family

Matrescence 2.0

December 2002

I loved reading The Birth of a Mother in the New York Times, and not just because that photograph reminded me of one of my favorite photos of Grace when she was a baby (see above, December 2002).  I read the article, which asserts that matrescence (the process of becoming a mother – a word that I had never known and which struck me because it acknowledges that that is, indeed, a process) is important and under-examined.  I share this view.

What I’m living right now is not so much my own first matrescence – that took place a long time ago, and being a mother is firmly at the center of who I am.  It’s more the transition of my motherhood into a new phase, but it feels as material and as jarring in its own way.  I’m struck by how I read about maternal ambivalence and postpartum depression (which was very much a part of my own matrescence) and those feel long, long ago.  I’m entirely, absolutely, head-over-heels in love with my own children now, and don’t feel much – any – apprehension about those being the central relationships of my life (along with their father). Those early, complicated days, which I can recall vividly, but with effort, have faded into the background entirely.

The future, however, is full of uncertainty.  This moment may be defined by my own full-fledged embrace of motherhood, but I can’t escape the shadow of what’s coming. My reality is taking on a new shape. Grace is going to boarding school and our family life is about to change in a major way.  There is no question this is the end of something.  I realize this is the most first world of first world problems (and when I read books like The Bright Hour, I’m reminded to Get A Grip).

As soon as I got my feet under me as a mother, it feels like, this season is about to end. I know, I know, this is just another reminder that life’s only constant is change.  My children, at 12 and 14, are such entertaining people.  I love them, but I also truly like them. They’re my favorite human beings to be around, and they easily make me laugh, think, and, sometimes, yell and also cry.

Life’s ordinary rhythms have taken on an almost unbearable beauty.  The routine of morning wakeups, breakfast, and driving to school (3/4 of a mile so it doesn’t take long!) makes me cry every single day and I have to actively try not to count how few mornings like this we have left.  I am trying to be here now, I really am, but wow, it’s hard.

I realize that it is impossible that this transition is as much of an earthquake as Grace’s arrival, but it feels almost commensurately big. I think of Jon Kabat-Zinn, of his line that “you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf,” I take a deep breath, I try not to look into Grace’s room where the folded piles of laundry I put there remind me that she still lives here, for at least a little bit more.  I try to appreciate the gorgeousness around me. No matter what happens, I will always be their mother. She isn’t going that far. I believe in the depths and fibers of my soul that this is the right next step for her.  I always said I wanted to raise a brave and a smart daughter, and here I am, watching her take flight. She is brave and smart. Everything is as it should be. I just didn’t know how much it would hurt.

April 2017

Winter break

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I want to remember winter break this year, because it was utterly ordinary and not at all perfect.  Already, as I write this in early January, the not-perfectness, the yelling and the imperfection, is fading into the slurry of memory and I’m recalling the shimmer of quiet days together.  It was the last time that my children will ever celebrate Christmas at 14 and 11, and every moment these days is limned with its own numbered-ness.  I know we won’t come back here. I want to remember it.

The week before Christmas was sort of frantic, with Matt and I working and the kids seeing friends before they left town.  Whit had a wonderful visit with one of his besties from camp who was visiting Boston. We celebrated with dear friends and finally, on the 24th, baked Christmas cookies.  On the 24th, we went to our local church for the annual pageant and service that I love so dearly.  I thought of the two Christmas Eves that Whit spent in the Children’s Hospital ER before he was 5 and felt grateful that he was sitting next to me in the pew. Then we had Christmas Eve dinner with my parents and our oldest, dearest family friends.  I sat next to my very first friend (we met when he was 6 weeks old and I was 2 weeks old) and watched my son (his godson) as we sang carols and felt full – of love, of all that’s over and almost-over, of what’s coming, of life itself.

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Then, on the 25th, the world screeched to a halt for a few days of quiet, which was entirely welcome. We had several days of marvelous visits with my sister, her husband, and her two children.  We had dinner with my father’s brother and his family (his oldest daughter, my first cousin, lives in Boston and is near and dear to all four of us) and celebrated my sister’s birthday.  My parents took Hilary and me and our families away for a night and we enjoyed being together.  There was rain and blue sky, milkshakes and birthday candles, swimming in a tiny pool and board games on the floor of a hotel gym.

On New Year’s Eve, friends from the neighborhood came over for an impromptu drink before dinner.  It was lovely.  Then we had New Year’s Eve dinner as a foursome, under stars on which each of us wrote some intentions for the new year. We played board games and had dessert and then moved upstairs to the family room.  Matt fell asleep and I joined him about 10:30.  Grace and Whit watched the ball drop.  I don’t know how long they will want to mark New Year’s Eve this way, but I’m going to enjoy every single second of it while they do.

On January 2nd, Matt and I went for a run together!  We ran and walked, and mostly walked, but we were out there, and together.  I can’t believe how far he’s come from the fall, when he was immobile and recovering.  I’m thrilled for him, and proud. It felt like an auspicious way to start the new year.  I’m hoping it’s a great year for us all, and for you, as well.

Favorite words

We have been doing a lot of vocabulary studying lately around here.  SSATs and ISEEs will do that to you.  There’s a lot about standardized tests I do not love, but any discussion of vocabulary and words I flat-out do.

Last weekend, we had a couple of hours in the car as a foursome.  We were talking about words, and it led into a discussion of our favorite words.  First of all, let me say that talking about words with my three favorite people in the world was fantastic.  I actually think this is a great conversation starter (but maybe that only reveals my deeply nerdy personality).  I was interested to hear Grace, Whit, and Matt’s favorite words, and also to think about mine.  It’s impossible for me to pick one.  But, here they are:

Grace: onomatopoeia (long discussion ensued of buzz, and fizz, and of how one of my words is in fact also an onomatopoeia)

Whit: terminate

Matt: penultimate

Lindsey: shimmer, elegy, archipelago, phosphorescence

What is your favorite word? Why?

