The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary.
– Mark Nepo
Month: June 2013
This beautiful world, and the power of traditions
Last week, on our fourth annual trip to Storyland to celebrate the end of school, I learned several things.
I learned that my children are as smitten with tradition as I am. I had told them weeks ago that I knew they were getting old for Storyland, and this might be our last trip. Halfway through our day at the park, Grace turned to me, eyes filled with tears, and asked, “Do you think this is our last trip, really?” I hugged her to me and said of course not, it was up to her, as long as they wanted to come, I wanted to take them.
Every aspect of this trip has ossified into ritual. We stay at the same hotel, we go to the same water park, we eat dinner at one restaurant and breakfast at another, we start and end our day on Bamboo Shoots. I love our breakfast spot for many reasons, including that it’s called Priscilla’s, which was my grandmother’s name. There was an unexpected wait (the place was jammed with Harley Davidson bikers, one of whose shirts resulted in a long conversation on why you’d have a shirt with b&^%@ on the back) and so we sat on the porch, deciding what to do. “Let’s just go somewhere else, guys,” I said, glancing at my watch.
Whit looked at me, absolutely scandalized. “But that would mess up our tradition.” He folded his arms and sat down. And so we waited.
I learned, again, that our family’s traditions form a scaffolding on which our life is draped. I need to write more about this, but the older the children get, the more important some of our rituals, both big and small, seem to be to them. They provide a reassuring rhythm to life, I think, as well as a space for them to still be children in a world that seems to be pushing them to young adulthood faster than they might want to go.
I learned that Grace is the voice of reason in my life. As we drove home we talked about what would happen when we got home. Maybe we can skip showers, I mused. “Mummy, I think we need showers,” Grace chimed in from the backseat. “I mean, after a full day at an amusement park? Don’t you think?” Good point, I admitted. Showers it was.
I learned that Caramel Bugles are troublesomely good.
I learned yet again of the wisdom in Storyland. I take a picture of this sign every single year. And it just gets increasingly true.
I learned that every year the edge of time’s passage cuts me more sharply. My favorite part of the (long!) drive up involves 14 hilly and twisty miles through the woods with glimpses of Crystal Lake on the right. It’s absolutely beautiful. As we passed the landmarks we know so well (the raft in the lake! the archery targets! the stilled ski lift!) I felt a pang of grieving this trip, even as we set out on it. As I watched Grace and Whit barrel down the water slides, their laughter echoing off the cavernous roof, I felt the familiar prickling up and down my arms that I’ve come to think of as the physical sensation of total presence, as well as the somatization of my distress about time passing. Even as I lived the moment I’d so anticipated, I was already mourning it.
As we walked through the doors of Storyland, leaving on Friday afternoon, I felt a tightness in my chest. I looked back over my shoulder and the park’s bright colors blurred because my eyes were full of tears. I blinked quickly but could not hide my emotion. The sting of sorrow at the end of something we had looked forward to took my breath away. I feel this way every year, but it keeps getting stronger. Surely the day is coming when I’ll sit down outside the gates of some activity or place and simply refuse to leave. Life’s endings bring me to my knees, face to face with all that is transient. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my heart regularly breaks open at the constant reminders that these moments I so thoroughly love are flying by. They will be over soon, and I am not ready.
I learned that I do still remember some college Chemistry. Whit brought one book on our trip, an introduction to the periodic table. As we drove up he talked about different elements, and more often than not I remembered the abbreviations, or their color, or their basic state. He was impressed and I was proud (fun fact: if I hadn’t majored in English at college, I would have chosen Chemistry). One thing is true, for sure: the conversations with these two just get more and more interesting.
I learned that my children are aware of this life’s poignant beauty in a way I never used to be. As we drove home through the outrageously glorious dusk light, I said several times, “Oh, guys, look: what a beautiful world this is.” I pointed out smudges of clouds at the horizon or the way that the dark green trees flared against the hydrangea blue of the gloaming sky. Not one single time did they shush me, or ask me to turn up Katy Perry. They always looked, and noticed. At one point, unprompted by me, Whit sighed from the backseat, “It is so beautiful, Mummy.” And yes. It is.
It is an astonishingly beautiful world. How grateful I am that Grace and Whit can see it.
The bitter part of my life’s bittersweet core
I can close my eyes and be back in this afternoon, exactly 7 years ago, June 2005, with baby Whit, 2 year old Grace, and my grandfather, who is no longer with us.
It’s not a secret that I struggled with my entry into motherhood. Grace’s infancy was not my finest hour. I remember large swaths of time as only a blur of tears and a wailing baby that occurred in a permanent twilight that wasn’t day and wasn’t night. But, somehow, I remember with crystalline clarity one comment that I received over and over again from kindly, well-intentioned people, friends and strangers alike:
“Make sure to enjoy this moment. It goes so fast!”
Just like everybody else I know, I heard this more times than I can possibly count. And every single time, through the haze of my exhaustion and despair, I recognized a kernel of truth. This sentence pierced my gloom over and over again. But the truth is it made me want to scream; this is probably because the sentiment cut close to the bone. As with all statements that are uncomfortably true, I did not like hearing it. And I swore to myself I would never tell a mother with a newborn to enjoy this time.
And yet I have. More than once, I’ve looked at a mother with a tiny baby, or a mother with a baby in a Bjorn and a two year old by the hand, dark valleys under her eyes and a slightly wild, exasperated expression, and longed to be back there. The way I express this longing is to say: “Oh, those were the days. They go fast. Enjoy them.”
