This photograph is nearly two years old now. This is my youngest daughter Stella at six or seven or nine months old, in a dress my mother wore when she was a baby, staring at me as I documented her awkward and determined attempts at learning to crawl. I sat on the hardwood floor of our rented townhome on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, I gazed at this beautiful creature as though I’d never seen a baby before – as though I was a tourist in Papua New Guinea drinking in a new and wonderful and rich and foreign land and its people – and soaked it in. I drank this little girl up, and swallowed hard with the full weight that came with the knowledge that this – that she – would be the last of my babies I would ever watch grow.

Today, on the precipice of nothing in particular,and everything all at once, I wonder if that’s really the truth.

If Stella really is the final fruits of my womb. If she is the last kidlet my uterus has to expel. The last first cuddle I’ll feel as a mother. The last first tooth. The last first day of school. The last poorly lit and improperly exposed baby photo I’ll take. The last stretch mark and vomit covered t-shirt and sleepless night. And I wonder if I’m ready for that ship to sail. If I’m ready to watch it slip quietly into the blanket of night, and not feel remorse or the crushing weight of regret as it drifts off into forever.

As I sit here typing this garbled mess of feeling and uncertainty that has absolutely-nothing-related-or-to-do-with-photography, I am convincing myself that I am okay with that. That my life is chaotic and wonderful and whole and perfect and imperfect and crazy and every little thing left in between….just as it is. That it’s time for the third baby ship to sail. That it’s time for me to let that go.

I just don’t know if I should. If I’m being honest, I don’t know that I can.

I don’t know if I want to have another baby, you guys. But the scary-as-hell truth is, that I don’t know that I don’t. I don’t know that I’m done nurturing or being puked on or kissing scraped knees or losing baby weight or hating myself pregnant. I like that I’m not doing any of those things right now – but that’s because my sister ship is still safe in its harbor.

It seems, however, the the tide is coming in, the winds are picking up, and it’s time to set out to sea.

Which means I have one hell of a decision to make.

So I find myself seeking out advice. From anyone who has any to give. Even though I know that the answer I seek comes only from within. From my heart, and my womb, and everything that my soul is telling me. But still, I go in search of clarity. I’m grateful for Cheryl Strayed, and her advice to a gentleman who was teetering on the edge of whether or not to have his first child – and I’m trying as hard as I can to heed her words. To remember that fear of regret is almost always the only reason we need to go out and do exactly that thing, and that “I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

Proverbial night is falling, friends. The ship is setting sail. It’s time for me to get on, or let go.

Gulp.

It happened the instant Elena was born. The second she was placed on my chest, pink and wrinkled and barely crying, it was there. That nagging, tugging, wretched self-deprecating voice in the back of my mind known as Mom Guilt started speaking.  It worsened the day Stella was born. Along with my midsection and my ass, it grew substantially. And like my wobbly bits, it’ll likely be with me for the whole of forever. It, like stretch marks, snot in your hair, the inability to take a shower by yourself, and countless other joys, is simply a part of the parenthood package.

And we live in a culture hell bent on making it worse.

I read this post on Facebook this morning, and I couldn’t agree with the author more. We as a culture spend so much time criticizing, judging, pointing fingers, name-calling, pigeon-holing, and misunderstanding that we forget to be kind. We forget how to be empathetic. We forget how to be human. We forget that we are all struggling, and we are all fighting the battle of not-good-enough when it comes to parenting.

I’m a working mom. The opposite of the author. I don’t spend a lot of time with my kids. I have two jobs that take up a lot of my time. But I also need me time. I need time to unwind. To skype with friends, or have a glass of wine, or read facebook posts on my phone while my kids play at the park. I beat myself up every time I look at my phone or respond to an email or edit a photo when my kids are around or awake. Because society tells me I should focus every single ounce of my energy on them at all times if I want to be a “good” mom. If I want to be the “right” kind of mom. If I want my kids to grow up intelligent and confident and happy.

My Mom Guilt tells me that, too. Which means I now have two voices – my own insecurity and the judgement of a harsh society – screaming at me for doing everything wrong. But these voices – this constant judgement and criticism - isn’t helping me become a better mom. It’s not helping you become a better mom, either.

We need to start holding each other up, not cutting each other down. Stop judging the mom on her phone at the park, or the kid in the shopping cart playing on the iPad, or the dad reading the newspaper while his kids play. STOP IT.

Now.

