The post I Didn’t Have Kids to Become a Sitcom Mom. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

She sits in my lap and we read this same book three times in a row. Each time we finish it, she says, “Again.”

My throat feels dry. My head aches dully. I want a sip of water. I read the book again; we get to the end, and her little voice says, “Again.”

I put the book down and she cries. Her cry gets louder, and my headache becomes momentarily sharper. I tell her Mommy needs something to drink.

The truth is that even though this day is coming to a close, I haven’t fully woken up. The truth is that this book isn’t really that cute. The truth is I know she wants to read, but I have a billion other grown-up things I feel like I should do.

After drinking some water, I decide to return to the couch, where she still sits holding her book and whimpering. She climbs back into my lap.

Her big sister, home from school, leaves the TV show she was watching, and curls up next to me. I cover her feet and legs with a blanket, too, and squeeze a girl’s hand in each of mine. We read the same story together again, and then they temporarily leave my side to get more books.

We sit intertwined like this—reading, and holding hands, and snuggling—for about 15 minutes.

Dinner still needs to be made.

The kitchen is filled with both clean dishes that need to be put away and dirty ones that need washing.

I still have to make my oldest’s lunch for school tomorrow.

Both of my kids should probably have a bath.

For 15 minutes, I ignore all of this and instead bury myself inside of the softest part of being a mother—that special place where there’s only me with my children, holding hands and being together.

The dishes can wait 15 minutes.

Starting dinner can wait for 15 minutes.

Packing a school lunch can be done in 15 minutes.

Everything can be put on hold for this tiny span within my life, but if I get up and walk away to do these chores weighing on my grown-up mind, and come back only a minute later to say, “Ah, never mind kids, let’s read a bit,” more often than not they’ve found another little kid interest and have moved on.

And I’m left standing in the doorway alone, wishing I’d sat down for just 15 minutes.

The post It’s Just 15 Minutes to a Grown-Up, but Not to Kids. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I’m putting on a brave face, but I don’t always feel brave.

I’m holding so much inside that I have to be careful to not snap at my family for no reason. What I’m holding in is all of these concerns and weighty feelings I have for my daughter as she goes to kindergarten.

I know—it’s just kindergarten. I logically know she’ll love it and that it’s a relatively easy first step in the many things that wait ahead for her, and for us. I know it’s not that big of a deal. Except for it is.

It’s my first baby’s first time being gone all day, away from me, with other people for more of her awake hours than in my care. It’s her first time experiencing so many of the many interactions with other people, both wonderful and awful, that are inevitable parts of life.

I know that my job as a parent is to help her as she experiences these things, not to shield her. Yet I am her shield, because although she’s getting “big,” she’s still so small.

And she’s nervous. I was surprised when she told me so. She told me she was scared, and it made me sad because I had no idea. We talked about what she was nervous about. I tried to both soothe her, as well as let her know she can always talk to me, even when I can’t “fix” it.

She’s nervous, so I paint on my smile. Some mornings, mascara helps because it makes me not want to cry. But I do show her my feelings.

I’m not completely false and inhibited in offering her my own strong emotions about her going to full-day school for the first time, but I am the grown-up. She needs me to be strong. She needs to know that part of being strong is sometimes crying and feeling sad, but she also needs to see my happiness, and the excited anticipation I have for all that lies ahead for her this coming year.

Because the truth is that while I am sad, I’m also ecstatic. I know she’ll love school. I know we’ll miss each other. I know it will be both.

I know we’ll both adjust, because that’s what people, and especially children, do. I know we’ll have new things to look forward to, like the coveted after school snack. I know that from here on out our life is different. It’s changing. It’s evolving. Life does this, whether we fight it or embrace it—it moves and shifts.

But I can’t help noticing that lately I find myself just looking at her; just looking at the way the dimple in her chin becomes deeper when she throws her head back and laughs with her baby sister. I find myself frequently plopping onto the middle of the carpet more and more often, with my daughter asking, “What are you doing, Mommy?” and me answering, “Just sitting here,” as I pull her and her little sister into my lap to read.

I’m finding how true it is that laundry, and dishes, and phone calls and nearly everything can wait, at least for a few minutes, at least for one book. I’m already discovering how I wish I could go back in time and stop what I was doing when she asked me to play dolls more often than I probably did.

And I know this transition will be even harder for this little sister left at home than it will be for me, so these smiles and cuddles of mine are for her, too.

