Before having kids myself, I always swore I’d never tell my kids “no.” Unless it was an emergency. I believe it’s the Dine (Navajo) who raise their children without using the word “no.” I’m thoroughly enchanted by the idea, and sadly haven’t been up to it myself. Despite my best intentions I hear myself saying “no” all the time.

“No, you can’t use the butcher knife yet, wait until you’re older.”

“No, you can’t pummel your baby brother even if he hit you first.”

“No, you can’t jump on the couch, don’t you remember going to the emergency room the last time you jumped on it?”

I could go on.

There are multiple problems with no: it creates disappointment, it becomes easy to use and next thing you know you’re using for everything, it stops being heard because it’s overused. The thing to do, is not say “no.” Easier said than done.

Perhaps a parents main job is to be their childs first source of disappointment so the child can learn how to deal with it.

That’s a depressing thought.

And yet, I know I’m constantly disappointing my kids.

“No, we can’t go to the river right now, it’s time for bath, books, bed.”

“No, we can’t have ice cream, you’ve already had too much sugar and you’re bouncing off the walls.”

“No, we can’t stay up late and watch a movie because we have to get up early tomorrow.”

I don’t mean to be a stick in the mud, but sometimes being a parent means parenting. Of course I want to stay up late and watch a movie with my kids, but not tonight or they won’t get enough sleep and then our event tomorrow will be awful for everyone. It still feels crappy to say no, even when it’s the right thing to do.

I remember growing up and playing basketball with my dad. He’d tell me the rules, we’d play, and as soon as I scored a point, the rules would change. It was confusing and frustrating and disappointing. Much like being told no. Now looking back I wonder, were the rules really changing or was he trying to introduce me to the next thing I needed to know in an effort not to overwhelm me with all the things I’d need to know? I’d like to believe the latter, but…

I grew up in a time where kids went to school, were expected to get A’s across the board, and then went to college. There were no other options even presented. This was the path. I gobbled it up. And then in high school I had a teacher who was even more demanding than my mother, a teacher who had me quite literally breaking out in hives from stress. I worked my ass off for that teachers approval.

One day I’d turned in an extra credit project and was summoned to her room shortly after. She accused me of cheating. I was devastated. I’d never cheated in my life, not even in my math, my worst subject, I certainly wouldn’t cheat in English, my best.

There’s something about that day. I haven’t quite worked it out yet. But it was the beginning of the end for me. I lost so much of my fight then, so much of my confidence, my trust in my ability to do what I set out to do. From that point on when anyone told me I couldn’t do something I believed them.

The thing about disappointment is, it’s everywhere. You’ve got to know how to deal with it. You’ve got to be a duck and let it roll off your back like water.

That’s what I’m trying to teach my kids when I have to say no.

No just means not right now, not no always and forever.

It can be tough to get that across.

I never want them to stop asking just because I said no this one time…well, that’s not entirely true, I mean, I absolutely want them to stop asking now, because I’ve already said no, but I do want them to ask again another day. So how to get that across? How to disappoint for the moment and not forever.

I haven’t figured it out yet.

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}

Did you have a childhood hero? I can’t remember that I ever had one, at least, not in the way most people think of childhood heroes: Wonder Woman, firemen, a sports star. I did have Wonder Woman underoos, of course, but I don’t ever remember worshiping a character or a profession or anything. The closest I had was my mom. Still is.

As a divorced single mom, my mom did her best to move us to the areas with the best schools, even if it meant she had a longer commute to work. She did her best, when we were very poor, to ensure I didn’t know we were. There were a lot of handmade, homemade holiday decorations, and I always thought that was part of the fun. She made us a Christmas Tree out of cardboard one year, I thought it was beautiful.

Growing up she’d bring home work for herself and for me. Looking back it was just busy work I couldn’t screw up but made me feel like I was helping when really, I suspect, it was giving her time to get the real work done. Then we’d clean the house to the Pointer Sisters or Tina Turner or Billy Joel. I can’t remember these cleaning sessions except for jumping around the house with a rag screaming “Jump! for my love!”

I have a strong work ethic, a desire to get everything done on time or ahead of time, on budget or ahead of budget and this is all because of my mom.

She also instilled an incredible love of books in me, something I try desperately to instill in my own children. We’d take weekly trips to the library where I could check out as many books as I could carry. And there’d be the occasional trip to the used book store where I could buy as many books as I could carry. Just the thought of these events makes me swoon.

My boys and I go to the library every week. I encourage them to take was many books as we can carry together. When we go to a used book store or a garage sale or Scholastic Book Fair, the rules are the same: how many can we carry? This is the greatest legacy I can leave them.

