everyday life

The summer of letting go

Letting go continues to be a theme in my life.  I think about what I wrote in December and it’s all still so true:

This letting go is releasing my white knuckle grip on the way I wanted my life to be.

It is EM Forester’s familiar words: “We must be willing to let go of the life we had planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

It is also acknowledging that certain things are lost and other things will never be.

It is accepting, with a deep internal settling, the passage of time against which I rail so often and so furiously.

It is the sentence of Jack Kornfield’s, to which I return again and again with an instinct as rhythmic and powerful as the tide, its truth ineffably sad and profoundly uplifting at the same time:

To live is to die to how we wanted it to be.

But this summer there’s a new note in the chorus.   Whit is letting go, too.  Giving me no choice but to do so, and to watch him ascend, move away, stretch the raveling red string that ties his heart to mine.  First, there’s the lost tooth.  Oh, my aching heart.

This past weekend we visited friends on Martha’s Vineyard.  We spent most of Saturday at the beach.  At the end of the long dock there was a twisting slide that dropped off into the ocean.

It’s hard to convey how tiny he looked sitting at the top of this slide from the beach.  I walked down and stood by him as he deliberated, deciding whether to let himself go.  And, finally, without any announcement, he did.

(and yes, I swear I feed him)

The week before we went to the Vineyard, I’d enrolled Whit in a neighborhood camp around the corner.  He knew exactly zero people there.  And on the first day, I signed him in, watched him make a name tag, and then stood with him at the corner of the playground.  “Are you ready for me to go?”  I asked him.

He looked up at me, indicating I should crouch down so that he could whisper something to me.  “Yes.  See you later.  I love you.”

And then away I went.  With a few glances over my shoulder, to witness this.

He is tall and lean and looks like a full-blown boy, his hair is bleaching quickly to summer blond, his smile is now crooked, and he’s reading early readers about rockets and bugs.  It’s all blurring in front of my eyes because it’s moving so damn fast.  Like an invocation, I chant silently to myself: let go, let go, let go.

But still he still sleeps with his Beloved wrapped in his arms.  Still.

Fireworks

Last Friday night was the annual fireworks display in Marion.  For a number of reasons I was having one of those evenings where I felt like Grace and Whit were the only true, steady things in my life.  We walked down to the dock at the end of the street to watch the fireworks hand in hand.  Whit has this new thing he does when he’s walking and holding my hand, where he turns my wrist to his face and kisses it.  He kept doing that, so often that I felt my heart expanding in my chest, filling (some of) the space that had felt so echoingly, clangingly empty just moments ago.

We sat and watched the fireworks. The show ended and everyone around me stood up to go, but I sat and watched the wisps of smoke in the sky.  Where there had been flashes of brilliant light, now there were traces of faint grayness, fading gradually to black.  The space held the memory of what had been, but tenuously, and only if you paid attention.

Grace tapped my shoulder and looked down at me.  “Are we going to go?”  I stared up at her, at her angular face, so full of her galloping years, and I blinked.  She looked confused, wondering, no doubt, what I was doing.  Shaking my head, stunned at the traces of babyhood that were still, but barely, visible in her face, I got to my feet.

We walked slowly back to the house, Grace holding my hand.  Whit was walking with Matt, and they and my parents and other people moved near us but I felt like Grace and I were alone in the world.  She gripped my hand and I glanced over at her head, her braids messy from a day in and out of the water, and noticed that it is at my shoulder now.  “Will you always watch the fireworks with me, Mummy?”  She spoke quietly.

“Yes, Grace, of course.”  I dropped her hand to squeeze her shoulders against my chest, marveling at how solid she seems, when she used to be so birdlike.  “Until you don’t want me to, of course,”  I laughed.  “Like when you’re a teenager.”  I smiled at her but she was looking straight forward with a scowl on her face.

A beat passed and we walked in the full-blown summer evening, hydrangeas everywhere.  “I don’t want to be a teenager, Mummy,” she said firmly.  I looked over at her, surprised.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t.  It’s going too fast.”  She stopped walking and faced me.

