Life's sweet moments

I teach one day a week at a music store. With the advent of Hazel, Ted and I have a new routine on that day: he takes a half day and drives our car to work, and then, after he returns in the early afternoon we do a workout (each person takes the baby while the other does a spell on the treadmill), we all go off to my workplace for the rest of the day and evening. We can't keep this up indefinitely, as Ted's vacation is not unlimited, but we are grateful to be able to do it now.

Recently, a new student has started taking lessons from the teacher across from me. His mom brings him and his brother, and they arrive sometime during my first lesson. The two boys love Hazel. The first week they arrived I popped out of my room during the lesson, because I was hearing a bunch of Hazel sound and wanted to check that she was ok. She was more than ok; she was giggling up a storm as they played with her. When I came out of my studio, the younger boy came up to me and declared, "I helped with Miss Hazel!" I can't tell you how much it warmed my heart to see his pride and delight, and to hear them all enjoying each other.

I hear them coming now (I listen for them), and it's so fun to hear them enthusiastically great my baby, "It's Hazel!" The younger one is autistic, and his engaged interaction with her seems wonderful for him as well as for her.

Last week, they brought a quilt and two baby books with them, and when I came out between lessons there they were on the floor with her, having a party. They left us the quilt and books to use for the rest of the day, and I stored them in my room for re-use next week. That sort of love and generosity is one of the wonderful things you sometimes run into in this life, and it's one of the things that makes life worth living, imo.

legitimacy

I have been thinking lately about how sometimes, and unsurprisingly when you stop to think about it for a minute, I've had this nebulous feeling of illegitimacy, unimportance, reduction in stature somehow.

Why is it unsurprising? Well, I've been fairly career-focused for a few decades now, and was reasonably supporting myself for quite a while before I met my husband. And until we moved into our current house, I never lived anywhere I couldn't pay for myself or with roommates. So, I was in a situation in which what I made was sufficient to pay all my bills, and even if I didn't always make the best financial decisions, still, I was in many senses a self-supporting unit. I didn't feel confident about it, struggled with feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, and guilt among others, due to large bills, a tendency to spend when I shouldn't, and self-judgement. However, I also felt pride in my eventual success in pulling myself out of the hole I'd gotten into, becoming self-supporting, and running my own business. And in this society, legitimacy is conferred, mainly, by monetary success.

Then I met my husband. We got fairly quickly into a serious relationship, bought a house, got married, and then had a baby. Now I'm in a house I actually couldn't afford on my own, even with tenants (the NW real estate market being what it is), and my income will always (most likely) be a small fraction of his. I would certainly struggle to keep afloat if it were just me and my daughter.

Interestingly, I think that were I married to a fellow income-challenged artist, I would not feel the same way, because I wouldn't be making the comparisons I do between my income and that of my husband. So, it would seem that I feel inadequate only in comparison to someone else, that my legitimacy as an income-producing member of society is to be judged along a financial heirarchy.

Now, there are all sorts of reasons separate from money why my job has importance, relevance, and matters to more people than just me. I am a teacher, and can see that I bring positives to other people's lives. I have the reward of ongoing rich relationships with my students. I get to see them develop over a period of years. I learn from them and they learn from me, and I am glad to be able to do what I do for a living.

Now, however, I am home much more than I used to be, and when I am home my days are very different than they used to be. It's hard to get much done in between feeding, changing, playing with, and caring for my daughter. Sometimes it's hard at the end of the day even to remember what happened that day, because sometimes the days take on a certain sameness. I do dishes, I pump milk, I feed the baby, I eat, I usually get out for a walk, I feed the baby, I answer a bit of email (on which I'm behind), I eat, I feed the baby....etc. In a world in which production and external success count for so much, there are mere crumbs in my tally which would count for anything at all in the definition of some.

So, what is legitimacy? Is it internally derived, or externally conferred? On the first gut-check, it would seem obvious that there has to be some degree of externality to it: otherwise, a person could declare anything a legitimate way to spend time. It's easy to think of examples worthy of scorn, pity, or just a confused scratch on the head....the guy who spends all his time in his parents' basement doing nothing but eating pizza and playing online games, for example, or the woman who, ... but I cringe; the rest of my brain is already castigating me: who am I to judge the value or worth of other people's time, their lives? Really, I can't. I can have feelings about it, or even opinions, but I cannot know the realities of the interior of someone's mind and heart. I do not want to place myself in superior position and say that someone's life is not, in essence, worth living. That's a spiritual weight I'd rather forego.

