“Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.”— Jhumpa Lahiri
I have imperfections.
Lots and lots of them, but let’s not quibble over who has more. It’s not a competition.
I’ve never believed imperfections are faults or randomly misplaced inadequacies designed to humiliate us by some humorless, vindictive God. I prefer to think of them as proof of our kinship. How you and I find common ground through our broken places, our failures, our messy homes, and our adorable wrinkles.
I’ve been watching my granddaughters for a couple of weeks while my daughter and son-in-law are traveling, and suddenly I’m being shadowed by fond catastrophes of motherhood.
It feels irrational, but I want to hold those memories close while simultaneously pushing them away.
The backpacks are lined up in the hall, lunch boxes drying on the counter, little shoes abandoned in the doorway, and several pages of detailed instructions are hanging beside the refrigerator so we don’t forget pickups, early dismissals, games, or practices. I refer to those instructions more often than I open and close the fridge.
Enough said.
I glance around the disarray of my usually neat home and am literally thrown back in time. Something sacred is tugging at my heart, and yet, I realize how skillfully I’ve redacted my memories of motherhood. It’s much messier than I remember.
By ten o’clock in the morning, I’m calling everyone by the wrong names, and for the life of me, I cannot locate my cup of coffee. It doesn’t help that two of my granddaughters are identical, we’re out of toilet paper again, we can only find one pink tennis shoe, and now we’re going to be late.
What surprises me most as a grandparent is that almost nothing challenges my emotional regulation. I seem to have unrivaled patience this time around. Even when things are going ridiculously wrong. The truth is, I don’t give a rat’s ass what a bunch of overly caffeinated, Tesla-driving millennials think.
When people eye me suspiciously because the twins are wearing mismatched clothes, have unbrushed hair, or are wearing two different shoes, that’s what kids do! I simply shrug and say, “I’m the Grammie.”
Well, if I were being honest, there was this one minor incident that tested my calm.
I lost my phone right after returning from Cora’s swim practice and Sienna’s gymnastics class. It was 7:00 pm. I had been corralling, feeding, and driving children since 1:15 pm and was understandably exhausted. The thing is, I could hear the damn thing vibrating, so I knew it was nearby.
Where the hell did I put it?
I tore apart the couch, checked the car, bathrooms, countertops, and side tables. I located a cold cup of coffee, the missing pink shoe, but no phone. I gave up searching and poured myself a glass of wine before pulling out salmon, lettuce, and broccoli for dinner. And that’s when I found my beloved addiction resting on a slab of cheese.
Are the girls suspiciously giddy, or am I totally losing it?
I’ve come to believe that our imperfections are the places where our unique vibration is the loudest. It’s a little cheesy, but it lets people know where we are.
We think if we’re calm, the beds are made, the floors are swept, and we’re holding it together with designer Band-Aids, then perhaps we can outrun catastrophe. But she trains for this, and besides, life refuses to cooperate with such bargains.
Children seem to understand this before we do. I find that enormously strange and deliciously comforting.
As children, we are wired for survival and immediately adapt to our parents’ attachment styles, emotional maturity, family dynamics, and cultural expectations. And I don’t care how fabulous your childhood was. We usually emerge with a few bruises.
Our childhood injuries are remarkably efficient.
Robert Kleck from Dartmouth conducted an interesting experiment in the late 70s. He put fake scars on the faces of half a study group. He showed them their scars in the mirror, then he sent them all into a room to engage in casual conversations with strangers.
When they returned, he asked how the conversations went. The unscared participants said the conversations were fine, but the ones with scars reported feeling judged, perceived the communication as tense, and thought the strangers were cold. They felt as if they were treated differently because of the scars.
In the second round of conversations, he told the scar group that he was applying a cream to the scars to keep them from cracking, but in reality, he had completely removed them, so they entered the conversation room believing they still had them, and this created an expectation as to how people would treat them. Read that again.
Which then led them to pay attention to things that objectively did not exist. It changed how they showed up. They created the reality they expected.
This is called expectation bias. We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we expect it to be. That’s so wild when you think about it.
The question becomes, what kind of scars are we carrying around that change the way we interact with others?
And now we have social media to contend with, which, in my opinion, hasn’t contributed anything to modern society besides eye strain and suspiciously perfect sourdough bread. What it has done is amplify our tendency towards perfectionism.
And suddenly, our most brutal critic has become ourselves.
We compare our gloriously messy lives with facades, carefully curated images polished with filters, flattering lighting, Photoshop, and now AI.
The problem is my eyes are ridiculously loyal to what they see, not what I tell them.
Here’s what I see. Everyone is vacationing somewhere fabulous, attending extravagant gatherings, setting fashion trends, dining at posh restaurants, with unblemished skin and professionally tousled hair.
Meanwhile, I’m home watching Big with my grandkids, sharing an enormous bowl of buttered popcorn, with a throbbing pimple on my chin.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at God’s feet.”
At God’s feet, no less.
I’m beginning to wonder whether failure is not a design flaw but part of the design itself.
I watch people.
I know, it’s creepy.
I consider it an occupational hazard since I’m always scavenging for material for the damn blog.
Lately, I’ve been observing my granddaughters after school. They have a narrow window to snack, finish homework, and decompress before their absurd practice schedules hijack the evening.
Passing their room one afternoon, I stand in the doorway, because entering is physically impossible, and watch them chatting with friends on their iPads.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask.
“A,” (withholding identities to protect the innocent), they answer without actually looking at me.
“Why don’t we arrange a playdate?”
That got their attention.
“A playdate?”
