I woke up this morning with a need to write. Later in the day, a text message conversation with my son helped me understand my drive to write about this topic. When I took out my journal, I thought about my children and their journeys to adulthood. I was reminded of discussions with people of faith about life coming in seasons. Within those seasons, I was told we learn lessons and connect with people designed to help us live the good life.

This morning I reflected on a time when my daughter was about four years old and my son was about seven or eight months old. She pulled him around the house in his carrier. She read to him and towed him to the television to watch her favorite shows then to watch her play make believe with dolls or teddy bears. She taught him and he loved being her student. I loved watching them. I enjoyed that season of my life with them.

Then, they grew up. They matured beyond the middle school dramas that played out in my kid cab every day. As I wrote, I have found myself thinking of their journeys from toddlers through adolescent transformation to adulthood in my daily work with college students trying to figure out their daily grind and their next moves. Like my own children, they progressively seemed to be learning lessons that are only taught by living. I have looked at students and wondered if life was less complicated for them as children like that season when my daughter pulled a giggling infant around in a carrier. I have wondered if the young people around me had complicated childhoods that established the rocky foundations I watched them struggling to navigate.

It has been my honor to have so many students trust me with their stories. Through the process of raising my children I learned to listen, watch, advise, and encourage. I learned that I do not get to make decisions for them or act as their surrogate in journeys that each of them must walk to make it to their next. I hoped that their choices would meet their definitions of success. I listened to them as intently as I listened to my own children. I acknowledged their strengths and the courage it took for them to seek help from me (or anyone else for that matter).

Whether I am parenting or educating students, the process of supporting students begins with listening. I must listen in order to help them sort out the issues presented then guide them to a plan of action that prioritizes their challenges. I also remind them to refrain from harsh judgment the corrodes their self-image or makes them insecure about decision making. I ask them to just do the best they can with the facts know to them at the time. My daddy once said to me, in essence, to be fine with myself if I knew that I did all that I could do to make the best of the situation confronting me. He also told me, “to just do the best that I can.” Those words were affirming in my youth, but in my adult life I have benefited from the seeds of validation and empowerment planted by my father’s words. Finally, I caution young people to be flexible with themselves throughout this season and those to come.

Life has taught me that change happens. Perfection is never the goal when we are doing life. I have also learned that change requires flexibility. Flexibility can allow us to make adjustments without debilitating resistance. We might be able travel to places we never dreamed of in prior seasons. The pliable approach to living gifts us potential to have our passions and purpose fed. We might just do something more awesome than we ever imagined in a place that rewards us for the hard work and struggle it took to prepare us for the moment. I challenge you not to be limited by your fear, your frustration, your confusion, or your season. Respect the season and use the character of each season to build self-awareness, confidence, strength, wisdom, and resilience until the season changes.

When my kids were in middle school, each of them began to contemplate what they wanted to be when they grew up.  I wrote a blog post about the guidance I gave them on that topic (See http://wp.me/p6L8u0-45 ). The question about the major came as the kids got closer to high school graduation.

I wanted to be an interior decorator or a professional dancer during my early years.  Both carrier fields were far from my little girl dream of becoming a pediatrician and the electrical engineering major I chose my freshman year of college.  When I was in the eighth grade, a dance teacher from a city south of Montgomery, Alabama offered me free dance lessons if my parents could get me to her studio.  I couldn’t wait to tell my parents about this opportunity.  I honestly believed their response would be, “Yes, when can you start?”  As it turned out Mama was not so thrilled about the idea of driving out of town every Saturday to practice dancing.  I think Mama and Daddy saw dance as a hobby much like my other dream of decorating.  Mama and Daddy wanted me to focus my professional goal setting on more common fields of study like education, medicine, and engineering.  They wanted me to select a career field that would provide a stable income and some benefits.  While their opinions were sensible, there was no consideration of whether or not those career fields had any relation to the calling on my life, my passions, or the best use of my skill sets.  I believed that my parents thought I was smart enough to do any of the jobs they suggested, but it seemed that they considered my passions hobbies that I could work on in my free time.

I tried to keep my dream alive by joining the Tigerette dance team in junior high school and the Jadette dance squad in high school.  I also found my way into a few Zumba classes over the years trying to make exercise fun.  Since my parents guided me away from the more artistic fields and in the direction of the career fields more likely to guarantee a job, I decided to expose my kids to the arts.  I made every effort to take them to musicals, plays, and concerts. I read to them daily book to expand their visions and books that allowed them to see people like them doing cool things.  I encouraged them to play instruments, join choirs, draw, paint, take photography classes, and dance classes.  Enrolling them in dance classes brought back fond memories from my brief tenure as a ballerina and tap dancer when I was in elementary school.

My son started tap classes in the third grade and loved it.  He went through several pairs of tap shoes and moved closer to being descried as a hoofer as opposed to one who performed only choreographed steps.  It took a conversation with a musician friend to realize that my son heard beats in his head that inspired his percussive expressions as a dancer and percussionist in the middle school band.  Imagine my excitement when I learned that my boy loved dance just like I did.  I was ready to pull him from school to pursue dance.  I thought I was going to be a dance mom until I learned that he enjoyed dance, but he loved school and his friends.  I learned that I had to live my son’s dream along side him and not impose my dreams on my son.  I almost let myself get carried away because I loved dance and he was so good at it.  When he danced, he seemed to escape to some other place where he just had fun.  I also took note that his reaction to dance shoes was very different from the experience I had when I introduced my daughter to dance shoes.

When my daughter was in kindergarten, the small church school invited a dance teacher to come in weekly to teach ballet.  Quickly, I signed her up for classes and rushed to purchase ballet shoes for her.  The classes began early in the school year.  Then, some time in November the school announced the recital.  I talked to my girl about the dance rehearsals.  I can only imagine that I did most of the talking.  She was a quiet, pensive girl who likely allowed me to ramble and hype myself up with the visions of my young ballerina dancing in my head.  The teacher asked us to buy pink leotards, pink stockings, and tutus for the girls.  I purchased her dance outfit and began thinking about how she would wear her hair.  The night of the performance came.  I got to the chapel early enough to get a seat near the front and near the center aisle.  In life, positioning matters.

