Great Expectations has been my regular series since the beginning of the year. I’ve asked many, many bloggers to share their experiences, their joy, their sadness, all wrapped up in the expectations that they’ve lived with, pushed aside, embraced. I don’t have words for what happened on Friday, neither written or spoken, so I’m glad that, in the last Great Expectations post of the year, Galit Breen shares her words instead.

Galit Breen writes at These Little Waves and Moonfrye. She’s one of those writers that leaves you a little breathless and in awe upon reading her stories and descriptions. She inspires me to try to be a better writer, pure and simple.

She has a gorgeous family, made up of her husband and three beautiful children.

Galit co-hosts the Memories Captured Link-up every month, and coordinates submissions for Pens and Paint, an anthology of childrens’ art work.

I’m honored to have Galit here today, sharing her expectations.

It’s quiet here today.

My mind tends to be a ridiculously noisy place where I think and overthink and then do more of the same, until I’m exhausted and need to turn everything off.

My phone, my computer, my books, my words.

So this morning when Brody woke up “a little bit sick,” I welcomed the chance for quiet.

The kind where we stay in our jammies and nap side by side, where I give the warm baths and take the nubby toweled snuggles that follow.

He’s sleeping beside me right now, breathing the slow, deep breaths of the very young, and I’m trying to match his kind of breathing, his kind of quiet.

***

I sent my girls to school today.

I stood with my boots planted in the freshly fallen snow, the breeze whisking my hair across my nose, my cheeks, my glasses, my arms wrapped tight along my chest, my mouth stretched in a parallel, equally straight line.

I watched them get smaller and smaller as they walked up The Big Hill, one brightly booted foot in front of the other and I thought, “Go!”

And at the same time, I felt, “Stay. Please stay.”

That was the noisy start of my day.

***

My husband, Jason, and I didn’t know what to tell our girls about Friday.

“Something sad happened” is how we began, and it felt inadequate.

We tiptoed around each other’s hearts knowing that we needed to say something, but feeling that as small as something sounds, that it would be remembered as Big.

Jason remembers the Big Something Conversation of his time.

The moment his parents sat him down to discuss Jacob Wetterling, the 11-year-old boy who was kidnapped in 1989, is so vivid to him, I hear his voice narrating as I picture the conversation unfolding.

His parents sitting across from an 11-year-old version of my husband with the same impossibly brown eyes lashed and eyebrowed and laugh lined in the exact same way that our three children’s eyes are.

Their words passing across the small space between them, in my version their knees are touching, flowing easily from lips to heart.

But as a mother, I now know that these conversations are awkward and messy and stumbly.

Like the lessons they reflect, like the New that children know once they are told Something like this.

***

I think that we –you, me, that mom over there- are on the cusp of Change.

We’re changing the kinds of conversations we’re having with our kids, with each other.

What we’re willing to talk about, bring up, be uncomfortable for. We’re redefining the edges that Big lives within.

This is our Big Something Conversation.

And while we’re tiptoeing around each other, attempting eye contact, seeing if we can have this talk, make this change, in my heart of hearts this is what I see, what I hear narrated.

I see us, knees touching, quietly talking, and definitely opening the door.

***

Jason says that my expectations of the people I love are painfully high.

And he’s right.

I spin and twirl my thoughts until there’s a tippy-top to them where the people that I love precariously stand.

But here’s what I know.

Those people that I love -you- stand like I do, work like I do.

Like this.

Filled with mistakes, bound by good intentions, and with just enough open to let Big Things in.

So my Great Expectations are of you, of me, of us.

We can do this.

We can lean on each other, learn from each other, grieve together, teach each other how to support our children in doing the same, and then start the conversation.

Say something. Let it be Big. Step into fear. Listen. Learn. Be wrong. Change. And then, one foot in front of the other, move forward {together}.

Galit is a Facebook pro, is on Twitter (a lot),  and Pinterest. And of course, you should be reading her blog.

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