End of Summer

Summer may be on the calendar for another month, but in my house, it feels like the end.

My older daughter came home from her job as a camp counselor at a sleep away camp and is now in the process of switching everything over to college mode -- securing a new job at school, making firm decisions about her classes, getting excited about her new roommates....next week we'll make the five and a half hour drive to drop her off.

My high schooler is finishing up summer reading (Note to my town's English department: She did not like the required reading this summer) and working on the essay that must be turned in the first day of school. She's finishing her math packet and getting excited about the Fall Show her drama group will put on. Her official schedule is up online, and one of her classes is Driver's Ed. (I won't say more about that, for now.)

It's still hot out but the stores are showing winter fashions, and Halloween is already making its way into Target. (Really? Isn't it just a tad too soon?)  And I feel myself growing more blah every day.

I hate winter. There is no way around it. I don't find one thing pleasant about it, unless you count my daughter's birthday.  Cold weather makes me extremely uncomfortable, from the constantly chapped lips to the need for many layers, from having to heat my car up for a few minutes before I get ready to drive to wearing a heavy winter coat everywhere I go.  I hate the dreary landscape and the snow. For me, there is just nothing positive about winter.

Further, I do not understand people who love winter.  People who say they can't wait until it gets cold. People who love to do winter sports, like skiing and snowboarding, so they're freezing and sweating all at once.

I hate winter sickness.  From colds to the flu and then to the most dreaded, the stomach virus, I can't stand it.  The scratchy throats, the stuffed up noses, and the fevers. I hate the cost of heating my house, and the fact that I can never quite get warm, even if the heat is on 72.

I hate the snow and the ice. I hate driving in it, walking in it, and shoveling it.  (Luckily, my husband does the shoveling.)

So by now, with the sun setting earlier and earlier every day, with school in just a couple of weeks, all I'm doing is dreading. Dreading the six months -- October until April -- that I'm cold. I'm already looking forward to next spring.  And taking my jacket off. Wearing flip flops wherever I go.  Eating in the outdoor seating areas at restaurants. Smiling, because finally, it's summertime again.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is another emotional area I lack clarity in.  I don't forgive -- or maybe it's that I don't forget -- easily.  I'm always amazed by the family members of murdered loved ones who tell the murderers they forgive them. And they sincerely seem to mean it. I wish that were me, but it's not.

I am wary after being hurt. I want to be the kind of person who says, "That's okay; I understand." But I'm not.  If you bump into me, that's okay, I get it, you didn't do it on purpose. If you forget to show up for a lunch date, hey, it happens.  But if you mess up big time, I'm going to be hesitant.  And at some point, I'm likely to say to myself, "I don't trust this person anymore."

This happened with an old friend a bunch of years ago. She'd hurt me before (in similar ways) -- I'd assumed, pretty unknowingly -- and I'd always let it go.  I tried to focus on the things about her that I liked.  She was funny. She seemed to be loyal. She appeared to embrace values that I really appreciated.  She had a lot of energy and was always ready to help somebody.

But then she did something that hurt me so much, I couldn't get over it. I tried to get over it. I tried not to let it color our friendship. I tried not to focus on it every time we talked, or saw each other.  But I found that as time went on, what happened was the opposite of what I thought was supposed to happen. The wound was supposed to get smaller, not larger, and I was supposed to start forgetting. But I hadn't.  I just kept thinking about what she had done, and thinking about how I no longer trusted her, and thinking about how deeply it had affected me. It had changed my opinion of her.  It had invalidated the things I liked most about her.  And I couldn't get past it. The friendship ended.  And the friendship really ended because I wanted it to, not because she didn't try to keep it going. She did.

I sound awful, right?

But the thing is, I do believe there are some unforgivable trespasses.  And I do believe that for each person, that line of unforgivability (a word I'm making up) is different.  I checked in with a few people after I found I could no longer tolerate this person in my life, and they all assured me that they would be wary to forgive, too.  But still, I wanted to be better than that. I wanted to understand this person's position and accept it as valid. And I felt like not forgiving her invalidated her position, which was wrong of me.

But maybe I didn't invalidate it. Maybe she was entitled to her position, and I was entitled to mine, and maybe I was entitled not to forgive her and move on.  Is forgiveness the same as "bringing things back to the way they were before" or is forgiveness something else altogether?  Is forgetting really, truly, "I don't think about this anymore," or is it another way of saying, "Though this happened, I no longer hold it against you, and I trust you again." If so, I don't forgive and forget. But maybe there are some things that can't be put aside. And at the same time, maybe after the event, trust is erased and then it has to be rebuilt.  And in some instances, you can choose to re-trust, and in others, you can't. And is that okay? To hold different people to different standards? I just don't know. What about you?

Learning to Cope With Rejection and Failure

As an author, I've dealt with rejection and failure more times than I can count -- agent rejections, publisher rejections, readers telling me they didn't like my novel -- and I've gotten used to it, mostly. Now when a rejection comes, I feel maybe a tiny sting, and then I move on.  In the beginning, though, it was rough.

One of the most important things we can teach our children is how to deal with rejection and failure in their lives, and this means that we must let them be rejected or fail.  As parents, this is extremely difficult. We can't stand to see our kids suffer, and since so many of us view our children as extensions of ourselves, their rejections or failures can sting as though we are personally experiencing them.

A few years ago, when my daughter was in middle school, a mother came up to me, infuriated. Her son had not made the middle school soccer team. "Imagine how he feels," she fumed, "when he has to walk by all of these kids who are not as good as he is, who got on the team, and he didn't make it." What I read from that was that she was embarrassed that her son hadn't made the team, and she couldn't bear to think he wasn't as good as she thought he was.

My daughter had a recent failure.  She came home, crying, and I felt awful for her.  It was one of those embarrassing things she would have to live with.  But I'm convinced that it will help her in the long run to be a better person, to make good decisions, and to work hard. So many parents seem bewildered by their children's failures or rejections.  A child doesn't make a sports team, and it can't be because the child wasn't as good as another child, or didn't behave well, or whatever the case, it has to be because there was some strange force conspiring against the child. (And there may have been, but then again, it's a lesson to be learned.)  Or the child doesn't get invited into a prestigious group, the advisers must be manipulating the system. By the time the child is ready for the college admissions process, he or she and his or her parents may have no real idea about rejection and failure, how and why it happens, and how to cope with it.

Two years ago, my daughter was beginning her senior year of high school. I remarked to a friend that I was going to spend the entire year locked in my house, because I knew how dramatic some of the parents were going to get over the college admissions process. I was right. Parents whose children had never, in theory, been rejected from anything, could not cope with their children not getting into the more rigorous schools on their lists. And the kids were horrified because they had never been rejected by anything before. And, sure enough, the parents insisted, these rejections had nothing to do with the child; they were sure to be about anything but the child.

College admissions rejection is the first really big rejection for many kids.  But it is bound not to be the last -- not getting the job, being passed over for the promotion, being broken up with by a serious girl or boyfriend.....there are times we are all rejected, and childhood is as good as anytime to learn to cope with it; in fact, I think it's the best time. So parents, when your child is rejected, don't cover it up as someone else's mistake.  Teach your children to accept that no one is perfect, including them, and that rejection, while not fair, happens.  Being rejected is not the problem, it's learning to deal with it.