Eighteen.

I can hear birds chirping out front and I can see bits of green and tiny flower buds on trees. Spring (you can call February "Spring" in California) is a time to feel fresh and aware and open to growth.

A time to be kind to struggling new flowers who are just learning what it means to find their place in the sun, so they can grow strong and steady and ready to stand up to the rains that eventually - inevitably - come upon them.

And if those flowers are our children, and we know that the storms will eventually come to rain down on them, much like they rained down on us as we grew up, then shouldn't we try to keep them in the sun as much as possible right now?

Nine is having a tough go. She's trying to navigate school, which has gotten much harder this year. She's trying to understand that as the school work gets harder, she needs to work harder. Success in school has come easily to date, so when it doesn't, it creates a valley of uncertainty and scaling the mountains to get back up to the top seems impossible. She needs to absorb my words when I tell her that things get harder for everyone. That as she grows, so will the challenges she faces. It doesn't mean she can't overcome them, it just means that she's going to have to dig deep for what she needs to help her do it. All the equipment is in there, she's just got to be able to find it.

God willing, finding that will be easier than finding her shoes when Seven and I are standing by the front door, toes tapping, keys jingling nervously because we're seconds away from being late to school (again).

Apart from school, which is partly cloudy this Spring, she's navigating the whipping social winds of third grade. I know from experience that girls can be mean. I'm pretty sure all of us girls know from experience that girls can be mean, otherwise Tina Fey wouldn't have written a movie called "Mean Girls" and it wouldn't have been as successful as it was, or as funny. It's easy now to laugh about it, but I remember my best friend suddenly and without warning, decidedly unfriending me in Junior High. I was DEVASTATED. Not to mention confused and embarrassed and racking my little hormonal brain trying to figure out what on earth I'd done to deserve it. Of course, I'd done nothing. It was her, not me. Even if I had seen it coming, I couldn't stop it any more than you can stop the rain from getting you wet when you try to run for cover in a barn with no roof.

I'm afraid this unfriending, uncomfortable, unwelcome storm is coming earlier now. The words that are said are cruel. The looks that these little girls give feel like a hailstorm, biting and sharp. I've seen it happen and I've heard the stories. I've also seen Nine's big brown eyes, with her long lashes that look like mink, well up with tears as she shares with me the fact that this is yet one more thing she can't understand.

We teach in our house that you look into someone's heart to find their beauty. That beautiful people have a happy heart and that heart can beat within bodies of all sizes, shapes and colors. When they are kind to one another or to friends, I say to them "I see such a beautiful, happy heart in what you just did.".

So it's tough to fathom mean, especially when it comes out of a seemingly clear, blue sky. We try to explain that people who act mean are unhappy, and that the nasty things they say have less to do with the person they say them to, and more to do with themselves and their own sadness. And when someone lashes out for no reason, the best thing to do is to remember first that it's not about you. The next best thing to do is to realize that whatever they are saying or doing is coming from a dark heart. Mean people aren't mean to you because you're doing it wrong, they're mean because they hurt. Maybe someone is mean to them. Maybe they watch Mom and Dad be mean to each other. I don't think an unhappy heart is necessarily born, I think it's learned through painful process. And that pain has to come out somehow.

Sometimes it comes out on a sweet, naive, unsuspecting third grader in the form of a turquoise post-it note with "I hate you" written on it. Sometimes the note says "You're stupid". Sometimes it's a sideways glance and a comment under the breath meant to intimidate. (And it does.)

I wonder if unleashing that storm feels good to a kid who is full of thunder and lightening. I wonder if it helps it move through them so they can find some sunshine too, or if it's just how they are and will be, with gray clouds in their eyes and hate in their mouths. Maybe instead of holding hands with their girlfriends, and feeling the shared joy of innocence, they will grip and twist and pull to ensure that someone else feels just as bad as they do.

My task as I see it is to teach a combination of compassion and confidence, because I can't (unfortunately) put my kids in a safety bubble for the next 80 years. It's okay to feel bad because of a mean girl, and it's okay to feel bad for a mean girl. But it's not okay to let the grip of one bring you to your knees. Hopefully Nine (and Seven) will grow so strong in the sunshine of our love that they will never be broken by wind or rain or hateful post-its from silly, sad girls. Hopefully they will grow so strong that their appreciation for self and others will protect them from what's to come, and what's already happened. 

