family

Storm-tossed and run aground

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” (Louisa May Alcott)

This quote, long known to me, has been in my mind lately. It occurred to me yesterday that overall, though, I feel a strange combination of storm-tossed and run aground. Both whipped around in a frenzy of wind and water, but also stuck, unable to move. This contradiction underlies a tension, I think, that I’ve written about before: the feeling of holding opposite poles in my hands simultaneously. The middle place, I guess. Stuck and lost. At the same time or alternating with an awkward rhythm.

Neither of these feelings is comfortable, and they both entail my Greatest Fear: being out of control. In the storm, I often feel unsafe, buffeted on all sides by influences whose intentions I am not sure of, by events and powers that I do not understand. But when run aground, I feel stuck, trapped, unable to move towards that life I am increasingly sure I want.

“A ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not what ships are built for.” (unknown)

All of the fear around being lost in the storm or stuck on the shoals could easily drive me to seek refuge in a safe, protected place. And oh how I know the feeling of wanting someone to keep the world at bay for me. But then I remind myself: this is not where life is lived. It is the moments when I’ve let go, gone on the (metaphorical) roller coaster, opened my heart up to the inevitable bruising … this is where I have felt most alive. And in truth? Most of the harbors I have known have become their own traps after a while.

“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky.” (John Masefield)

Hiding, retreating: this is not the solution. The sea – the storm, the wind, the rain, the water, sharp shells in the shallows that can cut you – this is where life is. In the mess, the unpredictable patterns, the haunting call of seagulls and the rhythmic snapping of halyards against masts. In the squeals of children splashing at the water’s edge, in Grace’s incandescent grin when she swam to the distant raft by herself, in the flash of white sails in the sunlight as they pass by.

These thoughts of the sea remind me of my parents, always, powerfully. I close with one of my Dad’s favorite poems, which I also deeply love. It reminds me of what I have always known: that the sea, as disorderly and uncontrollable as it is, is also home. We cannot control the tempestuous ocean of this life. Better to cast out to sea.

Crossing the Bar (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

When Whit was a cheetah

Some pictures and a memory from the archives.

On December 22nd, 2005, we woke up thinking Whit had chicken pox. I was excited, and had big plans to put Grace and he in bed together so they both got it (I would love to have avoided that vaccination which seems unnecessary to me). I took him to the doctor that morning and was told it was, in fact, an allergic reaction to amoxicillin. Apparently Whit had a textbook presentation of this allergy: second course of amoxicillin, day 8 or 9. Precisely.He was covered in red spots which were rapidly swelling and growing. The doctor switched his antibiotic and sent us home. Friday morning Whit was worse, with well more than half of his body covered in hives. I went back to the doctor who diagnosed Whit with Stephens-Johnson syndrome. My wonderful, calm doctor (who once told me of a 105 degree fever at 11pm to give Tylenol and see how it was in the morning) told me that the syndrome was a spectrum. On one side, he said, is a “mild rash.” “And on the other?” I asked, obviously. “Um, well, death.” Great. Thanks. He sent us to the Children’s Hospital ER.

To make a long story short, Whit and I went to the Children’s ER on the mornings of both the 23rd and the 24th of December. In each case they observed him, took temperatures, and sent us home.When released from Children’s around noon on the 24th I thought Whit was improving. He had shown no appetite at all and had barely taken any formula. He seemed quiet and listless but not unhappy. As I got the children ready for Christmas Eve dinner at my parents, he threw up violently. I paged the pediatrician’s office, nervous about bothering them on December 24th. One of the other two pediatricians in the practice, not my own, called me back. She told me to watch him, to give him pedialyte in whatever way possible (turned out that the baby Motrin syringe was the only way) and to call back immediately if he threw up again. He was at this point running a fever of about 100 and was about 80% covered in raised red welts.

That evening we celebrated Christmas Eve at my parents’ house with my family’s oldest, dearest friends. I was preoccupied and nervous. I kept injecting his mouth with teaspoonsful of pedialyte, one at a time. He was quiet, almost unnervingly so. Around 7, as everyone prepared to sit down, I took him to my parents’ bedroom to change his diaper. He threw up all over me. I called the doctor as advised and she told me to go immediately to the Children’s ER.

