Month: November 2009

Trusting Them and Myself


I really love this piece, Parenting in the Age of Paranoia: A Small Manifesto. The author says a lot of things that I agree intensely with. Many sentences left me nodding firmly to myself. Like this one:

We do our child a great disservice when we protect them from all risk and harm, as great as letting them go into the world unable to read.

Um, yes. I agree with this absolutely. I think the thing that the author said that was new for me, though, was about how the social norms of today make her self-conscious about being the kind of mother she wants to be:

Horribly, my social group is creating a construct whereby I can’t easily give my daughter her freedom without sending her the message that I don’t care about her. This is a first attempt to strike out against that. When enough parents are saying they restrict their children’s freedom out of love and responsibility, I have to defend my desire to let my kid experience new things- it’s not indifference and negligence. It’s being the kind of parent I would want to have, and putting her as a person above my own desire for comfort.

I am so familiar with this. The stinging criticism I endured when I let Grace fly alone (twice so far), for example. Or the raised eyebrows when I tell people I take her biking on busy streets, or let her walk to the general store alone in Marion. I’ve been chalking these reactions up to my own sensitivity, my own anxiety about my choices. But Quinn makes me realize that some of this is about the social environment, too.

The article renews my commitment to raise children who trust their own instincts, who feel safe and masterful in the world, who know what it is to fail without someone there to pick them up within four seconds. I believe that all of these experiences are incalculably valuable for a child. I also believe they are hard for the parent, both because it’s difficult to see our children hurt or failing and also because we endure the judgment of much of today’s parenting community.

There are, as Quinn reminds us, no guarantees. I think back often to my first pregnancy, when I just wanted to get to 12 weeks so the risk of miscarriage would go down. Then I wanted the triple screen blood work to be normal, then the 18 week ultrasound to be normal, then to have a full-term pregnancy and to deliver a healthy baby. At each milestone I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that some major risk was now over, that I was closer to the safe and secure reality of a healthy baby. And then Grace was born. And I realized, in a few days or weeks or months, that, oh my God, the risk is never gone. She could get sick. She could get hurt. All kinds of trauma could befall. And, as Quinn also says, something bad could happen to me. There are no guarantees.

This is not a reason to protect her (or him) so much that they are ill-equipped for life in the real world. My conviction that the world is a fundamentally good place is sturdy. It has been called naive. But I really believe it, in the marrow of my being. And so I don’t want to teach either of my children to fear the world. No. I want them to dance out into it, confident and brave, full of skills to cope with inevitable setbacks. I want to send them out without safety net so strong they never venture far enough to experience it onto their own. I am so proud of my children when they demonstrate independence. So very proud.

They don’t belong to me. On that I am clear, the crystalline, sharp clarity of sunshine on icicles. No way. I brought them into this world and that is all. One of my favorite bloggers, Jenn of Breed ‘Em and Weep, said this best of all:

I want you to grow up central only to yourself. I want you to find your center, to be your own pivot, your own point of balance, your own anchor. I don’t ever want you thinking you are the center of the universe, and be shocked to find that it is not at your beck and call.

I’ve long loved the story that Warren Buffet said he loves his kids too much to leave them enormous inheritances. This is a similar philosophy: I love my children too much to handicap them with overprotection. I love them so much that I continue to challenge myself to let them go a little bit, knowing that that letting go lets them build muscles, physical and emotional, that will help them stand steadily in life’s waves. To let them go I have to trust them. And myself. And I do.

By Inches

By Inches

You want it here and now, a remedy for everything
gone wrong. A magic wand, perhaps, alighted
on your shoulders. An angel whispering
sweet nothings while you sleep so you wake benighted
with certainty that you are whole once again. You realize
your patience is diminishing, and yet what’s required is the reverse.
This will not be some biblical miracle before your eyes,
a transformation of movie star proportions. No, healing is a slow nurse,
pausing bedside with drips of water, a hot cloth, a murmur of a touch.
By inches, a change sneaks into you, even if it doesn’t look like much.

(Maya Stein)

With thanks to Andrea at Superhero Journal.

