family

Unadventurous

There is no question that I am the unadventurous sibling.  I’ve mentioned my sister?  The one who is living in Jerusalem for the year, with her two daughters, ages 5 and 3?  Yes, that one. Apparently many boarding school teachers spend their sabbaticals reading books in a hammock at their lake house.  Not so my brother-in-law and my sister.  Instead they moved their small children halfway across the world to the Middle East.  And whoa, am I proud of her.

On the other hand, I have lived in the same house for 11 years.  A house that is a mile from where my children go to school and less than a mile from the house my sister and I were born in.

Hilary and I grew up in the same world; we are from the same terroir.  In fact she’s the only person in the world who was by my side during those formative early years with me.  It is she who was bundled under the seat in front of me (and my mother) on a transatlantic flight when we were 1 and 3.  It is she who’s standing next to me in so many pictures across Europe, with Another Damn Cathedral (ADC) soaring behind us (you can see that I did not inherit my father’s photography skills: in the photo above we’re standing before the Dome of the Rock.  But I chose a less-than-optimal spot for capturing the moment.  Classic.).

Coming as we do from the same particular soil, one that was intense, challenging, and rich, Hilary and I have a great many things in common.  I’ve always thought we look very much alike, a fact that I think is apparent in the photograph above (which redeems it, in my view, from its lack of excellence in the touristy-shot category).

But there are some big differences, and today it’s this one – the appetite for adventure and risk – that’s on my mind.

I’ve long believed that people are more a product of nature than nurture, so who knows how much of Hilary’s and my differences are innate and how much of them come about through our different reactions to the same circumstances.  But regardless, I look at her and T, and think of the extraordinary experiences they are engraving n their daughters’ early memories, and I wonder why it is that I went so thoroughly the other way.

My father has long held that an international adventure is critical for proper family life.  I know I’m a bit of a disappointment, at least on that dimension.  It’s true that my own personal experience of our transatlantic childhood was not unequivocally positive.  I would never do it differently, but for me the back-and-forth across the Atlantic rhythm had some difficult repercussions.  But of course there were tremendous riches, too.  And when I visit Hilary in Jerusalem, and witness all that they are exploring and learning, I recall only the horizon-expanding moments.

I’ll never know why it is that I responded in such an unadventurous way to my childhood.  I regret it, in some ways, but in others I’m doing just what I said I’d do: stay put.  What I find myself thinking now, in the aftermath of our life-changing trip, is of how I can introduce adventure, particularly of the international sort, into our life without fundamentally changing its structure.  Whit’s godmother, one of my oldest friends, is moving to China this month.  I am dreaming of a visit to Beijing.  Stay tuned.

And Hilary, thank you, as always, for ever, for the continued inspiration you provide for me.

 

Jerusalem

I still don’t quite have words to fully describe our experience in Jerusalem.  I recommend Hilary’s reflections, and in lieu of any writing, offer some photographs.

My sister Hilary and I and our families by the Dome of the Rock.  We went to the Temple Mount twice, and both times I was moved by a sense of calm and peace in the expansive plaza that surrounds the beautiful, exquisitely-detailed building.  Looking at this picture I’m struck, also, by the evidence that Hilary and I are, in fact, grown-ups, and that we have created these real live families.  Which, somehow, continues to shock me.

Jesus Christ’s birthplace in the basement of the Church of the Nativity.  Like so many of the high, holy spots in Jerusalem (and in this case, Bethlehem) I was struck by what seemed like simultaneous ornateness and randomness.  We knelt in front of this silver star and touched it, in a small, low-ceilinged basement lit by hundreds of gas lanterns.

Bethlehem rooftops, with a mosque and two churches cohabiting.  And the stunning blue sky that graced our whole visit except for Christmas Day, when it poured all day long (and created an entirely different, but also real, beauty).

Grace and I on the Mount of Olives on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve in Bethlehem.  Heavily armed guards and Santa.

Sunset over Shepherd’s Field, where the angels first appeared to tell of Jesus’s birth.  We sat in an ancient church, open to the air, and sang Christmas carols as the sun set.

Christmas morning in a 12th century Crusader church.  The children went forward to light the advent wreath’s four candles.

Mark of Islam against the same glorious sky.  So many of my pictures are of crescent moons and crosses and flags against the blue Jerusalem sky.

Again, the Dome of the Rock.

The crosses of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  Visible in the same frame as the gold dome, if I had had a wider lens.

My son looking up to my father – in so many ways, literal and figurative – at the Western wall.