I’m putting on a brave face, but my face crumples and leaks tears more often than I wish it did. I’m putting on a brave face, and I’m smiling at tiny things I might not have noticed so easily just last year when kindergarten seemed a world away.

I’m putting on a brave face even though I know I’ll smile and wave to her as the school bus leaves our driveway, and that then, after it’s out of sight, I’ll silently sob as I walk back up the front steps.

I’m putting on a brave face, and I’ll be doing it all over again in a few years for this little sister. I’ll be doing it again for high school, and college, and for so many things that right now seem that world away.

But, for right now, I have an almost kindergartner, a toddler still home with me, and the clarity and gratitude to stop and simply appreciate it.

The post I Know Kindergarten Isn’t a Big Deal—Except For It Is first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

It’s too easy to forget that good people still exist in this world, especially with all of the scary things we see, read and hear in real life and through news.

But they do. They’re everywhere. They’re as ubiquitous as everything that scares us.

I was reminded of this two days ago when I took my daughters to the zoo. My oldest wanted to go on the carousel. I didn’t think my struggling to keep both kids safe and happy was obvious, but I was—struggling.

It was the baby’s first time, and we chose to initially just try sitting on the peacock-shaped bench. My oldest thought the peacock was cool, but she was skeptical, especially as she saw the other kids swarm to their own wildly-colored animal seats, and not onto benches with their mom and baby sister.

The baby wouldn’t sit, and generally wasn’t having it at all, until the ride started, and her fine tousle of duckling hair blew gently in the carousel’s breeze.

After, the baby adamantly did not want to go back on, but my oldest—used to going on twice when we hit up this favorite treat at the zoo—wanted to go again. So I did a parent-override on the one child, and we bought two more wooden tokens at the little adjoining window.

It was during this second time—trying to figure out how to jostle the baby onto something to keep her still long enough for these few minutes we’d be on the ride, while jointly appeasing my oldest, and trying to decide whether to help my oldest onto an animal, or park us all once again on that peacock bench—that I was wrestling physically with the kids and also with what to do (before I started to sweat and my girls guessed that this was anything less than awesome, Mommy-and-me fun)—when this saint of a woman with pinkish-red spiked hair and a zoo uniform swooped in.

She’s a woman that we see basically every time we visit, which is often, even if she isn’t always there at the carousel. She asked me if my oldest would let her stand by her on her animal of choice. My social-butterfly, people-loving oldest child was ecstatic for our new friend—and, to me, this woman’s platinum blond highlights could not have made for a shinier halo.

I thanked her several times, as I stood in between my two girls, both on their own wildly-colored animals, for the very first time. I stood holding onto the baby, and our new friend was on the other side of my oldest. My oldest daughter had a smile that lit up my heart—one that I needed to see on her little-girl face after a difficult week.

The baby still didn’t like it. I had to snuggle right up next to her and repeatedly remind her that Mommy was right here, and I sang “up and down, up and down” to her to help her focus on my tightly-wrapped arms, and the simplicity of this brand-new sensation (of being on a carousel).

The woman whispered to me over my oldest’s head, “She’s beautiful,” and she had a smile of natural delight on her own face—one that nearly matched my daughter’s.

We got off, and I realized I couldn’t have done that—we could not possibly have had this same memory-created experience—without her help. I told her that it was the baby’s first time ever, and I thanked her from my heart. I told her that we had come that day pretty much to ride the carousel and then go home and that, because of her and her kindness, it had been magical.

I felt so filled with love—love for my girls, tenderness at seeing my bold, naturally aggressive baby frightened at something, and for my “big” girl’s little-girl excitement—and with love for this virtual stranger.

We went back to our stroller, stuffed with my diaper bag, and, apparently not enough snacks—which is why we were there for just this one special thing—because my oldest was hungry and wanted to go home to eat something familiar.

So we’re collecting our stuff, and beginning to walk away, and another little girl asked her mother, who then turned to me and asked, “Is it okay if we share our Goldfish crackers with your girls?”

I was inside of my own private mother-with-young-kids world—attempting to push my car-sized stroller, and watch my two daughters, as I also attempted to have them walk next to me (cue semi-insane laughter)—and I hadn’t been paying attention. I look up after this little girl’s mother has to repeat her question. Her daughter is holding a gigantic bag of Goldfish crackers, and with my gratitude and permission, her tiny fist held out two handfuls of yellow fish—one for my joyful oldest and one for the still-reluctantly happy baby.