Coda to Official Photographer

“The spirit is that in us which participates. It moves alone, like air or fire, and it moves with the body, lifting the body’s earth and water into gesture and connection, into love.”

– Mark Doty, Cold Dark Deep and Absolutely Clear

This is what I am talking about in the post below. By so obsessively recording memories, even as I live them, I am not somehow not fully participating in them. I am curating, not experiencing. My spirit doesn’t participate very often. There are people (very few, and they know who they are) with whom it does, and certain experiences (with those people), but it is rare. Mostly I am slightly removed, a step away.

Maybe this is not a failing, though, but simply a way of being in the world. When my spirit is really engaged it can feel so raw as to be on the verge of painful. Maybe my role as photographer, my instinctive way of being slightly outside all the time, is just a way of mediating a self that, when fully present, is powerful and porous. I am grateful to those who shepherd that part of me out into the open, who inspire me to such presence. But maybe I just can’t live that way all the time. And maybe there is nothing wrong with that.

Official Photographer

I’ve been thinking about presence lately, consciousness, the deep desire to more fully inhabit the hours of my own life. This has engendered some interesting questions in the comments and on other peoples’ blogs. Clearly there’s a nerve here, a seam of emotion and anxiety that is common to many people. Some of the dialog has really framed my thinking.

For example: Kristen asked, provocatively, “Is it possible that being mindful of the need to be present is in fact a manner of being present?” And I’ve been thinking about that. And then Aidan shared her similarly thoughtful question, “I can’t figure out whether we bloggers – by trying to memorialize the tiny details – are bowing to the present moment too often missed OR whether by documenting every existential twist and turn, we are missing it even more.”

I am turning both of these questions over in my head, letting them fall slowly from side to side, examining their edges. I don’t have answers yet, but it does bring to mind one aspect of my history and personality that I think wrestles with this debate. I am the photographer. I have always been the one who takes the pictures.

From all the way back at Princeton, I took the pictures. Every weekend I’d take my old-school boxy camera out to Prospect Street, and the next morning I’d take a roll of 24 or 36 pictures to CVS. Everybody would be annoyed at me, “Oh, God, not more pictures, Lindsey!” and then within days I’d be fielding requests for my negatives or reprints (oh, technology of the olden days!).

I am that person now, still. Of course there are no negatives anymore, but I still take the pictures. An event is not really real until I’ve uploaded the pictures onto my favorite photo site. There are a couple of ways this role, this identity as Recorder of Events, has rippled through my life.

The first is pretty obvious: there aren’t very many pictures of me. This is, I think, by subconscious design. By taking the pictures I don’t have to be in them.

The second is more complex. I suspect my relentless pursuit of a record of my life is further manifestation of my desperate effort to be present. If I record it, it’s real, right? Becca wrote about her memories of her childhood, and her confusion between actual memories and memories of pictures she has seen over and over again in old albums. This is something I’ve talked about before too – am I remembering that excursion in Paris to buy a Christmas tree, or the picture of Hilary and I standing there, smiling with our scarves and hats on, snow-dusted pine trees behind us? I don’t know.

So, in a weird way, if I create the pictures I feel I am assuring the memories. I am sure this is somehow driving me. Photographs were a big part of my childhood: my father has always (and still does) created careful photo albums, captions written in fountain pen under ever picture. I do this too (though I confess I’ve slid downhill to ballpoint). I get mocked a lot for still printing out 4×6 prints of my favorite pictures and putting them into old-fashioned albums.

Of course, though, being the photographer also removes me from my life. I am always off to the side a little, framing pictures and organizing groups of people into smiling, arms-around-each-other portraits. I am not quite ever actually AT the party, but rather floating above it, observing. I have this feeling in my life a lot. And on the rare occasions that I didn’t have film (old days) or my battery was not charged (new days) I have definitely, though I’m loath to admit it, felt relieved by the absence of obligation to take pictures.

So, somehow, in my obsession with recording every detail, in my unwitting assumption of the role of official photographer, I have actually made myself less present. In some ways. I don’t know that it’s entirely that clear-cut. But definitely it functions that way some of the time. Maybe the answer is for me to put down the camera more of the time. To let go of my need to assure a permanent record and just trust that my memory will be sturdy enough.

