everyday life

The thing I most want to do for my children

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We got home from our marvelous week in Vermont on a Saturday evening.  Everybody was exhausted and deflated.  The end August loomed, and the big summer things we’d been looking forward to were all behind us.  On Sunday, Matt had to go to work, so Grace, Whit, and I were left with an open day.  We did some errands in the morning, moving slowly, sinking back into regular life.  It was a glorious, outrageously perfect late-summer day.  I suggested a picnic in the park that is three blocks from us.

Grace and Whit responded with enthusiasm.  We packed turkey sandwiches, some goldfish, some tortilla chips and guacamole, and water.  They threw a frisbee for a while and I watched them in the almost-deserted park.  I could sense Grace’s month-old self snuggled in her blue Patagonia fleece one-piece, asleep in my arms as we took our first Christmas card as a family on the rise over to my right.  I could see both of their four year old bodies running in their first soccer games on chilly fall Saturday mornings, smiling as I remembered how often the parental cheering consisted “Wrong way!  Other goal!”  I could hear their pealing laughter as they made snowmen in the enormous, untouched drifts of snow in last winter’s blizzard.

After a bit they came to sit next to me on our towel.  We ate our sandwiches in the shade and in silence, and after a few minutes Whit sighed, “Oh, this is nice.”

“It really is, isn’t it?”

I’m not sure how, but we started talking about facing fears.  We talked about fears we had surmounted, and what we were still afraid of.  We all shared stories.  It was a rare half hour of perfect peace and happy equanimity.  After we finished our lunch we sat for a bit longer, noticing things in the fenced-off city garden plots next to us.  Grace tilted her head back to watch an airplane streak across the sky, pointing up at it, mouth open.  Then we packed up our trash and our towel and headed for home.

I am rarely prouder of my children than when they enjoy small moments like this.  I honestly think this might be (one of) the key(s) to happiness: finding joy in the most mundane things.  It’s also an outright goal of mine as a parent, trying to make the ordinary special, trying to shape a memory out of a regular old day (even knowing as I do that we can’t always control which moments coalesce into the pearls strung on life’s chain).  The day after the picnic, I left my desk an hour early to take the children to our beloved fairy stream, where we worked in companionable quiet for a long time building cairns.  It was spontaneous, it was something we do all the time, but despite that – or maybe because of it – it was an exceptional experience.

How can I protect Grace and Whit’s propensity for joy and their orientation towards wonder?  How can I keep them from becoming jaded in a world that leans towards cynicism so early, so quickly, and so finally?  How can I help them continue to find the white lines of exhaust from an airplane across a hydrangea blue sky or the quiet stacking of small rocks at a bubbling fairy stream things worthy of their time, their attention, and, sometimes, their awe?

I don’t know, but I am pretty sure this is the thing I most want to do for my children.

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Summer 2013

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Spring is the only season that I experience without an undercurrent of sorrow, because there is so much that lies ahead, but it is in summer that I feel I most fully live.  In June, July, and August, life is swollen with family moments, studded with the rituals that have come to mean so much to my children, and lit with bursts of fireworks both real and figurative.  For the last few years I’ve reflected on the summer that was: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.

In late August, I kept hearing Sophocles’ words, over and over again in my head: one must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.  And that is true of this most marvelous, rich, joyful season, too: it is really after Labor Day that I can really see how extravagantly wonderful our summer was.

This summer went by faster than ever.  Oh, what a cliche this is.  And yet it is so true.

In June, for the fourth year, Grace, Whit and I marked the end of the school year with a trip to Storyland.  Their mild agreement that perhaps they were getting too old for Storyland turned by the end of the day into stringent pleading to promise we could come back.  They love our tradition and so do I.

The weekend at the end of June that we spent with Hilary and her family was so humid that my computer shut itself down.  But it was wonderful nonetheless: swinging on swings over a big muddy puddle of rainwater, my father blowing out candles surrounded by his found grandchildren, those children lined up on the edge of Brea as we sailed, four feet dangling towards the splashing water.

Our hydrangea bush exploded into glorious bloom.  Once again I was reminded of the metaphors that are all around us: by late July I had to cut hundreds of past-their-prime blooms in hopes that we might get another round of new flowers.

We spent the Fourth of July with Matt’s family in Vermont.  The children loved being with their cousins.  Later in July we went to Legoland for the fourth time.  This is an extravagant tradition, to be sure, and maybe a silly one, but I can’t express the pure joy that descends on all three of us the minute we walk out of the airport in California.  I have no doubt that the three days in July we spent at Legoland will be among my most cherished of this entire year.

Coming home was hard, but we had a short but sweet visit with Whit’s godmother, my dear friend Gloria, to look forward to.  She came through on her way from Maine to Beijing, we all remembered how fiercely we adore this friend of my heart that I’ve known for 23 years.

Grace and Whit both went to sleepaway camp.  For the first time in 10 1/2 years Matt and I were alone for 10 days.  Saying goodbye was hard, mostly because of the reflection that it forced on time’s heartbreakingly swift passage.  Then, in August we had two weeks alone with Whit.  I spent my birthday with one of my oldest and dearest friends, at the place where we met and where our daughters how flourish.  It was marvelous.

