Tag Archives: playing it safe

These are my Backpack Words.

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I’d like to tell you my therapist never had any Backpack Words for me.

There was nothing worth stuffing into my backpack like those pamphlets with smiling children on the covers in waiting rooms.

I’d like to tell you those four months I spent carting my baggage up two flights of stairs wasn’t worth it. Because I know you are looking for an excuse. I know we are all looking for an excuse.

If I had it my way, I’d tell you none of it stuck with me. But something did.

Something small and measly and terrifyingly accurate, to be honest.

She said Happy People spread themselves out, so that when one puzzle piece falls out from underneath them, they can leapfrog onto a new one.

She didn’t want me making any one thing my world. And at the time, that upset me. Even now, that’s hard to swallow.

If you tell a passionate girl she’s going to have to pull the blinders off and ease her grip on the reins, she’s going to tug harder. Look closer. Press the mute button.

She’s not going to want someone challenging her. Who does?

That girl is still inside me. She’s not squeezing reigns so much anymore as learning to master juggling and backpacks and feeling heavy & light.

She is learning to love everything she loves, but always more than One Thing.

She isn’t spreading thin so much as widening a road, paved with the words in her backpack.

You’ll find her there, Out There, in that space of land nobody dares walk. The space we’ve given up one. She carries her backpack full of words, each a necessary foundation.

She walks in the center of two yellow lines—between too much baggage and cutting ties with everyone, everything.

And she is waiting for you to meet her halfway at a rest stop in Topeka. At a gas station in St. Louis.

She will start here, with the words her therapist gave her. And you will start there, with the ones your Mama tucked next to your peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

And in the middle, when you meet, you can share a booth in a diner off the dirt road.  You can pull out your words, set them on the counter, and she hers.

You’ll keep what you need, toss what you don’t, and swap what you’re desperate to borrow right now. Until you meet again. Under different circumstances with different backpacks.

What are your backpack words?

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"You need to expand your color palette, Mom."

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mom central park carousel zebra scarf waving

When I think of my mother, I think of her black and white wardrobe. The one my sister begged her to change.

“You need to expand your color palette, Mom,” she’d say.

They’d run out to Kohl’s together and my mom would come back with some flamboyant accessory that she swore she’d never add to any outfit. And then, sure enough, she started slipping off to meetings with a little extra flair.

You have to understand that I always pictured her as two conflicting sides: passionate and practical. For so long, I labeled those traits as mutually exclusive, with my mother leaning toward practical.

In her younger days, I imagine her as passionate. Falling in love with a man at sixteen-almost-seventeen and marrying him at 21. Working at the boardwalk all summer long, fingers shelling out quarters faster than lightning. Staying out until 1 a.m.

I imagine her cooling down and starting a family. Hiding her spark. Letting White House Black Market become her clothing store of choice.

I wanted to see the six million shades of gray and play with them like an artist on a canvas. She wanted to tell me “no” a hundred times for a hundred different reasons.

She became the parent of two wild, rambunctious girls whose light-brown hair flew in wisps behind them as they ran through the woodsy backyard and built bridges out of railroad ties. She grew up and handed that passion down to us.

I want so much for her. From her. A memoir. A novel. A blog. A twitter account.

I want to see the red and black cheetah print cardigan. The zebra print scarf. The dark jeans from American Eagle and the two-piece neon green bikini with board shorts.

I’m not sure why I equate her clothing choices with her outlook on life; I have no doubt in her ability to dream.

I see it in the way she sends me emails about nonprofits all day long. She dreams up a better future for the people in my life who matter and I know that she cares and believes and wants so much for them because I do.

So I keep pushing for that next step where she dives into the water. Feels the coolness spread across her skin and ripple goosebumps along her arms. Sees what the other side has in store for her.

I keep searching her name on Twitter, thinking a thumbnail image might pop up; it hasn’t.

If I’m being honest, it’s not about her dreams anymore. About making them happen. It’s about sharing with the world a woman who will love it with such attentiveness that it cannot help but love her back.

I think it’s me wanting to show her all the people I’ve met and let them see who I have to thank for the person I’ve become. My first cheerleader. My best researcher. My blind supporter.

I wonder if she’ll come around, see what she has to offer this world. I pray that she will.

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.