family

The prism through which all of life is seen

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Motherhood is is both enormous and tiny. It is made up of emotions so unwieldy that I can’t put them into words, and of moments so small I would miss them if I blinked (and I’ve surely missed millions). Sometimes the feelings are so giant I feel swollen with them, taut, tight, very much like I was in the last trimester of pregnancy. Sometimes the minutiae is so small that it seems impossible to hang any meaning onto it, and every time I am surprised when somehow, the hook actually holds.

For me, motherhood is more than one facet of the human experience.

It is the prism through which all of life is seen.

In my struggle to make sense of the moments of emotion so overwhelming I feel as though I’m jumping off a tall pier into the ocean, or ducking through the heavy downpour of a waterfall, I turn to the page.  I read the words of others and I write and write and write, circling the same topics, over and over again.  I cannot fit my arms around the enormity of it, no matter how I try.  And as soon as I think I have, it expands, changes shape.  Motherhood is a balloon expanding all the time and floating upward; I watch it above me, face tipped up, standing in the shadow it casts.

For the tiny, the minute, I don’t have to look any further than right here. The moments flutter like magnolia petals around my feet, stunning, short-lived, and quickly turning to brown mush. When I write about them I’m trying to memorialize them in their pink beauty, their spring perfume wafting off of them in waves.  Motherhood is running into Michaels in a suit on the way to a meeting to grab a gingerbread house kit so that your daughter can make it that afternoon.  It is  sleeping on the top bunk on robot sheets because the resident of the bottom bunk was having a bad dream.  It is muting your conference call to advise on a homework question about fractions.  It is rushing home from visiting your mother in the hospital to have your daughter confront you about not spending enough time with her.  It is losing track of time while writing your son a birthday letter and then hurrying to a meeting with red eyes and the sheepish look of someone who’s clearly been crying.  It is missing your children with a visceral ache while they are at school and then, within five minutes of their reentry to the house, snapping at them to “keep it down!” with a surge of aggravation.

Big and small. Tiny and huge. Overwhelming and underwhelming. Tears and laughter. All of these tensions, some of them cliches, exist in every single day for me.

Some parts of this post were originally written four years ago.

 

Small moments, and a snowman

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This, right here: my favorite moment of the winter break.  On the last weekend, Grace made a scavenger hunt for Matt and me, which took us all over the house with clues that each mentioned a cherished memory of our time off.  These included the snow fort she and Whit had built, Old Sturbridge Village, skating outdoors during a cold snap, dinner with our dear family friends, and the New Year’s dinner that the four of us had and the board games we played after.

The scavenger hunt culminated here, with this big snowman and words of thanks, on our bed.  I sat down and folded Grace in my arms, eyes swimming with tears.

Thank you, I whispered into her ear.  Sometimes her creativity and generosity take my breath away, as does her visible gratitude for this life of hers (and of ours).

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that scavenger hunt or that snowman.  What it reminds me is that children do not need grand plans to create special memories.  Yes, maybe I’m contradicting myself, since I know I recently vowed to help my children see the world.  But maybe these two things can coexist.  And, dare I say it, I think this snowman and this series of reminders of how important little experiences can be actually means more to me than do large adventures.  As I said in August, I am rarely prouder of my children than when they enjoy small moments.

This is an absolute priority for me as a parent: protecting Grace and Whit’s propensity towards wonder and their predilection to be overjoyed by small things.  Grace’s scavenger hunt reminded me of this, and of what I believe children need and want above all else: our attention.  Attention, which is, after all, love incarnate.  What we pay attention to blooms.  Being with them, in the moments big and small, that’s what matters. That’s why the snowman exists: because in those ordinary experiences – sledding, building a fort, sitting around a dinner table, laughing at a board game – I was truly there.

I know this, but I needed the reminder.

The truth is I need to refocus on this.  I’m embracing what Rachel May Stafford advocates in Hands Free Mama: A Guide to Putting Down the Phone, Burning the To-Do List, and Letting Go of Perfection to Grasp What Really Matters.  On Ali Edwards’ blog I read about Rachel’s suggestion to publicly declare the intention to be more Hands Free, so I am doing that now: I must rededicate myself to the practice of being present with my children.  I must put down my iphone.  I must trust that my work and personal email will wait.  I must remember the critical, essential importance of just being with Grace and Whit.