Every time I kick myself: Ugh, Lindsey, you swore you’d never say that. I can remember vividly my own negative reaction to those comments. But I realize now that the people who said that were just sharing their own nostalgia the only way they knew how.
Even now, aware as I am of not wanting to squander these moments with my children at home, I find myself – daily! – wishing time away. I am sore from the cold bleachers under my legs at soccer try-outs, I am listening to a detailed story about a 2nd grade bus ride that is being told in real time, I am tired myself, just want to get into bed with my own book, and this third glass of water is going to put me over the edge. I have realized this is simply the nature of parenting; the adage that the days are long but the years are short is so powerful precisely because it is true.
I am much better at appreciating my experience than I used to be. There’s no question about that. But even when I really AM there, even when I’m fully open and appreciating all the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions of my particular life with my particular children at this particular moment, it still goes by too fast. And this is the bitter part of my life’s bittersweet core: nothing I do, no paying attention and being here now can slow the drumbeat march of time. No matter how present I am I cannot alter the hasty onrush of this life.
Sometimes that truth feels unbearably bitter. Of course, yes, I do know that it’s bitter in direct proportion to the sweetness. The presence I have worked hard to cultivate over many years has left me with very rich memories of this season of my life. I’m grateful beyond expression for the way this blog has chronicled much of my life with my children. I have thousands of photographs and dozens of letters. But nothing I can do, neither white-knuckled hanging on nor meditative letting go, will make these days and years last longer. I guess when I say the thing I swore I’d never say to new mothers, I’m trying to communicate that. But I should stop, because I know it doesn’t help.
I’m pretty sure that my grandfather, in the photograph above, told me with a sigh that these days would go fast. I know he handed me some notes that my grandmother had written about observing the development of boys (she should know: she had four). But I also know that I probably shook my head, worrying about getting Whit down for a nap and making pasta for Grace, grimaced at the ugly plastic toys in my kitchen, and told him in a way that was both heartfelt and dismissive: I know, I know.
I thought I knew what he meant. But I didn’t. I do now.
Surrounded by mystery
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
This is thirty eight
I loved our This is Childhood series this winter. I loved writing This Is Ten about my first child, my pioneer, my grace, my Grace.
I keep thinking of things that describe my now, and thought I would write my own grown-up version.
So: this is thirty eight.
Thirty eight is solidly in the middle of my life. Thirty eight is realizing that there are likely as many years behind me as there are ahead. It is acknowledging that life is no longer a green field, that certain doors are closed, that some choices are irrevocable, and that many of the big what-ifs that haunted my childhood have been answered. Thirty eight is also realizing that despite these answers, there are far, far more new questions.
Thirty eight is new lines at the sides of my eyes and mouth. From smiling, maybe, but still.
Thirty eight is wearing my wedding ring all the time though my engagement ring rarely. Thirty eight is not knowing which band was my wedding band and which my husband gave me on the day our daughter was born, because they are identical. I don’t think it matters. Thirty eight is wearing my mother’s wedding ring for a time, when she was unable to. Thirty eight is knowing that one of my favorite pictures from our long-ago wedding shows that I wore my grandmother’s ring on my right hand when I walked down the aisle.
Thirty eight is realizing that certain shorts and skirts are now just too short. Thirty eight is wondering if this is the summer to put away the bikinis.
Thirty eight is thirteen years of marriage. It is knowing all the ways that marriage is both less and more than I thought it was, when I walked into a church wearing white and hearing thunder. Less score-keeping, less candlelight, less drama. More small acts of kindness, more forgiveness, more abiding. Fewer flowers, but more cups of coffee made exactly how I like them, without being asked, brought to me in bed in the morning.
Thirty eight is realizing that my lifetime passion for peonies probably has something to do with their life span, which is as short as it is spectacular. It can’t be an accident that I love best of all the flowers that blaze more brightly and most briefly.
Thirty eight is not having any more grandparents. It is hearing about the illness and death of my friends’ parents. It is going to funerals, and also christenings, more often than weddings. Thirty eight was leaving my injured mother’s side before surgery a couple of years ago to run home to my daughter, who was crying that I wasn’t spending enough time with her. Thirty eight is the middle place.
Thirty eight is knowing who your friends are, for real, for certain. It is understanding that though there will be a small handful of true native speakers, it is okay for many friends to access only certain parts of you. These friendships, while different, can offer great joy, deep laughter, and tremendous companionship. Thirty eight is still learning that not everybody will like you, no matter what you do.
Thirty eight is drinking homemade green juice and Diet Coke most days. It is developing a taste for kombucha, and drinking coffee with coconut milk and xylitol. It is drinking wine still, but not as much, because I’d rather sleep and I’ve realized that alcohol interferes with that.
Thirty eight is finding that each year she grows more sensitive, more aware of life’s beauty and pain, more attuned to the world around her. Thirty eight cries every single day, and laughs that much too (see: lines on my face).
Thirty eight is in the heart of the grand love affair that is motherhood, both smitten by and exasperated by her daughter and son. Thirty eight is watching, awestruck, as these children develop into people in whom bloom traits uncomfortably familiar and absolutely foreign in equal measure. Thirty eight reads Harry Potter aloud, packs lunches, drives to and from soccer and hockey and baseball practices and games (see photo), plans surprise adventure outings, and can still make a bruised knee feel better with a kiss.
Thirty eight is its own kind of phosphorescence. Different than ten’s ephemeral incandescence, but no less dazzling and no less fleeting. Just like ten, just like life itself, thirty eight is bewilderingly beautiful, maddeningly confusing, achingly bittersweet, and vanishingly transient.