval to express myself. This is nonsense. And this is perhaps especially nonsensical in the age of the internet. And nonsensical to the point of tom-foolery in the age of AI.

    A lot of my hesitation around IG is that I was afraid that once I was back on, I would end up getting sucked back into doom scrolling or even hope scrolling. Either way, I’d be flicking my thumb over and over in hopes of getting another hit of … of what? Confirmation that the world as we know it is ending? Confirmation that it’s not? Some sort of sense of connection to the other?

    Well, and of course, this fear came true. I got back on IG and as soon as I opened it, I was sucked into the scroll. It was just like when I get on Duolingo (the free version, of course) and after my lesson, I’d get sucked into the advertised games. I had to encounter a few puzzle-game-app hangovers before I woke up to realize, “Where did the time go?” In a way, maybe I had to have those experiences in order to overcome the challenge of not falling into the Duolingo advertised game trap (while still getting my free Norwegian lessons). So each time an advertisement comes up now, I have the script to just click by. I have my habits and routines on stand by. (I do Duolingo with a journal, a book, and my knitting nearby so that I am ready to move on to something that brings me more joy than game apps.)

    So fortunately, I had my strategies and I was familiar with how my brain would work in these instances. So, yes, I got sucked into the scroll a few times over the past day as I went on to IG to set up my account and then to post, but by the second time, I had my journal, book, and knitting at the ready to pull me out of the scroll.

    That was issue one with getting back on IG and I dealt with that handily. Rhena: 1 Scroll: 0.

    The next issue was the doubt that comes into play when creating a post. Creating the collage brought me great joy. My watercolor paints are these charming nuggets in a little tin. I love to tear paper and watch the raw edges emerge. But I also love to use scissors to cut and reveal the shape of the paper. In any case, I was quite pleased with my final product. When I took a picture of it though, it felt flat. Of course, I went down the hole of “Oh, this isn’t worthy of posting here.” This train of thought is worsened, of course, when I’ve just been sucked into beautifully produced images and reels against which, it feels like my little paper and glue stick crafts will not stand up.

    Well, I also thought: fuck that.

    And, I posted my little picture of my little craft that brought me so much joy to make.

    So that’s what I’ve decided to do when I can: wave my little joy flag from my little corner of the internet.

  • No more waiting for permission…

    Approximately 25 years ago, I moved to Thailand, my dad’s country of origin to teach English in his hometown at his old junior high school. After about a year of doing that, I taught students at Karenni Refugee Camp #3 on the border of Thailand and Burma (or actually, the region of SE Asia that Burma was attempting to occupy, thereby creating the need for refugee camps). I returned to the US after a total of three years in Thailand and started an MFA program in creative nonfiction writing.

    My thesis was about the Karenni, some of their history and some of their stories, and centered around my time as a teacher in the refugee camp. My hope was that my thesis would lead to a published book or at least some essays and articles. I did end up writing and publishing an article for a local alt-weekly and one piece in a SE Asian studies journal after I finished my MFA. (Both were about the Karenni people.) All these twenty years later, I’m still performing a post-mortem on my writing “career”, more specifically, what happened to my thesis and pursuing this topic?

    Here’s a bottom line that I’ve reached: these (largely untold)stories are important. And also this: I’m tired of waiting around to get “permission” to tell this stories. I’m tired of writing and rewriting and revising and guessing at what the gatekeepers (yes, in publishing) want to see in order to publish these stories. And I’m also tired of holding myself back on sharing these stories and truths.

    I’ve been reading Faith Adiele‘s Meeting Faith and this weekend I was lucky enough to be able to take a workshop with her. Her first book was about her time as a Buddhist nun in Northern Thailand, not too far from where I lived in the refugee camp. I’ve learned a lot from her book and her workshop about storytelling. As a result, I’ve been thinking a bit about telling stories about Thailand and also about living in places as an “outsider” and especially as a person in a position of privilege (as I was in Karenni Refugee Camp 3). In addition, Faith taught my fellow writers and me about how to unearth some of these stories from our past. As these things go, right away, I was dreaming about people in the refugee camp, recalling events that I had long ago forgotten.

    Here is one of them.

