Month: February 2010

The great Catherine Newman

I’ve been poking through my archives today, leafing through old posts and reading quotations that I want to post again.  These are all by Catherine Newman, who is without a doubt one of my favorite writers – her book Waiting for Birdy is fantastic, and I miss the blog she used to write for babycenter.  Hers is one of the voices I hear in my head, one of the perspectives I hold most dear.

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“In the deep of night, I am inclined towards heartbreak. I lie awake the muscle in my chest beating like a metronome, ticking away the rhythm of life’s passing, while outside the cicadas answer with their own clicking, also like a metronome, like a bike shifting gears, like a person in Greek mythology doomed to clip their toenails forever.  I regret every time I’ve spoken sharply to the children, every time I’ve answered curiosity with distractedness, met need with impatience, countered gentle trust with self-importance.  In the night, these occasions spook around me like the ghosts of Bad Behavior Past, hauntingly distorted.

I’m not being hard on myself, not exactly.  I don’t expect perfection.  I know that I have appreciated this journey; inhaled the children’s hair and smiles, crouched down to listen, lay down to comfort.  Every day I have gathered handfuls of my own gratitude and flung them skyward, exalted; I have knelt down in gratitude to press my humble face to its grit.  But oh, I have taken so much for granted.”

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“Another person is like a geode lined with hidden glittering.”

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“And I’m remembering an email my friend Brian wrote me a couple of years ago, about his sons: “There WILL be a day when they don’t want to be carried up the stairs … But the idea that the last time will go unmarked and slip away without being cherished just made me so sad.”

I’m trying to hold this in mind when Ben wants me to put his socks on or carry him in from the car when he’s actually still awake or stay with him and Birdy while they fall asleep at night. I feel the familiar ripping-away impulse — the same impulse you might have if, say, a baby had been stapled to your bosom — and sometimes I act on it, whispering, “I’ll check on you guys in a few minutes,” and unwinding the arms that are boa-constrictored around my neck, loosening the very claws of love from the hem of my shirt, trotting out before the poor lonely bed-goers can make their emphatic case for my company. But sometimes I just lie there. Let there not be a last time, I think — a last time that slips away without being cherished.”

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“I don’t know what to say about this — the way I incline towards sadness, latch on to it as it floats past, ride up into its currents. But it keeps me grounded somehow, however paradoxical that may sound…Looking into the face of loss is like a bell of mindfulness for me. This very heart that pounds sometimes with anxiety — this heart is beating! These very noisy children who make me want to fill my ears with rubber cement — they are vibrantly alive! This very full-to-bursting life — well, it’s life, life itself. “

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“Sure, there are recurring themes: anxiety and impatience; my chaotic efforts at peace or the way I lumber after gratitude.”

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“I am still confused sometimes about what it means to be a parent — how much you advise, how much you leave alone. They are yours but also their own. They reflect me and surpass me. I am their trusted shepherd, and it is a privilege to have them in my flock. Love and grief, holding hands and skipping down the lane of my crazy heart. When my eyes fill with tears in the car, it’s joy, yes, but I don’t think it counts. It’s way too bittersweet.”

Losing my religion, finding my faith

It is my distinct honor to welcome Kristen from Motherese to this space today. Kristen’s blog is one of those I admire most, for her lucid and intelligent probing of questions so relevant to me I often feel she dug them out of my brain. Kristen is dear to me, too, for leaving me one of the comments here that has meant the most to me. It turns out we have a personal connection that neither of us knew, and I love that we found each other through the ether first.

Kristen writes beautifully about questions of identity, politics, parenting, and living in this world.  Her posts are shot through with personal reflection and every single day she makes me think.  Her essay here talks about something that is much on my mind of late: faith.  I am certainly grappling with some big questions of belief in my life: I feel often as though I’m groping around in the dark, occasionally grabbing something solid or feeling a truth, as gentle as a moth’s wing, brush against my cheek.  As I grope, I feel lost but am propelled forward by a distinct, unavoidable longing for something.

I’m delighted and blessed to have her words here today.  Please go check out Motherese.  You won’t regret it

Losing my Religion, Finding my Faith

We worry. We wonder. Anxiety steals our sleep.

I worry, too. I worry all the time.

I worry about forgetting lines to plays that I am not in. I worry about forgetting to mail a mortgage payment. I worry about passing a fifteen-year-old calculus exam. I worry about my dad embarrassing me with an uncouth comment.

I worry that Big Boy will have another meltdown at tumbling class. I worry about what the other mothers will think of me when he does. I worry about why my son would behave that way. I worry about how I will handle it.

These are the shades of my worry.

But there are other shades, too, shades that don’t cast an inky penumbra over my mind.

I don’t worry about dying young. I don’t worry that the world will end before my kids grow up. Even in the face of graphic evidence of the possibility of calamity, I don’t worry about catastrophe – natural, economic, interpersonal.

I have always thought of myself as a neurotic person, as a woman whose days are sketched in anxiety and colored in worry. But recently it occurred to me: I do worry, but I worry about the small things. I do not worry about the big ones. I worry about my performance, about how it will be evaluated. But about the most important things? The life-altering, life-threatening, life-crushing things? I don’t worry.

Instead, I practice random acts of blindness, never allowing these deeper, soul-shaking worries to penetrate my bedrock of faith.

And this is a strange revelation for me. After all, I am an agnostic. I am not a religious person anymore. But I still have a sense of subconscious serenity honed, I think, through an early commitment to religious practice. I grew up with a traditional religious education: I went to Catholic school for nine years and went to church every Sunday, loving the rituals and the singing, the candles and the community. I was never sold on the dogma – on transubstantiation, the ascension, the Holy Trinity. But I believed. I believed in the benevolent, white-haired gentleman. And I prayed to him every night before bed. I confessed my white lies and my gray doubts. I asked him to protect me, to look after my family. And – it seemed – he did.

My family faced its share of health problems. People we loved died. But my own life – and my own experience of it – seemed to take place in its own sort of numinous space.

In my adult life, some bad things have happened to me. I have faced illness, high-risk pregnancies, and physical violence. But I have never doubted my fundamental security.

I don’t spend time these days talking to that white-haired man. I don’t ask for intercession or for forgiveness. Now I am more a veteran of religious practice, with a medal of faith pinned to my chest, a talisman against the deepest doubts.

I am the seasoned traveler in Christina Rossetti’s “Up-Hill”:

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

In this life – this entropic life – I feel safe.

But now a new worry sprouts: how will my sons, children of an agnostic mother and an atheistic father, unschooled in religion, never steeped in belief, find their safety? Without faith, will the monsters of worry call to them from under their beds and from behind their closet doors?

Do you worry about the small things or the big things? What role does faith play in shielding you from worry?