Month: May 2011

Pink petals, Jimmy, and the pain of saying goodbye

Yesterday was just another ordinary day.  A day of my life, bracketed in the morning and the evening with reminders to open my eyes and to appreciate what is right here.  It’s amazing, now that I see these nudges, how many of them there are.  I wonder how myopic I must have been, all those years with my eyes focused on that next thing, to have missed so many messages from the universe.  Well, were the messages from out there or were they from in here, the most intimate place there is?  From my spirit, my soul, my very life?

Early in the morning I set off to take the subway (the T) to a meeting.  I was walking down the familiar street to the T stop, a walk I’ve made hundreds of times in the nine years we’ve lived in our house, my nose buried in my iPhone.  I literally stopped dead in my tracks when I stepped onto a carpet of pink petals.

You can see I had made my way onto the edge of this gorgeous drift of pink petal snow before I woke up, literally.  I stood there and took pictures, breathing in the faint smell of the blossoms, their perfume spring incarnate. (not quite Princeton’s magnolias, but close).  I looked up and saw the cerulean blue sky through the pink branches.  And I was ashamed, truly, that I would have missed this.

I tucked Whit into bed tonight hugging Jimmy, the class teddy bear who spent the weekend with us.  Every weekend Jimmy visits a different classmate in Whit’s Beginner class, and this was ours.  Grace and I were just starting to read about Hermione and Harry’s vociferous defense of Sirius Black when I heard a strange sound from upstairs.  I paused.  “What’s that, Gracie?” We both listened.  Nothing.  I started reading again.  The noise started back up.  It was Whit, weeping

After a few moments where I tried to figure out if he was posing – yet another new trick to postpone bed? – she and I went upstairs to check on Whit.  He was lying in bed, face awash in tears, clutching Jimmy.  I sat on the edge of his bed and asked him what was wrong.  His words were punctuated with sobs as he choked out how upset he was to say goodbye to Jimmy tomorrow.  “Oh, Whitty,” I said.  My heart felt like it leaned over in my chest, angling towards him.  Deep in my chest I recognized his pain, the brutal symmetry of love and loss, so much on my mind lately.  I told him I know how hard it was to say goodbye to things we love.

A few minutes later, Grace and I were reading again when I heard Whit ask quietly, “Will you snuggle me?”  I looked up to see him standing forlornly on the stairs, Jimmy held against his chest.  “Of course,” I answered.  After I kissed Grace goodnight, I went upstairs and lay down on Whit’s bottom bunk..  I curled behind him, singing along in a whisper to his lullabye CD’s version of You Are My Sunshine, listening to his sobs grow slower and quieter.  After days of being all bravado and bluster, he had dissolved back into my emotional son, my little boy with big feelings, and I thought about how often he will shuttle between these two poles over the next few years.

“Are you ready for me to go?” I murmured against his neck.  “No,” he said quickly, quietly, and so I lay with him for another song.  And here I am now, at my desk, eager to get going on a new essay idea I have.  But first I have to put pictures of Jimmy’s visit into the class album, with narration of his weekend activities.  I’m not annoyed that I have to do that before my “real” writing.  This is also writing, in its own way, the writing of my ordinary life.

A repost from exactly a year ago … I’m startled by how I’m still thinking about the same themes, confronting the same challenges, grappling with the same emotions.  The very same.

The universe, coincidence, and bad guys

One of my friends from business school lost a brother in 9/11.  My friend, his wife, and the rest of his large family started a foundation in their brother’s name.  On Sunday I wore a tee-shirt from one of their fundraisers to go running.  I didn’t have time to shower when I got back, and so, hours later, when I bathed the kids, I was still wearing it.

“Who is the man whose name is on your tee-shirt, Mummy?” asked Grace idly, tracing her fingers through the bubbles in the bath.  I swallowed.  Both she and Whit know in general terms about “when the planes flew into the buildings” but they don’t know more than that.  Were they ready?

“Well,” I began, “Remember how we talked about the day when the planes flew into the buildings?  A friend of mine’s brother was in one of the buildings, and he died that day.”  I paused.  Both Grace and Whit were quiet.

“The pilots flew the plane into the building?”  Grace looked at me.

“Well, no.  The bad guys on the plane took over the cockpit.”

“How?  And what did they do to the pilots, Mummy?”

“I think they used force to get into the cockpit.  And the pilots,” I looked straight at her, hesitating.  “Well, they died.”

Grace’s mouth formed a silent “o” and she looked down at the bathwater.

“Why didn’t your friend’s brother get out of the building, Mummy?”  If Whit were any child I’d have sworn he wasn’t listening, so busy did he seem with the bathtub dinosaur toys.  But clearly he wasn’t missing a word.

“Well, Whit, they couldn’t get out.”

“Do you think they felt it when the plane hit the building?  Did they feel it when the building fell down?’

I was at a loss for words.  How to convey this day, so enormous, so terrifying, in a gentle, age-appropriate way?

“I don’t know what they felt, Whit.”  I spoke slowly, trying for gentleness.  “I wasn’t there.”

The conversation went on to talk about security at airports, and how things are much different now than they were before 9/11.  Grace and Whit wanted to know a lot about the bad guys, who they were, how it is that they killed themselves for their countries.  I had to be very clear that these people were not heroes, despite this act.  Based on their very specific questions, and the way that they wouldn’t let the topic go, I decided that they deserved real answers.  By the time we were finished talking, both kids were dry and in their pjs.  This was a long, detailed conversation, and left us – as most conversations in my life do – with more questions than answers.  What is it to really hate a people, when you don’t know them?  How do you life with intense fear, as the people on the planes must have felt?  Who was Osama Bin Laden and why was he so angry?  What does it feel like to feel the ground beneath you fall out, and to tumble to the ground?

