Gratefulness
This poem came to me at just the right time from the lovely website, First Sip. I share it with you, with gratitude for all the blessings in my life, everything in this photo: my children, my husband, my family, my health, my home.
loving fiercely | teaching audaciously | thinking deeply
Posted on April 15, 2016 by Jennifer Wolfe
This poem came to me at just the right time from the lovely website, First Sip. I share it with you, with gratitude for all the blessings in my life, everything in this photo: my children, my husband, my family, my health, my home.
Posted on April 12, 2016 by Jennifer Wolfe
It’s that uneasy feeling in my core that momentarily makes me shudder. I try not to sit over the wing, but this time I must have gotten too close. It’s grey outside LAX – an uncommonly rainy day in southern Californa, to be sure.
As the plane gathers altitude and begins to shake, my head swerves from left to right as if I’m stuck on a spinning teacup ride.
I will not get dizzy. I will not panic.
For someone who loves to travel, I despise flying. Each time I enter the stifling cocoon of an aircraft my breath begins to come in short gasps and I watch my hands as the grip and twist and fidget with anxiety.
I scramble for my earbuds, for my book, for anything to relieve the absolute panic I know is about to wash over me. It’s inevitable.
I’m flying. I’m released from the gravity that tethers me to my ordinary, everyday life. It feels like walking a slack line at first; I’m checking and rechecking for a diaper bag, I’m catching the eye of a toddler running away in my mind, I’m scanning for a plugged in teenager about to miss our boarding call. Strangely, they’re not there. I’m alone, feeling the float of lift off and gathering life from a new perspective.
It’s not exhilarating. To be honest, it’s unsettling.
This feeling of groundlessness unnerves me as we cruise along at 36k feet. Thankfully, the ride is smooth and my mind stills and wanders a bit.
I’m alone. Away from everything that tethers me to ME. I’m a stranger in a slew of travelers, incognito to everyone around me.
I could be an aging actress. A famous writer. A salesperson or an investment banker, or perhaps an editor or a restaurant chef or a politician.
I turn the pages of my novel to try and lose myself. It’s about a family of tinkers- travelers, nomads, those souls who wander but are not lost. Groundless, yet grounded. Their possessions with them always, settling briefly in one town and the next, they lead a decidedly unconventional lifestyle.
They’re outsiders, nudging the edges of discomfort as they roam.
I absolutely know that feeling.
Flying high in the sky, I can look back on my home and take in the vastness of our world. I can remove myself from my house and my street and my school and everything that is ordinary. I can become an outsider looking in.
I can see farther than I can imagine. I can revel in the anonymize of just being me. Jennifer. Mother, wife, daughter, sister, teacher, writer, friend.
The babies are crying in the back. I remember the weight of mine on my chest, nursing them to comfort so many years ago. I’m not that woman anymore, I remind myself. I can hardly remember her, it seems, outside of the visceral muscle memory of skin to skin, the sprawl of innocence spread alongside me. I’m flying and I’m weaving in and out of me, catching snippets of memories like I’ve just stumbled into a dream.
I’m flying, and I’m free of those old pulls of my ordinary self. I’m floating on my true nature, grabbing pieces of my life past, present and future.
Now, with only air beneath me, I’m unsupported, unrestricted. I’m free from my ordinary form, floating in a temporary state. It’s simultaneously unsettling and uncomfortable.
The pressure intensifies as we begin our descent to Salt Lake City and I breathe in slowly, then exhale. I pull Me back inside, I imagine the girl who will be waiting when I land. She’s a lot like me, but not quite. She’s her own, extraordinary, ordinary woman.
In and out, I prepare myself. It’s always bumpy on the landings.
Honestly, I need that jolt.
It’s sometimes hard to hit reality, isn’t it?
Posted on April 8, 2016 by Jennifer Wolfe
I discovered this most timely poem on The Writer’s Almanac, a favorite site for all things literary.
Does it speak to you, too? Forseeing Middle age refers more the top of a hill so you know without a doubt but that it does have, you can see your life whole, the horizon in the distance— of symmetry, like the earth especially now, while it’s simple waking up to it by virtue of being contained, define the landscape, “Forseeing” by Sharon Bryan from Flying Blind. © Sarabande Books, 1996. |
Posted on April 1, 2016 by Jennifer Wolfe
The other night I sat at our dining room table, across from my daughter and her forever friend, A. It was late, and everyone else in the house had long since gone to sleep. As tired as I was, I couldn’t pull myself away from the moment – the chance to look across at them, remembering their fourth-grade sleepover faces and times before life threw boys and jobs and college and adulthood in their path.
I could see it in their eyes. They’re feeling the insidious creep of growing up, the heaviness of choices that at times seem overwhelming and exhilarating all at once.
I wasn’t exactly sure how much to say. I didn’t want to sound preachy or teacher-like. They both passed my 8th grade English class long ago.