In order to get the best pictures and the best view of my girl, I had to be front and center.  My heart raced as the girls walked out holding their arms in a circular shape in front of them like an imaginary basketball hoop.  My excited spirit dampened a bit as I read the expression on her face.  Her face said something like, “Really, Mom?! How could you force me to wear this silly outfit with this scratchy tutu? Why did you ever think I might enjoy standing up here performing this kindergarten awful ballet routine?”  “Oh my,” I thought as she glared in my direction with a solemn face the entire performance.  I knew that she would never be a professional dancer.  I also knew at that moment that I would have to listen to her heart and wait until she could articulate her passions and her purpose.

It is tempting as for parents and good villagers to interject their own purposes and passions on the kids in their communities.  The temptation is to influenced  the subjects the kids study and the professions the kids select in order to ensure they pick the paths that will result in a “good job.”  It is better to spend time serving the role of supporter of the kids while the kids experiment with many things from the arts to the sciences in an effort to figure out what they do best and what they really love to do.  I have had “good” jobs before and been completely miserable in those jobs.  I have learned that I love my job because it melds the passions I have for building supporting villages for young people, helping young people dream bigger than they ever imagined, and for solving puzzles.  My children taught me to have patience with them as they attempted new things and that still holds true.  I work to demonstrate the same level of enthusiasm about the newest experiment or idea as I did with the last one (or two or three).  I praise them when they incorporate academic principles into daily activities because that is application.  I support their creative use of rap songs when they have complete conversations in song lyrics because that is a place where the arts and the analytical minds can unite.  Give the children in your space the freedom to learn about themselves and the courage to use what they learn to make themselves and others better for the rest of their lives.

On a recent cross-country flight, I sat next to a woman and we talked about our jobs and opportunities to talk about leadership with educators and students alike.  Our conversation later turned to talk about our family dynamics and our children which led to us chatting about how people decide the names of their children.  I told her I would consider writing about that this weekend because our conversation made me think about how my husband and I picked the names for our children.

I remembered that both of my children asked me why we picked their names at some point when they were old enough to realize that names were not genetically derived like their brown eyes.  I don’t remember if their questions came after a Sunday School class about the meaning of the name Moses or Abraham or if their curiosity was peeked in a classroom discussion about the history of names or after receiving the family tree assignment I dreaded so much.  At any rate, I shared “the why” with my daughter first.

When I was pregnant with my daughter and before we were certain of the gender of the child, my husband and I discussed the fact that we would have to pick a name for the child.  I know that seems pretty normal and simple, but it turned out to be a thoughtful, more involved process than I expected.  There was talk about “what if it’s a girl” and “what if it’s a boy?”  We talked about why our parents chose our names and if the baby would be named after a family member.  My mother gave me a middle name that was a form of her father’s name because he said I looked like him.  He actually wanted his name, Jodie, to be my first name.  I wondered whether children even needed a middle name.  I also wondered if being named Jodie would have made any difference in my life my associations or my opportunities.  There have been studies, formal and informal, that reveal the impact of names and how a name can influence behaviors of people.  I wondered if there would have been any expectation that I would look like or behave like my grandfather if Mama had chosen the name Jodie for me.

I bought a couple of those books that listed possible baby names. I must have had a thousand options between the two books.  I thumbed through the pages taking note of the familiar and the dated.  There were some names that I associated with memorable historical eras like Jackie and Martin or those names that related to the Bible like John, Peter, Mary, and Esther.  Then there were the names that made me wonder what it must have been like to look into the bright eyes of a baby with a happy, innocent face and call that child by grown up sounding names like Mortimore or Henrietta.  What an important decision because the child would have to live with that name for a long time.

As I read the lists of names, I reflected on how mean children can be when they poke fun at other children because of their names.  I hoped that my child wouldn’t be teased or have other children joking about the name I chose.  I fretted over selecting a name and choosing a spelling that made sense for a preschool child writing the name at the top of the paper for the first time.  How many syllables? How many letters? Would it be a traditional gender specific name like Sarah or Grace or would I leave the reader of the name with a question if I chose Jo or Jessie?  Would I choose a name that people would shorten like they did my name?  My mother named me Kimberly, but, Kim became the label by which I was known.  I don’t know if that became a sign that we knew each other well or if people were just lazy and Mama gave up on correcting them.

Based on all of my thoughts about the naming process, I made a few decisions.  I decided that if I had a boy, his first name would be my maiden name unless his daddy had a name in mind.  If the baby was a girl, her name would be simple, elegant, and one that she could learn to spell and write easily.  My mother had been a grade school teacher for decades and that was sometimes an issue in her classrooms.  (Creative spelling and formations of names can create challenges for children sometimes.)  I also decided that I would give verbal reminders to anyone who wanted to give her a nickname or shorten her name and I would teach her to do the same.

After going through the mental exercise of the concerns about naming a daughter and the decisions about the factors deemed important, I told my husband that I had narrowed my ideas and developed a plan.  To my surprise, he had a few ideas of his own.  He began to pronounce the slated guidelines for baby naming of a girl baby as proclaimed by him.  I knew that he had given this list as much thought as I had given mine because he vocalized the list without hesitation.  I am not sure he even took a breath before he completed the laundry list of non-negotiable considerations that were critical in selecting his daughter’s name.  He said the following:

1. The name could not begin with “La” or “Ta.”
2. The name could not be more than three syllables.
3. The name could not be the same as a car.
4. The name could not be a flower.
5. The name could not be a color.
6. The name could not be a precious stone or gem.
7. The name could not be a liquor.
8. The name could not have a hyphen or an apostrophe.