Instead of a sideways glance, throw a smile at the woman singing  to her kids in the grocery store. Especially if it’s a made up song about cereal and string cheese (and probably because that woman is me. NERD. Alert!) Instead of a pursed frown, send a comforting, “Girl, I’ve BEEN there, hang in there, you’re doing a great job” glance to the woman at the checkout register at Target with a screaming, flailing, kicking toddler in the cart. Or, if you haven’t been there, imagine that you ARE there. Imagine your toddler is acting out – horribly – in the middle of a crowded anywhere – and everyone is watching and judging and silently critiquing your parenting. And you’re trying to be a good mom. You’re ignoring the behavior – because if we’ve learned anything, it’s that attention is, in fact, a reward – and people are staring at you like you’re doing nothing on purpose, or because you don’t care that your kid is being a jerk, and that such jerk-facedness annoys the other people in the store. And then imagine what happens if you do, in fact, scold your child for their behavior. Then you become the mean, yelling, punishing, impatient and intolerant mom. Imagine feeling like your stuck in the middle of a rock and a hard place and no matter which road you choose your kid will still be crying and people will still be judging and at the end of the day you’re still going to be convinced that you suck at this whole mom thing. Then imagine biting your lip in an extreme effort not to cry as you hand your card over to the cashier and pray that this nightmare just ends already.

Imagine you’re this woman, well, let’s be honest, imagine that you’re me on the day this happened to me, or the mean woman behind me at register that tsk’d and scoffed and pursed her lips AUDIBLY at my horrible parenting, and then do for this mother what you’d want people in line behind imaginary-you, or behind actual me, to do.

I promise, we’ll all be better for it.

Then do the same for the parents of young children on an airplane, in shopping malls, at zoos and amusement parks and restaurants and anywhere and everywhere at all times.

And to the moms and dads out there, it’s time to stop caring. Or at least it’s time to stop caring so much. It’s time you realize – that you KNOW – that you’re a good parent. That your kids don’t need your undivided attention all. of. the. time. That they need to play by themselves and use their own imaginations. That they need to learn humility and their place in the world, too. And you need – NEED – to know that it’s okay to check Facebook. It’s okay to have a glass of wine. It’s okay to put your kid in daycare, or let her cry herself to sleep sometimes. It’s okay to give them the iPad at the restaurant and it’s okay to let them break their toys and ruin their perfect dresses.

It’s okay to be imperfectly you.

You’re perfect that way.

So am I.

xo

The thing no one really explains to you when you’re young  is that things only exist the way you perceive them. Grown ups spend so much time trying to convince children that things aren’re real, but when you’re a child, real is one of the most basic truths: If you think something exists or is true, it is. This includes the obvious and ubiquitous list of things like monsters, ghosts, unicorns and Santa Claus (and okay, maybe even a tall tale about a legendary northern in your hometown lake).

The thing with childhood though, is that it ends. For all of us. Even for those of us that fight it kicking and screaming, there comes a time when we are forced headlong into LIFE. If we’re lucky, the transition is an easy one, and we let go of our adolescent ideologies easily. They fade into the background as we get older and we trade Santa Claus and the tooth fairy for MVP’s, rockstars, or God. Adolescence lends itself to the formation of idols and development of heroes. Some we let go of later in life – the basketball star, the pro-snowboarder, the cone-bra clad rockstar. But some of them we hold onto for the whole of our lives. They become rooted within us so deeply that they become hardwired into our very DNA – imprinted into the genetic makeup of our personalities. Some of them stay with us forever – woven like an impenetrable thread in the fabric of our lives.  I had heroes when I was a kid – but I wasn’t a typical kid (shocking, right?). As such I didn’t have the most typical heroes. Sure, I worshipped Madonna and Paula Abdul, but the people I looked up to most were closer. More tangible. More…real. And the one man that wove himself most profoundly into the fabric of who I am – the person who helped me become who I was always meant to be -was one of the people I knew the least. He is – he was – my grandfather.

I don’t remember much from my childhood – or at least I don’t recall much vividly – I can’t close my eyes and see clearly something that happened two or three decades ago. What my memory lacks in visual acuity however, it more than makes up for in sentiment. I can’t see most of my memories – but I can feel them; extremely loud and incredibly close – and the memories of my grandfather resonate with the greatest vibrato and most perfect pitch of them all.

Though he was a farmer most of his life – I never knew him as such. He was a remarkable cultivator of tall tales and laughter, but the only thing I ever saw him grow was my grandma Helen’s temper (which, as most husbands do for their wives, he did remarkably well!). He spent the whole of my childhood working for Thompson Machine, and when he’d come home in the evenings smelling of sawdust and grease, I’d rush to greet him and he’d swoop me up in his arms and bestow upon me the greatest hug this side of ever. Then we’d go downstairs to his workshop and he’d tell me the stories that matched the scars I pointed out on his hands (sometimes he even demonstrated with the old metal fan that sat atop his workbench).

