Things we wish you knew

Posted on 04/30/2014 by kosanford

Please don’t be scared of her, she is just a little girl.

She needs to touch everything because that is how she roots herself in the world.

When she doesn’t look at you when you are speaking, it isn’t because she can’t hear.

It also isn’t because she doesn’t like you.

Telling her she is pretty is not going to make her less Autistic.

It’s ok, I am not sad about Autism anymore and she never was, so you don’t need to make a sad face.

I want you to know that I am grateful every day to be her mother, but that doesn’t mean I am an unusually good person. She is my child, we are in this together, we are learning and trying, growing and changing. I used to plan that someday I would dance at her wedding, now I recognize that those kinds of plans are a gift that makes you feel sad. Now I plan small. I take life in careful bites. I savor the good moments and try and let the bad ones not break my spirit. Autism has taught me that a life is not a series of accomplishments or degrees from fancy schools. Life is about waking up every day and beginning again.

Family, Marriage, Meditation, Yoga

Push, Balance, Steer

Posted on 04/28/201404/28/2014 by kosanford

When my children were learning to ride bikes this is the mantra we would repeat for them. In the videos of their first successful two wheeler rides you can hear them whispering to themselves, “push, balance, steer, push, balance, steer.” It became the magic words that propelled them onto two wheels.

I hear it in my own head when I feel like I am on shaky ground. It has become my own mantra, my own magic formula for reminding myself what I really need.

Push: We need to apply effort in our lives. Some days the effort can be just getting out of bed. It requires effort to sit down and meditate every day, or go to a yoga class or exercise. Even being polite especially to those we love most can be an effort. Sometimes, it is the effort of not listening to our own defeating chatter, or doing something that scares us. If you push too fast or far, you will fall, but if you don’t push at all you won’t ever move forward.

Balance: We all use the word, I am not sure we know what it means. To me balance means mostly follow the rules, but maybe break them a little every day. Balance means sleeping when I am tired, and eating when I am hungry, snuggling when an opportunity presents itself, and taking every chance I get to make sure I am plugging in to my life. Balance means showing up to the people who care about me, including myself. The road underneath me is always changing, balance means not thinking it will all be smooth and flat.

Steer: Being in the moment does not mean that there is no plan for tomorrow. We need to steer ourselves along a path. We don’t meditate to become awesome meditators. We meditate to become better human beings. We shouldn’t do yoga so that we can be at the front of the class in tight pants balancing on our noses. We should do it so that we are connected to our breath and body. We shouldn’t just fill our lives and hearts with people to avoid loneliness. We should fill our lives with relationships that uplift and encourage us. When we are steering ourselves in the right direction anything is possible. When we aren’t we end up on our asses by the side of the road.

Push, balance, steer, push, balance, steer, push, balance, steer….When you feel yourself wobbling, say it a few times, and you will be back on the road in no time…

Family, Marriage

I may be the kind of person who curses in front of toddlers

Posted on 04/22/201404/22/2014 by kosanford

One year after Christmas we went to Michigan with my husband’s family for a few days of rest. Both his brothers were going through painful divorces and I had gone from being the last of the daughters-in-laws to marry into the family, to the only daughter-in-law in a few short years. I wanted very badly to do a good job in this role, on one level because family is important, and the less elegant truth that I love being a hero.

My sons were just over 2 and 3, they were adorable. The younger one in particular looked as if he had fallen off the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Blond curls, chubby little legs and sweet smile. One afternoon, during this winter week, we were all bundled inside, a fire blazing and the gentle quiet that descends on winter houses filled with families. One of my brothers-in-law was on his computer, my father-in-law was snoozing, my husband, Colin, was reading, the kids were puttering around, and my mother-in-law and I were playing Scrabble with Colin’s older brother. At that moment, the door to the screen porch blew open. My two-year-old, Peter was just walking by it, and I asked him to close it. He threw himself against it, and it closed momentarily. Seconds later, it blew back open, and Peter valiantly hurled himself against it to close it again. It closed and he said, “Stupid door!” I responded by saying something to the effect of, “Peter, we don’t say stupid,” and looking at my mother-in-law to make sure she understood I was a perfect mother in every way. Peter, was still looking at his foe, the door, and said “If it opens again, I am going to say Fuck You door……”

This is the moment when everyone started to laugh so hard we had to stand up. Ten minutes later we were still giggling and wiping away tears. The whole thing was so ridiculous, the angelic child saying “fuck you” after his well meaning but sanctimonious mother had corrected him for using the word “stupid.”