“Oh my,” I thought as my head swam.  The thought bubble also contained this thought: “Who knew he had such strong opinions about naming a baby girl?”  As he ran down his list, I commenced to crossing names off of my mental list.  There went Brandy and Jade.  I was alright with the cars, colors, and flowers because Mercedes, Indigo, and Rose were not on my top twenty list.  Now, I think that maybe if he could have foreseen the celebrity kid names today, I would have had a girl named Pink or a Blue.

Due to his list of “could not’s,” the task of naming a baby girl had become a little more challenging, but not impossible.  I took out one of those books and implemented a new strategy with a fresh perspective.  I covered up the names and read only the meanings of the names.  My husband’s list of “could not’s” left me understanding the value he placed on the meaning people would attach to his daughters’ name and how she would be defined by her name.  There was merit in that concept because I am sure that at some point in my life I unintentionally formed opinions, set boundaries for people, and opened my mind to possibilities for people often because of their names.  Ever heard, “Oh, that’s my name!” or “That’s my mom’s name!” or “I used to know a person with your name.”  When that has happened to me, there was some instantaneous connection between me and the other person.  Sometimes that connection leads to more conversation, an unsolicited perk related to the service I was seeking, or a gifted smile because the thought of my name gave the other person a welcomed memory.  On the other hand, I am less enthused when there a connection made between me and another person based on my name and there is an involuntary raising of an eyebrow and a solemn face with the added question, “Did you say, Kim?”  The pregnant pause that followed left me confused, concerned, and asking if I did something wrong.  I have also had people make presumptions about my zip code based on my name as if only Thomas folks live on the east side.

I had no idea whether other people spent this much time or developed such a process to select a name, but the last thing I wanted to do was provide a reason for someone to pass judgment on my child in a way that impeded her progress, growth, development, or success.  If anything, I wanted her name to speak strength and promote thoughts about intelligence, poise, and promise.  I already knew some of the challenges of being born a female child who might dream of leadership in a male dominated field or the likelihood of her being singled out because she was the only little girl with plaits and multiple, colored hair bows in her grade school classroom.  The last thing I wanted to do was create another obstacle for my sweet baby.

The decision to study of the names in those books I bought proved fruitful.  I found one name that meant “pure” and another that meant “faith.”  I compared the names to the list of “could not’s” then I weighed them against my list of concerns and fears.  The result left me pleased and excited.  My baby would always know that her parents intentionally chose her name.  Her name selection was one of the first parental decisions made to aid us in establishing a foundation stable enough to support the amazingly vast potential of our daughter.  Hopefully, every time she sees, speaks, or hears her name spoken the clarity, favor, hope, and peace that rest upon one who lives a life of “pure faith” will intentionally be her testimony.

In the last few months, I have been a part of conversations with a number of young moms talking about their little kids and their potty needs.  It’s been quite some time since I’ve had to concern myself with facilitating potty needs, but I’m not so far removed that I’ve forgotten.  After considering the risk of embarrassing my kids, I have chosen to continue with the disclosure of my learned experiences from my days of potty training.  If I, in fact, cause them any angst, they will let me know.  Hopefully, they will shake their heads, chuckle and get on with life.  I am certain they believed at some point that I lived to embarrass them.  I didn’t really live with that goal in mind then, but if this post makes them blush, I hope they are blushing in a humorous, loving kind of way and not with a heated angry face like the red-faced emoji.

When the kids became toddlers, it was such an exciting time.  Like many grown-ups, I ooh’d and ah’d about the baby steps and the joy that my toddlers loved exploration.  What I didn’t’ know was that the next stage of child development involved potty training.  Potty training has earned its place in the chronicles of child rearing.  Potty training reigns as one of the top developmental stages caretakers of little ones could live without.  It ranks right up there with temper tantrums during the terrible two’s and the day those little creatures learn the words “No” and “Why?”  So, you gotta respect potty training while recognizing (as my daddy would say about most any topic), “Suga, you ain’t the first and you sho nuff won’t be the last” to go through this.  Hang in there and know that there will come a day when those little ones will care about being dry AND those cute undies you bought to entice them to go potty.

Now, the potty training tools have improved designs and the options for support are more abundant.  The one thing that hasn’t changed is the inevitable frustrated trainer.  I honestly believe that kids come close to mastery of this skill just before the trainer has a full on meltdown.  I can remember wanting to hide from my toilet-resistant toddlers hoping that somebody else would fix it for me.  Not only did the little rebels work my nerves, but all of those potty training experts exhausted me.  I couldn’t figure out why the expert potty trainers were not millionaires if they had all of the answers.  Where were their books for potty training illiterates like me?  I appreciated those who suggested tips or methods that helped them bridge the gap from diapers to big kid undies.  I also enjoyed the tales of potty training journeys shared by people successfully on the other side of accidents and multiple changes of clothes.  However, the voices of judgment accompanied by turned up noses at my potty training decisions was bothersome.  Each child is different and there has never been a prescribed timeframe for potty training.  Nobody that I know has ever documented that moment when they or the potty trainee became potty trained.  I can just remember that the trainer one day, like me, said something like, “Oh my, the little person hasn’t wet all day” or “Oh, little person, I’m so proud of you!  You went potty three times today!”  So, if you are potty training, hang on and keep a journal.  This will be funny one day.

I remember the expert advice that I should just refuse to buy pull ups and make the incontinent child figure out what it feels like to be wet.  Well, all I have for that is this: “Child please!”  If you can afford a pull-up, buy a pull-up.  Now, let me tell you all of the places that your resident expert won’t be when this child is experiencing said wetness.  The expert will not be holding the potty training child when the child pees your lap from the excitement of seeing the favorite animated character.  The expert will not be paying for fabric cleaning for your car seat or your couch.  The wise advisor will not be sanitizing your floors after you see that look of shock and “oopsy, I didn’t make it again” on the face of the pint-sized trainee.  If you can afford a pull-up, buy a pull-up and save yourself that drama.