Hopefully they will learn that they can also give sunshine to help someone else's seed of happiness grow, and they can do this without becoming cold themselves. I myself am learning how and when to let go just enough. It's scary for all of us and one more reason why my middle name is Worry. But I am grateful to be on this tireless journey of teaching and loving and protecting. Sometimes it makes me want to curl up around the puppy and sleep for hours. Other times I want to - work with me here - just stuff the kids back up into my womb and fight their fights for them again.

Instead, I will keep pointing out pretty clouds and beautiful hearts and reasons to laugh, and hope that this fortifies them enough to weather any storm.

I may also steal all the post-its from the classroom, but you didn't hear it from me.

Seventeen.

It's been longer than five minutes and my husband is still in town.

Granted, he leaves again Sunday, maybe Monday, but for the moment he is here, so he's finally cleared some mind space, and read the whole blog. His comments about it crystallized the differences between men and women. He liked it and was very complimentary. He even said he laughed out loud at one part, although he couldn't recall what it was. He said, You know, it was something about the four of us doing something. I was all, Super specific, thanks.

But he said something else that I thought was so interesting. And by "interesting" I mean I shared it with Chicago right away to get her perspective, because she's the kind of best friend where if something happens in my life or hers, it didn't really happen until we can share it with each other. So I wrote to her and she emailed back and instantly made me feel uncrazy, as she tends to do. 

So, he said, I don't know, it just sort of seems like you're sad. And I was like, Sad? I'm not sad. Well, sometimes I'm sad, but I'm not writing because I'm sad. He said that he's just not the type of person to throw his life out there for people to read or see. You know, he's a man. I explained to my sweet, unassuming, confused man that this is what women do. We feel something, and then we feel around to see if anyone else feels it too, and then when we discover they do indeed feel it too, we all feel better.

It's a lot of feelings for a man to wrap his man-brain around, I get it. But I've been thinking about what he said ever since, because I like to dwell.

What I've come up with is that women are just different from men. We love the feeling of feeling connected. Even as little girls we joyfully hold hands, and to catch a glimpse of little girls holding hands is to catch that sweet, innocent, burgeoning female connection in its infancy. Eventually, we hold the (clammy) hands of our first boyfriends, and our next. It makes us feel giddy and breathless. We hold the hands of our husbands or partners. It makes us feel adult and exclusive and publicly devoted. We hold the hands of our children. It makes us (and them) feel guided and safe and in control. We hold the hands of our parents when we are all adults. It makes us feel thankful and full of remembrance and less out of control.

Women need to hold hands with others, even if it's virtually. For me, reaching out and connecting helps keep the Good Ship Amy balanced as it creaks and sways and navigates through life.

Men like to stand solitary on the bow, feet spread, hands on their own hips, steady as they go. I think it makes them feel stronger to manage the course alone.

But women's hands are never just on our own hips (without grocery bags and infants and backpacks, I mean), and we learn early that steering alone doesn't make you stronger or braver or more capable. It just makes you alone. Women's hands are forever wringing, washing, carrying, clasping, patting, soothing, making, cradling. Our hands are exhausted. We feel less tired when we feel warmth. Solidarity. Support. We need to feel another woman saying, I've walked in your shoes, and my callouses are right where yours are - do you feel them? You aren't alone, I am with you - do you hear me? I will stand by you and walk with you and listen to you and feel for you. I will squeeze your hand to remind you that I am cradling your heart while you cradle that baby through another sleepless night. I will brush the hair off of your pretty forehead as you cry out of sheer exhaustion or frustration or anger or heartbreak. 

Or, I will read your musings and I will write you back and tell you that your journey is my journey. And that your kids sound like they act like my kids. And that your life seems wonderful and crazy and you're a lunatic (but I say that with love) and you made me laugh today and also? We. Are. One.

Women love that shit. Men, not so much. And that's okay. Because I can feel something, and throw it out there thinking, Man, am I the only one who feels like this? And someone writes back and says, Me too. And then I know it's not just me, because I have proof. Someone else said it out loud too, and that means it's not just in my head. See? Uncrazy.

But that's only part of why I'm writing. One side of it is that it gets all these ramblings out of my head. The other side is the side that connects me to you. So I will use the hands that I use to hold my babies, to make dinner, to love my husband and to care for the house-eating puppy, to do this too. To write away. And as I clickety-click it all out there, I will feel your hands holding mine. Just holding and squeezing and outhaling through it all, every time.

Sad? No. Exactly the opposite, actually.

:)))