The poet’s job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it. – Jane Kenyon
It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. – William Carlos Williams
I can’t explain exactly why our now-annual trip to Legoland is so special, but it is. A light veil of magic that descends on the three of us the minute we walk out of the airport in California and it floats around our shoulders until we get home. On the taxi to the airport in Boston, as we set out on a long day of travel, Grace announced that she looked forward to this trip as much as she did to Christmas. And on the second day, as we discussed the new Lego-themed hotel that is going to open this year and whether we should consider staying there, Whit brought tears to my eyes when he said, “Well, it would be cool, probably, but I really like our tradition the way it is.”
They are as sentimental as I am, these two, and as wedded to ritual. One of my firmest beliefs about parenting is that traditions, large and small, have huge power to ground children. This trip is now one of the central rituals around which our family year spins.
Cruelly, the days of our short visit to California seem to accelerate every year. This summer they passed in a blinding blaze of ice cream and swimming pool jumps and rides and laughter. Our final day in the park I could not get Colin Hay singing just be here now (from his beautiful song, Waiting for my Real Life to Begin) out of my head. I rode behind the children on the safari ride, watching them more than I did the incredibly detailed Lego animals, fighting to stay inside my own experience. Nostalgia pulled at me like an undertow, and I struggled not to slide into full-blown grief for a trip that wasn’t even over yet.
This is a familiar pattern for me, and it was a part of my time at Legoland this year more keenly than ever. It is so easy for me to slip into anticipatory grief about a moment being over even as I inhabit it. My awareness of time’s passage grows more and more acute, and it is often an effort not to let the s0rrow of that unavoidable reality overwhelm me. I remind myself that my days are short here, and that I risk squandering them by surrendering to a morass of relentless missing and sadness. At the same time, I thank the universe for my own particular emotional wiring, because the truth is that being able to sense the throb of time under every minute makes my experience, while often painfully bittersweet, tremendously rich.
And I blink back my tears and smile when Grace and Whit barrage me with how they noticed for the first time that the giraffe’s head swivels, and then follow them as they run to the next ride. Looking around as I try to keep up with them, drinking in with my eyes and nose and ears – with my whole self – this magic place. This golden moment in my life. Yes, it is about to end. As hard as I try, I cannot get around that. So the best I can do is be here now.
It was raining. Whit was a little nervous about being dropped off on the big playground for the first time, but he stayed close to Grace and said he was okay “as long as he had his sister.” They both watched me warily, clearly full of abject terror that I’d embarrass them by crying. I managed to wait on that until I got to the car. Then I went to work. Another day, another year, another swing around the sun.
As I thought about the summer of 2012, I thought back to my reflections on the summer of 2011, 2010, and 2009. This is my favorite season, though also one heavy with melancholy. I noted last year that the only seasonal change I don’t lament, on some level, is winter to spring. Because after that I’m aware that we are turning towards the end, the darkness, the cold. There comes a moment in each summer when I sense fall underneath all the sun and heat and laughter; usually it’s somewhere in the end of July. And then comes August, an elegaic season that is at once the fullest manifestation of summer and its end.
This summer was full of joys. I saw first-hand the power of tradition. Certain events are now carved into our family life as important rituals. We started off by going to Storyland on the last day of school. The kids are getting old for Storyland, but they love the tradition as much as I do, and embrace the way it marks the beginning of summer vacation.
Grace was recovering from her broken collarbone in June, so Matt and Whit went alone on the fifth-annual White Mountains overnight trip. We visited our dear friends in Martha’s Vineyard and had a wonderful, albeit short weekend. Grace went back to sleep-away camp and loved it, cementing her bond with my best friend from camp’s daughter. I don’t have words to express what it’s like to watch this second-generation friendship flower.
We spent the Fourth of July with my family, happily welcoming home my sister, her husband, and her daughters from Jerusalem. We watched the parade, played in the back yard, swam out to the raft, and jumped off the boat into the ocean. It was a very, very happy week.
The summer wasn’t all re-treads of previous years, though. That’s the beauty of rituals, I think: they are a framework around which you can build lots of new experiences. Several times, Grace, Whit, and I woke up early and went to Walden Pond to swim. Each time we were among the only people there, in a place whose magic is palpable to both the children and me.
Around Memorial Day we started the License Plate Game. We wanted to see all 50 state license plates. I printed out a list, put it on the fridge, and the children got really into it. We were down to four by the beginning of August, and we knocked three of those (Hawaii, Nebraska, and Wyoming) out in California. Alaska eludes us as of this writing.
We listened to a lot of Phillip Phillips’ Home, and the Mumford & Sons cover of The Boxer, and Katy Perry’s Wide Awake, and Willie Nelson singing Coldplay’s The Scientist, and to a few songs from the soundtrack of Brave.
I read a lot. I absolutely adored Wild by Cheryl Strayed, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, and The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. These three are among the most lovely books I’ve read in a long time. I also loved The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith, I Couldn’t Love You More by Jillian Medoff, Light Years by James Salter, Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian. I read lots of other books, mostly fiction.
We are deep in the happy hours, as Glenda Burgess wrote in her gorgeous memoir The Geography of Love. I know these hours won’t last forever, and I am trying to sink as deeply into them as I can. One thing I know is I can’t make them stay, so at least let me pay attention to them while they’re here.
This weekend we said goodbye to my grandfather. On Saturday, a crystal-clear, bluebird day, we remembered him with tears, with laughter, with the Navy hymn, and with an echoing alleluia chorus.
Pops’ obituary is here. It talks a lot about his professional accomplishments, which were significant, but does not capture his role as the patriarch of a large and sprawling family. His three living sons and the family of the fourth as well as his nine grandchildren were all in attendance on Saturday. Two of his six great-grandchildren were. Many, many cousins were there, and I was reminded, again, of the family that runs in my veins.
In a day packed with memorable moments, two stood out. Grace told me that during the service, my grandfather’s companion of the last many years, who was sitting next to hear, reached over and held her hand. The idea that the 92 year old woman who meant the world to my grandfather at the end of his life knew my daughter well enough to find comfort in her small hand makes me swell with pride and sorrow. And then, on the long drive home, I overheard Grace offer this to Whit in the backseat: “Whit, when you grow up to be an engineer, Great Pops is going to be very proud of you in heaven.”
Yes. I think he is already proud of both of them.