One person’s suggested tool was the physical reward if the hand clapping, cheering and back flips didn’t work.  As I recall, we tried candy pieces.  Sometimes we used to count the pieces while we waited.  Other times we used these opportunities to learn colors.  One child made progress taking that route and the other child learned that “potty” meant the tired lady will bring me treats.  From what I’ve heard lately, treats and toys continue to be strategies of potty trainers.  Figuring out the potty training love language of my bladder-challenged babies was by trial and error because like I said, “Each child is different and there has never been a prescribed timeframe for potty training.”

Once the kids’ bladders and brains connected, a new challenge emerged.  Where was the nearest bathroom?  When those amateurs said they needed to potty, they didn’t mean in a minute.  They meant NOW!  It was game time.  I grabbed the tiny hand or scooped up that kid like a sack of potatoes and ran.  The sack of potatoes tactic always got laughs from my kids.  They thought it was a game and I guess it was a game of sorts: Can mama find a bathroom before she has a mess to figure out?  As the trainer, I learned that “bathroom” was a relative term.  Bathroom meant anything from a real porcelain throne to that water bottle I emptied by chugging all of the contents when the potty alert sounded.  Flexibility, creativity and open-mindedness were my companions and these good friends will serve you and your emotional state well if you befriend them all.

I remember maneuvering between car doors to create a private stall after someone said they had “to go.”  As the laughing child enjoyed the excitement of the cement portable potty, I was playing the game of foot placement trying to dodge the trailing stream of wetness on the ground which generally encouraged more giggles.  I have hurried a kid into a traditional restroom with hands on their heads, on their hips, raised in front of their chests or just anywhere that would ensure they touched nothing.  Once in the stall, I would lift my kid and instruct the kid to stand on the toilet to handle their business.  When it came to my kids and their clean potty needs, those skimpy paper covers were not enough protection and I rarely had time to make the triangle of double or triple folded toilet paper liners to cover every inch of the seat for fear of the impending bladder release.  Just saying bladder release reminded me of the ease of that warm sensation felt by the unsuspecting trainer when there is no barrier between the trainer and the potty training kid.  Unfortunately, there was no dam lock or lever I could adjust to stop the flow.  There was nothing I could do except say, “Dang” and start the clean up.

I found it useful to always keep changes of clothes for the kids and me in the car.  I often kept extra clothing in my mama tote for the kids too.  When we traveled by plane, I took changes of clothes for each of us in the carry on bags along with wipes and plastic storage bags for wet clothes.  Even when your child is just outside the potty training window, take a pull up and the plastic baggies on the plane just in case you get stuck on the runway and the pilot tells everyone to “remain seated with your seatbelts on.”  When the kid needs to go, the kid needs to go.  The kid will be happy, you will be happy and the flight attendant with the eagle eyes won’t call you out.  Trust me on this piece of advice.

I am always up for sharing any advice I have about potty training and I definitely love hearing the funny tales from the toilet.  I don’t proclaim to be an expert trainer, but I have successfully coached two kids through the process and that counts for something.  I was once a young, tired, frustrated potty training mama trying to navigate the potty training challenge and do all of the other things that come with raising kids.  Because of my experiences, my greatest hope is that I offered you a laugh, a few helpful tips and a little encouragement to stay the course and in the words of old church elders, “Hang on ‘till your change comes!”

As I was thinking about Black History Month, the infamous family tree assignment crossed my mind.  The family tree project frustrated me when I was in grade school and it frustrated me when my children came home trying to figure out the names of the family members to write on each limb the photocopied tree.  I was always frustrated because many of the kids in my class who were not African American boasted proudly about their family lineage and they could trace their families back many generations.  They would say thing like, “My family is from Ireland” or “My family is Scottish.”  On the other hand, African American students were not able to trace their families back beyond two or three generations because the histories of slaves was not valued and documented or as in the case of my family the white men who willed themselves into my family tree remained anonymous.  As a result, there was a incorrect presumption that all of our ancestors were from some part of Africa and people seemed to be alright with that presumption.  It was confusing to me as a child and my confusion was compounded and layered as my children were each asked to complete the same exercise that never seemed to produce the same excitement that our childhood peers experienced after completing this project.

Despite the confusion and frustration, we always did our best to complete the family tree assignment.  However, we couldn’t manufacture information we didn’t have available to us so our trees never had as much detail as the majority of the students in our classes.  Every time the assignment was given, I would be a part of a conversation with the my parents and elders of the family about our family history.  Aunts and uncles would report their limited information about the family history.  While this began with some frustration, I recognized that even this project afforded the family a cool experience.  The fun thing about this exercise was that we would always learn some interesting family trivia or a cool story about a family member.

As I recall, it was during one of these research calls that we learned that one of my mom’s sisters accepted a bet to bury live baby chicks in the backyard.  After a gasp and a comment that revealed our shock, we were quickly told that the baby chicks were unearthed and saved because their parents came home and one of the kids who promised not to tell reneged on the promise and told.  There were ten children in my mom’s family so I imagined five or six kids running around in the backyard when Mama Love and Grandaddy Jodie got home.  My mom and her siblings were probably playing and daring each other to complete tasks like kids might do now when someone had the bright idea to dare my aunt to bury the chicks.  I laugh now when I think about how my aunts, uncles and my mom who as children standing around trying to look like everything was normal when their parents got home with looks of guilt and nervousness on their faces and in their body language.

When my daughter was in middle school and working on the tree project, we called one of my mom’s sisters to pick her brain about our family history.  This aunt told us stories about her school days.  She said that she had to learn and recite the Gettysburg address.  I made both my kids get on telephone extensions to listen to this story  after I realized that my aunt, who I believe was in her seventies at time, could still recite the Gettysburg address.  She recited the address for my kids and then went on to recite her high school graduation speech. She said that every student had to recite a speech at graduation.