This story always makes me laugh, because it is funny. It also makes me laugh at myself. I don’t really use the word “stupid” very often, but I apparently was not afraid to drop the F-bomb now and again. My children have never failed to remind me what is true. When I am striving to make the world believe I am perfect, they will unintentionally remind me I am not — either by cursing in front of my mother-in-law, or some other equally embarrassing disclosure.

The person I lie to most often is myself. I think that’s true for almost all of us. No one wants to think to themselves, “I am the kind of person who regularly curses in front of toddlers….Or I am the kind of person who prefers to watch the Real Housewives of something instead of the news….” This was so true in my case we had to cancel the cable, to save me from my from glassy eyed, slack jawed 11 pm self.

The truth is, we are all flawed, we all want to be the hero, curse less, exercise more, improve on what is there. To improve on anything you have to be honest about it. If you are going to be honest with yourself, do it with humor, do it with kindness. Every time I find myself pretending to be something I am not, I picture a defiant toddler saying ”fuck you door” and I am reminded that our true nature will always make itself known. So try and greet yourself with a smile and a wink…..and hope you mother-in-law does the same.

Family, Marriage, Yoga

Youth, wisdom and the state of my boobs

Posted on 04/20/201404/25/2014 by kosanford

When I wake up in the morning after a healthy dinner and seven hours of sleep, I look the same way I did after a two day bender in my twenties. I know that the lines around my mouth are from smiling and the ones around my eyes are from squinting on many a beach day. The state of my boobs is upsetting, but a result of nursing my kids. The roundness of my stomach, a tribute to many a good dinner. They are all signs of an instrument in use.

The shiny hair and sparkly eyes of youth are like a road with no line down the middle, or potholes. Really great for learning to ride a two wheeler, but hard to maintain. The drugstore is filled with products that are designed to hold off aging. Or, some semblance of it. If you really spend your days in search of youth, and all the beginnings that come with it, would you even recognize your actual youthful self? Would you recognize that real youth is about possibility and not perky boobs? Real youth is about not having met your children yet, or certain kinds of heartbreak. It’s about a future that holds more beginnings than endings.

Youth for me was also about insecurity and the anxiety of whether or not I was fit for adulthood. Each wrinkle and stretch mark has liberated me from that. I never stop trying to be a better version of myself, a better wife, mother, daughter and friend.

“Better” no longer means cute though, it means really listening when people talk. It means letting the enormity of life’s successes and failures sink in. It means celebrating with gusto and enthusiasm when there is cause and rolling up my sleeves and getting to work when I have to. It means not apologizing just so someone will absolve me of responsibility, but always apologizing when I think I am wrong. It means stepping back and looking at how far I have come, and then appreciating my chaotic and beautiful present.

Youth is about possibility, but maturity is about confidence and wisdom. Neither is really marked by age. We all feel youthful after we surprise ourselves; there is no more beautiful expression on the face of a yoga student than when she has come down from her first handstand in twenty years. I hear the wisdom in the voice of my ten year old when he talks about living with a special needs sibling. Neither youth or maturity are available commercially, they are the product of our experiences and our willingness to see them. Or even better, celebrate them.

Family, Marriage, Meditation

Every day, choose joy…some days it works

Posted on 04/06/201404/06/2014 by kosanford

On any given day, I am a chef, a maid, a chauffeur, a doctor, an engineer and very often a UN peacekeeping force, and that can be before breakfast. I am exhausted and empowered by the number of problems I solve every day. Having three kids, one with special needs can mean that I have to remember both the pythagorean theorem to help B with his homework and try and figure out why M is banging her head…..concurrently.

I really believe that we have the power to shape how we feel about things. There are certain facts of my life. I have a child with really significant special needs, I have a curve in my spine that were it straight, I would be two inches taller, which would make me skinny. I curse a lot. Sugar is the one wagon I can’t stay on. Despite my best efforts, I still want to be cool. My hair is getting gray really fast. I was not grossed out yesterday when I said to one of my children “please don’t pick your nose at the table and eat it.” I am who I am, I admire women who are elegant and glamorous. Instead I am the kind of woman who often accidentally spits while speaking.

One thing that has always been true about me is that I am an optimist. In the days and weeks after my daughter was diagnosed with autism I found myself profoundly sad, it rested in my bones. I worried that I would never feel like myself again, I missed myself. I was serious all the time. I went to bed reading medical textbooks, and spent my days in doctors’ offices. I longed for fart jokes, or for some sense of lightheartedness to return to our lives. I thought it never would.

