Our beach days have been limited by rain this year, as La Niña whips up the wind, drives the waves, and drops temperatures, and even those days with time spent on the sand have been brief forays, short walks instead of long mornings. On one of those recently, I noticed for the first time a craggy shape to the horizon, to the point that I pulled out my phone and checked Google maps to see if there was, just beyond Manly Beach, a land mass I had been unaware of. Any horizon I’d ever seen to that point had been knife-edge straight.
Realising–re-seeing–something anew can be disorienting. A jagged horizon made no sense to me until I understood that the same wind tossing massive waves onto the shore was churning the ones further out, too, turning a straight-edge into a serrated one, and forever changing my expectations upon gazing into the water’s distance. I showed it to the boys (teaching moments!), telling them what it had taken me forty-four years to learn, the world suddenly bigger in a small way.
Expectations, flipped upside down and turned inside out, become invitations. At this year’s cross-country carnival, I expected most of my cardio to come in the form of helping The Kid finish his three one-kilometre loops of the course, the way I did last year, unexpectedly and in a less supportive bra (#liveandlearn). Little did I know that my pulse would raise more in response to what happened with Little Brother.
When he crossed the finish line, I missed it because I was sorting out TK at the starting line–and because he, LB, got to those cones a bit earlier than expected. He ran to me, waving a card that read “First Place,” and I embraced him through my surprise until I heard some of the surrounding kids and parents start shouting words like cheat.
Apparently LB, in his excitement and confusion over traversing the course for his first time ever, had taken a wrong turn and cut out part of the loop, beating the kids who had been ahead of him and leading to their accusations of cheating–accusations quickly picked up and hurled by their parents. LB was quickly reduced to tears, having no idea of the mistake he made and no intentions of cheating (seriously, if you know this kid, you know he’s (a) honest to a fault, and (b) way too afraid of getting in trouble to pull a stunt like that). I approached one of the mums who was freely tossing out insults and asked her what was going on. Quickly, she backed off, but my blood pressure was shot to shit by then anyway, and the rest of the day was spent sorting the situation out and unsuccessfully trying to calm myself down (rather than imagining a world in which my comebacks are somehow both well-thought-out and immediate and leave my nemeses crumpled on the ground).
Long story (or cross-country course) short, it was all worked out in the end and became a teaching opportunity for all of us, I daresay (except the douchebags at the finish line, who will likely continue their Reigns of Asshattery throughout their lives, not that I’m bitter, but grow the f*** up). LB will place and advance to the inter-school level because of his status before the cut-through debacle, and we both learned important lessons about honesty and character and how to construct a shiv using only anger and a stick.
And though it may seem I’ve broken my promise to Get Past It by writing on it now, I also know that Getting Past Things is overrated before reflection (in the form of writing or therapy or both) has occurred. I also know, now, that rather than meeting my expectations, the day turned into an invitation to something deeper: the truth that I am not just one of my sons’ advocates, though that advocacy may look different on behalf of each. That the world is pock-marked with icky moments and disappointing people (including, very often, me) but it’s also full of people who have our backs. That the best stories, and horizons, have dips and rises and twists and turns, which can be off-putting before they are beautiful and leave all the more room for the ministry of the unexpected, or as I like to call it, grace.