We thanked them, and this got the baby to climb back into her stroller seat, and my oldest then sat down on the little bench on the back for bigger kids, and I pushed them as they munched on their crackers, and we headed out of the zoo.

These two—what felt like miraculous—acts of simple kindness made me feel like I was floating as we walked back through the parking lot to my silver Jetta.

I was reminded that there is kindness out there waiting for us, and we have only to gift it to one another.

The post In One Day Two Random Acts of Kindness Reminded Me That Good People Still Exist. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The sun sets lower in the sky, and it glares through the large picture window in the living room, and onto the girls’ pink-and-white, chevron-patterned teepee.

The intensity of this brightness smooths my oldest daughter’s face into radiant porcelain when I turn to her as she starts talking. Her tiny features glow and her animated eyes appear to speak to me, since I can barely see her mouth without squinting through the light.

She’s made up another game—she’s incredibly talented at working out games through her own imagination; ones that both her and the baby find enjoyable, and that teach her baby sister words and songs, even if it’s not completely intentional (although often it is).

Her bright eyes are determined, as she asks me to participate in this game that she’s invented, but I’m picking up the house. Lately, it feels like I’m the “Martha” and not the “Mary,” and I try to appease her without stopping my cleaning, but it doesn’t work. She leaves my side eventually and goes towards the television in the background that’s just started playing a Sunday night movie. (I usually try to make a game of our picking up, but it’s getting late, and she’s been helpful today, so I let her wander off while I continue.)

I wonder at my thinking from when I was a young-enough woman that I was still truly a child; that I would never be that notorious parent discussed in the song Cat’s in the Cradle. I could never be the duty-oriented Martha to the Mary that chose to sit and entertain Jesus. I would never be the parent that always worked and didn’t play.

Only it feels like I am.

We all are, in a way—that’s why these stories are so universal that there are even Biblical examples.

But the floor will nearly always be dirty with two young kids living in a semi-country house, and the carpet with a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old will probably always have evidence of yellow Goldfish crackers, however small the crumbs.

The window–left open accidentally as we quickly and spontaneously ran out for ice cream—will inevitably leave more dust upon its ledge that needs wiped off later, and I’ll need to equally help teach my girls this careful balance of knowing when to stop and relax.

I am not an anal-retentive parent, but I’m also not the idealistic granola-hippie that, in my youth, I thought I would be.

I don’t let my kids dribble food everywhere. I tell them to get their elbows off of the table. While we do picnic outside on the front porch as often as we’re able, more often than not we’re inside, and I’m telling them not to lean on their chair’s back—an awful personal pet peeve.

I write, most commonly, with the baby crying at my feet and, by default, letting her cry for a few moments so that I can allow some of these thoughts to drip out.

I do the dishes after lunch when I theoretically could let them sit—and I do occasionally leave them, and go read a book with my daughters first.

I don’t aspire to be a “Martha.” I don’t want to be the one that runs around performing menial tasks while someone else chats and hangs out.

But I don’t have a maid. More, I don’t have an office. I’m a mother that writes, and I do it at the same time as I’m raising these precious, busy children. While I’m conscious that my most important role right now is to raise them to feel loved and cared for, it’s also my job to set boundaries and examples.

I want to show them how to curl up on the carpet in an extraordinarily sunny spot after dinner and play and create, but I need them to witness that sometimes, when you’re a big person, we get our work done first.

Parenting these days feels a lot like being pressured to be fun and ever-present, but we’re still adults with work to get done—and our kids need to see us being responsible.

The post When Being a Good Role Model Feels a Lot Like Being The “Bad Guy.” first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

We went to the zoo again, and I think we were there for maybe an hour. Maybe.

We left because I couldn’t handle it.

It was crowded, and I felt thankful for our membership, as the non-member line spread at least an hour’s wait outside the door, and into the beautiful blue-sky, sunny-day air.

The baby whined the entire time to get up from her stroller, and I don’t blame her. Because she’s not a baby anymore. She’s a tiny toddler. And she should be walking around and not sitting still.

But I’m a mom alone, in a sea of human beings, with two kids that don’t easily listen and stay close to me. So I ordered the “baby” a leash.

