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So, as you know, I’ve been pretty preoccupied lately with questions about how we – I! – can be more present in our lives. Once in a while, I have a day where I feel like maybe, just maybe, it’s within my reach, that conscious life. Thursday was such a day. I felt overflowing, at times, with awareness of the abundant beauty in my regular little life. In fact, I had the Weepies’ “All This Beauty” in my head all day long.

I woke up when Whit pushed his little nose into my neck from the side of the bed. He crawled in with me, snuggling up. How much longer will he do this? I am just not ready for children who won’t cuddle. I am not generally a fan of physical contact but this guy? For sure. He pressed his little feet against my legs and breathed his breath that smelled faintly like sweet potatoes into my face. Now this isn’t because he’d been eating actual sweet potatoes, seeing as this child has never eaten so much as a raisin from the fruits-and-vegetables category, but I swear that’s what he smelled like. I whispered in his ear that I loved him and he whispered back, “Mummy, I love you as much as the sky.”

Then I ran out to get coffee and as I was driving back was momentarily struck by the gorgeousness of the pale gray-green rime that covered the field at the park down the street. It shimmered in the morning light, this layer of frost that was so beautiful in part, I’m sure, because I knew as soon as the sun came up it would melt away.

It was a no school day, so the children watched some TV as I folded laundry. For some reason, I found myself charmed by the little boy briefs with dinosaurs and trucks on them. I was also appalled by the tremendous length of my childrens’ pajama bottoms: when did their legs get so long? Such a cliche, but there it is. I heard the “Rainbow Connection” playing on the TV in the family room and felt happy, happy, happy.

Then we went into a local park to meet some friends. As we approached the park, I saw someone I had not expected to see. Grace was mid-story about a squirrel when my friend saw me and shouted hello. “Hi!” I exclaimed, interrupting Grace. She burst into tears. I was able to distract her from the brink of a tantrum with the delights of a playground and, later, those of her friend. But this came back later.

During quiet time, Whit emerged from his room to hand me a large teddy bear. I looked at him, mystified, and he said, “for the goodwill bag, Mummy.” That blew me away, I admit. And then as soon as I got him back in his room, Grace came out (“quiet time” is like an extended game of whack-a-mole, and frankly not altogether quiet). She was crying. “What, Grace?” I asked her. She could barely talk through her tears. This was one upset seven year old. I asked her to sit on my lap in the chair in the living room and I rubbed her back as she calmed down.

“Mummy,” she began, looking right at me with those huge, bottomess brown eyes, “Today at the park? The squirrel? When you said hi to Sally? That really hurt my feelings.”
“I’m sorry, Gracie. Tell me more?”
“Well, sometimes, when you see an adult, and you are excited to see them, you stop listening to me. Sometimes I feel like you are not paying attention to me. And you always tell me interrupting is wrong. But then you do it sometimes?” Her voice wavered and I could tell she was not sure if she was saying something wrong.

And yes, universe, I heard you. Boom. Guess I’m not really as present as I was thinking I was, on that one day. Boom boom neon: pay attention. This is your daughter, Lindsey. And so I did. I looked right back at her and apologized for interrupting. We discussed a better way to handle the situations – because I told her there would be more – when I simply cannot for whatever reason give her my uninterrupted attention for the duration of a story or episode. She gave me a huge hug and thanked me for listening to her.

I understood in a single moment of startling, stunning truth what people mean when they say their children are their teachers. I’m embarassed now to admit I never quite got that before. I do now. My daughter, my teacher. A seven-year-old sage with chipped nail polish and double-tied shoelaces that I can’t untie. A font through which the universe reminds me of that most important thing: be here. Be here now.

And I remembered the graffiti Gracie had shown me at the park that very morning. All Is Love. She asked if this was from Where the Wild Things Are (we listen to the soundtrack in the car a lot, and that’s her favorite song) and I said I didn’t know, but it was a good thing to live by. And, yes it is. Love that reminds us of who we want to be. Love in tears and love in hugs. Love expressed through teddy bears for goodwill and through purple graffiti on a new playground structure. All is love.

It will surprise exactly nobody who knows me that I am intimately acquainted with loneliness. She and her siblings – anxiety, fear, sadness – travel with me every day. On different days I carry a different one on my shoulders, feeling knobby knees bumping into my temples and shifting to try to walk steadily while balancing such an awkward and heavy load.

Lately, it’s loneliness I’m carrying, and I find myself staggering under her weight. This has been a long carry, this one, a long slog. And I’m realizing that loneliness’s mood changes day by day, depending on me and the circumstances I find myself in. She has flavors.

The basic loneliness, and the one I am most comfortable with, is that of being physically alone. In fact, in truth, I crave this kind of loneliness sometimes. I like being alone. Of course, much has been written and theorized about the enormous distinction between loneliness and aloneness, and I agree with it. Still, sometimes, after a long afternoon by myself in the house or a quiet night at home, I am surprised by a shiver of loneliness. This loneliness always straddles the line between pleasant and chilly, and it always passes as quickly as it comes. Well, like a shiver.