So, let's check the dictionary for some help.
From Merriam/Webster, online:
Main Entry: le·git·i·ma·cy
Pronunciation: \li-ˈji-tə-mə-sē\
Function: noun
Date: 1691
Def: : the quality or state of being legitimate.

Well, ok. hmmm. Let's go see what they say about "legitimate".

Main Entry: le·git·i·mate
Pronunciation: \li-ˈji-tə-mət\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English legitimat, from Medieval Latin legitimatus, past participle of legitimare to legitimate, from Latin legitimus legitimate, from leg-, lex law
Date: 15th century
Definitions:
1 a: lawfully begotten ; specifically : born in wedlock b: having full filial rights and obligations by birth
2: being exactly as purposed : neither spurious nor false
3 a: accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements b: ruling by or based on the strict principle of hereditary right
4: conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards
5: relating to plays acted by professional actors but not including revues, burlesque, or some forms of musical comedy

Alright. Number 1 doesn't apply here. So strike issues of, well, legitimate issue. :-)

Number 2 seems more applicable: I am what I say I am, a teacher. But I am teaching less, devoting more time and energy to mothering my baby, and to domestic chores. So, my connection to that sense of professional identity, while there, is less clear and strong than it used to be. Ok, in order to be legitimate, do I have to be who I say I am? Is it identity?

Number 3 also doesn't seem to apply here, except that my legitimacy as a teacher has something (maybe everything, but certainly a lot) to do with how my students view and experience me. After all, if they learned nothing from me I couldn't be viewed as legitimately teaching. I'd just be wasting oxygyn.

Number 4 is interesting. Accepted standards? Accepted rules? Of society? Well, so often that it's still the norm for significant chunks of society, the woman in a heterosexual partnership winds up in a position similar to mine upon the advent of children. So yeah, this is usual, accepted, and, by many, expected. So, given that externally no one would question my legitimacy as a mother/domestic worker (snark), why would I feel any oddness here? It appears to have to do with my own feelings of legitimacy, based in my background and upbringing, life experience, and values. So, a mixture of the external and internal. The rules by which I live are not mainstream, and that has everything to do with by whom and where I was brought up, as well, I think, as my own inherent personality and desires. I never really thought I'd have children, and when I thought about it, I didn't imagine that I'd be spending the sheer quantity of time that I am now in a non-professional setting. So, I've in some sense gone against my own set of "rules" or expectations.

Number 5, again, doesn't really apply except in the sense that we're all actors on the stage of life... (hee hee)

This definition is all externally-driven. It says nothing about identity, or self-defined reality. What I come back to in the end, then, is that I think that legitimacy does have an external component, but that ultimately the most important thing by far is whether I think that what I'm doing conforms with my values. So, does it?

Yes: I value living with courage, integrity, truthfulness, and love. Bringing up a child with love is something I consider to be deeply important and valuable. Ultimately, I have to be careful not to mix together two things which, though related in some way are separate issues: 1) my sense of identity, and 2) the legitimacy of my actions as they relate to my values. My sense of identity has been intertwined for a long time with my professional identity and life. I am seeing now that I need to expand and flex that identity. I know that I will, and am confident that I'll be able to absorb all the newness which has come my way. My lifelong commitment is to align my actions with my values, and I know also that, though there will be plenty of mistakes along the way, I'll do that too, because it is of extreme importance to me.

This does not mean that I'll kick up my heels and lightly brush away any care of what anyone else thinks of me; I am not at this point tempermentally able to do that. However, this whole thought process is a reminder to me that what matters to me the most is my own internal compass, and following my truth is the way for me to adhere to my sense of legitimacy.