The prayer that Grace put into the Western Wall.  I left one too.  Praying is saying thank you.

Damascus Gate.  One morning we circled the ramparts around the old city, and explored behind this ornate and beautiful facade.

Inside Jesus’s tomb, from which he ascended into heaven.  I love this picture because you can see the children are praying and I am looking up.  That’s what I do, always, when prayer is called for.  I look up: to the sky, to the stained-glass windows above the altar, just up, up, up.  It’s my automatic instinct.

And so, enriched by a week in December, looking up, always, I go forward into 2012.  Thank you, HTHM.

Trusting myself

Before we went to Jerusalem, I had an exchange with my friend Aidan about how mothers universally doubt themselves.  This is simply and inherently part of the terrain, she said, and I agree.  But for days after our conversation I found myself thinking about those moments – rare, but important – where I have trusted myself as a mother even when the prevailing wisdom said otherwise.  To understand how vital these experiences are to me you have to understand that I was never a “maternal” person – I had never changed a diaper until I had Grace, I didn’t babysit as a kid, and having children was never part of the future I ran so aggressively and directly for.  It wasn’t not part of the vision I had of my life, but somehow it – motherhood – was never an explicit part of my plan.

And then, as you know if you know me or read this blog, motherhood came upon me suddenly, without warning; my pregnancy, a surprise, announced itself the same day that Matt’s father was diagnosed with a terrible illness.  Indeed, Grace’s gestation, birth, and infancy are wound tightly around my father-in-law’s illness and eventual, miraculous heart tranplant.

All of that is to say that I reflect with a very real sense of wonder at the moments when I did trust my own mothering instincts.  I was often not aware of this in the moment, but with perspective certain turning points stand up, insistently, reminding me of the undeniable power of an identity to which I’d never given much thought: mother.

During my labor with Grace, I went somewhere I’ve never been again, to a land of incendiary and incandescent pain, and I knew somehow that she and I were going to be okay.  A more conventional birth environment probably would not have allowed this to happen, so my choice at 28 weeks to move to the midwifery practice at the small local hospital – which was, on the face of it, somewhat radical – is one I continue to be proud of (and amazed by).

When Grace was almost 2 and she had some symptoms that our doctor could not understand.  He sent us to a specialist at Children’s, and she had blood work, x-rays, ultrasounds, a CAT scan.  The doctor began talking about possibility of a brain tumor.  In this midst of this – a time that I recall more than anything as utterly devoid of panic – I decided to switch her from soy milk to rice milk.  I was worried about the estrogen-mimicking qualities of soy.  All of her doctors scoffed at me.  Her symptoms disappeared in 2 weeks, and I’ve been profoundly skeptical of soy ever since.

When Whit was 3 his nursery school teacher was worried about his speech, and was unsure whether something cognitive was going on.  She sent us to speech therapy, where had him evaluated, and the whole time I failed, again, to freak out.  I knew he was fine and he was (and is).  He just speaks – to this day – with a slightly funny accent.  Now it makes us all laugh.

When Grace was 5 (almost 6) she flew on an airplane alone.  She flew from Philadelphia to Boston as an unaccompanied minor.  I put her on the plane (well, I watched her walk down the gangway with a flight attendant) and Matt and Whit met her at the gate in Boston.  Unbeknownst to me, she wrote about it in her kindergarten journal, and I cried when I saw it at our parent-teacher conference.  I received stinging criticism on the playground and from other mothers (notably, not from any of my close friends).  To this day she talks about the experience, evincing great pride and self-confidence about the fact that she did it.

And these days, I follow my intuition every day.  It weaves a narrow path, glimmering, through the overscheduled, overstuffed, more-more-more world of childhood today, and I try to follow it, hand-over-hand, like I’m palming a ribbon.  I take my children for walks, I take them to the playground, we thrill at the small sparrow on the porch.  I worry – I’ll admit it, a lot – that their lack of skills at Mandarin or violin or hockey will be a problem eventually when it comes to applying to schools, colleges, etc.  But even more, I believe in the small still voice in my head that says: protect this time.

Aidan, thanks for prompting this conversation, for causing me to dive into my own memories, to remember anew that I do have instincts here, despite how often I bemoan the fact that mothering does not come naturally to me.

Do you have memories like these, about any aspect of your life, that bolster your trust in yourself?

February: I left a piece of myself there

Last week I read Amy at Never True Tales’ words on The Witching Years.  She writes about the years that her children were young, with a combination of regret, loss, gratitude and wonder that I recognize intimately.