Hilary came with me and Matt stayed with Grace. I drove like a bat out of hell. The Children’s Hospital ER on Christmas Eve? Pretty close to how I imagine Calcutta. Let’s just say we were not the only people there. I can say, though, that if you need attention in this kind of setting, just throw out Stephens-Johnson Syndrome. The seas parted and they took us immediately to a room. Whit was put back into his third hospital johnny in two days and they decided to start an IV. No easy feat with a very dehydrated baby.

I consider myself a fairly unsqueamish person, and have watched my children endure all kinds of injuries, have personally held Grace down while she got stitches in her face, etc. But this was too much for me. After they had tried unsuccessfully four times to insert his IV I had to leave the room. Hilary stayed with him. They finally got the IV into him and he spent most of his first Christmas Eve at Children’s Hospital.

Whit did not have to go back to Children’s after that. The rash receeded, though slowly. We stay away from all – cillins. Whit is officially my “allergic” child. While Whit has no memory of this, Grace does, referring to the incident as “when Whitty was a cheetah.” It’s become a humorous part of the family lore, but the memory always tugs at me beneath the laughter.
That Christmas Eve, Whit’s first, will be vivid in my memory forever. Sitting there on a gurney with my johnny-clad son lying listlessly on my chest, I felt aware, suddenly and heavily, of the responsibility of being a parent. I felt like the adult for the first time. This was the first time (and other than Whit’s second nut allergic episode, exactly one year ago, the only) I’ve ever truly feared for my child’s health or well-being. And yes, yes lo what a blessing that is. How lucky I am. I know. I promise, I know.
The fragility of all felt overwhelming, the gossamer sheerness of the normalcy we take for granted every day suddenly impossibly thin. I am ashamed that I cannot translate these experiences into more humility and gratitude every single day. But in remembering them I am spurred, anew, to this gratitude.

Skipping rocks with my Dad.

I remember being a child, maybe 7 or 8, standing on the rocky beach on Long Island where my father grew up. His parents still lived in his childhood home, a few blocks’ walk from this beach. Set back from the beach were rows of wooden changing rooms, whose gray paint was peeling slightly. We used to run down the aisles between the changing rooms, laughing and chasing each other. My grandparents’ room (they were all assigned, and locked) had life jackets in it, and a strong and persistent smell of Shower to Shower talcum powder. To this day that smell takes me right back there. There was a long, narrow pier that protruded into the ocean, with a dock at the end of it. The dock is where Hilary and I played the popsicle game with other children.

Today, though, we’re not swimming. Dad is skipping rocks. He’s always been good at this: he picks the right kind of rock, flat and round, and is able to make it skip four, five, six times before it sinks into the ocean. I try to skip rocks like Dad, but I’m not as skillful, and manage at my best two skips before the rock stops moving and drops to the bottom of the ocean. So, mostly I watch. I’ve stood next to him while he skipped rocks into countless bodies of water: the ocean here, on Long Island, as well as that in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Ahead of me, though I don’t know it, is rock-skipping all the way across this ocean, off the coast of England and into that country’s lakes.

I sit here on an airplane, watching my children across the aisle, hearing Whit wonder whether we are “on the earth,” “in outer space,” or “somewhere in the middle.” For the record, I’m going with (c). I am as far as possible from my 9 year old self on the shore of Long Island Sound. Yet I can’t stop thinking of my brown-haired father, meditatively flinging rock after rock into the ocean, making them skim across the water before falling in, creating the illusion of a solid where there is really only liquid.

My mind is like that, skipping from one place to another before surrendering and sinking deep into the dark unknown. It tries to stay afloat, tries to believe that the surface that it is skimming over is solid enough to support it, to keep it buoyant. And yet, eventually, my thoughts always wind up being pulled underneath the surface. I am forced to admit, over and over again, that this surface is not solid enough to keep me from sinking deep into the layers. But maybe that is okay, maybe the lesson is that, as my father kept skipping new rocks, new thoughts will come and take me skimming across the surface again. And the buoyancy of that skipping, of that being aloft, means so much more for the knowledge of what lies beneath.

