everyday life

These are days

Yesterday Grace, Whit and I went back to Storyland. Our first visit was nothing short of magical and I wanted to experience that again. I am determined to jam this summer that I’m not working full of memories for the children. I’m anxious about what reality will look like once I go back to work, and I realize this may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. To that end, I just made plans to take them both to Legoland (yes, in San Diego, ie almost as far as you can get from Boston within the continental US) for three days in early August. I don’t know if I’m insane. After Whit melted down at Chili’s tonight I was convinced I was. But once I caught a glimpse of his angelic sleeping face in the rearview mirror, I decided again that it was a good idea. Stay tuned.

They had another marvelous day at Storyland. We left an hour earlier than planned because it started pouring. As I pulled out of the parking lot I felt a pang of real sadness, surprised by how unhappy I was that this much-anticipated visit was over. I don’t know when we will be back, if I’ll be able to just take them here on the spur of the moment next summer, or even what next week holds.

As we sat in traffic in North Conway, the kids descended into their annoying and predictable bickering. Whit snapped at Grace, “I don’t like you, Grace. Not at all.” She surprised me by saying to him, calmly, “Whit, I know you don’t mean that. I know you care a lot about me.” Conversation closed. She turned and looked out of her window, ignoring him for a while.

After a dinner pitstop at Chili’s we drove the last hour to Boston. Whit fell asleep clutching the threadbare and treasured animal that he’s taken to calling his Beloved Monkey, a name that for some reason charms me. Grace was tired but not asleep, gazing out into the evening. It was simply a beautiful night, everything soft around the edges, the world draped in the faint pink haze of sunset. “Grace?” I spoke into the quiet stillness that had settled over the car. She nodded, caught my eye in the mirror. “I thought what you said earlier about knowing Whit loves you even when he said otherwise was really smart. Try to remember that in life. People say a lot of things they don’t mean.”

“Yes. I think sometimes people say things because they are tired, and cranky, and angry.” She lapsed into silence again and my breath caught in my throat at my daughter’s wisdom. May she hold onto this particular piece of it; I know I for one could use the reminder on an almost daily basis.

The song “These Are Days” came on the radio and about halfway through I realized I was singing along under my breath.

These are days you’ll remember …
Never before or never since, I promise,
will the whole world be warm as this.

I was startled to feel tears rolling down my face. These familiar roads, this beautiful city that I love, on the horizon, wreathed in pale pink fog, these sleepy children, these days passing faster than I can bear. Yet again of the loss that limns every single minute of my life lurched up into the foreground. My heart is so full of aches and fears right now, of feelings so big they threaten to overwhelm me. No matter how determined or desperate I am to make this summer full of warmth for Grace and Whit, of memories and joy, it will end. There is nothing I can do to change that. The keening anguish of this fact is sometimes truly more than I can bear.

I noticed that the license plate on the car in front of me was BEACON. Yes. This is my beacon, there is no question: remembering that this is all I have brings me back, over and over again, to right now. I drove through the beautiful dusk, feeling again the haunting awareness of how fleeting it all is, acknowledging reluctantly the unavoidable truth that my grasping at moments just makes them run through my fingers more quickly. Following my beacon, my eyes dazzled by the deep summer blue sky smudged with faint pink and gray clouds, and light glowing from below the horizon, I drove my children home.

Summer fever

A couple of weeks ago, Whit had a high fever all weekend.  He was listless and not himself, he threw up a couple of times, and his fever just would not come down.  Plus for three days in a row he took 2+ hour naps in the afternoon.  As delightful as his sleeping and his unusual desire for extra cuddling was, I knew something was wrong.

On Monday we went to see our beloved Dr. Rick.  Dr. Rick who is leaving practice in the fall.  Sob.  Another farewell, another changes, another factor contributing to the earthquake.  I am very, very tired of goodbyes, endings, and changes.  Have I mentioned that?

Anyway.  Whit and I sat in the waiting room.  Well, I sat.  Whit lay down (see above).  He was quiet and subdued and altogether not himself.

“Whit, do you want me to read to you?”  (I was sitting in a third chair, by his feet)

“No.”

“Are you sure”

“Yes.”  He sighed heavily and lay there, staring into space.  I reached over with my right hand and rubbed his skinny little calves, marveling at how simultaneously tiny-thin they are and how grown-up-long.  With my left hand I read my email on my iPhone.

A few minutes later I felt him sitting up.  He curled up in the chair next to me, his legs drawn up under him, and leaned his head over onto my shoulder.  I put down my phone and turned to kiss his forehead.  Against my lips his skin felt hot.

“Whitty, are you okay, baby?”  He took in breath audibly and I pulled my face back so I could study him.  I could tell he had something on his mind.  “Whit?”

“Mummy,” he began, tentatively.  “What if the doctor can’t find anything wrong with me?”  He wouldn’t look at me, staring resolutely at the edge of the receptionist’s desk across the room.

“Why does that worry you, Whitty?”

“Well because if he finds something wrong then I’ll get better faster, right?”

“Well, maybe.”

“And if he doesn’t find something wrong maybe this is just how I will feel from now on?”