That, and the knowledge that every dawn is a new day, and if I feel compelled to start a new career sometime down the road, well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Wedding gigs, traveling with the baby

So, I had a wedding gig that involved 1.5 hours of travel each way. When I accepted this gig I was pregnant, and so, obviously, didn't have the baby yet and didn't get how much that would impact our daily routine and things like work, and gigging, etc. Once I started to think about the gig in light of our new addition, plans changed. We decided that 3 hours travel in the car in one day was just too much, and so we took the opportunity to make it a weekend away.

Bottom line: it was fun, and I'm glad we went.

BUT.......... there were challenges.

Transcription on the fly:

In the group with which I accepted the gig, we use repertoire in which my part is often in treble clef, up quite high. In order to make it work on the cello, I'm usually dropping down an octave or sometimes two as I read the music. When I do this, it puts the actual note that I'm playing one note away from how the note would read if it were in tenor clef, as would be likely if the part were written for cello. That is insanely confusing to deal with on the spot. For those of you who don't read music or who have no idea what I'm talking about imagine the following: you're reading off a series of numbers for an audience, and as you do so, someone is shouting numbers in your ear that are one different from those on the page. Try it, just try it, I dare you! :-) Anyway, not wanting to screw up royally at a gig, I decided to write out some of the music in the proper register and clef. A good idea, but this takes a LONG TIME. And since I now have a child whom I'm feeding a good chunk of the day, I just don't have the time I used to for getting tasks like that done. So, Saturday was spent frantically trying to get all that transcription done, at the B&B, at the restaurant for lunch, etc. And why was I doing this instead of using Finale, the program designed to make all that work easier and faster? Because I am feeling intimidated by the software and haven't touched it though it's been loaded on my machine for over a year. *blush*

The Preciousness of Modern American Weddings:

Well, what can I say? Ted and I are not traditionalists. We had a friend MC, but married ourselves to each other without someone saying we could (at our wedding - obviously, we had a judge say we could a few months earlier at court). We had ourselves as well as our wonderful friends and family contribute time and energy and creativity and love to make the space happen, make the music, speak the words of the ceremony, and even clean up afterwards. (To any of you who might be reading this, thank you again, from the bottom of my heart!! We absolutely loved our community-produced wedding!)

In my experience, that was quite unusual. Having played many wedding gigs, (and I am now down to playing very few because they're usually more hassle than they're worth, imo) they often seem formulaic to me, despite varying trappings and settings. This is not to diss the feelings of all involved; I know how moving they are for people who are there to get married and their friends and family. From the point of view of a musician playing at the wedding, however, it's a different experience. Bringing my baby, my cello, and myself through a very large space outside, over two quite narrow wooden bridges was just the start of it. Then there was the wind, that kept blowing our music away from and off of our stands, despite clothes pins. And the bugs in our eyes. And the foetid smell of the pond in front of us. And the loudness of the fountain in said pond. And the bright sun and our professional black clothing. And the miscommunications about timing, and the fact that we couldn't see when anyone was starting "down the aisle" (around twisty/turning paths, through trees) which was to be our cue.... whee. Needless to say, my vacation didn't start till Saturday evening some time later. (This is a photo of the place; we were tucked behind the trees to the right, just to the side of one of the ponds).

Sleeping away from home, and My Princess-On-The-Pea self:

I have huge trouble sleeping. It's hard enough at home, but worse on vacation, where I often lie for hours on hard mattresses, tossing and turning. I really sleep best alone, but a king size mattress works pretty well. Ted has a sleeping talent the equal of which I have never seen, but does a lot better with more space too. At the B&B we had a queen bed, we had a baby, and the first night I got about an hour of sleep. The second night we slept separately, and then, yippee skippy, I slept. We have learned our lesson; as much as we don't want to be pampered little princesses, when we go away we have to get a room with a king bed. Otherwise, we're sleep-deprived, snappy, and not having that much fun. We don't want to wreck Hazel's childhood vacations that way, so we'll just have to celebrate our inner princesses and go with it.

On the Plus Side:

We happened into fun street fair in Langley. We drove over Deception Pass Bridge at sunset twice, and it is so incredibly beautiful! We got sunshine one day, and then a nice cool day to wander and meander through the fair the next. We had time together, wonderful meals, fun with the baby, who smiles all the time. We each love watching the other with the baby. We are giddy with love and cuteness, and enjoying that in each other. It's good.