I always said I wouldn’t be one of those parents who put her kid on a freaking leash, except to hike in nature, like I saw one time three days into our first backpacking trip together, with my husband-then-boyfriend, when we were probably around 21, and kids weren’t really part of my thinking at all.

A leash like that would be okay, but not at the grocery store or inside of the zoo.

Except for now I can’t even go to the grocery store.

The baby refuses to sit in the cart, and she won’t even hold my hand as we walk through the glass-jar covered aisles (which alone is hard enough, pushing the cart and also keeping my eye on my oldest). So I got a leash, and I’m hoping that it’s the miracle I need, because these last few days have made me feel like I’m not cut out for this mothering gig.

I’m already not a great housekeeper, or even that good at staying on top of the dirty laundry. I would make a totally shitty housewife, if I was one, which I’m not, because I adamantly told my husband early on in my stay-at-home motherhood that I am staying home to spend time with my child, not to iron shirts (if I had an ironing board—or an iron).

This isn’t to say that part of my “job” isn’t to teach my girls how to be self-sufficient, or to be self-sufficient myself—how to wash clothes, and do dishes and pick up our messes—because it is, and it’s not because I’m a wife and because they’re girls, but because I want them to be independent when they grow up.

So, I bought a leash, and I’m nearly afraid to use it; to potentially find out that it’s not the sanity-saving device I’m crossing my fingers for it to be.

I tried it on her, and it has these cute little butterfly wings on the back. This was intentional, since she loves playing dress up. Trying it on around the house, however, she tried to hold the little loop at the end of the leash, and, essentially, walk herself—which negates this entire purpose of the leash.

So fingers are crossed and silent prayers are sent up that I’m better at being a mom than I feel like I am right now, on spring break with two pent-up little girls who give Mommy near-panic attacks as we head out into public, and they both misbehave, and my face gets hot, and my armpits sweat, and I feel like everyone is silently looking at me, wondering why I’m the mother of these two kids I can’t always control.

Except for even more important than going to the grocery store for more juice and more milk for my current lifesaver—coffee—or the opinions of strangers that don’t matter, are these little girls’ lives that I’m in charge of guiding, and that I feel like I fail at multiple times a day with my short temper and sometimes-invisible capacity for stress.

I hope they grow older, and laugh together about the baby’s butterfly leash, or they recount that we went to the zoo two days in a row, and completely forget that it was only for an hour both days (and that counts bathroom trips and snacks, too).

I’m not sure we’ll go back to the zoo tomorrow. (After all, we have gymnastics lessons.)

I’m not sure I’m ready either.

My neck still aches despite my trying to yoga-practice it away, from this unbelievable pressure I’m in—of raising two little kids; this overwhelming responsibility that I’m occasionally too busy to truly notice, and often so unshakably aware of.

But today was a better day than yesterday, and sometimes, as a parent, that’s all you really can cross your fingers for— that and that they’ll remember more of what I do right than anything else.

The post I’m Hoping My Kids Remember More of What I Do Right. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

There are two kinds of people: those who pretend that incredible—and wildly fake—desserts can be made with a rice cake, and those who eat the actual dessert that inspired this pathetic creation. I am not the former.

There are also two kinds of people at the play area in the mall. Actually, to begin with, this should be prefaced with why I even went to the play area at the mall.

I started going there kind of by accident—I think desperation is often involved with the mall play area. I’ll admit to this straight away–desperation to finally sit down, or to give our kids the opportunity to play, or to finally make it in to a Sephora store.

My kids were bored; it was another cold-as-hell, end-of-winter, everyone-is-getting-antsy sort of afternoon. We went to the mall, which alone is something that I never do. (Okay, I’ll be honest–I went to take my kids to Build-A-Bear, and I didn’t even know that it had closed a year ago.) So, now I’m trying to make up for the fact that they aren’t making stuffed bears, and, obviously, I do the one thing that—up to this point—I have not been desperate enough to do: we go to the mall play area. And they freaking love it.

I’m having mini panic attacks. I’m watching the way that the other kids are running around like Lord of the Flies. I actually felt proud of my daughters, and of how aware they are of other people, and of their environment, and, mostly, of their manners. Many of the other children are seriously acting insane. Which brings me to the two kinds of parents in these scenarios: those types that are relaxed, and those of us who aren’t.

I’m the latter. I have to force myself to sit back, and pretend that I’m not screaming internally.

