Happy Birthday, Lynn!

I feel extraordinarily lucky to have you as a lifelong friend.

On your birthday, I am celebrating not only my good fortune in being married to you, but much more -- I am celebrating all the things I admire, respect and desire in you.

You are such an intensely loyal friend. Your ability to live toward people as a "finisher" is a trait that only a few lucky people in the world have experienced. Because you're such a Good Friend -- you're the kind of friend that invests deeply, for the long haul, and whole-heartedly in your friendships. Those of us who happen to be the lucky few to whom you have committed, are wealthy because of the love, attention, listening, empathy, care, time and laughter you give to us.

You are such a gifted professional. I feel like you have cultivated the notion of VOCATION in an a way that is deeper, richer and more full than most human beings I know. Profoundly aware of both your abilities and your limitations, you leverage your best efforts toward the work that is before you (regardless of how honorable, exciting or surprising that work is) and as a result - the fruit of your labor is always more honorable, exciting and surprising than any of your colleagues could have expected. The affirmations of your professionalism continue to build in volume and bandwidth the longer we stay in a place, and it feels good to be located so close to you as the reverberations of your gifts echo throughout the space where we live.

You are an intuitive and caring mother. The way that you profess your love to your kids, touch and cuddle them, carefully mentor their learning process, balance the thousands of prescriptions, appointments and transportation routines that define contemporary parenting -- the way you balance the beauty of affection and the responsibility of the mundane -- both inspires and invites me (toward better parenting).

You are fun. I know that you fear that the routines and responsibilities of middle age will extinguish the spark of life, creativity, excitement and newness that you have always relished and embraced with your friendships, your traveling, your conversations & your ambition. You continue to pursue Life! Newness! Surprise! and Change! in ways that I could never expect or predict. When you tell funny stories, you completely embody this trait that you have -- of being fully committed, totally in the moment, raptured by humour, and hopeful of sharing connection.

I am rich because I know you. Happy Birthday!

She holds things together

It is Mother's Day, 2003, and while I have celebrated Mothers Day for most of my life, I have only had the privilege of celebrating my life partner, Lynn, on Mother's Day for four years.  Not surprisingly, this experience alters my perceptions of Mothers Day in general.

When you celebrate your own mother, you can't help but celebrate (at least partly) the experience of life that your mother gave you.  The way that you understand your mother's personhood is necessarily bound up in the way that you understand the world on a more basic level.

Not so with your partner.  This woman I chose to spend my life with because I loved her, because I was intrigued by her, because she piqued my imagination, because I couldn't forecast a future any brighter than one that was tied to hers.  Seeing her and knowing her as a mother is all frosting (not gravy -- frosting is a much more apt metaphor the life Lynn and I have made together). 

t seems like Mothers Day is the day that people celebrate the mundane for once, or at least the triumph of human life over the mundane.  Most of my life, when I've heard the phrase "she holds things together" on Mothers Day, it's the tentatively-, finally-, humbly- offered praise that stands in for the otherwise invisible, unmentioned and unmarked hours of labor that have traditionally defined femininity. 

This compliment is true and should be afforded to Lynn.  She baffles me with her ability to excel at all things domestic.

But. This is not why I raise the point -- she holds things together.

Lynn has inspired me with her ability to hold much larger things together than the domestic sphere.

She has crafted a life defined by professional ambition, around a profession that is rooted in a deep sense of calling and a fierce commitment to helping people.

AND...

She has poured her life into her children, her family and the possibility of making meaning through and with them.

Both.  She does both of them with the energy, focus, commitment, and excellence that most people (less inspired, less tenacious and less ambitious) cannot summon for one or the other.

She holds things together.

During the fifteen years I have known her, Lynn has developed and grown in her intellectual capacity, her understanding of tradition, and her ability to change more than any other human being I've known. 

She has asked difficult questions, affirmed challenging answers, lived with the awkwardness of unanswered questions.

AND...

She has the courage, more than anyone else, to use her whole self to challenge ideas.  She relies on her feelings, her worries, her excitement, her experience, and her traditional learning.

Both. She is, by training, an academic, an educator, a changer, and she is, by birth and tradition, a pragmatist, a finisher, and a cultivator. 

She holds things together.

Thank you for HOLDING THINGS TOGETHER.