    I worked from time to time with a young Karenni woman (I’m going to call her Marie here) who was often charged with interacting with English-speaking foreigners. Her English was excellent and she’d grown up in places that were frequently visited by tourists (yes, there were parts of the camp that were open to outsiders because the women there were an “attraction” because of some of their cultural practices; but I’ll have to tell that story some other time). In any case, I ended up connecting her with a journalist from a big US news magazine program. The two of us took this journalist and her camera people around to visit a few different villages over the course of a few days. Marie served as interpreter and was also filling in a lot of the background and historical context. During the course of it, the journalist apparently noticed that Marie often wore make-up. If I recall correctly, she made promises to be in touch with Marie again. And some point, the journalist mentioned sending her a gift from the states. A few weeks later, I was chatting with Marie, getting caught up with her when she mentioned that the journalist had sent her make-up from the states. And it turns out it was used lipsticks, shades that the journalist no longer found fashionable.

    In my dream, I saw Marie and there was a table-full of used make-up that had been set out for people to use.

    Here’s the point at which I feel as though I need to make sense of this story. I need to extract some sort of lesson about how people behave towards one another and the ideas of “need” and “gifts”. But, well, I’m just going to trust that I can send this story out into the world and it will end up where it needs to be. And that it won’t require my further input, evaluation, and assessment. In other words, I’m not going to participate in gatekeeping these stories.

  • On receiving (yet another) rejection

    I think I’m up to nearly thirty “nos” on writing submissions over the past couple of years. And not a single “yes” from someone other than myself. I’m not going to sugar coat anything here: it’s rough to receive all those rejections. I’ve had more than one time when I’ve just felt like giving up. How have I not?

    1. I have a writing community now, to boost me up and keep me focused on what’s important when I receive another rejection. For a long time I was going at it without any real community support and that was when I pretty much gave up on submitting. I joined my community (The Sanctuary for BIPOC women writers) without any real intention of submitting again. I just wanted to write. Of course, having a writing community meant that I was regularly reminded of the importance of writing and creating. Paradoxically, it also reminded me that I’m first and foremost writing for myself. Which leads me to …
    2. The greatest and primary beneficiary of my writing is me. The vast majority of my words will never see the light of day — or at least I write them without the intention of them going beyond my own eyes. Yet these words are still valuable. And this practice still benefits me. By the time I get to submitting something, all of those words have already served their primary purpose of guiding me towards a revelation, a sense of self, a lesson, and/ or a healing. They’ve already done their work. What someone else thinks of them, whether they get “chosen” or not is irrelevant.
    3. I am a writer. I am a writer because I call myself a writer. In my case, I also happen to write every day. And this month I’ve been writing a minimum of words because I’ve been participating in a November challenge in my community. But to call myself a writer doesn’t even rely on that specific daily word count. It doesn’t even rely on myself writing every day. And it certainly doesn’t rely on someone else agreeing to publish my writing. A few months ago, I was on the metro and a man came up to me. He asked me if I was an artist. I said no. I turned out he was an artist and thought I looked like one too. We got to talking and he asked me what I do. My canned response in these moments is usually “stay at home mom” (which is also true) but this time “I’m a writer” popped out of my mouth. I genuinely surprised myself with that one. But the bigger surprise was that I didn’t equivocate and I genuinely believed it when I said it. I’m a writer.
    4. I write every day. And if nothing else, a rejection is a reminder to me that I’ve not only been writing every day, but in some cases I’ve sent my writing out into the world. That takes courage. My writing reminds me that I’m a courageous person and, yes, even the rejections remind me of that too. That daily writing is so engrained into my habit that I hardly notice these little rejection blips. Compared to the ocean of words that I’ve written over my lifetime, the few thousand that comprised that particular submission are a mere drop.
    5. I do a bunch of other stuff too and I’m also a bunch of other people. Yes. I’m also a mother (and a pretty good one made better by my writing; just this morning I had a talk with my daughter about a poem I’m working on). I also go on walks and have long, serious talks with trees and plants on my walks. I knit. I play guitar. I make really good chai. I read. A lot. For enjoyment. When I received my latest rejection, I was just about to do my daily yoga practice. For a brief moment, I considered putting it off to write or take a closer look at the piece of writing that had been rejected. I considered quickly figuring out some other places to submit it (getting back on the horse is also a beneficial practice) but I went and did my yoga practice instead. I’m grateful that I have it there to keep things in perspective.

