This Feels Hard

lessons my foster son and I are learning together

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. As always, links are in bold, and there’s an audio of this pocket if that works better for your life. Happy Father’s Day to my dad, who has consistently been there for me my entire life, with kindness and a sense of humor. Happy Father’s Day to Dan who is holding my hand as we navigate this beautiful, full life we have cultivated together. Happy Father’s Day to any of you who are making a difference in someone’s life by showing up for them.

Without further ado, today’s pocket.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a writing workshop with Ammi Midstokke, a local author and outdoor adventurer, who is awesome and agreed to run a free workshop for my high school creative writing students, a good writer friend of mine and me at the public library. Ammi is smart, funny and creative, and in planning this field trip with her and reading her quirky emails, I’ve decided I kind of want her to be my new BFF. My students tell me not to look too eager, so I try to play it cool, but I’m fan girling all over the place. I can’t help myself.

Ammi has us sit in a circle, and she tells us we will all write today. “Even you, Mary.” She’s talking to me. I’m grinning from ear to ear.

Ammi doesn’t have to tell me twice. I’m eager to participate. She gives us a prompt, and I’m excited to get started. All around me, my students are writing like fiends, but I realize I’m stuck. Listening to their pens furiously scratching their papers only makes it worse. Why are they so much better than me at this? We’re supposed to make up a scene and use dialogue to drive the story, but I got nothing. The only thought circulating around in my head is this feels hard, which is what I write on my paper.

With those words anchoring me, I start to write a scene with dialogue. It’s not an imaginary scene. It’s a scene that took place on my front porch just this morning, but I put it in the third person to play with it a little.

“I can’t do it,” he sighs and lays back on the old porch couch where he is trying to tie his shoes.

She waits. “Yes, you can. I’ll help you.” She worries he won’t sit back up, but he does. He picks up the laces again. “Do the steps you know,” she says. He crosses the laces and pulls them tight. “Make the bunny ears,” she says, her tone soft. He does exactly what she says. “Make them tighter.” He rearranges his fingers. She regrets never learning the other way to tie shoes. After all these years, she realizes there’s probably an easier, more efficient way to do this. “Good,” she says. “Now cross the bunny ears and leave some space.” She uses her fingers to show him how to do this, taking one loop and putting it through the other. “Now pull tight.” He is relieved that the shoes are tied but disappointed because she has done the hard part for him.

She thinks of Rita Pearson, an amazing teacher who used to tell students when they got 98% of the test wrong, that they were on the road. She enthusiastically reminded them that they were two percent closer to achieving their goal. Success in life is often about the reframe. “You’re on your way,” she tells the boy beside her. “You know so much more about tying shoes than you did yesterday.”

Every day they repeat this process. Every day they get stuck on the bunny ears. Every day the little boy lays down sighing, and every day he gets back up. He still can’t tie his shoes, but after each session he says, “I’m closer than I was yesterday.”

Trying to learn a new thing is hard, whether it’s tying a shoe, writing fiction, or figuring out how to be a foster parent again, loving a kid you know in your bones is probably going to leave, even though in a fair world, he wouldn’t have to. When learning a new thing, it feels so clear and obvious that it will never get easier, that a way through will never present itself.

One morning though, about a week ago, Mateo ran through the house shouting because he had just tied his first shoe. He was beaming from ear to ear. He reached a milestone he didn’t think he would reach. He kept trying because he believed me when I told him he was on the road. I’m tucking this victory away, holding onto it as he tackles many more milestones ahead… learning to read, learning to swim, seeing his birth family again. When it gets hard, I will remind him of the bunny ears.

And perhaps, we can remind each other that the way through is often just patience, practice and lots of grace. I’m still no expert at writing fiction, but I’m on the road. Same with being a foster mama, every day I’m getting a little bit better at it.

It’s enough. It has to be.