(Let’s just say I learned the trick about the removable thumb at a very early age.)

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in my grandfather’s boat, and, if I’m being honest, on various lakeshores throughout Polk County. Grandpa taught me how to fish – how to bait a hook, cast a line, tire out a fiesty (and half-my-size) northern pike, and clean my catch – and he taught me how to be silent (I know, I know. A lesson I’ve obviously forgotten). He taught me how to be patient and that sometimes, goddamit Athena Helen, you just have to sit and wait. He taught me that life is a series of preparation meeting opportunity, just like fishing. And in that boat I learned that sometimes you find the best life has to offer in the most unassuming of places. But most of all, summer after summer, year after year, he taught me that he really didn’t like it when he didn’t catch the biggest fish.

As I got older I spent less and less time in Grandpa’s boat. Eventually he moved from the house he shared with my grandmother to one of his very own in the next town over. Trips to North Twin Lake were replaced by walks along the rocks of the upper St Croix and time spent cleaning fish was exchanged for talks about baseball and the weather. We had less and less in common; I was growing up -and he was content to watch me become my own person – even if it meant watching from an ever growing distance.

He eventually sold the boat (which carried with it a startling surprise and a heartbreaking realization for me), and the time he spent on the water became time spent behind the wheel of his car. He spent hours every day driving around Polk County delivering warm smiles, conversation, and often a gift or two to those he’d known most of his adult life. Always a woodworker, he turned the woodshop in his home into an art studio and spent hours burning drawings into sanded pine, only to give them away to anyone who hinted they had wall space to spare or a love of flora or fauna. I spent what time I could with him as I got older, but as I set off to college and began my life, our visits grew fewer and farther between, and my knowledge of his life diminished with great speed.

The years slipped passed as Grandpa endured the loss of my grandmother, his youngest son, and some of his dearest friends. He watched as his oldest grand-daughter was married, and nervously walked me down the aisle on my wedding day. His hands were shaking with the tremors of age as he placed my hand in DRL’s and gave me away. As his grandchildren graduated high school and college, and started careers and families of their own, he slowly fell victim to the hands of time and grew old, and then older still. He began counting seasons instead of days; his routine marked by the coming of the jays to the feeder and the roar of the baseball crowd on the television set. The rhythmic squeak of his rocking chair kept time melodically, as one year slipped quietly into the next.

When my mother asked me if I would write a eulogy for my grandfather, my reponse was simply that I couldn’t. “I didn’t know him,” I replied. Because I didn’t. I don’t. I don’t know the name of his favorite book, or his first car, or the name of the first girl he ever kissed. I don’t know how many nights he dreamt he was dancing with my grandmother after she died, and I don’t know if he really hated that I always caught the biggest fish, or if it was just another one of the many ways he teased me. But yesterday, something changed. I realized all I ever needed to know about Leonard- about my Grandfather - I already did.

I know that he gave the best hugs this side of ever. That he had a soft spot for pretty ladies. That he loved to dance and enjoyed a slow waltz as much as a good Wisconsin polka. That he loved blackberry brandy and baseball and birds of all shapes and sizes. I know that he could build almost anything, and that his hands were his most prized possession. And that he loved and cherised every single second he got to spend with every single person who knew him.

My grandfather passed away last Monday night; His death was quiet. Easy. He simply closed his eyes and slipped away. No whistles or sirens, no crash carts or pain. He died the way most people fall asleep, slowly and then all at once.  The night after he died he came to me in a dream. We were fishing – or rather, I was fishing and he was there – standing in the water with his waders on, casting out his line. He was younger – I’m guessing late fifties – probably what he looked like when I was five or six – his dark hair interspersed with flecks of silver.  I looked over at him as he flicked his rod back and forth and he looked at me for an instant, a smile spread wide across his face, before he turned to look over the lake. It was a perfect summer day and he was happy. So remarkably happy. The dream was so vivid that when I close my eyes to remember him – to  tell him I love him and I miss him and I’ll hold him with me for always – that’s the image I see. Not him as an old man, a victim of the cruel hands of age. Not his face the night before his hip surgery, or the last time I saw him – the night I finally allowed myself to say goodbye. No. I see the face of the first hero I ever had staring over the water on his favorite lake. With the sun in his eyes and a smile on his lips, I see my grandfather alive. Happy. Perfect.

For that – and for all the amazing and wonderful years I had with him – I am forever grateful.

I love you Grandpa.