Everything is fine.😅

Everything is fine

While watching Esther scrape gel polish off my nail beds yesterday and wishing I could pick up my phone to stalk my teenager, a gaggle of middle schoolers rode down the sidewalk across the street on their bikes.
 
The boys must have just been coming from baseball practice and I watched them ride slowly by wearing backpacks and helmets while turning their heads to shout to each other. The weather yesterday was so mild and I could see through the big windows at Nails Plus how young their faces looked as they biked past the Wells Fargo across the street.
 
I thought how nice it would be to be one of their moms, knowing her son was at a nearby field with friends, tossing balls to each other and razzing the guy up at bat. How easy, I thought, to know that when practice was over they’d just get on their bikes for an quick ride home through town.
 
At the same time, my 18-year-old son was driving home from a weekend at West Virginia University with another boy at the wheel. What I thought at first would be my son accompanying his friend and mother going to visit a family friend morphed at the last minute into three 18-year-old boys driving six hours south to stay in a hotel alone for 24 hours, and I felt a bit snookered by him about how it had all gone down.
 
But there I was on Thursday as he was waiting to be picked up, packing a Lululemon bag full of Smart Waters and protein bars and handing him $100 in cash. 

*** 

Earlier in the week, I joked with a sober friend that we’d like an instruction manual for surrendering, complete with action steps. “What am I even supposed to do?” she joked and I nodded my head in agreement. 
 
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it would look like to just accept things for what they are. To stop trying to manipulate outcomes through words and actions. Just taking responsibility for myself and leaving the rest up to the universe to sort out. In other words, to just Serenity Prayer the f*** out of life.
 
Honestly, the idea of letting go of all that control and allowing things to just happen sounds delightful. But instead, I cling to the notion that I can control everything the way my cat’s claws would dig deep into the blanket she was lying on if I had the nerve to try and move her. How her sharp talons would pierce the fabric and she'd drag the blanket from the bottom of her paws as I carried her carefully to her new location.
 
I can be the same way, digging my claws into something in hopes I can manage a situation, or person, towards the intended outcome. How if I could just get all that foil and cotton pads soaked in nail polish remover off my fingertips I could navigate to the app on my phone that lets me stalk my son’s location and will him home to me safely. 

***

A friend I haven’t spoken with in ages called this week to catch up and we shared the news from our lives and changes we’ve been trying to make. We’re both exploring spiritual paths and trying to grow as humans and the conversation was rich and enlightening and at some point, the subject of surrender came up. Apparently, it's a theme.
 
I did my little schtick about wanting an instruction manual for how to do it and she laughed and said that maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe, she suggested, surrendering was less about thinking and more about feeling. “It’s just a shift,” she said. 

***

The thing I was most concerned about this weekend had a lot less to do with the boys being on their own for 24 hours and much more about three 18-year-olds navigating a six-hour car ride. Every time my older three kids had to do a long drive to or from their respective college campuses, I needed to breathe into a paper bag as I imagined the most horrifying scenarios – multi-car pileups, broken guard rails, jaws of life – on a loop until they arrived safely at their destinations.
 
I’d been in touch with the mom of the other boy along for the ride south this weekend and she, too, had been freaking out about the boys driving down on their own. We shared our concerns and weighed our options and observed that our high school seniors would be navigating a lot of new territory over the next year and driving long distances was bound to be a part of that. And we agreed that the boys pretty much kept their wits about themselves during high school. I’m sure someday I’ll find out all sorts of things that have been happening right under my nose, but as teens go, my youngest hasn’t been very controversial.
 
I thought about those middle schoolers riding through the middle of town on a beautiful spring Saturday afternoon. How free they must have felt rolling down those sidewalks surrounded by their pals and getting themselves wherever they needed to go. No moms. No dads. No carpools. Just themselves in charge.
 
And when my own children had started to spread their wings in middle school I’d been so apprehensive at first about them riding their bikes into town (busy roads!) and crossing certain streets (the traffic!). While that posse of 12-year-old boys seemed to me -- sitting at the manicure table -- so idyllic, I guarantee you somewhere at least one of those boys’ mom was freaking out in her kitchen wondering why he wasn’t answering her texts.
 
“Don’t worry,” I want to tell her. “It’s only going to get worse.”
 
Then I ask Esther to cut my nails a little shorter and use my free hand to put my phone back in my purse.
xoAmy

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SUNDAY SHARES: read-watch-cook-buy

Apparently, my new job has warranted a full underwear upgrade. For a while, I've wanted to explore all those bras and panties that keep coming up in my Instagram feed and recently, I pulled the trigger on a few.  

• Um, is it me or have underwire bras become completely unnecessary in COVID times as we sit on Zoom calls in sweaters and loose tops?  But, as a woman with an ample bust, I still need something with some substance. This bra kept coming up in my Instagram feed and then some blogger I like gave it a rave review and it seemed a sign. Reader, so far, I love it. The sizing is weird, but their little quiz told me to buy a Size 3 and the fit is pretty great. Plus,  it’s a lot sexier than my Old Navy sports bra or pilled and stretched-out Spanx number. But it’s good with a button-down or t-shirt and very comfortable and I'm into it.

• I also bought the matching underwear and this time I thought I knew better than the sizing quiz and got a medium instead of the small and now I wish I’d gotten the small.

• On a roll, I picked up this super soft bra by Beyond Yoga on a shopping spree through Spring Lake with my sister on Friday (size Large and I pulled out the pads). We stopped into Barefoot and chatted with the adorable owner and I also picked up more of my new fave socks and fun hair ties that look like old telephone cords and a headband for good measure. She also has stores in Sea Girt and that Brook Plaza down there. So worth the drive, I could have bought everything in the store.

• Okay, since we’re being all tbh, I’ve also come to the realization that sometimes, thongs are necessary. And I hate them, truly I do. But I hate panty lines more. So somehow I stumbled across Everlane’s high-rise thongs and truly, they are a revelation. I mean, it's still a thong but it's not as aggressive as something you'd have gotten at Victoria's Secret in 2007.

• Finally, this New Yorker comic strip really SPOKE TO ME.