Wish Flowers

My kids call these "wish flowers".

They pick them, make a wish, close their eyes, and blow with all their might, hoping that the power of their breath is enough to force every single piece of "cotton" off of the stem, granting their wish immediately.

To see their innocence and hope every time that they do this is both inspiring and heartbreaking. Knowing that they have placed all of their hope and faith on a common weed makes me realize just how trusting they can be, but knowing that the weed doesn't have the power to make everything right is just as disappointing for me as it is for them.

As their mother, I want to make all of their wishes come true. As a human, I know that's impossible. How can I do for them what I can't even do for myself?

As a parent, I think one of the hardest things ever is to see my kids want something and not be able to provide that for them - be it a material item or not. It's no secret that I don't have money to burn, so when the kids ask for something.... a new bike, or new 'cooler' shoes, or to go out to eat, or whatever... and I have to say "I'm sorry, but we can't afford that right now" it absolutely breaks my heart. But at the same time, I try to use that as a teaching moment - "we can't always do what we want all of the time, but if we work toward a goal and save our money, we can do it another time" or something similar to that. I think that it teaches them something, and I think that they learn to appreciate things more because of this, and I know that will help them in the long run - but it doesn't negate the fact that right now - it sucks.

I hate using money - or the lack of it - to teach my kids life lessons, but when you get right down to it, so much of our lives nowadays revolves around money. Our kids are being taught by society in general that they have to have the newest best biggest brightest thing or they're not cool - and to me, that's just wrong. And I'm trying to teach my kids that they don't have to have all that to be cool.

Every now and then, there's a moment when I think that maybe I've gotten through to them - like today, when we were driving to church in The Dude's chariot and Emily looked at me and said "Mom, when I get old enough to drive, I want a truck just like this - I don't want a new one, I want an old one" and I could have hugged and kissed her right then and there if I wasn't driving. She thinks that the old beat up truck is cool - and that makes me so happy.

Right now, 98% of the enormous stress in my life revolves around money - or the lack of it. We need money to fix my van, we need money to move, we need money to get The Dude's surgery on his shoulder, we need money to plan our yearly TMOART to see my parents.....money money money. But as The Dude reminded me today: "We will get through this - we've gotten through worse, and we'll get through this too, because we're too badass not to."

Don't tell him, but I'm beginning to think that he's my own version of a wish flower - except that instead of me being able to push him around and get my way, his strength in tough situations is what is keeping me from totally losing my mind.

Don't judge me.

Here's a news flash for everyone. I know it might come as a shock to some people.

I'm not perfect.

I have made so many mistakes in my life - we all have, haven't we?

Mistakes are a part of life, and there are so many ways that we can handle them.

We can learn from them, and not make the same mistake again.
We can use what we learned to make sure that our loved ones don't do the same thing.
We can make them a few times just to make sure that they were really mistakes before we learn from them.
We can even pretend that we didn't make the mistakes and act like everything is ok, when in all actuality, it isn't.

Or, my all-time favorite thing to do with a mistake (made by someone else, of course) is to judge a person for her mistakes. (I hope you sense the sarcasm on that...)

Think about it...

We aren't perfect. We've all made mistakes. Right?

So we see someone else make a mistake. It happens, right?

But instead of supporting that person while she regains her footing on the ground that has slipped out from under her, we judge that person. We ridicule that person. We call her a bad person, or worse yet, a bad mother. Instead of keeping our opinions to ourselves, we voice them, and we hurt her. We cause her to doubt herself. We don't go back to her and ask her for her side of the story so that we may better understand her actions - instead, we cut her out of our life.

We pretend that she doesn't exist anymore.

We exclude her from everything.

Why? Because she wasn't perfect, and may not have handled a situation the way that we would have wanted her to do it. But...maybe, just maybe, she had her reasons for handling it that way. Maybe it went way deeper than what we saw on the surface. But we will never know the reasons unless we ask.

At the same time, after we've cut her out of our lives, maybe she's learned from her mistakes. Maybe she's become a better person. Maybe she's even become stronger than she ever was, stronger than we ever gave her credit for being.

Maybe someday, we will find out her reasoning for doing what she did - if we choose to ask her about it. And maybe, she won't be as judgmental of us as we were of her.