  • I’m writing this instead…

    … of playing that game that was advertised to me on my language learning app. Those ads are a small price to pay for a free service. The one I got sucked into most recently is the one with the balls of yarn and the dragon going after the kitten. Did the algorithm know that I knit and what my eastern zodiac sign is? Sure I also have a cat allergy but that doesn’t make me a monster. I’m still going to try to save the kitten, right? I’m frightened by how much they know about me. It’s not really those little details about my hobbies and autoimmune issues that I’m worried about. It’s that they seem to know how my mind works. Like, how difficult a task has to be to get me and keep me engaged without it being so challenging that I give up altogether. It was so easy to just keep clicking “retry” — so much easier than putting down the phone. And the music? It just built the tension, made me feel like I was on an adventure that I needed to complete, made me feel like matching these colors was somehow important.

    I got sucked into it for far too long last night. My problem — or one of them at least — is that I didn’t prepare myself by having something else to do instead of playing the game when it was advertised to me. Next time, I’ll have a book on hand that I can just pick up and read while I wait for the ad to time out or whatever it does.

    I used to play Tetris as a kid and I remember that feeling of the little shapes falling in front of my closed eyes as I was trying to fall asleep. Last night, it was those balls of yarn and the fiery dragon.

    And somewhere in the back of my head, I think, “Well, games and playing are good for me and my brain. Puzzles keep my brain engaged and active.” But do they, really? Am I actually having fun when I’m matching these colors? Or is it just that the games are tapping into some primal part of my brain that developed when searching for patterns in the environment was tied into basic survival.

    The other day, on my walk, I went to retrieve pinecones from a nearby tree. I was aware that this was the season when this specific tree would drop its pinecones that are the perfect size for the firestarters that we like to use and make. Searching around the base of the tree, it’s that same sort of primal lizard brain that the game activates. It’s the foraging brain looking for a specific shape and color against the grass. But outside in the open as my pocket filled up, it was easier to turn that off and walk away. Easier, anyway, than clicking “retry” on the yarn-dragon-kitten game.

    And this, too, this blogging … this writing and sending my words out into some unknown world … this is one of the ways in which I’m trying to replace the easy “retry” clicks. I leave my blog page open. I joined a challenge this month in my writing community to write a certain number of words each day. In this community I’m getting cheered on and supported in my writing endeavors. I try to remember every day that what I have to write and say is important. And in these ways, I try to make writing and blogging … if not easier than clicking “retry”, then certainly more rewarding. After all, the kitten is just pixels. I’m a real person.

  • Updates from beside the wood stove

    There are worse things, I suppose, than having so many things to do that fill me up and energize me. These past few days, it’s been cold enough that I’ve been making a fire in the wood stove. This has meant that a portion of each day has been spent alternating between reading and listening to a book while knitting next to the fire. It’s exceedingly cozy.

    I’ve been listening to The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna which I think was written specifically to be listened to while knitting next to a wood stove. All of this feels very indulgent. But also very necessary. I received (yet another) medical bill in the mail today and I realized that the hours I spent being cozy and calm was shoring me up to deal with that particular challenge and other challenges yet to come. In spite of all of my health challenges, the professionals often comment on how my blood pressure is ideal. And I think that taking care of myself in these kinds of ways might have something to do with that.

    These are not the socks I’ve actually been knitting these past few days; this is a pair that I finished before it was fire season. My daughter selected the colors and pattern from my stash.

    I’m grateful for all of the work that my past self put into making sure that I could weather these challenges. Many years ago, I learned to knit. And in the past few years, I’ve accumulated enough skeins of yarn, patterns, and skills that I can pick up a project pretty quickly. It gives me something for my brain and hands to do. Idle hands being what they are… And, of course, there’s always the satisfaction of finishing an item and then giving it to someone, sending it off into the world where it will do its thing. With each item I make, it’s a practice in letting go and in trusting that it will end up doing what it needs to do, being where it needs to be without any sort of effort from me. Once that final strand is woven in (ok, and I block it), it’s out of my hands. I’m done. It’s an exercise in letting go of control. Of course this translate into other areas of my life: parenting specifically. But also even with writing. I put the words on the page and hit publish or otherwise send it off. What happens beyond that is up to the universe. I have to be ok with that or else I’d never do any of it. But I am. And so I do.

