Tigers Big and Small

The rooms that carry children through high school are obsolete after college whether it's been one semester or four years.  No matter the time away, the lessons learned change our children.  What was important, previously essential, has been rearranged.  There is a new independence, a certain seriousness about life.  Perhaps the realization that the real world awaits truly settles in.

As Emily gets older, I see the excitement in her eyes, coupled with a nervous wariness.  She wants to travel, wants to save every lost animal, wants to make a difference somewhere, somehow.  She is only 18 but has travelled across the US and Canada and has been to the jungles of Thailand.  She has seen more than most do in a lifetime.  But right now, she wants to be home.

 With Emily's decision to return home and pursue school locally, it was time to update her room in preparation.  Gone are the bright pink walls, the high school mementoes, and homecoming mums. Old furniture has been moved out and a spa blue pallet now serves as a backdrop to house her one true love: tigers, big and small. 

I was going to make the bed before taking this picture but Emily's neurotic cat wouldn't let me near the bed.  It's as if he knows she is away at school and he guards her bed until she returns. He thinks he's a tiger, as if the painting on the wall is his self-portrait.  He believes if he acts fierce no one will know how much he misses Emily.  He doesn't understand we've all been doing that for months.

LOVE  &  SMALL TIGERS

To Thine Own Self Be True

Perhaps it is the late fall that has me waxing poetic, but never has Shakespeare seemed closer in truth than this past week. To thine own self be true.

It is often in the following that we find we are better taking our own path (skipping desire to quote the obvious Frost here).  But first we must do what we perceive as expected, "the right thing" even though the norm is at odds with whom we truly are. All experiences, good or bad, hold value if we choose to learn from them.  For every negative there is a positive, every slammed door opens an opportunity, and for every awkward journey there is the chance to turn around. 

Emily has decided to leave UIW after this semester and follow her dream of cosmetology school.  It is where her heart has always been and where she belongs. I've known it since she was a small child spending hours in the bathtub washing and styling the hair of allllllll her Barbie dolls.  The bathroom was a stock pile of those large Barbie heads whose hair could be styled and make-up applied.  They were everywhere like a macabre scene from a B rate horror movie.  But they always looked divine. 

Emily has a natural gift.  But cosmetology school didn't seem to be "the right thing" for her to do when all of her friends were headed off to college.  So she headed off to college, too.  She just needed to know what she would miss if she never tried dorm life in a big city. Turns out all she missed was home. UIW is a beautiful school but it isn't the right path for her. As a Mom, I knew her decision was made early but in true Emily fashion, she wasn't giving up without a fight. But no matter how hard she worked, it just wasn't a labor she loved.  The only advice was to tell her to go in the direction of her heart. 

 

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. ~Shakespeare

 

Summer Teal

Twelve years of school are winding to a close, college acceptance has been achieved, and vacation plans are now pen marked on the summer calendar.  Relatives will be arriving this week for graduation celebrations and laughter will replace the hectic hurry of the school year.  The squalor in the parlor has been neatly tidied and I am left to contemplate the simple joys in front of me.

Teal has always been my serenity color.  It calms me.  Soothing as the sea and crisp as line-dried linen, I could swim in this color forever.  It is the siren shade of fresh starts and reminds me that I have two months before Baby Girl leaves home and starts her new life three hundred miles west in San Antonio.  I think of all the blessings that have paved her path and I am so thankful for the journey of motherhood. Teal was Baby Girl's nursery color eighteen years ago, so perhaps it's no coincidence I am craving this color palette today.

She is wood and crystal.  Stubborn, like her father, and beautiful (like her mother- snicker snicker snortle!)- she is a simple country girl with the complexity of prisms in sunlight. I don't worry about her going off to college because she is a traveler at heart- a student of the world and she is not one content to be confined.  I know letting her go is the beginning to her own spectacular journey.  So for the days and weeks ahead I will enjoy the simplicity, wander our vacation world, and enjoy every moment alongside the teal waters under the rotund Texas sun.

 

LOVE  &  LETTING GO