I have to, for instance, repeatedly ask a child to stop picking up my baby, and placing her inside of kid-sized toy cars and rocket ships, and I’m looking around wondering why I’m asking her and not her own mom and dad.

I’m also watching my oldest child’s face emit pure joy as she goes down the slide, and as she makes a friend to play with. I watch the baby cautiously enter a tunnel instead of squeezing through it without any concern over another kid being already in it. I see also how my little one goes down the slide like her sister and the other big kids, and how delighted she is with herself; how delighted I am with her.

I notice a mother smile at my girls when they come over to say hi. I can’t help but pay attention to a mom who is acting like it’s her first time here, and she’s literally hovering over her son.

Yet I’m not relaxed either. At one point, a child runs out of the play area, through the one entrance-slash-exit, and a parent catches her and holds this tiny girl up calling with increasing volume, “Who is this girl’s parent?” Finally someone grabs her, and they are in the Starbucks nearby, and not even inside of the play space. I’m shocked. I’m surprised that anyone would want to be totally relaxed here.

I know that my kids need me to sit back and pretend that I’m comfortable—to give them the space to explore and learn, and to fall, and meet new friends—but that they need me to watch over them, too.

My kids are 5 and 1. My kids are the average ages present. This is good practice for me, and for all of these other parents of little ones, on learning how to straddle this line of over-protection, with the uncomfortable area of un-caring.

Because I might be the sort of person who doesn’t believe in gross, phoney “healthy” desserts—and I am this way because I believe in moderation. Parenthood is the ultimate lesson in moderation.

I’ve learned to have two glasses of wine—but not the entire bottle (on most occasions, at least).

I’ve learned that I much prefer enjoying a few pieces of dark chocolate on most nights, than to pretend I’m happy with an unparallelled substitute.

But motherhood is different. It takes more practice than ever before to let a child fall, and to trust our children that they can figure out how to get back up on their own. It takes even more careful attention to have them think that we aren’t either waiting in secret on the other side of a ginormous playground caterpillar the entire time, or that we’re out of sight worrying, since they’re at school, or somewhere else that we have to trust because we physically cannot be there to catch them.

I cannot catch my kids every time they fall. I have to learn not to want to catch them every time they fall.

Part of love is trust. Part of love is balancing our own needs to want to protect and nurture with recognizing when the loving thing to do is step back.

The post Learning How to Parent from the Other Side of the Room. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Part 2: The Caged Girls.

She sat alone in a chair, her legs folded neatly beneath her. Her heart felt not so neat.

She contemplated the day, how she had reacted to her small daughter, and she curled her legs more underneath her bottom; her metallic black shawl feeling like a much needed hug.

Her daughter’s crying from the day echoed in her brain, but now she sat with a brainless fashion magazine in her lap.

She thinks of how she longed to be a mother for years before finally emerging as one—knowing always that her children lie cocooned within her only waiting to make her the mommy she always felt she was—but her repeated daily failures make her feel selfish for wanting to actually have them.

She draws a smooth, tart sip of red wine. She normally drinks white.

The heater in the house comes on with a near-silent puff, but the old house’s quiet exposes the noise as almost offensively loud. She is not used to quiet.

She blinks her eyes closed—she honestly shuts them so tightly that little creases form along their outer edges. Firmly, she gives a final squeeze and then opens them, as if this will make the world more fictitiously shiny and wholesome, and her heart feel less dramatic.

She doesn’t like feeling that she’s dramatic, but the intensity of emotion builds so fully and so often for her lately that, frankly, she accepts she is, at least for now.

She notices that the tiny strawberry-hued ruby—the one that matches her daughter’s small, silver ring—has turned on her finger, as it shifts along the keyboard of her laptop. She turns it rightside up. It shifts to the other side of her finger.

Her life feels like this.

She moves and pulls and draws things to her—appointments held promptly as children are buckled into car seats; text messages sent with loving intention, but difficult execution—things like that. Life is not as practical, or as precise, as she tries to make it be.

Instead, her life meanders and takes its time, pausing with roadblocks to her carefully measured successes—and then often these are exactly the life experiences that shape and shift her as she moves through it.

She shifts in her seat and rises, thirsty for more than red wine.

She takes her jug of a water glass with her small hand and goes to the dispenser to fill it.