2nd Anniversary, Hazel's accomplishments, cleaning house

So, yesterday was our second anniversary. We've now been married for 2.5 years. No, I'm not having problems with addition: we got married in a courthouse in December and then had a wedding July 1. We spent much of the day (until about 5 pm) cleaning. Whoo hoo!!

How romantic, you might say, ironically. Well, actually, it was a wonderful day. We busted our butts in a companionably partnership-oriented way, Hazel was contented and self-entertaining for much of the day (more on that later), and now we have a house in which it is a pleasure to lounge around, eat, entertain, etc. The day before we laid flooring in the laundry room. The house looks better than it ever has since we bought it. Being in a space that feels good is incredibly important to mood, I find. Having a freshly mopped floor on a sunny warm day delights the feet, nose, and eyes. :-)

Hazel turned over all by herself! I put her in her car seat at one point yesterday, and when we came back to check on her, she was on her tummy!! Wow!! Go Hazel!! It was exciting to see. She's also making all sorts of cute new vocalizations, and moving her tongue to change the tone and register of her sounds. She's so much more talkative, and it's so fun to hear, and to "talk" with her.

After cleaning house we went over to Andy's for wonderful tea and pizza for snack (breaking the cardinal rules of not eating while having good tea - ruins the palate, don't you know?!) which restored our tissues, as they say. And then we all went to the pool. It was Hazel's third time, and she had a really good time, smiling in a big way at all three of us. We floated her, let her get water on her face, played with her in the pool fountains, and really enjoyed ourselves.

Ted, having grown up going to NY community pools, had not been enthused about the pool trip, but loved it once we got there. It's hard to describe how good the Mountlake Terrace pool is, but it's wonderful; soft, textured bottom, warm water temperature so there's no shock in going in, fun water features, and very kid-friendly. We even bring the stroller all the way through into the pool area so we can change the baby if necessary, or I can feed her, etc.

Then we stopped by to pick up Indian cuisine for din-din, and had a good meal and conversation back at our clean and appealing house. :-) We lit our wedding candle. It has three wicks, and Andy stood in for Hazel in lighting the third wick, since she can't do it yet. Give her time; she's only 4 months old...

Then Ted swaddled her for sleep, I gave Andy a ride home, and after I got back we had a nice conversation before snoozing the night away.

What a great day!

Joy

So, it's really easy to get apocalyptic when considering the current state of our society and our world. There is so much wrong that it's totally overwhelming to even begin to think about, let alone to attempt action in redress. My midwife said, in one conversation just after Hazel's birth, that she worries that our children's generations will be burdened with unbearable guilt about the state of the environment. And I can see how that could happen easily; there are significant numbers of us now who are in such a case.

My thought for the day, then, is this: even if the aforementioned vision is true, even if the world is about to go down in flames, that does not mean that we do not deserve or should not cultivate health, well-being, and joy in our lives. No matter the consequences of our (humanity's) cumulative actions, I believe that life is value-positive, and should be celebrated. Perhaps this is more important than ever, now, in these days.

I chose to have a child so I could bring her up with love. It's really that simple. To allow guilt and fear to swallow up my life seemed like an unloving and spiritually pathetic thing to do. Having a child was a manifestation of my commitment to faith, hope, and joy.

And I am not fiddling while Rome burns. I am not closing my eyes to the vast darknesses that abide in our world, the tragedies and outrages that occur daily. They are there, enough to bring a person to her knees any moment of any day. However, if we do not give voice to the positive, no matter its sometimes minuscule percentage of the data, we are not being truthful in either spirit or presentation.

So, apart from whatever circumstance pertains in any given moment, life is good, love is oxygen, and joy effervesces through the universe, to be found in places large and small. Gratitude can be a balm for a troubled heart, and I plan to make it part of my daily spiritual practice as long as I am alive to do so.

Today, I am grateful, among other things, for long friendships, good movies, and a partner with whom I am honored to parent our wonderful, beautiful daughter.

In the broom closet

You know that feeling, the one where you think, "Now just how did I wind up here/doing this?" Last weekend I found myself sitting on a bench with my back to the door, with brooms to my immediate left, appliances surrounding me, industrial strength cleaners to my right, and my breast pump perched a tad precariously on the edges of a cardboard box just in front of me.

