Yes, my heart is aching. The radiance and the sorrow of everyday life collided on a sunny, hot morning this week. The past and the present and the future, which I’m learning are always animate in every single minute, asserted themselves in an overwhelming way. I cried. And then I cried some more.
Onward.
Beginners, June 2008
Kindergarten, June 2009
First Grade, June 2010
Second Grace, June 2011
It’s not a secret that I am a huge, fawning Fan Of Pam. Her blog, Walking On My Hands, has inspired my own writing many times (here, here, here, and here), and I cannot possibly recommend it highly enough. Walking On My Hands is about, in Pam’s own words, “learning to live with grace.” It’s about Pam’s life: about her yoga teacher training, about her military husband, about her two delicious sons, about her own struggles to face her “stuff.” And it’s told in her gorgeous, inimitable voice. Run, don’t walk. And read the whole thing when you’re there. Pam is the real deal, as good as it gets, and she’ll make laugh and cry in every single piece.
When Pam asked me to write her something as a guest post, I jumped at the chance. Of course I started out writing about something different, and this is what came out. Please click over to read my words about trusting the path, even when it takes you somewhere totally unanticipated (and note that while I was writing about this happening in my life it also happened with this specific piece of writing, too. very meta, the universe can be.)
This is, as I’ve said before (ad nauseum, you might say), a time of year tinged with sadness for me. The endings and goodbyes come one after another, waves lapping onto the shore of my life, eroding anything I have written in the sand. An extra farewell this year is the fact that Matt’s parents have sold their house in Vermont, the house that Matt grew up in, the house where the family has gathered for years, the house that is one of Grace and Whit’s very favorite places to visit. The picture above was taken on their very last morning there, looking out over the field that unfurls gorgeously, its colors undulating with the seasons, in front of the house.
On Sunday night Whit was beside himself, unable to go to sleep because he was crying so hard. He sat on my lap and wept, face wet with tears, wailing over and over again that he didn’t want Grandma and Grandpa to sell the house in Vermont. It reminded me of the night a year ago when he dissolved into genuine, heartbroken sobs about the fact that he was no longer a baby. His humor and little boy bluster sometimes camouflage his intensely sensitive core. He was not comforted by my reassurances that there were many more fun visits ahead, just in different places. He just sobbed and sobbed, burrowing into my neck like he did when he was much littler, and cried his heart out. I know the feeling.
Today I picked the kids up from school because it is the last day of regular pick up. Grace ran up to me, a friend in tow, frantically asking for a playdate with this girl and one more. The girl standing next to her is moving out of state at the end of this week, and this was literally the last chance. I said, as gently as I could, that we could not do it, because Grace had a doctor’s appointment. Long minutes of negotiation ensued, complete with arms crossing, feet stamping, and voices being raised. When we walked to the car, Grace was in angry tears and Whit was uncharacteristically quiet, not quite sure what was going on. In the car I told her that this was the last pick up of the year, that I was disappointed that she was acting this way. She crumpled even further, cried harder. Almost immediately I apologized, and told her that was unfair of me to have said; there have been hundreds of wonderful pick ups, I said, and there will be more. One day is not a big deal, and I ought not freight it too much with being the last. She said she felt worse, even worse, about having marred the last pick up of second grade. She wept. I know the feeling.
We got home and curled up on her bed to talk it out, and she turned her bad mood around surprisingly quickly. But her rapid disintegration at school, the urgency of the request, and the emotion in the outburst all speak to how sensitive she is, too, to this season of endings. While transitions are hard for everyone, I suppose it’s shameful that it’s taken me this long to realize that my children may struggle especially with them, as I do. When Grace and Whit evince these qualities, straight from the heart of who I am, I am overcome with both compassion and guilt. I relate intensely to how they feel, but I also feel enormously responsible for the fact that they have these feelings at all. I wish I could lift this from their shoulders, this inchoate anxiety about change whose darkness can cloud even the most radiant days. But I can’t. I think all I can do is try to remain gentle with them about the complicated, non-rational emotions that swirl in times like these. To allow their sadness room to breathe while also reminding them of all that is bright. After all, I know the feeling.
One night last week there was a big thunder and lightning storm. This was after a torrential squall in the morning and a tornado warning in the early evening. The weather has been swooping dramatically lately; maybe the restlessness in my spirit these days is just another manifestation of the vibrations I sense out there in the universe. Something feels out of whack right now.
I sat in the window of my bedroom watching the blackness of night crack open, over and over, listening to the rolls of thunder and feeling the house literally shake. And I thought about another night of thunder and lightning. I was with my almost-brother, Ethan, on the Vineyard, in the house our families rented together for several summers. This house (we actually rented a few, in the same general neighborhood) had a separate guest house where the four kids stayed (Hilary, Tyler, Ethan, and me). Ethan and I were sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor of the loft, underneath an enormous skylight.
I love lightning. One summer on the Cape, when I was a camp counselor, a friend and I ran across the front fields in a torrential storm. I remember literally dancing with the lightning, which blazed all around us. What an idiotic and naive thing to do, I realize now. At the time, it was thrilling: I felt as though I was inside the storm.
But last week my thoughts turned firmly, and completely, to that night on the Vineyard. I remembered lying in the dark with Ethan, watching the sky burst into brilliant light right above our faces, whispering to each other. It was Ethan’s birthday, or the end of it, because it was nearing midnight. What I remember most vividly is feeling sad that his birthday was coming to a close, painfully aware of the last moments of his day ticking away. Even all those years ago – I think I must have been 10 – I was anxious about endings and about time’s passage.
This realization made me feel something in my chest, a knot of inchoate feeling. Am I saddened to remember the melancholy that twisted through me even as a young child? Do I feel reassured, resigned, ready to stop struggling against something that is so clearly an essential and indelible part of who I am? Or am I frustrated that still, so many years later, I’m experiencing the same sorrow, am twisting through the same spiral, over and over again?
I don’t know. So I just sat, my ten year old self and my 36 year old self staring through the same eyes in frank wonder as the night sky burst again and again into light outside my window.
I did it. My second Covered Bridges Half Marathon, and I beat my first time. The first 8 or so miles were pleasant, even fun. After that it got hard. Really hard. I thought about what Pam says about “sitting with her stuff.” And I thought about my own inclination to stop when I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it through something hard.
And I did not stop. I swear I finished on fumes and grit. My feet are a blistery mess, my hip bone is worn raw from where I stashed the car key in my shorts pocket, and I feel the strange overwhelming stomach pain I often get after long runs.
But. I did it. And my family was there to cheer me on this time at the finish. 1:50.02. And this sign? The best part of all.