She feels the tingle in her breasts, reminding her that the baby will need to nurse soon, and thinks of one daughter holding onto the side of the shopping cart as her husband pushes it; her other daughter nestled in it, in her baby car seat.

She turns the ruby ring again and consciously lifts her breastbone to the ceiling—an obvious yet subtle shift of confidence, and of resilience too.

She tips the red wine glass towards her mouth and takes the smallest taste. She wills her heart to work itself into a stronger muscle.

Strength is not increased by tightening or force. She knows from having scoliosis that a tight, short muscle is not a strong muscle. Rather, a muscle with both suppleness and firmness is most advantageous.

She feels a brief letting go in her heart muscle as she decides to honor that she is only having a workout—an exercise session of sorts—by being challenged with her strong-willed, equally passionate children.

Being more comfortable and able to understand herself in this way, she decides to stop here for the evening. To pause. To rest. To let go.

The post How a Mother’s Heart Lets Go. {Part 2 in The Caged Girls.} first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The place of silent rituals in our daily lives:

Her backpack is too heavy and keeps sliding down off her shoulders.

It’s nearly the length of her entire body, or it seems this way as I perch it on her each morning.

We stand at the edge of our stone driveway, waiting for the bus. She doesn’t need to ride the bus, but wants to, and so I let her.

She takes my hand in her small, warm palm and swings my arm—silently asking me to sing our usual medley.

I didn’t even know how well she actually knew the words to many of the songs that we listen to in the car, until we started this new-yet-already-familiar routine.

Each morning, she takes our joined hands and dances her tiny body around me. Often, the baby is in the carrier, strapped to my chest, with her little feet thumping against the creases of my hips, where her legs dangle, as she also animatedly moves herself to the rhythm of our singing voices.

We make our arms go in circles for “Wheels On The Bus.” We pretend hammer for “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” We sing other songs, too—like those from our car rides to the grocery store and to get water for our small, country home. Trucks and vans and sports cars whirl by on our winding, pretty road, near the edge of our stone driveway, where we wait.

This morning, the leaves were distinctively yellowing; fall perching precariously on their branches, much like her big backpack on narrow shoulders.

The air was damp and the dirt between the stones was wet. Mist fell ever so slightly, but she asked me to get an umbrella.

We danced underneath a large golf umbrella that I’ve had since walking from my apartment to classes in college. Over our heads, white and maroon add additional color to the golden leaves of the trees.

It’s not really raining enough for an umbrella, but the baby is delighted by the maroon and white triangles above her, as I swirl it and sing along with her big sister. Her dancing feet kick my lower abdomen so hard that it almost hurts; she squeals happily as her sister sings.

Cars zoom by, and we stay back from the road. People are rushing to work and our road, being pretty, attracts drivers in general, as it parallels a much busier one.

Some notice our little spectacle; our private showcase of songs and dancing and hand gestures. My daughter doesn’t notice them at all, however, and I don’t care—so engrossed are we in our morning ritual.

The bus was hard for me to get used to—truthfully, I’m still not used to seeing my five-year-old get on it.

I so look forward to this pre-bus time, though, and I know both she and her baby sister do too—especially because the two times so far this dawning autumn, when it was too cold to take the baby out, and I left her inside with my husband as he got ready for work, she cried and whimpered at our front door.

These little routines of our personal lives—the kinds that are normal to us, but special in that not everyone’s life goes precisely this way—are healthy; making us able to properly invite crisp, new daily details around smudged, muted normalcy.

My sister visited this weekend and outwardly observed that I like to do things a particular way. I shrugged my shoulders and silently agreed because, really, why shouldn’t I?

Routine, especially for small children, is important.

In the mornings, it makes the day go more smoothly—more effectively—and, for kids primarily, these little things that stay the same help when life creates bigger changes—like baby sisters and new school buses.

The bus comes up from behind a yellowing tree, and its gold flashing lights begin to flicker. Typically, my daughter jumps up and down ecstatically when she sees it, but this morning its appearance seems to have also taken her by surprise—neither of us are ready to stop singing and dancing in this morning’s foggy drizzle.

I smile a little too boldly and guide her further up the stone driveway, to the waiting bus. It’s filled with kids she knows, and a driver and an assistant—in short, it’s a waiting world of something familiar to her that would be completely foreign to me or to anyone else.

She buckles into her reserved seat and waves good-bye, and the baby and I walk back up the wet stone to the front porch. I pause and gently squeeze the baby’s feet and nuzzle the top of her head with my chin and lips.