What I said next surprised me.  “Grace, you know how right now you are so excited about summer, and then at the end of summer you are ready for it to be over, and to go back to school?”  She nodded.  “And remember how at the beginning of December Christmas is so exciting, and then by the time it’s New Year’s you just want to pack away all the decorations and start back to regular life?”  She nodded again, but clearly wondered where I was going.  “The point is,” I said, swallowing as I realized where I was going.  “Everything happens at just the right time.  I promise.”  My eyes welled with tears.  Do I even believe this?  I don’t know.

“No.”  She looked right at me, her own eyes glassy, wet.  “I don’t ever want to lose you.”  I wrapped my arms around her and she buried her face in my chest.  I could feel tears through my thin cotton t-shirt.

“You won’t ever lose me, Grace.  You won’t.”  I closed my eyes and saw the gray streak of where the fireworks had been against the night sky, heard the whisper of moments that had passed, said a silent thanks for the fact that I can see the vestiges of smoke that remain after the showy brightness of life’s fireworks.

Happy Fourth of July

Home from a long weekend with my whole family (other than my wonderful brother-in-law).  We had a very windy sail, a birthday, a whole lot of laughter and a few tears, a lost tooth, ice cream and fireworks.

Back tomorrow.

Summer at last

It is finally summer. A few images of the last several days:

Crazy gorgeous blue sky.  I love the faint tracing of an airplane’s straight line juxtaposed with the puffy clouds.  A reminder of all that is linear and all that is utterly non-linear.
Grace on the camp bus.

Continuing to try to let go.  Lately have been thinking of how it’s futile to try to surrender.  Ridiculous to effort to let go.  Trying to parse that one.

The steeple of the art center on the corner against a blue sky is one of my very favorite views.

Walking back from the school bus in the slanting late-afternoon sunlight.

My Renaissance man painting on the beach (under the wonderful tutelage of Sally, one of the Four Family mothers)


Matching shoes for dinner out at a local restaurant.

Sound sleep, in a hot room with animals nearby.

empty

Sometimes it feels like what I do, all day long, is empty things.  I empty the trash cans.  I empty the dishwasher.  I empty the basket of drycleaning into a bag to take it down the street.  I empty the grocery bags into the fridge.  I empty the childrens’ backpacks and I empty their lunchboxes.  I empty the mailbox and pay the bills and make a note of the babies to send gifts to and the things I need to RSVP to.  I empty the front hall table, bringing all of the detritus that accumulates there up the stairs to where it belongs. I empty the basement, sorting through things we don’t need anymore, deciding what goes to be handed down, what goes to Goodwill, what goes to the trash.  I empty my email and my voicemail boxes.

In the midst of all this emptiness, it’s easy to overlook how these small tasks contribute to the rhythm of our lives. Laundry is just another item on the endless list of things to empty and sort. Each cycle of the washing machine echoes the constant need for upkeep and care. But while I’m often caught up in the day-to-day hustle of emptying and organizing, I’ve learned that laundry doesn’t have to feel like a chore. Services like Kleanway Laundry remind us that there are smarter ways to manage these tasks, allowing us to reclaim time for the moments that truly matter.

With the hustle and bustle of daily life, it can be overwhelming to think about how laundry piles up, waiting to be washed, dried, and folded. But thanks to modern conveniences, we don’t have to face that mountain of clothes alone. Instead of feeling buried under the weight of it all, I can utilize Kleanway’s pickup and delivery service, turning laundry day into a breeze. They take on the burden of laundry for families like mine, ensuring that we have clean clothes without the added stress. This support helps me focus on what really counts: spending time with my loved ones and creating memories, rather than simply emptying baskets and folding clothes.

I listen to the kids, let them empty onto me the things from their days that made them happy and the things that made them fret.  I listen to Matt, let him empty his frustrations and elations, big and small.

Everything is always overflowing and too full.  Sometimes it seems like the primary function of my life is to keep the encroaching entropy at bay.  I must be constantly vigilant against this rising tide of disorder, mess, stuff.

Why, then, do I feel so empty some of the time?