It was during one of these research expeditions that we learned that the girls in my mom’s family had a reputation for being good cooks.  My mom had older sisters who were older and more seasoned cooks.  A woman in the community sometimes hired my mom’s sisters to help her clean her house.  Often they would cook while they were at the house cleaning.  After my mom became an teenager, the woman hired her to work around her house and because the older girls cooked, the lady decided to ask my mom to bake her a cake.  My mom said that she figured it couldn’t been that hard to make a cake so she collected all of the known ingredients and proceeded to mix the batter with nervous anticipation about the outcome.  Mama reported being nervous because it was her first solo attempt to bake a cake and the poor lady had no idea.  My mom’s smile and her laughing eyes were followed by  a gut wrenching laughter that left her sitting in the chair having to recompose herself in order to finish the story.  As she chuckled there was a rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders.  All she could remember was that the lady learned a valuable lesson that day.  Mama said, “I used up all of that lady’s baking supplies – her flour and sugar and butter and eggs.”  Mama kept laughing and shaking her head as she recalled the fear about whether the cake was going to rise or not after she put it in the oven.  She also wondered when the lady would discover that she was experimenting with the costly ingredients.  Well, time did reveal all in this case and Mama learned a valuable lesson about disclosure before experimenting.  It turns out that the lady gave her some pointers on baking and paid her for her day of work.

While the family tree project did not produce the expected results, it did enable us to document stories that might never have been told.  This blog entry reminds me of the importance of documenting our special family moments.  As older family members have died in the last couple of years, I have cherished the memories we shared.  Moreover, I realized that we need to find ways to preserve the memories and experiences we share with the folks we care about the most.  With the invention of the phone camera, many memories are memorialized through pictures, but I recommend that you write the stories that that are associated with the events because one day your family may want to know the story behind the smiles and laughter.

It has been my experience that my boy doesn’t call often and when he calls his conversations generally consist of very select topics or direct questions.   When my phone rang and I saw that it was my boy calling, I was especially sparkly inside.  He wasn’t calling to ask for money or to share some news about a new sports shoe being released that I needed to “help” him buy.  I felt warm and sentimental because he called and engaged me in a free, open conversation.

That particular day he called to engage his mom in a casual, light-hearted conversation and my thought bubble read, “How sweet!” I thought, “My, how he’s growing up” and “What a cool kid!”  This conversation with him resembled conversations with my daughter which felt odd.  Calls from the girl are at random times and she often calls or texts to just ask me what I am doing.  She has called me to keep her company on a road trip or she has called so that I would be her companion during a meal in whatever city she found herself visiting.  So, while my needy, maternal, empty-nesting self longed for this call to be all about me and my son’s need to spend time with his mother (during his out of town visit to a friend’s house), I knew in my instinctive mama world that this call was more about something else.

And then he said, “Hey Ma, I’m gonna do something that might make you mad – get my ears pierced.”  I am not really sure how I managed the balancing act between my personal opinion and the need for me to let him make some life decisions on his own.  I have always told my kids that their time at home was a time for them to explore and try new things because I would be there as a safety net to catch them.  I also told them that there were some things I said “no” to because perception matters in classrooms and in society for some people more than others.  For my brown son, I always coached him on how “not to fit the description” and having earrings was a part of “the description” so I always said, “No.” And my “no” was not negotiable.

In order to make it through the next phase of this conversation, I had to add some humor.  I asked, “So, is that what this call was about?”  Then, I said, “When we get off the phone, I’m gonna look to see how long it took for you to get to that.”  He laughed and replied, “Twenty-five minutes.”  Why twenty-five minutes? Because he thought “that was a good amount of time.”  After a little more laughing, I asked, “Why now?”  He said because “I’m old enough.”  He followed that statement with this one: “I never did it before because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

He was right that he was old enough to make a decision to get his ears pierced.  The fact that he considered my feelings also suggested to me that he considered the lessons taught about image and perceptions and that he believed he could manage that aspect of his life.  The hard truth was that I really could not stop him from doing anything.  So, I made a decision to demonstrate trust and affirm his thoughtful, respectful consideration of my opinion and my feelings because that was special and mature.  I gave him my blessing with a reminder of my why.  He said, “Aight Ma, I feel you…(pregnant pause)…Ah, I won’t be getting a tattoo.”  And we both laughed out loud before we hung up.

I usually write about “Hey, Ma” moments with my kids.  But, this post is about a personal “Hey Ma” moment.  I remember having a lot of nightmares when I was a child.  My earliest memories of nightmares date back to about age six or seven.  I remember waking up terrorized by something in my dreams.  I would open my eyes to darkness and realize that the monster was in my dreams and not in my bedroom.  But, could I really trust that the scary thing in my dreams had not escaped my dreamworld and found safe harbor in the darkness that filled every inch of space around me.  Was the creature lurking in the closet?  Was it hiding under the bed?  What should I do next to ensure my security and protection from this creepy creature?

As an adult, I realized that the hallway from my room to my parents’ bedroom was really not that long.  However, in my childhood mind that was consumed by terror and the reality of a racing heart rate, I thought their room was miles away.  It always took a few minutes for my brain to convince the rest of me to throw the covers back and make a mad dash down the hall to their room to secure the protection I needed (and hopefully some sleep).  Once after going through the whole mental exercise of escaping the thing that lurked in my dreams, I climbed into my parents’ bed and slide under the covers next to my mom and breathed a sigh of relief.  She would generally ask, “Kim, what’s wrong?”  I would tell her about the bad dream and she would say that it was only a dream and that I should go back to sleep.

After snuggling up next to her and feeling all cozy, I looked up and saw that their closet door was open.  Oh my goodness what were those shadows in the closet? Surely the creepy, scary thing did not follow me from my room.  The monster couldn’t be that bold and brave.  Is it possible that Mama had heads of people in that closet! Who will get up and close the closet door so that I can sleep? Well, needless to say, I laid there most of the night looking through the darkness at the ceiling and wondering about the heads in the closet.  When daylight broke, I could see that Mama had a few wig stands maintaining the structure of her most prized wigs. Those things literally shocked my senses all night.  The lesson I learned from that experience was to plan ahead.  Moving forward, I closed their closet door every night before I went to bed to ensure that my safe place felt like a safe place if I needed to find solace next to Mama again.

