If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over
the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each
child in the world would be a sense of wonder so indestructible that
it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the
boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation
with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of
our strength.
– Rachel Carson
(thank you, HWM, thank you, thank you)
I don’t know if it’s the awful weather, or the echoing, empty aftermath of last week’s End of School celebrations, but I’m sad and not entirely myself this week. I know, you say: I’m always sad. Well, I’m actually not. I’m sensitive, yes, prone to waves of sorrow, but they are, on a regular day, interspersed with rushes of joy and wonder of an equal intensity. This week, though, it’s mostly grief I feel, alongside the odd, crawling-out-of-my-own-skin anxiety that sometimes overtakes me, preoccupying me as completely as a leg full of itchy bug bites or a grain of sand in my eye.
Do you know this feeling? There are days when I’m so impatient, so utterly aggravated with every single thing – and person – in my life that I can’t even stand myself. I slam on the brakes at red lights, am annoyed with everything anyone says, and find myself snappish. I’m also forgetful, even less coordinated than usual: driving to the wrong destination, stubbing my toe on things, walking into rooms and not knowing why I’m there.
I feel a frantic discomfort, as though I literally want to climb out of the container of my own life. As if I cannot bear another single moment inside my body. All of the rushing and distraction is just, I know, a desperate effort not to be present, not to really look and see. What I don’t know is why it is so insufferably difficult for me to do that, to be here, right now. I try to remind myself that my intense agitation comes from a deep well of sadness. That its source is the swirling darkness that exists always inside me, swelling, sometimes, so that I cannot think of anything else.
Despite my being a Leo, born in the year of the tiger, and in posession of defiantly sunny hair, I’ve always felt distinctly not-feline and not-sunny. I’m more like the moon, I think. Surely my pulse thrums in some kind of mysterious accord with the tides. And I inhabit a dense, mostly dark place, speckled with blindingly bright stars. This week, then, I’ve been on the dark side of my moon.
One of my favorite of Lisa Belkin’s blog posts is about how we all airbrush our stories of parenting. She talks about the ugly truths that we keep hidden, either about ourselves as parents or about our doubts about our children. I still think about it, even all of these months later.
When I read this I nod, but, probably more importantly, I think: this is just not me … I particularly loved the last line of her NYT magazine piece: “You often learn who you are by realizing who you are not. ”
I am consistently more honest and consequently more bleak about my children than most parents. (“More honest than the average HBS student,” a business school professor commented of me a few years ago). I am instinctively open about my childrens’ flaws and weaknesses, about their speech therapy and their lice, their brattiness and their defiance. I am also quick to acknowledge my own failures as a parent, my short fuse, my distraction, my inability to sit and just be, my frustration and impatience with many of motherhood’s quotidian tasks. I simply feel no deep urge to protect myself – or them – by smudging with vaseline the lens through which I see parenting. But why, and is this a bad thing?
When there is an altercation on the soccer field or at the bowling alley, my automatic reaction is to assume that somehow Grace or Whit is at fault. When they reveal that a teacher was unhappy with them about something I instinctively take the side of the teacher. What does it mean that I often, basically, assume the worst of them? I don’t know. I do know I don’t believe anything is gained by inaccurately representing myself as a mother; so many do this, and I think it creates feelings of inadequacy in others and immense pressure in the self. I also know I don’t believe in protecting them artificially from the way the world works, both formally (rules) and informally (opinions and judgment).
There are other places I feel asynchronous with many of my peer parents. I’ve written before of my fierce dedication to not overscheduling my kids, and frankly I feel more, not less, guilt and conflict about this as they get older. I’ve also expressed that some of my proudest parenting moments are when my children demonstrate independence and courage. One of my closest friends told me a few years ago that from her vantage point it was clear that I wanted most for my kids was that they be smart and brave. I don’t know that everybody else shares this priority: when Grace flew alone, at the age of 5, I was shocked by how many other mothers actively judged me.
I try very hard not to compare, to feel confident in my parenting, not to allow the winds of judgment and criticism that blow so freely around these parts to buffet me too much. But some days I can’t stop thinking about all the ways I feel different, and most of all about my predilection to share the ugly, the messy, the imperfect. I may have some sense of what I am not, as a mother, but what does that mean I am?
(part of this was originally posted in 2008; it’s clearly still on my mind)
Recently, Whit, Grace and I spent the afternoon at a water park. Whit doesn’t do water slides (note: this may change soon, as he didn’t do rollercoasters until last week, when he suddenly tried one and is now a Huge Ride Guy) so we spent a lot of time in the wave pool. We headed into the waves, Grace and Whit erupting into giggles as the water splashed up our legs. When got to the deeper water, where the waves were big, both kids started thrashing around. I grabbed them both, holding one against each hip, marveling at how enormous, lean, and knobby their bodies are now. Because we were in water I held them easily, feeling slippery skin against skin, looking back and forth at their smiling faces.
“So the thing, guys,” they leaned their heads towards mine, listening above the roar of the waves, “Is to just float in the waves. Let them bob you around. Don’t fight them.” I saw Whit’s eyebrows raise skeptically. “No, really, Whit. I know it sounds crazy. But try to just drift in the waves. You’ll see.”
I let go of them and Grace immediately flipped onto her back, trying to float in the undulating water. Whit plummeted again below the surface and came splashing up, panic and delight mixing in his eyes. He grasped for me, water splashing everywhere. I took his arm. I put my arm around his waist and held him against my side, watching Grace in the waves. It was not lost on me that this is how I held him, all the time, when he was a baby and toddler.
A few moments later I noticed that Whit was pushing away from me, trying to pry my fingers off of him. “Mummy!” I looked at him, surprised. “I’m trying to drift! Let me go so I can try to bob!” Laughing, I let go of him and smiled as I watched him, trying to relax his body, trying to trust the rising and falling water.
After a minute or two both kids came back to me, tired, tethering themselves to my body. Whit said, “Let’s hold hands! Let’s make a family circle!” And so we did, my feet firmly planted on the floor, both kids bobbing up and down in the water as it moved around them. Johnny Cash’s voice, singing “…will the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord, by and by..” sprang into my head my head and stayed there for the rest of the evening.
Grace and I took another few trips down the water slides and I wrapped up in some towels and gave them the five minute warning. They wanted to go back into the wave pool so I sat on one of the faded yellow plastic chairs, watching, as they stepped tentatively into the splashing water. When they got deep enough that Whit couldn’t touch anymore, I watched them both trying to float. And then I noticed that Grace held Whit in her arms, helping support him in the roiling waves. Tears sprang to my eyes as I noticed how her arms reached instinctively for him, how he clasped her with complete trust, their dark heads next to each other as they looked away from me towards the source of the waves.
Whit started to wade out of the water. Close to shore, he grinned at me and then suddenly turned back again towards the pool. He held his arms up above his head, open, walking back into the waves. Startlingly, I thought of the minister at his christening, a tall, imposing man who had held his arms up like that while I cradled Whit above the font. His arms open in benediction, he’d boomed, “Welcome, Samuel Whitman Russell. Welcome, all of us.”
Arms spread, Whit walked back into the waves. Welcoming what is to come. Without fear. May I do the same.
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