My eyes filled with tears.  Isn’t this the thing we all fear?  If we can’t name, and treat, or fix, or medicate the thing that is making us feel bad, then is it simply who we are?  I remember when the children were small being very relieved at an ear infection diagnosis, for two reasons – the first being that the antibiotics would quickly kick in, improving the screaming and up-all-night situation, and the second being that if there wasn’t an ear infection then didn’t that just mean that this cranky, yelling, ornery behavior was simply my baby’s personality?

I pulled Whit against me, cupping his bony, bird-like shoulder in my hand, squeezing him, feeling the fever radiate from his forehead and the exhaustion in his sagging body.  Of course a summer fever is not an internal demon.  Of course not.  But it did remind me of the deep human fear of that which we cannot fully understand or subdue inside us, and of the various ways this makes us act out, seek comfort, dull ourselves.  I was reminded of Where the Wild Things Are, of all the ways that we cope with the fearful demons we sometimes feel raging inside of us, and of the Jung quote that “the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”


Genetics

This boy.

This boy has two brown-eyed parents and four brown-eyed grandparents.

And those blue eyes.

(also, a continuing passion for mardi gras beads)

I can’t tell you how many people say, jokingly, “Hmmm … the mailman?” Each time, I ask, with varying degrees of patience, if the commenter remembers the basics of dominant and recessive genes.

This reminds me of my friend who has boy/girl twins. She told me she gets asked, at least once a week, if they are identical. To which she responds, well, there’s that pesky matter of gender …

I guess most people were just not paying attention when their junior high science teacher covered Mendel’s peas. To me, this was one of the most fascinating parts of school. But then again, I’ve always been a science nerd.

I’ve always loved the blue of my blog header. Cornflower blue, hydrangea blue, sky blue. Maybe all along I have subconsciously been seeking the color of Whit’s eyes.

Long weekend in the sunshine

I drove down to Marion on Thursday evening with Grace and Whit.

Blue hydrangeas for Mum’s birthday.


Friday morning we walked to watch Mum play tennis.


Friday afternoon G, W and I went to the beach. Grace toiled long and hard on this sand castle, complete with seaweed flag.

Saturday afternoon we had a drink with an old friend of mine from college and her new son (and her 3 year old daughter too).


Saturday evening cooled off and Grace and Whit pulled out their matching G and W sweaters. Later that night were the fireworks, and as has become the tradition, I stayed home with Whit who dislikes them.

Matching Fourth of July pajamas on the morning of the 4th.

A swim in my great-godmother’s pool down the street.

Close friends from Boston arrived on the afternoon of the 4th and we all went to the beach. My goddaughter was delighted by the ocean.

Rose for E and me.

Grace and James played tennis while their dads played singles.

Sparklers.

Monday morning, waiting for the parade. That’s our white picket fence. Main Street.

These guys make me cry every single year.

Happy kids, in red, white and blue. I love this tradition, and this weekend. My mother’s birthday, my godfamily (extra treat: new and original, this year!), fireworks, rose, the beach, swimming, sparklers, and WW2 vets. Pretty perfect.

So different … and so much the same.

Two years ago, I wrote this … how far we’ve come and yet how things are still the same.  The requisite parade photograph will come on Monday (I may have to do a retrospective as I have many years of parade photographs now!)

Anyway … Fourth of July, 2008:

Happy Fourth! The parade was its usual motley self – both under- and overwhelming at the same time. The WW2 veterans made me cry, as usual, with their proud, dwindling presence. The children adored it, from the firetrucks to the flags to the candy thrown at them. We had assorted family and friends gathered in our front yard (one of the perks of living on Main Street is that the parade literally comes right by our house) drinking coffee and milling around.

Whit has been a handful of late; sometimes I feel like I am, more than anything, waiting him out. Trusting that this, like all things, is just a phase. The child has extraordinary instincts for self preservation. At the exact moment that I think I am going to throw in the towel and just give him up to the state, he jekyll-and-hydes into a sweet little boy. Yesterday he threw such a tantrum at the breakfast table that I had to take him out to the yard and pin him down in the grass for a time out whose tone can only be called corporal punishment-esque. He finally quieted down, accompanied me back into the kitchen, and quietly began eating his muffin. A few minutes later he looked up, fixed me with a tentative smile, and said, “Mummy? I love you.” And somehow, despite being able to feel the imprints of his teeth on my palms still, I swooned.

We have had some lovely moments during this 4 day weekend. Grace, Whit and I went swimming twice in Biege’s pool (Biege, my godmother’s mother, lives a block away and keeps her pool heated to 90+ degrees -heaven, in my book). In the absence of other distractions I was able to really just be with them, to feel their sheer joy at being in the water. Whit, for the first time, untethered himself from me – he took off, swimming with two noodles under his arms, and never looked back. It was bittersweet, of course, this wanting to “do it my own self!” but I applaud the independence as much as I mourn it. Grace is confident in the water now, interested in learning how to dive and able to swim entire laps under water.

I feel like the mother that I want to be flits in and out of my days, perniciously resistant to capture, her rhythms confounding in their resolute illogicality. Her very presence – tolerant, patient, engaged – is a blessing, telling me that I am, occasionally, the parent I aspire to be. But she is also a deep reminder of how often I fail to meet those goals, an ever-present yardstick showing me how far I am from what my children deserve.