Endings and Beginnings

15 May 2025:  Endings and Beginnings

For Mother’s Day I gave myself the gift of not caring. Just for the day.

I let myself not care whether my kids showed up for church on time or at all, or what they were wearing. I un-obliged myself from caring about keeping track of people’s schedules, possessions, logistics. I didn’t bend myself to anyone’s desires or needs. It was a shocking freedom, and honestly a little hard to sustain after decades spent being steadfastly available.

So much about being a parent involves holding boundaries until children either don’t need that boundary or can hold it on their own. Each child is different. It’s beautiful and exhausting and sometimes I lose myself in the swirl of being things for other people. It was strange to take a day off.

When Jack was but an infant someone counseled me a version of the ‘how fast they grow’ lament by saying, “What’s so hard is all the endings. I’d be so excited that my son had achieved some new milestone, like learning some words, but then would realize that meant he’d no longer do something else that I loved, like blowing bubbles. It’s just a constant letting go.” Not that comforting, really, but I see her point.

I’ve tasked myself with doing everything possible to ensure my children grow up to be independent, well-adjusted, kind and generous people. I’m always keeping that long game in mind while navigating the sometimes excruciating minutia of their childhoods. Here’s the crazy part. If I’m doing my part well, then the short game keeps changing. I keep having to level-up when sometimes I just want to enjoy the bubble-blowing.

These latest levels involve a lot of letting go. And, if I’m honest, having to let go right when it’s actually become fun to engage.

This is the predicament I was trying to alleviate, or at least understand, when I recently listened to a Dr. Lisa podcast about parenting teenagers. As I said in my blog preview, the takeaways for me were don't take it personally and don't hold a grudge.

Easy peasy. How’s that working for me? you might wonder. It’s awful!

Yet it also works. If I’m well rested and not hangry and Trump has been in the normal outrage zone that day. As with so many things, if I can bring my best self to the situation, it helps others bring their best selves too. I’m practicing not weighing things down with meaning that isn’t really there. I’m practicing letting go.

Alongside the letting go practice I’ve been holding this wisdom from Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, "Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward."

I think I’ve spent my whole life chasing pleasure as a reward and avoiding pain as a punishment. I’ve layered them with so much unnecessary meaning. They are signals, not judgments. I’ve been mulling over pleasure and pain, taking things personally and not holding grudges, in my context as a parent, but they’re equally true for other relationships. My friend, Jeannine, assures me it’s also true with PR clients, and it tracks with every work or volunteer role I’ve ever had.

All Saints’ Chapel at the University of the South is a beautiful, majestic cathedral-looking building. Think soaring stone arches, glowing stained-glass windows, undertones of incense. The walls of the aisles commemorate people and events important to Sewanee with smaller windows and stone tablets. In particular I’m remembering a large tablet carved with scrolls dedicated to some bishop or other, praising him and cataloguing his various accomplishments. About 20 feet away is a much smaller rectangle carved with his wife’s name and this Bible verse: She hath done what she could.

When I first read it, I was offended on her behalf. So damning, so subordinate. Maybe she was strikingly underwhelming. Or maybe her husband was an insufferable oaf, and she had her hands full dealing with his outsized ego. In any case, she outlived him.

Later, as an adult with relationships, career, volunteer commitments, I came to admire her grit. What a wonderful thing to be said of one’s life, that you’ve done all you could. How often have I really done all I could? Ever? And instead of listing a few (possibly amazing) things she accomplished, it implies that everything she did was all it could be. 

Given my recent musings, though, I’m dialing back pressure to (over)perform. Now I’m reading the epigraph as permission to do some, to do enough, but not overdo. Hold the boundaries but also maintain the relationship; enforce reasonable rule compliance but don’t sweat the grumbling; keep offering togetherness and hold the ‘no’ lightly. For this, too, shall pass.

Every ending is the beginning of something else. Kidwise, why not go in thinking the new thing could be the next wonderful thing I’ll miss when it inevitably ends? Thing is, each change adds to my love, it doesn’t diminish. Here’s another miracle. I’ve begun thinking that maybe there’s new good stuff for me, too. That God’s not through with me, either.

And as far as taking the day off for Mother’s Day, we all know it wasn’t the whole day. After church I was right back in the middle of chauffeuring and logistics, Still, the hours off were nice. One child missed church but I think the overall spiritual formation wasn’t wrecked. I put my faith in the Spanish proverb: An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.