  • How Will They Know I Love Them?

    This is the story of how I struggle with saying no to my kids. And also the story of how I struggle to say yes to my kids. And also of how I struggle to say yes to myself. And so therefore perhaps it’s about how I struggle to say no to myself. I guess maybe I could therefore say that it’s about how I struggle with decisions. And maybe that means that I struggle — and usually fail — to recognize the abundance that has been gifted to me.

    It begins with a corn dog. It was the weekend. My daughter wanted one. What she really wanted was to go to one of her favorite restaurants to get a corn dog and a bubble tea. But she never told me this directly, she just kind of hinted around it. I would like to say that I have a strong “mother’s intuition” and that I pay attention so closely to my kids needs and wants that they never have to express them: I just know. But that’s not what’s going on here. At first, I thought that my kids don’t always ask for what they want directly because they don’t like to hear “no.” But I’m starting to realize that my kids sense that I struggle to say “no” to them. They don’t like to see that struggle and so they edit themselves before it even gets to the whole asking directly for their wants and needs. They kind of “test the waters” with hints and indirect comments. It’s not to save themselves from hearing a no. It’s to save them from having to watch me flounder and go back and forth and try to make a decision.

    So I knew that she wanted to go get a corn dog. (Honestly, she’d probably want to get a corn dog every chance she got so this wasn’t any sort of revelation.) And I went back and forth inside my own head on whether or not I wanted to take her to get one. It would take a while, a chunk from their day off from school. But it’s always nice to have these types of trips with her or, really, any of my kids. Corn dogs aren’t the healthiest option, on the one hand. On the other, part of me really does believe in a sort of “do what you enjoy” attitude. We didn’t really have a set lunch at home so why not go out and get something? But, then again, I also had things I wanted to do and enjoy at home. And she had never really asked directly to go. I’d like to think that if there’s one lesson that I’m trying to instill in my kids, it’s to ask directly for what they want from me. And here I was trying to come up with an answer to a request that she hadn’t even made yet.

    And here’s the real crux of the struggle, “If I don’t anticipate and meet their every hearts desire, how will they know that I love them?”

    So I was in this internal state of debate, letting all of these back and forths slowly eat up my morning. Finally, she asked me, directly, “Mom, do you like the corn dog restaurant?”

    It was the first direct question she’d asked all morning about lunch and it wasn’t at all the question I’d been planning for.

    “Well,” I explained to her. “I like corndogs, but they aren’t the healthiest option for me and I’m trying to focus on eating in a healthier way these days.”

    And that was it. She didn’t mention the corndog restaurant again the rest of the day to me. She asked me to help her with cutting celery and onion so she could make herself a tuna melt, which she seemed perfectly satisfied with. And we had a perfectly nice time at home. We’d played volleyball together in the morning. Later, she came to me and asked if I’d play with her again. I was in the middle of writing a poem so I told her, “no.” She tried to convince me a little more but I stuck to my commitment to my writing.

    Of course, it wasn’t easy to say “no” to her. She wanted to do something perfectly wholesome with me, her mother outside on a lovely day. And, of course, in the back of my head, there’s always the thought, “one day my kids will move out and be on their own and I won’t have a chance to play volleyball on a beautiful fall day with them.”

    Later, I found out that she took that time to clean her room.

    And I realized that my always giving more of my time, my attention, my energy every time they ask for it isn’t helping them. I realized how much they are really, truly watching everything I do and soaking it all up. When I say, “no” to them, often it forces them to figure out a way to say, “yes” to themselves, to improving their environment, to taking care of themselves and their health. I had been modeling self-love all along and didn’t even realize it. But she had seen it. And now she could practice it for herself.

    “If I don’t anticipate and fulfill their every want and need, how will they know I love them?” They will know I love them because they see how I love myself. They know I love them because I do.