All this hot July weather gets me thinking of cold. So let’s talk about snow a minute.
Living in the north east means experiencing some serious winters. The winter tends to come on slowly and sheepishly before she releases her mighty pillage of frosted flakes onto every windshield, sidewalk and Weber grill in sight.
Winter begins with a freak storm in late October or early November and then nothing for a while. Things start to cool down at night in November and slowly get colder in the daytime in December but there isn’t much snow. By Christmas time, residents are usually kinda peeved at the entire season; nobody wants cold weather without snow (or Christmas).
By January it’s bitter cold. It snows lightly. Everyone thinks: although it’s cold, it’s a pretty mild winter!! But they’ve spoken too soon. Yes, every year the same pattern of events unfolds; and by February, the snow-Kracken is released. “Let it Snow” is the theme song of the month of New England February’s when constant storms unravel from above and stack snowy blankets all over the towns of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York at worst. This past winter Boston broke the all-time record for snowfall in the city since 1919. Check out some Boston Storm Sample Coverage here.
So what do people do on wintry days in New England (AKA half the year)? Plan for the warm season of course! That’s right. I personally spent months this past winter studying hard to obtain my Guide’s License to be a registered Sea Kayak instructor. Wind, weather, gear, and safety procedures were among the top things I studied while meditating on the idea of getting paid to paddle along the beautiful coast.
It was mid-April when I realized I wouldn’t be a guide this summer. I couldn’t. I would be… a nanny. Quite a different occupation, really. My goal went from relaxing with a bunch of yupps on the crystal waters, a dab of sunblock on my nose, to cleaning up crumbs and doing my best to ignore armpit-farts all day. If you’d told me that’s what I’d be doing a few years ago, I’d have laughed (classic but valid truth).
Truth is, the idea of having kids scared me ever since I’d conceived it (no pun intended). I used to believe that I would never be a good mother since I had a bad relationship with my mom and didn’t think she did her job well. I believed that there wasn’t another chance for me to become a good mother and that it was pointless to try. If I were to raise a kid, he or she would become a little monster and I would have to live with that fact physically for 18 years and mentally forever. It was more simple to throw out the idea completely.
I used to believe that I didn’t relate well to kids and that I never would. I taught swim lessons for five years and hated it for a long time because I simply did not know how to talk to kids.
And then something stirred inside of me — not a baby, thank God. But a feeling of interruption. A voice telling me that I wasn’t reaching far enough. That I was settling for a false truth; a boundary that was blocking all of my potential. A chance to extend greater than I once thought possible. A barrier forever unbounded, with remarkable, unending faith and promise that anything is possible. This poem describes what I was feeling:
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
attributed – sir francis drake -1577
…Why shoot for the ceiling when you can shoot for the treetops?
……Why shoot for the tree tops when you can shoot for the stars?
………Why shoot for the stars when you can shoot for the moon?
Does having kids scare you? Then let it scare you no longer. Do you come from a troubled background and believe you won’t be a good parent? You will be the best. Do you not know how to relate to kids?
It takes practice. Parenting is an art.
It takes a whole lotta time and a whole lotta heart.
But the miracle revealed at the end of the day
is more than any sea kayak guide can say.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Having kids is scary, but so worth it. I can’t wait to have kids of my own. And I’m extremely thankful that this nannying job came around to prepare me to become a good mom.
Are you/were you scared of having kids? Drop a comment in the section below!
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