My daughter was five years old. We were in Chandler, Arizona traveling on a desert country road. The area was only just beginning to build up so you could still see enough open space and big sky to inspire you to breathe deeply and feel a part of something greater than yourself. As I took it all in a little voice from a booster seat in the back asked, 

“Mommy, do you know if God is a man or a woman?” “

“I don’t think that anyone really knows the answer to that question honey.” 

“I do.” 

She said it confidently, in the way young children sometimes do, with a deep, egoless knowing. She hadn’t asked me because she needed an answer, she’d asked because she wanted to share one.

“God is both. God is a man and a woman. I know because there is a line from my heart to God’s and I can talk to God whenever I want.”

I looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror, eyes full of both innocence and wisdom, an expression of pure earnestness and reassurance on her face. A small enlightened being.

Nothing else needed to be said.

It wasn’t the first time she’d talked to me about God, but it was still surprising. A lapsed Catholic turned agnostic, married to an even further lapsed Catholic who leaned atheist, I hadn’t raised my daughter to be religious. I’d taught her to live the examples Jesus set because they are, in my opinion, a roadmap to being a good human. But even so, I really didn’t talk about Jesus or even God, at all. Catholics are not chapter and verse people. I was taught to strive to live by the teachings of Jesus in a quiet and humble way. To call attention to it was to defeat the purpose. In her five years I’m not sure my daughter had been in a church even five times. Yet she spoke about God with an absolute confidence that rendered me speechless. And it resonated with me in a way that I’d never felt in a church or a temple or a religious gathering. I realized instantly that it made perfect sense that God would be both a man and a woman. And it’s one belief I haven’t wavered in since.

It was around this time that my daughter began having an unusual dialogue with her father. “Daddy”, she’d ask, “are you a boy or a girl”? “I’m a boy.” he’d answer. “No”, she’d say thoughtfully, “you’re a girl-boy-girl”. Sometimes she’d change it to “boy-girl-boy”.  She was lighthearted about it but there was no humor in it, just that quiet, egoless assurance. There was no room for doubt that she knew of what she spoke, a soul older than time in a fairy -like body. I’d read once that Native Americans recognized five genders, but I can assure you that my five year old hadn’t.

Shortly after the gender dialogue began, Arizona banned same sex marriage. My daughter came home from school and said to me: “Girls can’t marry girls here.” I acknowledged that that was true. “It isn’t fair” she stated solemnly. “No it isn’t”, I agreed. Her Dad and I were liberal minded but these topics weren’t on the agenda in our home at the time. We hadn’t so far had the need to raise them, we were mostly absorbed in mundane daily topics. Our child was on a path all her own.

We moved to Delaware a year or so later. I had joined a meditation group and one week I brought my daughter with me. After the meditation portion, members were welcomed to share anything that their mind was occupied with as we learned to allow our thoughts without being consumed by them. One young woman was engaged in a personal identity struggle. She didn’t use pointedly specific language about it, but it was clear that her dilemma surrounded gender and/or sexual identity. I was focused on her as she expressed confusion around figuring out who she was and how to be, when my seven year old leaned in to look this woman straight in the eyes. Again, I heard that gentle, knowing tone as she said, very simply and respectfully to a woman three times her age:

“You should really just be who you are.”

You could have heard a pin drop in that room while a smile spread across the young woman’s face as she nodded in agreement.

 

"Out of the mouths of babes..."

I’ve been thinking about these conversations throughout Pride Month as I see discussions taking place across social media. My daughter, of course, has continued on a path of complete acceptance of every human being she comes across. As far as she is concerned, no discussion should be required. You are who you are and that’s who you should be- unapologetically. 

Imagine a world where we could all rest comfortably in that belief. A world where instead of thinking first in black and white, our default was the entire spectrum. A world where you could just wake up in the morning and be who you are, enjoying the same rights as every one else.

May our "babes" pave rainbow paths across the earth as they step into adulthood. May they make for us all a better world.

For as long as I can remember my mind has made maps for change.  Whether sudden or planned, shifts in my reality result in about five to seven drawn out seconds of stillness as I digest whatever news or new knowledge has presented itself. In those seconds I may feel anything from mildly surprised to stunned, slight sadness to grief, immediate resistance to stoic acceptance. My response time must seem slightly delayed to anyone watching this process. I imagine that delivering news to me must be like typing a web address into your browser and then watching the spinning circle as you wait for it to load.  When that connection is completed, my brain has constructed a new working model and my response is the first step onto the new path. It's a fluid model that will shift as more data is offered, a rough first draft, but it allows me to take immediate action and make real time decisions.  I refer to this operating system as 'coping mode'.

This pandammit, as I have been referring to it after seeing it on social media, has been two years tacked on to the end of what had already been three years of transition for me. I had just finished settling into a new normal that was starting to feel like real life to me when the world's epidemiologists shouted, "plot shift!" and we all started to engage in what felt like the grocery store version of "The Hunger Games".  Instead of enrolling in the local computer classes I'd been eyeing as I focused on career change, I was sewing masks, cooking more than I've ever wanted to, keeping my daughter on track, walking literally a thousand miles across the Brandywine Valley because I am claustrophobic and cannot stay inside for days on end.  I gave more time and attention to the people around me who weren't used to living in Mindful head spaces or adapting to constant change.  "We can do this" I reassured them, needing that reassurance equally as much.  And we did. We are. We're coping as we're adapting, coping as we're adapting, endlessly on repeat. 

The model in my brain has been ever-shifting, like Harry's Marauders Map. People enter and leave its edges according to their own new models. I switch paths in favor of more practical or workable ones as I monitor my daughter's mental health through, what at times, has felt like an untenable amount of transition for any individual, let alone a young teenager. And because social distancing minimized all of our circles and contacts, I often feel wearily aware that I am a single parent managing a household on my own. Normally I reorganize and repurpose this home's spaces in an endless quest for the perfect balance of function and comfort. Recently, though, I've been settling for varying states of semi-organized chaos that for my clutter averse mind are not sustainable. Omicron and the yo-yo of winter's barometer seem to have given new life to migraines and joint pain and general malaise. If I'm not at work I'm trying to be at rest.

And yes, work. In the past I've run toddler classrooms like well-oiled machines. Regardless of what else was happening in my life I'd find comfort in our tiny microcosm of carefully and cheerfully organized consistency. Toddlers thrive on routine in a framework that provides predictability with room for small changes that fit the current day's needs. This school year has not been that. Covid measures and other circumstances beyond my control have meant that my class is also in a coping mode holding pattern. I find the question that I'm asking most often is: "Do you need a hug?". My littles, who have only ever known the pandemic world, are rolling with constant change. I am once more marveling at what capable little humans toddlers can be. But having done this before I know what we're all missing.

I realized this week, that I'm suffering from a healthy case of pandemic fatigue. As a trained Mindfulness coach I know how to ride this out: let myself grieve what was and what isn't, accept my emotions without judging them, practice gratitude for what is wonderful in my life (and there is a lot of wonderful), be patient with the tiny setbacks i'm experiencing in PTSD management, meditate, practice self -care, just generally give myself grace. And above all be honest with myself.

I'm tired of this constantly shifting mental model. I'm ready to install a new operating system. It may be true that life is and always has been about change, that nothing is permanent, that the ability to adapt has always been a necessary life skill; but I don't think that life is meant to be lived in coping mode indefinitely.

I look forward to the day when making maps for change once again becomes an occasional necessity rather than my default mode. I am once again longing for spring. I hope that the warmer months lead us ever closer to the elusive new normal that we've been chasing for the last two years. May we all heal and blossom with the increasing light.