All is love

So, as you know, I’ve been pretty preoccupied lately with questions about how we – I! – can be more present in our lives. Once in a while, I have a day where I feel like maybe, just maybe, it’s within my reach, that conscious life. Thursday was such a day. I felt overflowing, at times, with awareness of the abundant beauty in my regular little life. In fact, I had the Weepies’ “All This Beauty” in my head all day long.

I woke up when Whit pushed his little nose into my neck from the side of the bed. He crawled in with me, snuggling up. How much longer will he do this? I am just not ready for children who won’t cuddle. I am not generally a fan of physical contact but this guy? For sure. He pressed his little feet against my legs and breathed his breath that smelled faintly like sweet potatoes into my face. Now this isn’t because he’d been eating actual sweet potatoes, seeing as this child has never eaten so much as a raisin from the fruits-and-vegetables category, but I swear that’s what he smelled like. I whispered in his ear that I loved him and he whispered back, “Mummy, I love you as much as the sky.”

Then I ran out to get coffee and as I was driving back was momentarily struck by the gorgeousness of the pale gray-green rime that covered the field at the park down the street. It shimmered in the morning light, this layer of frost that was so beautiful in part, I’m sure, because I knew as soon as the sun came up it would melt away.

It was a no school day, so the children watched some TV as I folded laundry. For some reason, I found myself charmed by the little boy briefs with dinosaurs and trucks on them. I was also appalled by the tremendous length of my childrens’ pajama bottoms: when did their legs get so long? Such a cliche, but there it is. I heard the “Rainbow Connection” playing on the TV in the family room and felt happy, happy, happy.

Then we went into a local park to meet some friends. As we approached the park, I saw someone I had not expected to see. Grace was mid-story about a squirrel when my friend saw me and shouted hello. “Hi!” I exclaimed, interrupting Grace. She burst into tears. I was able to distract her from the brink of a tantrum with the delights of a playground and, later, those of her friend. But this came back later.

During quiet time, Whit emerged from his room to hand me a large teddy bear. I looked at him, mystified, and he said, “for the goodwill bag, Mummy.” That blew me away, I admit. And then as soon as I got him back in his room, Grace came out (“quiet time” is like an extended game of whack-a-mole, and frankly not altogether quiet). She was crying. “What, Grace?” I asked her. She could barely talk through her tears. This was one upset seven year old. I asked her to sit on my lap in the chair in the living room and I rubbed her back as she calmed down.

“Mummy,” she began, looking right at me with those huge, bottomess brown eyes, “Today at the park? The squirrel? When you said hi to Sally? That really hurt my feelings.”
“I’m sorry, Gracie. Tell me more?”
“Well, sometimes, when you see an adult, and you are excited to see them, you stop listening to me. Sometimes I feel like you are not paying attention to me. And you always tell me interrupting is wrong. But then you do it sometimes?” Her voice wavered and I could tell she was not sure if she was saying something wrong.

And yes, universe, I heard you. Boom. Guess I’m not really as present as I was thinking I was, on that one day. Boom boom neon: pay attention. This is your daughter, Lindsey. And so I did. I looked right back at her and apologized for interrupting. We discussed a better way to handle the situations – because I told her there would be more – when I simply cannot for whatever reason give her my uninterrupted attention for the duration of a story or episode. She gave me a huge hug and thanked me for listening to her.

I understood in a single moment of startling, stunning truth what people mean when they say their children are their teachers. I’m embarassed now to admit I never quite got that before. I do now. My daughter, my teacher. A seven-year-old sage with chipped nail polish and double-tied shoelaces that I can’t untie. A font through which the universe reminds me of that most important thing: be here. Be here now.

And I remembered the graffiti Gracie had shown me at the park that very morning. All Is Love. She asked if this was from Where the Wild Things Are (we listen to the soundtrack in the car a lot, and that’s her favorite song) and I said I didn’t know, but it was a good thing to live by. And, yes it is. Love that reminds us of who we want to be. Love in tears and love in hugs. Love expressed through teddy bears for goodwill and through purple graffiti on a new playground structure. All is love.