I wonder who my boys’ heroes are. I haven’t thought to ask. Maybe I will.

Equally important, who were my moms heroes? Who are her heroes now? Where did her love of reading come from? Is the legacy I’m passing down one she started or was it gifted to her?

If asked who my hero is now, I’d still say my mom.

As a parent myself now, I know exactly how much energy and drive and thought it takes to be a parent, just how much of myself is drained every day even as it’s refilled by the same. I can’t imagine doing this alone.

How did she have the energy to clean the house after a week of working and caring for me, making sure I did my homework each night, that I had my clothes for the next day picked out a ready to go? How did she have an ounce of creativity left at the end of the day to make decorations with me when she knew she was also responsible for all the other things: presents (where applicable), magic, ideas.

Not all heroes where masks and capes, some carry craft supplies and ask how many books you can carry.

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}

I suppose everything has a beginning and an end, even things we never expect to end, like love, the Star Wars empire, a lifelong friendship that turns out not to be so lifelong after all.

Growing up I had a best friend I almost never saw. We’d met when we were on vacation with our families and it was instantaneous best friends at first sight. The sort of thing that never happens in real life, but did. We didn’t live too far away from one another, a three hour drive, but neither of us drove at the time. Our parents picked up the slack and we’d get to visit once a year. The rest of the time we wrote. This was before text or email. So we wrote letters. Gloriously long, epic letters. Full of all the things: troubles with siblings and school and partners we didn’t have.

At some point our friendship migrated to all the technological things: emails, texts, FaceBook. We somehow managed to remain best friends for nearly thirty years despite only seeing each other in person a literal handful of times. We stayed friends even though our lives were completely different: she had a great job when I was freshly back from a stint in Europe with no idea what to do next, she settled down and started a family when I was jealously looking on and nowhere near ready, she moved out of state when I was ending a major relationship I’d never thought I’d leave, she was getting a divorce when I’d just gotten married and was gearing up for a major move out of state. We never seemed to be in sync yet remained best friends. And then we weren’t.

It was my fault. I screwed up.

That divorce she was going through was intense, not that any divorce isn’t, and she needed me.

I had a breastfeeding baby that had never had a bottle, a house I was trying to fix up to sell, a toddler that I needed to keep out of my husbands way while he renovated the house and I packed, and through it all we were also trying to figure out just where we were going to go.

In books and movies I would have dropped everything and run to be with her. For at least a weekend. But this was real life.

I had no frozen breastmilk to leave my baby behind, and didn’t know how I’d bring a baby with me and be able to emotionally and mentally be there for her. I had a deadline on renovating/selling the house and I wasn’t even packed yet, I couldn’t leave my husband with two kids and a house to pack up/renovate, not even for a weekend, we didn’t have the time. And I didn’t know how to explain all of this to her and not sound like I was making excuses. So I didn’t.

I didn’t explain it.

I failed her. I said I couldn’t go to her when she needed me. I was a terrible friend.

Even now, roughly three years later, I don’t see how I could have done anything differently. I’m sure there’s something, but I don’t see it.

I tried texting, calling, emailing. I never heard back. I tried writing letters the old fashioned way. No response. At one point, I wrote a letter shouldering all the blame, as I should, with no excuses, cause none would have sufficed, and threw myself at her mercy. I don’t know if she’s ever forgiven me.

Despite knowing no other way I could have handled it, I don’t know if I’ve forgiven myself.

I’d like to think I’ve learned something, but that’s just wishful thinking. I know that if she needed me now, I’d be there on the next flight. If she needed me now, it’d be a whole different thing though. Now I’m settled in my home, my kids are older and don’t physically need me here to survive, we’re on no kind of deadline for anything except maybe getting to karate practice on time. But I’m sure she doesn’t need me now. In fact, I don’t think she needed me then, she’s tough, but I still wish I could have been there. She has some really close girlfriends and I’m sure than at least one, if not several, were there for her. I wish I had been too.

Our lives were never in sync, it really shouldn’t feel like such a loss, but it really is. It’s no less of a loss knowing I caused it. Perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise that two people who found best friendship at first sight could also dissolve that friendship in a moment. Maybe there wasn’t as much there holding us together as I thought. Maybe I took her friendship too much for granted. Or maybe she just recognized that the distance between us had become extreme, not just in mileage but in who we were. Maybe two people who were always so out of sync couldn’t continue a friendship based on the past.

None of that, though true, makes the loss easier to bear.

_{This post was written as a thirty minute writing exercise, no editing, no stopping and was inspired from a writing prompt in Bryan Collins’ “Yes, You Can Write!” book available here.}