Come Away to Sea

Grace was a colicky baby. I was a colicky new mother. Those first few weeks and months involved far more crying than they did sleep. First, I was lost in the 24 hour tilt-a-whirl cycle of newborn-ness where day and night blend into each other in an endless wash of tears, milk, and a general soggy grayness. As a routine slowly, awkward emerged from this murk I started trying to put Grace to bed around the same time every night. This was no small feat. And it was so scary to me that I remember feeling full-blown dread as night approached, feeling each afternoon as the sun went down as though my anxiety, which started in the pit of my stomach, would eat me alive.

I started playing a Martha Stewart lullabye CD at bedtime. I don’t remember where this came from, but I chose it basically at random and put it into the CD player in Grace’s room. The dulcet tones of “Baby Mine” and “Blackbird” accompanied those early evenings when I would rock her in the ivory rocker, nursing her to a calm but not asleep state. I was obsessed with her learning to put herself to sleep. I’d burp her, swaying with her over my shoulder in the darkened room, humming along to the familiar tunes that got even more well known because I was hearing them every single night. Then – oh, careful, oh careful – I would put her on her back in her crib, standing over her as though she was a grenade about to go off. Well, let’s face it, she sort of was. I’d gradually inch backwards out of the room, freezing in my tracks as though caught in a bad act when she turned to watch me. At the beginning of this enterprise my success rate was low but it climbed over time and she eventually became a great sleeper.

I remember so many nights my anxiousness to get on with my evening. Two feelings, truly, coursed through my veins in those evenings: I wanted to have some time by myself, and I wanted my baby to damn well do what I wanted her to do. I wanted her to just obey and go to sleep. I also wanted a couple of precious hours where I could be nobody’s mother. I hate now knowing that I had both of those feelings. Why was I rushing those minutes past? And why did I care so much about her doing what I wanted? I guess it’s normal that I wanted to get some rest – but, still. I wish I had not wished those evenings away. I wish, now, that I could have those baby-drenched evenings back. Every single one of them.

And that CD still sings her to sleep. To this day, she listens to it going to sleep. Her bedroom is next to mine, and every time she goes to the bathroom or anything in the night she turns it on again. In many ways this CD is the soundtrack of my life. I’ve had to replace it twice. I can sing every single song from that CD, though the ones that come to mind most viscerally are Come Away to Sea and Home. I imagine a day when I am walking down the street – or being wheeled – at 80 years old, and I hear an acoustic version of one of those songs. I will be, instantly and powerfully, back in a darkened nursery suffused with the powder smell of baby, a dark-haired infant scrunched up against my chest, rocking her back and forth.

When I think back to that 28 year old woman I feel flickers of empathy for her but mostly I feel frustrated at her, even angry. I wish I could shake her – myself! – by the shoulders and let her know that she would spend the rest of her life wishing she could reach back to live these minutes again. There’s things I’d like to tell her … but I can’t. Of course I could not know that then.  Isn’t this, in fact, the struggle of our lives?

Come Away to Sea (David Wilcox)

The wind is right for sailing
The tide is right to go
So come away to sea with me
There’s things that you should know

There’s things I’d like to tell you
That words can’t seem to say
Unless we’re on this simple craft
Sailing far away

Sail around this sound
Far away from shore
Come away to sea with me
Sail your heart once more

Join me in this simple craft
Welcome to my home
The things I’d like to say to you
Are better said alone

So let your heart sail with me
We’ll cast away from town
And we’ll sail away on music
Inside this simple sound

This simple craft I play upon
Is made from wooden parts
Its never sailed an ocean
But is sure can sail my heart

And if you feel the music
Then we’ve raised another sail
The ocean wraps this world around
The wind will never fail

Inspired by Jo’s Flashback Friday prompt at Mylestones. Thank you Jo!