Now, I was not, as you could very reasonably suppose, in a gas station bathroom on the road somewhere. I was at the spa. A very very nice spa, a place I've gone many times before and at which I've spent a good deal of money, a place of luxury and sophistication, a place whose purpose is to pamper its customers (for a substantial price).

This was the most time I've spent away from Hazel since her birth. I've been looking forward to going to the spa for over a year, and I was there with my mom, aunt, and sister. My breasts tend to leak milk if I haven't fed the baby for over 3 hours, so I brought my pump with me so I could avoid that happening mid-massage or other spa activity. Also, one's milk supply needs to be kept up by pumping when away from the baby, and having milk around with which other people can feed Hazel is important. All around, this was an important thing for me to be able to do.

I had a hard time leaving Hazel, but once I got to the spa I started to relax and enjoy myself. I had a great massage, and a really wonderful lunch. Then I decided to pump, and somehow, after hearing "it's private, with a door", and "we'll bring a bench in so you don't have to stand up", I wound up trying to balance my pump on the edge of a cardboard box amongst the chemicals.

I wasn't upset, didn't spend the time angry. I was amused, and got to read the lists of "Always" and "Never" things that the staff ("cast members") are supposed to always/never do, among them never saying no to a customer. However, I was uncomfortable. Pumping takes a while. I had to put the pump and bottles on surfaces that are probably not particularly clean. I was hidden away IN A CLOSET, because they didn't have anything better to offer me (they thought). Downstairs there's a very nice lounge with outlets, comfy chairs, a fireplace, and water to drink. But were I to sit there, other people could see me, and that seems to be the main thing that was to be avoided. I can totally understand the staff wanting to offer me privacy. However, I would frankly rather sit in comfort with a cloth draped over my front than in a broom closet so no one has to know that I'm doing something so gauche as pumping milk for my baby.

I never protested. I'm so used to going along, making do, etc, that it didn't occur to me until later that I should have said something, requested a different solution. It's sort of mind-boggling that they'd consider this a reasonable thing to do, really, but hey, I didn't stick up for myself. I will next time. I want to help our society move to seeing women nursing and pumping as a matter of course, a normal daily activity to be accepted as such and neither hide it away or create drama over it.

Now, the day before I did in fact manage to stick up for myself. I had gone out to eat with my family, and the host wanted me to take Hazel's car seat out of her (small) stroller, put it on an upside-down child's high chair, allow him to take my diaper bag, breast-feeding pillow, and stroller away, and position the baby on the inner corner of the table where other customers wouldn't have been able to get by rather than the outer, where he might have to move his path into the table area by perhaps one inch. hmmmm. I immediately didn't want to, and the more insistent he got the more resistant I got.

The bottom line is that the car seat in the stroller was no wider than the car seat on top of the upside-down high chair, and so his insistence was totally unwarranted. The fact that he was patronizing and disrespectful was an additional irritant. So, I just kept politely saying no, and eventually won my point with the help of our wait-person, who quite deftly edged him out of the way. Then, for the rest of the evening, he refused to bring water to our table, and wouldn't look at us. Amazing.

I am beginning to find that one of my new goals is to combat the discrimination, criminalization, and just plain rudeness that seem to be the responses of some individuals and our society toward the regular processes of motherhood by normalizing them.

Life narrative

TIME: When we're children, time seems to stretch out forever, as does childhood. Many children yearn forward, hoping to get older, to get bigger, to become adults. Life can feel like walking through water, struggling against that powerful resistance. I remember having the feeling often as a child that a given day would never end, that the evening seemed to get wider in perspective as it spread out in front of me like a slow-moving river. I think this is enhanced by the funny things memory does: since we don't remember our beginnings, the first months and years of our lives, even when we're very young children, they seem lost in the mists of time and therefore very far away. The time before we were alive was really the time before the universe began. As a little kid, of course, I knew that life and people existed before I did, but I had a hard time crediting it. And as the possessors of knowledge of the time-before-me, one's parents seem sort of godlike (or irrelevant, depending on a kid's current age/stage). Parents hold the keys to the details of the genesis of one's life. They tell the narrative, remember the events, set the mood in one's infancy and young childhood. Part of growing up and gaining independance, I think, is developing a body of knowledge of oneself and one's world that can only be achieved by acquiring memories that allow for a sense of narrative of one's life. One can tell one's own story, with feet in the past (remember when?), present (I feel this way now now), and future (I want to do that).