Grace wanted to pray for the people who died in 9/11 when she was going to sleep, and so we did.  And I woke up to the news that he had been killed.  In my Monday morning oblivion I didn’t even realize the coincidence (or not) until Kathryn emailed me to point it out.  And since that moment goosebumps have buzzed up and down my arms and neck.  A reminder of the great river of humanity, both seen and unseen, that we all travel in.  Everything is connected.

All day long I’ve been reading messages, tweets, blog posts, and articles about Bin Laden’s death.  This morning, driving from school to the grocery store, I listened to NPR reporting on the massive celebratory throngs that has sprung up all over America last night.  They played a recording of BU students belting out America the Beautiful.  They compared the mood of the crowds to the emotional, triumphant reaction to the Red Sox winning the World. Series.  What?

And all day, I’ve felt ambivalent about this.  I’m not unhappy that Bin Laden is gone, though I am wary about celebrating an active murder no matter what the reasons behind it.  But I think my ambivalence is more general: why are we celebrating anything about an event, and an ongoing situation, so full of pain, misunderstanding, and sorrow?  While I can definitely see the justice in this outcome,  I feel sad, not joyful, not proud, about this reminder that our world is most certainly not in a place of compassion and empathy.

Last night, as I tucked Grace into bed, she asked me again about the planes and the buildings.  It was clear from her tone that she had been thinking about it all day.  “What happened to the bad guy?” she asked me, and the hairs on my arms stood up.  I looked straight at her, deciding in that moment she deserved, again, a real answer.

“Well, Gracie, he actually died yesterday.”  Her eyes widened, the whites glowing in the dark of her room.  “The US military found him and killed him.”

“They did?”  She asked faintly, curling her beloved brown bear more tightly into her chest.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, they wanted to keep America safe and make sure he couldn’t plan anymore attacks.  And I guess they wanted to punish him for having caused so much pain.”

“Oh.” She was quiet.  “Are we supposed to be glad about that, Mummy?” Her voice wavered.

“I don’t know, Grace.”  I hugged her, smelling the shampoo I was her hair with every night, hearing the achingly familiar lullabyes from her CD player.  “I don’t know.”

Belonging

Maggie pointed out this weekend that belonging “has longing, sewn in stoutly so you can feel it like Braille letters.”  Somehow I’d never noticed this before, and reading that simple sentence took my breath away.

Oh, how I long to belong.  The longing for that is, to use Maggie’s beautiful words, sewn stoutly in me.  I’ve written before about how complex the notion of home is, for me, who had a peripatetic childhood where moves were the only sure thing.  No matter where I’ve gone in my life – schools, geographies, jobs, communities – I’ve been followed by a sense of not really belonging, like a cloud above me, between me and the sun.  My whole life exists in its shadow.

I’ve sometimes tried to fit in, to blend into the background of a group.  Because I’m such a permeable person and so sensitive to what’s going on, it’s relatively easy for me to understand what others want from me.  The path of least resistance has usually been to reflect back whatever it is I sense someone wants to hear or see.  That’s led to a frequent sensation of being in a group but not really there, a feeling of floating over my own life, observing rather than participating.  This is, I have realized, a lot lonelier than just being alone.

What I’m trying to puzzle out is why belonging is so important to me.  Why, still, do I need the validation of “belonging”?  What kind of deep-rooted human need is it, this desire to feel a part of something bigger than ourselves?  Of course, I routinely feel overwhelmed by the enormous universe and the ways in which I am connected to it, but somehow this isn’t the kind of belonging I crave.  Or, at least, not yet.  Perhaps I’m still too immature and too insecure to find the comfort I seek in that kind of unity.

The universe is providing me with ample reminders that I need to surrender to this persistent loneliness: I chose, after all, the professional route that was most likely to make me not belong anywhere – working part-time, staying at home part-time, trying to be at school pickup in Juicy sweats and also at work meetings in heels, sometimes at the same moment.  I believe my choice came out of a subconscious need to learn the rich lesson that exists in the friction between my two worlds, and, most of all, in my continued, dogged sense of not-belonging.

That’s a generous interpretation of my behavior.  There is another, less kind one: An innate restlessness of spirit keeps me from fully engaging in any one world, from fully embracing a single identity.  Why is it that I refuse to fully let go and surrender to one clearly-defined life? What am I afraid of?  If I skip around between worlds, never fully engaging in or identifying with one, do I hope to innoculate myself from this terrifying vulnerability of really being seen? It’s as though as long as I keep moving all the photos of me will be blurry; literally and figuratively, it will be hard for anyone to get a clear impression of me.

I think I lack a sense of belonging because I still have a basic discomfort in my own skin.  Maybe I am not wholly sure of where I fit because I am not entirely sure who I am yet. Maybe I have met so few native speakers because I am still fumbling around with my own language. I do like people, and I am lucky to have many friends; the fact remains, though, that there are very few with whom I feel truly at home.

All I know is that I long to belong.  I long to feel utterly at ease, to relax into true repose, to trust absolutely that I am seen clearly and loved for what is seen.  Oh, how I long for that.  I think we all do.