I must remember the snowman.  I apparently could do it over winter break.  Now I need to keep doing it.

The past glinting through the present

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We had a marvelous – albeit looooong – holiday break.  There were two highlights that I can’t stop thinking about.  The first was a visit, in the snow, to Old Sturbridge Village on Boxing Day.  Because of some combination of these two factors, the place was deserted.  We were very nearly the only people there.  We walked around in the gently falling snow, and I couldn’t stop thinking about where this country began, and of feeling pride in how tenacious, brave, and stubbornly determined those who came before us were.

Then, the next day, my entire family (my parents, my sister and her husband and two daughters, and Matt, Grace, and Whit) went to see some of my late grandfather‘s pieces of art at an art museum in western Massachusetts.  He donated them before his death.  The pieces of art are undistinguished, I think, from an artistic standpoint, but they hold tremendous sentimental value.  In a room where a large portrait of a Chinese man looked down on us, four of Pops‘ grandchildren looked at some of the snuff bottles that he brought back from his childhood in China and displayed in his homes.

I was overcome with memory.  The portrait had hung on the wall of my grandparents’ home in Long Island, site of so many of my childhood memories.  Then it had moved to the wall of the apartment my grandparents moved to, the apartment both lived in when they died.  The snuff bottles hold a real place in my memory too, particularly the story my mother tells of coming around a corner in the Long Island house to see the toddler me, having pushed a chair against the wall, inches away from grabbing one of the fragile bottles.

This portrait, these bottles, along with the scroll that hangs on the wall of our home and Pops’ fluent Mandarin until the day he died: these were all relics of his childhood, spent in Beijing.  I often forget how extraordinary this small detail is: my grandfather, with his four siblings, grew up in Beijing.  In that small room in western Massachusetts, four of Pops’ great-grandchildren leaned over treasures that he had brought back from his own childhood in Asia:  tiny bottles carved out of ivory and coral, the portrait of a Chinese man.  Their childhood, my childhood, his childhood: the room was full of memory, and years banged together, reminding me of all that had come before.

It is such an immense world, and we are so small.  Two of the four children in that room lived in Israel for a year as small children.  The two grandchildren in that room, now women in their (late!) 30s, grew up largely in Europe.  I felt a flush of shame at my family’s unadventurousness, I’ll admit: we’ve stayed a lot closer to home than anyone else in the room.  But still: all of our paths are different, and they take us into the world, no matter where we go.

Both of these experiences, in their own way, involved the past glinting through the present.  Whether it was with respect to America in general or my family in particular, I confronted where I came from on that trip, was reminded of the spirit of both endurance and adventure that marks my and our history.

2013: October, November, December

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Grace turned eleven.

We saw the Jerusalem IMAX movie and visited the Dead Sea Scrolls.  In the exhibit, we were able to write notes that would be sent to Jerusalem and put into the Western Wall.  Grace wrote “I would like to thank God for blessing me with an amazing family and everything I need.  Thank you God.”  Whit wrote “I pray to God that the Bruins win the Stanley Cup.”  Meet my children.

Whit dressed up as Indiana Jones and Grace as an “80s Valley Girl” for Halloween.

The four of us went to New Hampshire for homecoming at the high school I attended.  It was both freezing and fun.

We spent one wonderful Saturday morning rock climbing as a family.

Our Christmas traditions swept us along in December: tree trimming, carols, cookie-baking, noticing things.

My favorite post: Catastrophe and beauty, loss and joy

My favorite quote (which is actually my favorite quote of the whole year):

“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. . . . I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”

– Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

2013: July, August, September

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We had a reunion with all of Matt’s family in Vermont over the Fourth of July.

We had several wonderful sails with my parents in their seaside town in Massachusetts.

Grace, Whit and I took our fourth annual trip to Legoland.

Grace and Whit both went to sleepaway camp.  I cried as we drove away, but maybe not for the reason you think.

Whit’s godmother, one of my dearest friends came to visit on her way back to Beijing.

We spent a week as a family on Lake Champlain, a tradition that has come to mean an enormous amount to us.

My favorite post: It’s Not All Shiny

My favorite quote (of this season and, very possibly, of all):

“Life gives us what we need when we need it,” she said.  “Receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing.”

– Pam Houston, In My Next Life