I had so many nightmares that when we traveled it was a topic of conversation because I needed to make sure I had my route to safety mapped out before bedtime.  One summer we visited the home of friend in Florida.  She was a wise older woman who listened intently as I discussed my sleeping arrangements and routed my path to the room where my mom would be sleeping.  The woman asked me to go collect my crayons then she gave me a piece of paper and asked me to draw a picture of the monster that I saw in my dreams.  Draw a picture of the monster?! I honestly didn’t have a recollection of the physical characteristics of the monster.  I just knew that it was scary.

I put the crayon to the paper as instructed and drew what looked like a blob with pointed edges.  I scribbled with purple, brown, black, orange, green, and red crayons.  With hesitation I presented the portrait to her.  She smiled and agreed that the monster was scary.  How wonderful for me to have received affirmation from a grown up that scary monster things could exist in my dreams and frighten me out of my bed in the middle of the night.  Next, she gave me some tape and told me to put the picture on my door.  She assured me that when the monster saw himself he would run and I would be safe.  Genius!  She also gave me a small bible to put under my pillow.  She said that evil could never lurk in the presence of the Word.  I didn’t understand that statement at that time, but I trusted her enough to do what she said because she was the only adult who believed that my fears were real.  I had no nightmares at her house.

I did everything I could do to save my kids from experiencing nightmares.  I didn’t allow them to watch horror movies at home or at the theatre.  When they were old enough to choose to watch them they did and for the most part they told me that the movies were comedic.  They also said that they could see how those movies would have been scary when they were younger.  There were no comments about me depriving them of the opportunity nor was there any resentment because they had to wait until they were older to experience horror flicks and haunted houses. When others were racing through the darkness filling sacks with treats,  we practiced other family traditions because I was not a fan of people jumping out of bushes or using other scare tactics to frighten kids.  I was not a fan of monster costumes and the dark tales told to arouse emotions of fear, insecurity, and gloominess.  Furthermore, I like my sleep.  My kids needed to sleep and not be running through the house jumping in my bed waking me up to assure them that they were safe from the boogie man.  I worked to protect my babies from a boogie man intent on causing them mental anguish, paralyzing fear and insecurity.

Answering the phone in the middle of the day and having my son on the other end saying that he just got rear-ended put everything else on pause.  My immediate response was to tell him that I was on my way to the scene which happened to be right down the street from his school.  If that wasn’t enough, he called back to say, “Hey Ma, my car just rolled into the wall and its all smashed up in the front and in the back.” OMG!  What the what?! My visual became some really confusing mess of a car accident.  I was trying to figure out if he was in the car when it hit the wall and how did it hit the wall after the initial call about being hit from behind.  My daughter was still home from college so we hurried to the scene.  I did the whole push the speed limit through the 35 mph zones trying to get there as quickly as I could without getting pulled over for speeding.

When we arrived at the scene, my heart dropped and I got really worried.  The car was really smashed into the wall that served as a barrier between the four lane road and a garden home community.  The back of the car was crushed and the trunk was popped open.  There was some type of liquid on the ground from the point of the initial crash and it trailed to site of the second crash where the car made contact with the wall.  We got to the scene and realized it was the open campus period for lunch and there were students walking to and from the school.  The car had found a stopping point with the front tires resting on the sidewalk which made me so thankful that there was no student in the path of the car as it rolled into the wall.  After seeing the damage to the car, my daughter and I became super anxious about the health and well-being of the boy.  As I slowed my car to assess the situation, my daughter in her anxiousness to check on the health of her brother attempted to open her car door and jump out.  Really?!  I told her not to think about getting out of the car in the middle of traffic and have me worry about both of them.

After we found a place to park on a side street, we learned that the student driver of the large pick up truck also parked on the side street was the vehicle into which my son was pushed when he was hit from the rear.  The student who drove the truck said once he saw the smoke and the fluids coming from our car he moved his truck to keep it from catching on fire.  Then, our immobilized car went rolling down hill.  Now, I really needed to figure out how the car was guided into the wall and why it did not roll straight into the large four-way intersection crawling with pedestrian and motor traffic.  I hurried to the scene to find my son.  The ambulance was there along with campus and local police officers.  My son explained that when the car started rolling he ran beside it and put his arm through the open window and steered the car into the wall to keep it from barreling into the intersection.  OMG! What presence of mind? But, OMG! After seeing the european car that hit him, I got all anxious again.  The front end of that car was smashed up pretty good.  I couldn’t see any visible injury to my son and I was thankful again.  I asked if he had a passenger and he did.  One of his friends was riding with him.  Between the three vehicles, there were eleven kids.  I was overcome with emotion just thinking about how ugly this situation could have been.  I was so thankful that all of the students walked away from the accident.

After the police investigation, the calls to the insurance companies, the arrival of the parents of the students involved, the call to the school to report the students would be late for the next period, and I checking my boy out of school, we went home for lunch.  My son looked at me and then at my daughter and he said, “Y’all look a mess!” and we all laughed.  We had just come home from Bikram Yoga when we got the first call.  I was wearing a bandana of some sort and I am sure we didn’t have on matching or fitted clothing.  It was funny after the fact and I found a way to blame him for my fashion failure that afternoon.  Haha!

By the time we were done eating lunch, he started complaining about a headache.  We went to the quick care clinic for an evaluation.  He was given some medicine to calm his head and neck complaints.  Thank goodness all of the symptoms were gone in a day or so and he was insisting that he return to regular activities.  As a mom, I was thrilled that he wanted to get back to his normal, but I wanted no parts of him driving or playing a contact sport.  I was also very afraid that the medical staff might have missed something.  The whole mama bear – mother hen complex was in full effect.