Then there is loneliness for a specific person. A friend once told me she felt like an amputee when her boyfriend left for long trips. This loneliness is profound, and feels for me like a pulsating ache that will not go away. It’s a preoccupying kind of pain: the sting of a deep cut that blots out everything else, the sharp hurt of a bad knee making it impossible to walk without mulling and considering the injury with every step. This loneliness makes itself known, it shouts out to us that we wildly, agonizingly miss someone who is special. It seems to point out the empty space next to us that used to hold the person who is gone. I am always surprised by what feels like the blank disloyalty of physical space: how can it not hold in some energetic way the remnants of the person and the experience we shared?

Finally, there is the loneliness that I’ve been carrying lately, the kind that is to me the most pervasive, the most invasive, the most toxic and terrifying. This is the feeling of being lonely when surrounded by people. Worst, by close friends. For me this kind of loneliness creeps in on little cat feet (like fog in a harbor) and, when it sits down and makes itself comfortable, is hard to evict. This loneliness is not fog for me but a cold liquid syringed into my veins.

This loneliness is existential, and it reminds me that there is no way to be fully known. That regardless of how many words I spill, of how desperately I seek to connect, I can never really share the contents of my heart and head. That what I have is myself. And just that. These limbs, this skin, this network of synapses working overtime, frantically, making me grind my teeth to try to burn off some of that excess psychic and emotional energy. I realize intellectually that this is a very useful reminder.

I believe that even the most introverted people long for some kind of connection. Nobody, as much as they love being alone, wants to be lonely. Everybody wants to be seen and known. Once again I return to my evergreen theme, and one of my favorite quotes of all:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Plato

Everyone knows loneliness’s moods. Everyone struggles under her weight, or that of other burdens, some of the time. And for me, loneliness has absolutely nothing to do with how many friends or family I have, with what my life looks like from the outside. Those things might actually make the third kind of creeping, icy loneliness worse. Because I sit and look out at my life and clench my fists with frustration that with all of that richness out there, all of that love, I cannot feel less alone. I know. I know. I’m trying.

This afternoon, as pouring rain turned to fat, wet snowflakes (October 18th! Please, universe, no) I took my children to see Where the Wild Things Are. I’ve been really excited for this movie – when we were at Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs the preview made me cry. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack and generally counting days until it came out. I love Dave Eggers, I love Spike Jonze, I love Maurice Sendak. Win win, right?

It did not disappoint. Not at all. I found Where the Wild Things Are to be beautiful, wistful, ambiguous, and full of soul. The wild things themselves were stunning, both otherworldly and deeply human in their expressiveness. The movie left me with many thoughts, but most of all I think it was a melodic riff on the desperate desire to belong. On the fundamental human need to find a tribe.

It was also, of course, about childhood. The metaphor of Max sailing his own craft was gorgeously expressed. There were parallel stories about how we act out because we are scared. The fact that almost all bad behavior has an understandable root cause has been on my mind lately. I am realizing how much better served we would all be by approaching with compassion those we love when they are being childish or having a tantrum or crying inexplicably. Jonze weaves lovely, echoing stories about the way we are sometimes unable to control our own reactions and emotions, and the genuine ways we all strive to cope with and make amends for that.

The movie has both text and exquisite, sensitive subtext. Like Bronte’s madwoman in the attic, the wild things serve as metaphor for Max’s own demons. He is afraid of them, he conquers them with fake bravado, he breaks down and shows his own fear, and finally he learns to understand and empathize with them. It is at the end, after being figuratively reborn from one of the wild things and from his own devils, that Max decides to return home. And what a return it is: I had tears running down my face watching Catherine Keener’s portrayal of an honest, imperfect mother.

I was surprised, in the days leading up to the movie, by the debate that it sparked. After hearing several people say it was too scary and too mature for children, I decided to read some of the commentary. The Newsweek review is thought-provoking. Midway through, the article poses a question that I stopped to really think about:

But what if that intensity, that asymmetry, is exactly why kids should see Wild Things? What if the very thing that makes the movie “controversial” is also what makes it necessary, now more than ever?

The article goes on to muse more generally about the modern-day control we exert over our children and what kinds of losses, intentional or otherwise, this has entailed for childhood. It references an article from the New York Review of Books by Michael Chabon entitled Manhood for Amateurs: The Wildness of Childhood. I read this article this summer but found it even more provocative and wise when I reread it today.

Chabon’s essay is a concerned obituary for the freedom – “the Wildness” – that he enjoyed as a child. He grieves his children’s loss of independence, autonomy, and adventure. His theory – and his descriptions of his own childhood support it – is that only by being given freedom to roam and experiment and, sometimes, get lost, do children develop resilience and creativity. In more abstract terms, he posits that as parents have taken over the navigation for our children the vital lessons they should glean from their travels suffer.

His words rang in my head as I watched Where the Wild Things Are this afternoon, continually sneaking glances at my spellbound children’s faces, lit by the flickering screen.

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children’s imaginations? This is what I worry about the most….Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted—not taught—to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?

I share Chabon’s concerns and also his frustration at the inability to provide space for our children, literal and figurative room for them to grow their own wings, minds, and, indeed imaginations. He notes that even if he let his daughter go ride her bike alone, as he would like to do, there are no other children for her to share the journey with. By definition this makes the experience less rich for her. I know that immersing children in the 2 hour wonderland of Jonze’s movie is of course not even a drop in the bucket of experiences we’d like them to have, but maybe every tiny story helps. Certainly to be thinking about it, while depressing, seems better than simply accepting the status quo of modern day parenting.