We spent a week by Lake Champlain as a family, for the fifth year in a row, and it was pure magic.  Grace and Whit love it there, and Matt and I do too.  We swam and ran and water skiied and laughed.  The vacation, just like the end of August time that holds it, was tinged by end-of-summer pathos.

I read All That Is and A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, The Engagements by Courtney Sullivan, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, Still Writing by Dani Shapiro, Early Decision by Lacy Crawford, Ready for Air by Kate Hopper, Looking for Palestine by Najla Said, & Sons by David Gilbert.  I spent long hours revisiting some of my favorite poetry books.

Grace and I were deep in Harry Potter 7 while Whit and I were on 4.  They both remain entranced by Harry’s world.  Grace and I read Little Women at the same time in August: she marked the pages she read before bed and then left the book for me, and I’d read the same passage.  The next day we talked about it.  We read A Wrinkle In Time (my favorite book from childhood) the same way last year.

We managed to fit some of our favorite rituals into the last week of the summer.  We went to the beach for an end-of-summer day, we swam at Walden Pond, we visited the tower nearby and built stone cairns near the fairy stream.  We spent Labor Day in town for a change, because Grace had a soccer tournament.  It was calm, mellow, and surprisingly wonderful.

There was plenty of yelling and exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed by all kind of small things.  And I’ve already forgotten those moments, as the summer slides into memory, crystalline, shimmering.  And how I miss it, already.

 

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It’s hard to believe that I wrote these words about turning 35 four whole years ago.  And that in a year I’ll be writing about crossing over into my 40s.  While mid-August is the height of summer’s dog days, fall is also undeniably whispering around the edges of these hot hours.  I have noticed some red leaves in trees, can tell that it’s getting dark earlier, and sense the new season that is arriving.  It was on this hinge between seasons that I arrived (three weeks early, of course!), and I’ve been drawn to borders and transitions ever since.

Another year, here we go.  Towards the radiance.

Solstice

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It’s well established that I love the solstice.  In some fundamental way, my spirit feels the ebb and flow of light and dark, and the way that they dance with each other from one end of the year to the other mean something to me that I can’t quite entirely express.  Last Friday was the summer solstice.  I’d been feeling it coming for weeks.  A gradually-building awareness thrummed inside me that we were reaching the pinnacle of the year’s light.

To mark the day, Grace, Whit, and I went for a notice things walk after dinner.  It was a spectacular evening.  When we set out, the sun still quite high in the sky, and the light turned golden as we walked.  For some reason, it had been a long week; Grace and Whit were bickering and I felt tired.  Still, we walked.  We noticed things.  A spray of small pink flowers in a yard, the fact that the years-long construction at a house near ours seemed to be over, the almost-imperceptible hum of a dragon fly that accompanied us for a block.

In between the noticing, there was arguing.  Everything Grace did aggravated Whit.  He kept snapping at her, exasperated.  Everything Whit did annoyed Grace.  She kept scoffing, rolling her eyes, and walking ahead of him.  I finally stopped them and looked them in the eye, one at a time.  Stop it, I barked.  Enough.  This day is important to me.  Pull it together, I said in a raised voice.

Chastised, they kept walking.  I trailed them, taking this picture.  I felt a surge of that agitation, that restlessness that feels like an itch inside my head, that I now understand to be my brain and heart trying desperately not to be present.  Giving in to it, I looked down at my phone, scrolling through recent emails.  I glanced up to see that Grace had turned and was watching me.  She glared at me, and I looked back, raising my eyebrows questioningly.  “What?”

“Put down your phone,” she said and turned away from me.  To punctuate her dissatisfaction, she reached over and took Whit’s hand.  He let her, and they walked off, away from me.  My cheeks burned as I slipped my phone into my pocket and hurried to catch up to them.  All I could think was: don’t waste this, Lindsey.  We waited to cross a street and I leaned down and whispered in Grace’s ear, “I’m sorry.”  She smiled at me and we walked together, the three of us, into the large grass quad near our house.

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I sat and watched them run.  They did cartwheels and raced, and Whit climbed a tree.  Then we walked on.  A calm settled gently over us.  Nobody argued.  My restlessness eased.  It was as though we’d slid quietly into a slipstream, suddenly stopping our splashing against the current and instead letting ourselves be carried.  Relief washed over me as I grabbed hold of the shimmering ribbon that is being open to and aware of my experience.  I remembered, yet again, that it is a practice, this noticing, this being here now, this breathing, this watching with glittering eyes the immense holiness of life itself.

I trip, I fall, I yell, I snap, I fail.  And I start again.  I train my eyes right here, on what is in front of my feet.

We noticed the print of a leaf in the sidewalk, talked about how it must have happened, how a leaf must have fallen into the wet concrete.  We fell into step in silence.  We noticed a slew of heart-shaped leaves.  Under our feet, the earth tilted, shifting infinitesimally towards the darkness, commencing its gradual movement down from this apex of light.  And we walked on.

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This beautiful world, and the power of traditions

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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.

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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.

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