So I listened. I hesitated, I looked in their eyes as they shared their fears and hopes, and finally, I took a breath and broke in.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” I said, pushing my glasses to the top of my head. “It takes guts to listen to your heart. It takes a lot of courage to admit that the path you’re on isn’t the path that you want – that where you thought you wanted to go when you were 17 might not be the destination you want to head in right now. And that’s ok.”
They both looked down and back up at me. “Thanks, mamawolfe,” A. replied. I couldn’t tell if she was going to smile or cry.
“Life isn’t always a straight path. In fact, for most of the people I know, life was a curvy, squiggly, up and down and all around kind of a journey – especially in college. The idea that someone could know enough about themselves to make a decision about their future when they’re only 17 is crazy – you should know that decisions can be changed, courses can be altered, and if you listen to your gut and trust the journey, everything will work itself out.” My words hung there for a minute until the corners of their mouths started to turn up, their eyes met mine, and by the end, the three of us had exhaled.
I watched as they hugged and whispered goodbye, promised to see each other soon and that they would miss each other.
Later that night, after I’d tucked my girl in and kissed her goodnight, I was browsing online and came across Oprah Winfrey’s quote, “The only thing you shouldn’t miss is what matters to you”.
I know – you’re saying ‘easier said than done, Oprah’ right about now, aren’t you?
Of course, we shouldn’t miss what matters to us. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it. Why would we spend our time paying attention to those things that in the long run really don’t mean a thing?
But why do we miss it so often, then? What does matter most, I wonder?
These are the kinds of things I think about when I’m taking my dog for long walks. Or lying under the air conditioner on a hotel room bed, alone. Or when my hands are immersed in sudsy, grapefruit scented warm water and I’m unconsciously scrubbing the remnants of last night’s pasta sauce off the Teflon coated pan. Definitely when I’m elbow deep in dirt and weeding in my garden.
When I was in my twenties, what was mattering most to me? Did I even know? I remember feeling like my two girls did tonight – the fear, the insecurity, the cold sweats and second thoughts and absolute stupefaction over what life had in store for me once I graduated from college.
I stumbled alone, crossing my fingers and hoping the Universe would reveal the shortcut I needed to take to get where I thought I should be. It wasn’t a straight line for me, either. The circuit was tumultuous, terrifying and exhilarating, for sure, and for the last 25 years, I’ve towed the line in teaching.
All along, I’ve been trying to figure out just what Oprah reminded me of – what matters most.
Maybe it’s turning 50 this year, or perhaps it’s been watching my daughter move away and my son battle health challenges that has cleared the path for me. Because today, more than ever, I’m realizing that the words I shared at my dining room table were words I needed to remind myself – “It takes guts to listen to your heart. It takes a lot of courage to admit that the path you’re on isn’t the path that you want.”
The passageway of my life is narrowing with age, but widening with perspective. I know now, more than ever, that listening to my intuition and trusting the journey is the route before me.
I know that like the crack of daylight at dawn, it’s the glorious moments of each day, the little extraordinary ordinary moments that offer a glimpse into the world, are what matters to me.
These are the only things you shouldn’t miss.
Posted on March 18, 2016 by Jennifer Wolfe
I’ve been a working mom for nearly 20 years, if you count teaching-middle-school-while-pregnant (not an easy feat, believe me). I have to say – it’s made me a better mom.
I’m not trying to judge here. I wouldn’t assume to know your story – I’m just sharing mine.
I strongly believe we all make choices in life, and sometimes we choose things that we realize aren’t in our best interest – but I don’t believe they are wrong choices; instead, they’re opportunities for learning more about ourselves and choosing another path.
I could have chosen to stay at home – I just would have had to choose everything that went along with that. For me, being a working mom was what offered me balance, a center, and a way to indulge all aspects of my self.
As a teacher, being a working mom created definite problems – papers to grade during every karate class or gymnastics meet. An inability to feel like I could always be open about what my kids were experiencing while enrolled in classes taught by colleagues. A lack of salary increase, no 401k to retire on or work ‘vacations’ they could tag along to interesting places.
However, being a working mom had certain perks – similar schedules to my children, an understanding of what their days were like, and, since they went to my school, an opportunity to know all their friends and classmates.
With 25 years of teaching and two teenagers later, I still feel the pull for balance, I still feel the urge to create boundaries and keep my priorities front and center. Today, I’m sharing my words for working moms on The Educator’s Room in hopes that my experiences can connect with yours and that together we can find strength in this parenting journey.
“I’ve always been a working mom. I guess I should qualify that – I’ve always been a work-outside-the-home mom. Since I was in my thirties before I had both children, I spent several years teaching before they rocked my world…and to be honest, it was a struggle to figure out how I could balance it all. I loved being a teacher.”
http://theeducatorsroom.com/2016/03/balancing-teaching-mothering/