I learned from this experience to be available to my babies when they need me as soon as I can, to be grateful for the good health and well-being of my babies, and to allow them to keep living even after an unnerving moment so that the baby doesn’t develop a fear of life.  While I am able to allow my kids to grow and revisit those things that challenged them, I still find myself a bit anxious when it is time for them to go at life without me.  Honestly, I think that means I love them and care about the things that concern them.  I have learned that while I have a number of reasons that I am afraid that things will not work out perfectly for them there are more reasons that the challenges in their lives will teach them at least one valuable lesson that they need to know.  Those challenging situations will aid them in their growth and maturity.  Finally, I learned that I have to use the times of challenge in the lives of my kids to be a presence and a voice of reason and direction.  My son seemed  to be primed for direction and guidance immediately after the crash and for the next couple of days.  He even verbalized that he recognized the danger that was present during the accident and that he was thankful that everyone was safe.  As much as the car accident caused me some stress, I was excited about the maturity  he demonstrated, the fact that the officers said that he was abiding by all traffic and safety rules at the time of the accident, and that he was safe and able to go home with me that afternoon.

When I was in the eighth grade, my junior high school administration decided to create clubs focused on career and professional choices. The idea was to bring professionals from the community into the school to tell us about their career fields and afford us an opportunity to ask questions about their daily grind. I joined the modeling club and the interior decorating club. I remember a lady who worked for a local department store spoke to us about the joys of working with modeling boards in her store. We learned about how they selected the women and children who participated in their store fashion shows. The idea of wearing new clothes and receiving discounts on them seemed pretty cool to me.

One day, during our interior decorator meeting, a woman from a different department store visited us to tell us about her life as a decorator. She explained how she assisted people in the store and at their homes or businesses with decorating decisions. She talked about helping clients create an atmosphere that would be compatible with their personality, company, or group. My heart was happy about looking at color palates and selecting colors to set the desired mood or invoke a particular emotion. I began to dream about using my creative juices to cultivate cozy, warm spaces for families using comfy chairs and sofas and dark wood accents. I could not wait to get home to tell my parents that I had decided on my career path.

Well, dinner time arrived and I sat at the table with my mom and dad. My dad always wanted to know how my school day went. With a smile on my face and excitement oozing from my insides I said, “Great! I know what I want to be when I grow up now!” My parents said, “Really?!” I couldn’t wait to tell them the excellent news. “I want to be an interior decorator.” My proclamation was met with silence coupled with looks of shock. After their nonverbal communication of amazement and confusion, my father spoke. He said, “You can’t make no damn money decorating nobody’s house.” Can you say dream crusher?!

He didn’t mean to crush my dream. He was doing what he thought was best for me. He told me how smart I was and how I was so good in math and science and how I could be anything I wanted to be. Haha. I guess that meant anything except a decorator. He encouraged me to consider obtaining a teaching certificate so that I would “have something to fall back on.” His rationalization continued with dialogue about how there was only one decorator at one or two stores in Montgomery and I would have a hard time getting either one of those jobs if those two ladies ever retired. For some reason he never considered that I could live and work in a city other than Montgomery and I often wonder what he would say if he could see all the money being made by decorators of popular television network shows today.
As a result of that conversation, I tossed the idea of becoming an interior decorator, but not my passion about colors, fabrics, textures, and furniture. I dismissed the decorating ideas and focused on my math and science skill sets. I decided I would be an engineer. After two years of engineering school, I called my father to ask if I could give up my scholarship, change my major to English, and use the other side of my brain to make my soul happy. He agreed and gave me his blessing with the caveat that I should consider obtaining a teaching certificate as a back up plan. I can smile about it now, but the back up plan talk feel on deaf ears back then.  Haha.  Maybe my father knew that my life would lead me to be a villager for a number of children later in my life.  Just maybe he had an inkling that I would need the professional education training that I would receive if I sought after that teaching certificate that he believed would create security for me.  I could not argue with the fact that he and my mother and my siblings were excellent teachers and teaching certificates served them and many young people well. In spite of his loving wisdom, I was not trying to extend my undergraduate college career beyond four years.  I had things to do and places to go.

Although I felt like he crushed my dream, I know that he believed he was the voice of wisdom I needed to hear. His response shaped my decision about how I would handle the discussions with my kids when they came with questions about career decisions or when they came bursting with excitement about their career visions. Instead of telling them that their decision should be based on the amount of money they could earn or limiting their dreams because of perceived limitations in a seemingly over saturated market, I told them to think about their passions. I advised my kids to select career paths based on a two criteria: their passions and the calling on their lives.  I tell my kids to pick career fields that they enjoy because regardless of the amount of money they make they will always feel rewarded from their work and they will most often be glad to get up and go to work every day.  Additionally, I advised my kids to let challenges in their studies or school environments spark them to think outside of the realm of what seems normal for their chosen field or group.  For example, if you chose professional school and you don’t get selected to work in an office in the preferred field right out of school or you figure out you really could care less about wearing suits, pantyhose, and heels every day, think about other places where people with the same training and skill sets can work.  While some people plan career path with great detail and find that things line up just as they plan, that is not everyone’s testimony and it certainly was not my testimony.

I am that student who went to professional school and bought into the dream of seeking work in a traditional office.  I found that my heart was not passionate about the stiff, rigid, formal environments in which I worked even though I loved the academic pursuits.  What I found during my sabbatical from the career pursuits is that my passion and calling was to be a villager for young people.  I was most happy and satisfied when my kids were with me and when I was driving the “kid kab” for any kids who needed a safe ride home or to the school.   I have learned that when you operate within your passion wheel and the calling of service to mankind that rests in your spirit it will be obvious to others.  As a result, more opportunities will arise for you to hone the skills needed to make you the best at whatever you love to do.