It’s clearer here, on the other side. In the light. With kids who brush their own teeth and do their own homework and get their own snacks. I know now that being a mom of young children, staying in the house day after day, parenting solo 80% of the time…well, it is what it is. (Oh, is it ever.) I know that I did my best.

I also know I’ll never get those years back, as much as they often make me shudder: those years that passed so slowly as to nearly grind backward. Those years so long I measured my children’s ages in months instead. And that’s a travesty, because I left a piece of myself there. Something raw, and unmeasured, and instinctively maternal. Something sacrificial.

Those years were also, for me, a time that felt removed from the rest of my life.  It’s absolutely true that it’s clearer here, and also that this feels a bit like the “other side.”  In retrospect those dark years were a kind of slow, dark traverse, like the hours-long slog to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro where all I can remember is step, breathe, pause.  Step, breathe, pause.  In a white-out ice storm.  For eight hours.  All the while wanting it to be over, and then the minute I’m through it I want to go back.

Hurry up, slow down, faster, slower, the interplay of impatience and of regret.  This is the music to which my life is danced.  When my children were little I used to talk wistfully – everyone used to talk – about “getting my life back.”  And yes, I have my life back now.  But it’s not the same life.  And furthermore, I feel nothing short of anguish that I wished over some of the most tender, raw, and special days of my life.  I will never revisit that unique interval of time when your regular life – that life I wanted back so fiercely – recedes.  I will never have that wild magic back.

And I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.  What I can’t stop thinking about is the notion of I left a piece of myself there. Oh, yes.  My first few months of motherhood were a crucible, so hot that I emerged made up of a totally different alloy.  In those dark weeks it rained and snowed constantly, we waited for Matt’s father to come through surgery, I woke up every morning from deep, soggy sleep and swallowed a white pill, believing desperately that it would help me?  Beyond those initial weeks, the first few years were also their own country.  Set to the drumbeat cadence of the needs of a toddler and an infant, the demarcations between day and night eroded, the very earth beneath my feet tilting perilously.   My sense of self adjusted slowly, creakingly, to this new forever-after reality?

What did I leave there?

I left my body swollen with childbirth, with milk, with life.  I left eyes so tired that they felt like they had sand in them; I’d press my fingers to my eyelids and see stars exploding faintly in the blackness.  I left behind the powdery smell of newborns, a bottle drying rack by the sink, mint green coils of diaper genie wrapped diapers, sterling silver rattles dented from being thrown on hardwood floors, and all sizes of white onesies. I left behind the explosive and extraordinary experience of natural childbirth, though it reverberates to this day through my sense of self.

I left my naive but absolute belief that motherhood was my birthright.  That shattered like a lightbulb exploding and left behind questions and doubts as numerous as those shards of glass.  One of the tasks of the last few years has been to see the beauty in the doubts, the tremendous richness in the questions.

Most of all I left behind my certainty.  My certainty that I knew what I was doing, that my path was assured, that I was safe.  That was lost forever in those weeks where my sense of solid ground shifted; the tremors of those days reverberate still.  Nothing feels safe, but the uncertainty holds a dangerous, fearful promise that I never anticipated.  The impact of those years is carved onto my soul as indelibly as a scar would be on my skin; the difference is it is invisible to others.

I grieve those old, surer, more confident versions of myself, though in retrospect I can see in each of them the buried seam of doubt, rising occasionally to the surface, disturbing the apparently smooth, clear surface like a pebble dropped into a lake.  That’s what I left there, most of all, in the autumn of 2002: who I was sure I was, what I was certain the world was, and the future I saw unfurling in front of me so vividly and assuredly.

Nothing has ever been sure again.  And what an immense, outrageous, terrifying blessing that has been.

Off to Jerusalem

We are off today to visit my sister and her family in Jerusalem.  It is Grace and Whit’s first trip out of the country, and an adventure for all of us.  I plan to truly soak up our time there, which would already be holy simply because it’s my whole family together, but is made extraordinarily more so by our visit to the holiest place in the world.

We return on the 30th.  I’m going to post one of my favorite posts from each month (other than August, which was my month of photos, and December, which feels too recent) for the remaining days of this year after the solstice.  I’ll be back in January.  It was a surprisingly emotional experience, this diving into my archives (diving into the wreck, you might say – and, indeed, the words are maps).  It was not always easy to choose what I wanted to share as emblematic of a particular month.

Thank you for being here, for reading what I share.  It means more to me than I can ever possibly express.

May you have a happy, hopeful, and holy rest of 2011, celebrating the close of the year with those you love.