MEMORY: Memory is powerful. It's a necessary condition for intimacy and self-knowledge. Memory is also weirdly fluid and very susceptible to various internal and external influences. In memory as it employed along the path to self-knowledge, truthfulness is of extraordinary importance. And truthfulness is about more than just an accurate recollection of facts, though that is one part of it. More importantly, perhaps, it also has to do with a willingness to recall and narrate the stories of one's life and others with as little spin as possible. Truthfulness is about presentation as well as content. So, what does it mean to be the custodian's of a child's memory and life narrative? I believe that it's a truly awesome responsibility, one of the biggest that a parent faces.

STORIES: In families, certain stories get told over and over, and certain "facts" about family members are also repeated across years. These stories and facts start to develop both the mistiness of myth and legend, and the weight of sanctified dogma. They shape our perceptions of the world and of ourselves. In my family, it became "fact" that "Mary views life through rosy-colored glasses". Did I, or did it just seem that way in contrast to those around me? Often, part of the work that we do as adults is involved with freeing ourselves from that externally imposed and internally affirmed narrative about who we are. One friend of mine was "the athlete" in his family. This view of him was both affirmative and limiting. He was a really good soccer player, and was encouraged in the development of his skill, to the betterment of his physical health in the long-term. However, his interests in artistic endeavors was not only not supported, but were laughed at, because they didn't fit the mould of who he was supposed to be and were therefore somehow unconceivable or ridiculous. And his intense involvement with his sport was rewarded, because of his mother's emotional investment in it as it supported what she wanted to see in her life story and in his. Because of this, his ability to acquire self-knowledge (what do I value?, what do I like?) as a child was limited, and he didn't fully figure out until well until adulthood how much such pursuits might mean to him. He also suffered loneliness, spending most of his time around guys with whom he had little in common other than their chosen activity.

BIRTH STORIES: Parents tell their children the stories of their early lives. I will be telling my daughter about her beginnings ("We decided we wanted to have a child, and I got pregnant in June. You were born in the springtime in Seattle. When we came home from the hospital the cherry trees and daffodils were blooming. I remember standing outside the hospital waiting for your dad to bring the car around, thinking that this was the first time you'd seen the outside." etc.) What I remember, what I tell her, and how I tell her will become the foundation of her own perception of her life narrative. So, I have to balance the need for clarity and lack of spin with the realities of the subjectivity of my memory and my desire to give her a sense of how much this story means to me, how much she was wanted. I don't want to tell her a bland story devoid of color and love in an effort to avoid the aforesaid spin. But not all of the story is hers, either; it's part of my narrative and that of my husband's, and so I won't tell her the "whole thing". Some of it is private, some of it I don't know or don't remember, and some of it I'll tell her later as her ownership of her own life narrative gets strong enough to handle more powerful input from mine without losing its own coherence and shape.

INTIMACY: So all of this is partly to say that I find it amazing that we can achieve intimacy with other people, and especially with our children/parents, given that we're all traveling through life at different speeds. Hazel and I are in the same river, but somehow the current is both very slow and very fast around our boat, because this time is both the immense beginning of her universe and also the full, action-packed, zooming middle of my life.

RESPONSIBILITY: In my commitment to truthfulness and clarity, knowing that I am one of the primary architechs of the landscape of her personal life narrative, there is a poem which has been and continues to be a mantra for me. And that is "On Children" by Kahlil Gibran.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

-------

LOVE: I will try to give Hazel the stories and emotional/energetic ingredients from the beginnings of her life as truthfully and lovingly as I can so that she can become her own architect as she grows. I will endeavor to find out who she is as I also attempt to give her guidance and show her pathways. I want to give her the joy of her own beginnings so that as she goes on she can captain her own boat with confidence, clarity, and openness to what life has to offer.