As I watch my kids sort through their options for career paths, I had to be very careful to support them through the exercise of decision making on a career field.  We had to discuss which colleges offered compatible fields of study.  I suggested that their ability to realize their dream be a primary consideration and not selecting a college or high education situation based on the school location or the colors or the mascot or what other people say you are “good at” or the celebrity graduates from said school.  I think my kids have demonstrated that classes are  much more interesting when you are studying subject matter that interests you.  When you enjoy your field of study, the grades are better.  In addition, you won’t describe success in terms of how many pay checks you have received, but rather how you have impacted people in your space.

Finally, I told my kids the story of my dream of decorating and their grandfather’s response.  I admitted to them that his response shaped my thoughts about dreaming and chasing goals that other people believe unattainable or they don’t believe the dream makes sense for you.  I encourage my kids and other people’s kids to dream outside of the neighborhood and be the first in your hood to do something excellent that will inspire others to dream big and achieve.  Encourage your children and those around them to be amazingly fabulous while instilling in them the belief that you will be a safety net for them as they experiment with hobbies, classes, sports, clubs, community service events, and uncertainty while they work to figure out.  Although I never got a teaching certificate, my father was correct that I would spend most of my life being a villager for young people.  He was probably right about a little girl who remained in a small town in Alabama not becoming the next great designer at a local department store.  I am thankful that his comment forced me to think larger than my childhood brain knew that it could and he made me believe that he would support me through any choice I made.  Ultimately, I knew that he was proud of me just as I am of the kiddos I raised.

If you are a parent, you have probably heard, “Everybody has one!” One can be whatever the fad or trend is for whatever age group you may be dealing with at the time.  I heard this with the trading cards I refused to buy and all of the things related to at least two popular kids fads when my kids were younger.  Once, I refused to spend money on one popular kids’ trend because  I thought the books and subsequent films were too dark.  I believed I was saving them from some darkness that made me live and dream in fear.  I told them stories from my childhood about my nightmares and fear of walking outside to the car at night because I was allowed to watch horror thrillers on tv.  Those monsters that lived in the dreams of folks in the movies and the monsters traveling down neighborhood streets wreaking havoc on unsuspecting residents kept me looking over my shoulder and dreaming about craziness when I should have been getting my beauty sleep.  I just didn’t want my kids to deal with the visions of monsters created by cinema while they slept.

I refused to buy some stuff because I thought it wasn’t worth the money or because it would be a waste of their time.  Mean mama you say.  Well, that’s why they call me mama because I get to make those executive decisions.  Shoot, I would often feed my mama ego by asking my kids, “What’s my name?”  They would shake their heads and roll their eyes and say, “Mama.”  “You dang skippy and don’t forget it,” would be my reply (with a giggle and smirk.)  Heck, I will still ask them the question, albeit more rhetorical now, since they are both grown for all intents and purposes.  The only thing I may have left to fuel the mama ego now is that they still need me for some pocket change.

Well, fast forward to middle school when the “Everybody has one” mantra got louder and more frequent.  I heard it when I refused to buy cell phones in the sixth grade.  “Everybody has one,” they proclaimed.  “Well, no everybody doesn’t have one, cuz you don’t,” said I.  Harsh, but true.  One time a friend and neighbor said to me that she didn’t know how I could say no to my daughter.  She said that she had trouble with no where her kids were concerned because they cry.  Hmmm.  Well, my response to her was, “They stop crying.” While they are crying and when they stop crying, you have to explain to them your rationale.  With many things like cell phones, clothing options with too much spandex, pants choices that lead to sagging, and a ticket to a horror movie at a young age, my discussion was always the same: Everything available to you is not always good for you. (I didn’t make that up, by the way; it’s in the book of Proverbs.) I would say to my kids, “I am on your team.”  All of my decisions were for their good.  I would also tell them that the decision I made at the time might not always be the decision when they got older and  had a better understanding about the world and the dangers.  Honestly, I was not and am not the parent who wants to spend my time surveying phone logs to see who kids are calling or texting.  So, I decided they couldn’t have one until I could trust them with one.  The same was true for social media accounts, messaging accounts, and picture mail.  When they were allowed to have social media accounts, the task of keeping them safe online was assigned to the villagers.  Villagers checked in on my daughter and my daughter was required to maintain access to my son’s accounts at all time or he would lose them.  They got some freedom from parental control, but there was still what I like to call “a safety net” and if anything got out of control I would hear from a villager about the issue.  I was cool with the fact that the villagers rarely gave details to violate a confidence of my kids, but they shared enough so that I could have a discussion about the matter that concerned them.

“Everybody” also had the capacity to watch videos in their cars.  Well, everybody except us.  I only allowed movie watching on long trips.  When I was in the car with my kids, that time was for us to pay attention to each other.  When the car doors close, the magic happened.  They told me all about school and who did what and who said what to who.  I got to ask questions about the school day and find out who had homework or events on the calendar that required my attention.  We listened to music and radio commentary together that sometime led to them teaching me a few things.  I remember once they taught me a dance that went with a song and I got caught at a red light gettin’ it.  I remember the roar of laughter in my car and in the car full of young boys next to us when I realized everybody was looking at me doing the latest dance craze.  I cherished the rides in the car and honestly I still do (even if I have to share them with those evil handheld devices now :-)).

My parents used to talk about “keeping up with the Jones’s” when I was younger.  I tried to make sure there was a balance for my kids between having some things that made them feel like they fit in with their peers and making sure they understood the things in life that everybody really needs.  Everybody needs the basic things like food, clothing, and shelter, but I am talking about those intangible things that people need that can’t be substituted for stuff.  I realized that my kids wanted my time and my undivided attention more than the stuff.  They wanted to know that I would be available to them when they needed me.  I made efforts to create the space and time for them by reading stories at night,  by banning videos in the car, by making everyone eat dinner at the table at the same time,   and by being a presence at their schools.  The time built trust, made them respect me when I said no, and made room for them to respectfully ask questions about my decisions and thoughts.  I also think they appreciated the things they got later because I didn’t give in to the “But Ma, everybody has one!” mantra every time I heard it.