Sienna added, “You mean A can come here?”
Why not?
In our part of the world, both parents often work simply to afford housing. Some children go to after-school care, while others quietly occupy themselves at home as parents finish their workdays on their laptops at the kitchen table. Playdates, once routine, now require logistical negotiations worthy of international diplomacy.
So the following afternoon, I waited with A and the twins after school until her mother arrived and asked whether we might bring her home with us.
She knows my daughter and granddaughters. She knows we live across the street. She knows I’m supervising the girls for a few weeks.
She miraculously agreed, even though she’s never actually met me. She must be desperate for a break. I get it.
The girls practically levitated into the car.
At home, I assembled a snack tray that would have impressed Martha Stewart herself and sent them outside to do whatever children do, which, from my observations, involves astonishing amounts of noise.
I carried a warm cup of coffee to my chair/desk in my room with my laptop balanced on my lap so I could watch, listen, and write.
An hour passed.
And just when I was feeling rather smug about our charming little gathering, the screaming began.
“GRAMMIE! GRAMMIE! GRAMMIE!”
It was the sort of scream that instantly tells you something is wrong.
I threw the computer aside and ran out the back door, certain someone had fallen from the tree or launched themselves off the playset.
Oh no.
It was worse.
Poor Miss A was barfing up my magnificent snacks on the lawn.
She looked mortified.
And suddenly I was mortified for her.
I worried we might be adding to her scars.
I knelt beside her, handing over napkins and murmuring the profound medical wisdom at my disposal.
“It’s okay, honey. Don’t worry. We all throw up.”
She attempted a brave nod while fighting a second round of nausea.
The twins stood nearby, carefully mimicking my soothing reassurances from what they considered a medically responsible distance.
Eventually her stomach settled, and I called her mother, trying to place a positive spin on both the refreshments and the vomiting.
Now Mom was mortified.
We moved our little party to the front lawn and waited beneath the shade of the ginkgo tree for Mom.
Poor Miss A still looked slightly green.
Then the twins casually explained they had spun her repeatedly on the round swing.
Her mother sighed and shared with us that Miss A struggles with motion sickness.
See how easily our tender places reveal themselves?
I took a breath and risked rejection.
“Would you be open to another playdate next week?” I asked. “No spinning.”
She agreed, although she looked understandably cautious.
Later that evening, the girls checked in with Miss A, who had fully recovered and apparently forgiven us all.
She told them, “Your Grammie is a baddie.”
I blinked.
“That sounds bad.”
The girls laughed.
“It means you’re cool.”
The grandma who will hold your hair while you throw up is a baddie. Who knew?
Life is not something we should endlessly edit into presentability.
The only way we discover what it means to be fully human is by sharing the whole experience, nausea and all.
I’ve taken to leaving Band-Aids and Neosporin on the counter because I can no longer keep pace with the parade of insignificant injuries that vie for my attention. But sometimes I wonder whether what children truly need is not antiseptic so much as reassurance.
A gentle hug. A word of encouragement. A nod of approval.
So Miss A braved it out and joined our circus for another play date. It was a scorching-hot day, so of course I let them play with the garden hose, turned on the sprinklers, and set out a bunch of towels and snacks on the patio table.
The play date was a total success.
Until the next morning.
After walking the girls to school, Larry and I returned home and collapsed on the couch with a fresh cup of coffee. That’s when Larry received an urgent notice from the water company claiming excessive usage.
We both looked confused. A couple of hours of sprinkler time couldn’t have warranted a notice. Could it?
We ran out back. You guessed it.
The hose was left on all night! This notice was triggering for Larry. He claimed (in a very aggressive voice) that it was my playdate and therefore my responsibility to secure all outside facets. Fair enough. Apparently, both the water shortage and the budget deficit in California are all my fault.
What can you do? I stated the obvious. It’s my superpower.
I said, “Well, at least the back lawn will be green. You’re welcome.”
He was not humored, “That was completely irresponsible.”
“Well, we can’t do anything about it now. Would you top off my coffee?”
Ignoring my request, he says, “It’s going to cost hundreds of dollars.”
“Thank God you don’t own twelve bikes.” (There are currently eleven stored in the garage)
“No Amazon for you for an entire month.”
I had a great comeback for that little quip, but it’s completely inappropriate for the blog. All I can say is there is nothing more attractive than a girl, young woman, or old lady who is unapologetically herself.
No explaining.
No softening.
No acquiescing.
Certainly no blaming!
We all screw up. We lose our phones and our patience, we forget to turn things off, flip the pancakes before they burn, or hold our tongues when we’re dealing with heavy emotions.
What if the measure of our souls was our capacity to love imperfect people? I stole that from Joseph Grenny. So good.
We are not held together by our polish, but by our failings, it’s how we’re designed. If it is true that we are made in the image of all that is good and holy, then perhaps these so-called flaws are not liabilities at all, but places where love can find us.
Wouldn’t it be something if our wounds could hum like a lost phone, sending out a soft, persistent signal until someone finds us struggling to hold on to some cheesy liferaft.
What if we gave our hearts permission to lean toward the one who is trembling, the one still becoming, the one brave enough to be unfinished in plain sight. It seems as if our broken places instinctively know how to harmonize, like a current, love runs through our shared imperfections, our absurdities, our tenderness, our glorious, unfiltered humanity.
Grow Damn It, the quintessential summer read, send one to a friend who is hanging on to a piece of cheese for dear life.
Come quickly – as soon as these blossoms open, they fall. This world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers. Izumi Shikibu
Living in the Gap 