Thanksgiving

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The closest I’ve come to touching the meaning of Thanksgiving is 2002.  Grace was a month old, and Matt’s father, John, received a lifesaving heart transplant a couple of days before Thanksgiving.  Matt, Grace, and I spent the day with my family, including both of my grandfathers (see above, with my maternal grandfather and Grace).  In the evening, we drove back to see John in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at MGH.  I think about the experience often, since it felt like I understood the meaning of Thanksgiving that day. The driving, our new baby, the warm embrace of my family, the presence of both of my grandfathers, and Matt’s father emerging from his miraculous surgery: the whole day was thick with holiness.

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After Thanksgiving dinner, in the dark, Matt and I drove back to Boston, to MGH.  John was just starting to come out of anesthesia, Marti was at the hospital, and Matt wanted to see them both.  I had Grace’s carseat slung over my arm as we took the elevator to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) and walked through a maze of shadowy glass partitions.  Despite the faint beeping of machines, there was a deep, pervasive hush; the CICU was one of those places, like a church or a library, where you automatically whispered.  In contrast to the always-bright ward where John had waited for his heart, this wing seemed to be in permanent dusk.  The metaphor that this presented struck me as odd given that this was where John was supposed to wake up and begin the next phase of his life.

John lay in a bed behind two sets of sealed glass doors.  Marti sat beside him, robed in a sterile gown and wearing a face mask and rubber gloves.  She turned when she noticed us through the glass and stood up, peeling off her gloves and lifting her mask as she hurried through the double doors.  She crouched down immediately, without saying a word, and simply stared at Grace’s sleeping face.  I glanced at Matt, wondering if we should say something, and he shook his head slightly as if to say, no, leave her.  Long moments later she stood up, hugged Matt tightly, and asked him if he wanted to go into the room.

“Is it okay, Mom?  I don’t want to bring extra germs in there,” Matt looked worried. “You know, from Grace or something?”
“No, it’s okay, as long as you wear the gloves and mask.  Theresa will help you.” Marti nodded at the nurse who was stationed between the two sets of sealed glass doors.

“Okay,” Matt went in to the small chamber between the two doors.  He spoke briefly to Theresa and then I watched him shrug the paper robe on over his clothes and, after scrubbing his hands at a small sink on the wall, pull on rubber gloves.  Theresa helped him adjust the paper mask over his face and then stood back, looking him over, and then nodded her okay.  Hesitantly, as though he was stepping onto the moon, he walked through the second set of doors to his father’s bedside.  Even through two thick panes of glass I could see trepidation in his hazel eyes above his paper mask.

“He’s just starting to wake up,” Marti murmured at me, not taking her eyes off of the two men in the room in front of us.  Matt sat down on the stool on wheels that Marti had vacated, which was to the right of John’s head.  He then looked over at the glass wall and gestured at me, holding his hands up in the general shape and size of the carseat.  “Oh!  Oh!”  I leaned over and picked up Grace’s carseat, holding it up so that John, had he been looking, could have seen it.  Matt gave me a thumbs-up sign and turned back to his dad.

“Is he awake?  Could he see that?” I asked Marti doubtfully as I lowered Grace in her blue plastic bucket to the floor.

“I don’t know.  He’s been in and out of consciousness, I’m not sure what he can see.”

“Wait,” I said, kneeling down and unbuckling Grace, trying not to wake her as I pulled her gently out of the plastic bucket.  Squatting, I held her against my shoulder and felt her moving gently, her head turning side to side, her little nose pushing against my neck.  A waft of her baby smell washed over me and I closed my eyes briefly, holding still.  Then I stood up again, holding her in front of my face, knocking gently on the glass so that Matt turned to see.  I saw his eyes crinkle in what must have been a smile beneath his mask, and he turned to his father and tapped him on the shoulder.  I looked over at Marti who was beaming, looking not at Grace but at John.  We stood that way for several long moments before Grace began to squawk and I lowered her back into her carseat.  I’ll never know what John saw.  He can’t remember anything about those days.

Hair trigger

It hasn’t been a very calm few months at our house.  Which is strange, because in other ways it’s been very calm.  We haven’t done much other than work, physical therapy, and homework (me, Matt, and kids, in that order).  But everybody feels frayed and tense, not to mention tired, and we seem to be blowing up at each other with uncomfortable regularity.

Often the mornings are bad.  We bicker and argue over breakfast (and “we” here is usually the children and me) and then pile into the car to make the 0.75 mile drive to school.  There’s some escalation of the disagreement in the car and by the time I drop Grace and Whit off I am filled with a toxic mixture of sorrow and regret.  I feel awful about having argued with the kids, usually it is at least partially my fault, and I can’t shake it off.

While I have said over and over and over again that Grace and Whit don’t belong to us, I do know that Matt and I to a certain degree create the weather in which they are growing up. I feel terrible that I’m responsible for too many tense moments and thunder storms in the last months.

I started this post before the election results and it feels self-indulgent to write about how things are snappy inside our house when I worry about the state of the country generally. But at the same time, I realize that maybe the only thing I can possibly influence IS what’s inside my house, so I need to focus there. Since November 9th I feel enormously more sorrowful and anxious, but somehow, also more focused on keeping things peaceful at home.

There are several things that keep running through my head these last few days, but chief among them is the line that I have used two times on our family holiday card.

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

This is what I want to do, to be, to model.  I just have to figure out how to stop snapping long enough to do it.

How are you doing, out there?  I’m honestly curious.