I was wrong, it did. One morning, I woke up and felt a little bit like my old self, and gradually the rest of me came pouring back. I now know that while an obstacle itself may not be a choice, my response to it can be. I never expected to have a child with whom I couldn’t speak, but I cannot let it break my heart. I wake up and know that I will be faced with lots of opportunities for perspective. Sometimes I succeed and make a difficult moment into an easy one by taking a couple of deep breaths and just moving forward. Other times I unleash a string of profanity and feel sorry for myself. Each moment is a chance to be honest about who I am and show up for the people who need me. Life does not always lend itself to joy. Joy is a choice and we can make it every day, and on the days we don’t, we can forgive ourselves and move on.

Marriage

Thoughts on marriage

Posted on 03/28/201403/28/2014 by kosanford

Being married is a funny thing. We take someone we love and are so excited about and then we make them ordinary. I am a yoga teacher and every once in awhile someone asks me if I still love yoga, even though it’s my job. Of course, I still love it, but it’s different. It can get boring sometimes, like anything, the more familiar you become with something, the harder you have to work to keep it interesting.

When my husband was my boyfriend he existed for only me. His relationship to his friends and family didn’t really include me, his co-workers, his hobbies, his quirks… I could approach it all like one of those sushi menus where you simply check off what you want and ignore the rest. Once you get you married, you get it all. All the relationships that didn’t include you, are now as much yours as the vows you took. It’s more than choosing every item on the menu, in marriage you have bought the whole restaurant.

And it gets even more complicated when you have children. Your husband is now a father, and you regularly discuss, among other things, poop, which eventually gives way to the only thing less exciting; youth sports.

Before we were married, and even into the first years of our life together, my nighttime routine didn’t just involve teeth brushing and face washing. I would also carefully choose a pretty nightgown before heading up to bed. I now insert a mouth guard to prevent tooth grinding, wear a compression garment to relieve pain in my right hip, and pull up an old pair of sweats. I can’t even remember what it felt like to be self conscious around my husband, but my hunch is that the more comfortable we are with someone the less they give us butterflies.

Sometimes, when we are in the car together, Colin will run out of his own material to think about and ask me what I am thinking. When I actually hear my thoughts out loud, things like “I was trying to remember which car just had the oil changed, or wondering why the A&P was able to charge a dollar more for cherries than Stop & Shop even though they are right across the street from each other.” I am startled by how boring they are, but what I love about Colin, is that I can be that boring, I can wear a mouthguard and he will still snuggle close to me in bed.

To me a good marriage is one where you can be dull, or restless, you can be grumpy, or tired, or giggly, or hyper. You can obsess out loud about details that your spouse doesn’t care about –like whether or not your neighbors are really going to leave their garage that color– or the cost of gas. Sometimes, when I bring up a subject like Yoga, which I love and Colin doesn’t, I can see his eyes glaze over, but he loves me, so he will let me discuss the ins and outs of a pose or yoga drama and politely offer his thoughts if it seems like I need them.

I used to look at couples who had been together a long time, who would go out to dinner and sit silently, or bicker over details and think to myself “that won’t be us, no way, we can talk until the phone battery dies, we never bicker…”

Now, I hope that we’ll be able to just sit together after 50 years and look at each other, and see all our faults, our bad haircuts, our quirks, our missteps, and still enjoy being together. No one believes in me more than Colin, he takes enormous pleasure in my successes, and can almost always re-frame a disappointment so it stings less, and because he really see’s me and I know he really see’s me, I have started over time to really see myself, and to believe that maybe I really can do anything.

Sometimes, I look at new couples and I am envious enough to hate them a little. I would love to go back to a time when I could pretend to be glamorous and funny all the time in front of Colin even if we both knew it wasn’t real. I would love to still get that little chill when I knew he was coming home, instead of just being relieved that now that he is here, I can maybe deal with our kids less.

I don’t think that butterflies, and chills are sustainable. Not because people are inherently incapable of staying excited about each other, but because when we first fall in love it isn’t just about the other person. It is the thrill of finding someone who believes that you are funny and attractive, who laughs at your jokes, and is willing to believe that you never wear sweats to bed. Someone who can look at you and see this very best version of yourself and believe that it is actually you. That is thrilling.

So, the butterflies disappear, and fly off with all the illusion, but what they leave behind can be way better. What they leave behind, is the comfort of knowing that if you let someone love you — with your mouthguard in, an ace bandage around your waist, and high school sweatpants– they just might. When someone loves you that much, you learn to love yourself that much too, and that is what happiness feels like.

Katherine Osnos Sanford