I go inside to perform more of my morning rituals, like making another cup of coffee, kissing my husband as he heads out the back door, and putting the baby down for a nap.

I’m not sure what the rest of our day will look like—I hadn’t expected rain this morning—but I know that I’m ready—thanks to cloudy day singing, patiently coloring leaves, and the waiting smile of my daughter as she’ll climb back down the bus’s steps, and into my ever-open arms.

The post The Importance of Routine. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

This weekend, a man who grew up in our new-old house visited unexpectedly.

My husband was outside working on the couple acres of lawn that the house sits on, up at the top of a hill.

The man brought his son. He asked my husband hesitantly if they could come inside. My husband said, “Of course.”

He showed his son where he and his brother—the boy’s uncle—had once had “sock wars.” The shy boy said quietly, but with palpable excitement, “He’s told me about those!”

My five-year-old daughter was ecstatic to have guests, and she breezily played hostess, much to our awe.

She showed the older-than-her, young boy her pony (the kind with a stuffed-animal horse head on a stick). She skipped around her playroom on it and offered him a turn (he shyly refused). The man was, as my husband put it later, in another world—the past—as he looked around his old attic bedroom, where those sock wars had once-upon-a-time happened, which is now my daughter’s playroom where we stood.

She made us tea and, later, her “famous” chocolate soup in her pretend kitchen as they looked around. My heart swelled more than ever before as I watched my tiny girl know exactly how to properly entertain. (She even shook hands—this taking multiple attempts for the man to understand what she was trying to do, in his surprise I think, since she’s so young—and she hugged the little boy.)

He told us that his great-grandfather had built our home and that, actually, the small street adjacent to our hill is named after his mother. He and his brothers were raised here and the house wasn’t sold until fairly recently. In short, this house was a family treasure and he hadn’t seen it since it left their hands a few years ago, to move his elderly parents to the South where their sons had all settled.

He told us many private memories and details about the house that we didn’t know—tales that we can hopefully share with our own girls as they grow older.

He showed us where a bay window had been, before his parents had put on a two-room addition. He was wistful as he remembered watching snow fall on the other side of it, during the blizzard of 1978.

This is exactly why I’ve always wanted to live in an old home: the memories—these types of stories—and, frankly, the old craftsmanship are rarely recreated in modern times.

With our permission, the man took a few photographs of his son in long-ago special rooms.

He awed at how the carpet was now wood flooring and noticed, too, what was still the same.

I showed him the antique mirrors and how as much of the house was preserved as possible, when the people who bought it from his family had renovated it. I told him we loved living here, and that I envision my girls playing upstairs together the way he did with his brothers.

Later, when the man and his son left, my daughter cried; my miniature, natural hostess no longer had guests.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the animated look in that man’s eyes as he walked around his childhood, familial home with his own son. I still can’t believe that we were home and that my husband was out working on the grass—the man might not have stopped otherwise. (My husband told me that he had almost whispered—in shocked feeling of such an opportunity—that he “grew up here.”)

Our house is still filled with boxes from moving in a few months back.

Because of this, the man and his son couldn’t see where I hope to put a mirrored chair in the entry way, from the same time period of the house.

He didn’t see, either, the way I want to dress up that little attic bedroom as a play space and slumber nook for our girls.

I hope he could see that we love it here and that his visit was, just maybe, as meaningful to us as it was to him—although that’s sensational, I know.

He said it seemed smaller now than in his youth—it’s funny how we grow and our memories aren’t quite as pristine as they seem, although they feel crisp and vivid.

The man and his son blessed our house that day, whether they realized it or not.

I found out that our home has been in the same family for nearly 100 years. I found out that his mom—who has that street named after her; the one whose sign I see every time I look outside of our window—and her family were one of the main farming families in my community, before the land was all sold and divided. I found out also that his dad’s family was a farming family of a neighboring town.

I don’t know if I’ll ever look at that doorway, with two small steps down into the addition, the same way, now that I have secreted away the picture of a young boy looking out at a blizzard when it was still a pane of glass.

He might not have stopped that day, as he drove past with his son, but he did—and I’m eternally grateful.

I already loved this house—knowing it to be a writer-mother’s dream!—but now my home up on the hill has the best thing of all: a story of a family’s unforgettable love.

The post Gratitude for Uninvited Guests. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.