The Ampersand Life

I recently asked on my Facebook page for suggestions about artful ways to display the brooches I’ve inherited from the grandmothers in my family. I got some great suggestions and ended up going with this idea which involved wrapping a wooden letter in burlap and then attaching the pins. I’m happy with how it turned out, which is saying something since I am the least crafty person I know. . . and I am including the small children I live with.

I originally thought I’d get a “B” for our last name, but something about pinning my grandmother’s brooches on an initial that wasn’t hers seemed odd. I didn’t have enough to do a different initial for each woman represented, although I like that idea. What I ended up deciding to buy and display was an ampersand.

And.

Rebecca Tredway Photography

This has been a theme of my life for the last year or so. I have been learning to embrace the “and” in myself, my history, and in the people I love.

I have been a black and white thinker for as long as I can remember. I have a hard time with shades of gray, but motherhood has slowly been burning that thinking out of me. I remember when I was shocked by the sight of a mother feeding her baby a french fry at the local Chick-fil-A while I was spoon-feeding my little angel a hand mashed green bean and pear mixture I brought from home. 5 years and four kids later and I WAS that mom telling her baby, “just one more french fry and then you can have a lick of ice-cream” and trying to ignore the judgey stares from the mom in the booth next to me.

I am passionate about being a good mother, but what it means to be a “good mother” is something I’ve wrestled with over the years. It isn’t always as obvious as I’d like it to be. I have had to sacrifice some ideals for the sake of my sanity or because I’ve realized they were ridiculous to begin with. This is where The Ampersand Life found me. It isn’t “I love my kids but sometimes I feed them fast food.” It’s “I love my kids AND sometimes I feed them fast food.” The fact that we occasionally eat french fries doesn’t mean I love them any less.

I saw this in our foster care experiences, too. It was easy for people to look at the parents of foster kids and say, “I don’t know how anyone could choose drugs over their child.” That thought process doesn’t acknowledge the “and” in the lives of these parents. It wasn’t “I want to be a good mom, but I’m addicted to cocaine.” It was “I want to be a good mom AND I’m addicted to cocaine.” They wanted to be good parents and addiction got in the way. Their struggles with addiction didn’t necessarily make them disinterested in parenting, but it drastically impacted their ability to parent.

Who of us doesn’t feel this “and” tension every time we talk about our own childhood and family? I had a great upbringing, but sometimes I felt unprotected. I have a wonderful dad, but he wasn’t very nurturing. My mom devoted her life to being a good mother, but sometimes she didn’t understand my struggles. No. Not “but”– it’s an ampersand. We love our families and we’ve been hurt by them. We had parents who valued and supported us and they failed us at times. They are not all good or all bad, they have elements of both. That’s what I want my own kids to remember when they look back at the way I parented them.

The ampersand realization has probably been most critical in my marriage. My husband cares about my feelings AND he hurts my heart. My husband sacrifices for this family every day AND he sometimes puts his own desires above what’s good for us. We have had beautiful memories together AND there are days I wish I could forget. I am a supportive wife AND I can be undermining and controlling.

I love my husband and there have been times I have hated him.

When I read articles about how to be the perfect wife or how a husband is supposed to show love to his wife, I feel like there’s not an acknowledgement of how we’ve all failed. I don’t become a valuable wife by doing all the right things. I should be loved and valued even when I fail and I should be extending that same grace to my husband. He may leave his dirty socks on the floor, forget to compliment me like he should, never bring home flowers AND be the love of my life. He isn’t all good or all bad, all success or all failure. And neither am I.

As this ampersand realization has become part of my life, even my writing has changed. I find myself unable to write the “but” I previously would have added without thinking. It makes my sentences sound odd at times, but it’s helping me embrace the full picture of my life. . . well, I guess it makes my sentences sound odd at times, AND it’s helping me embrace the full picture of my life.

I’m not throwing out the “but” altogether, I’m just becoming more conscious of the ways I have accidentally been implying a black and white situation or negating things I know are true. An ampersand language is more graceful, more forgiving, more understanding. I want to be that kind of person even in the ways I think about myself.

So I love that my burlap and jeweled ampersand can have a place of honor in my home. It reminds me of the beautiful women who wore those pieces of jewelry and their contributions to my family as we live out their legacy. They weren’t perfect women and their story is my story. I have benefitted from their strengths and weaknesses. They each contributed to the woman I am in their own way. And I’m thankful.