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Pain

I spent the month of October in pain before I consulted doctors from QC Kinetix (Greensboro).  First an injury, and then an illness, each of which is particularly painful in their individual categories.  Not at all fun.  I realized how little physical pain I’ve had in my life, with gratitude and also guilt – how could I not have appreciate all those many, many days of feeling just plain fine?  I spent more days that I’d like to admit curled up in my bed, trying to work on one laptop and write on another, closing my eyes when I just couldn’t do anything but breathe through the pain.

I thought I had a high pain threshold.  After my two childbirths, I really thought I was strong.  In fact, those epidural-free deliveries were my benchmark (clearly a 10) whenever a doctor asked me to rank my pain on a scale of 1 to 10.  I was somewhere between 7 and 9, on and off, for most of October.  I’m still at 4 or 5, most days, and some much higher.

I don’t know about my pain threshold anymore.  I do know, in a way I never did before, that pain is its own country.  I have tremendous empathy for people who live with substantial pain on an ongoing basis.  Often I looked at Grace, trying to listen to what she was saying, her voice muffled by the ringing of pain in my head, feeling like I was across a moat in a different place altogether from her and my regular world.  A regular world I had never appreciated until it was stolen from me, replaced by this foreign place full of pain.  It is both exhausting and terrifying to ride the day-in, day-out ebb and flow of pain, the peaks of agony and the valleys of oh-maybe-I-am-okay-now almost-normalcy.  Every time I breathed a sigh of relief and thought, yes, finally, I’m on the road to recovery, something would flare up, and I would return to bed, eyes full of tears and heart full of fear.

It is the helplessness of it, as well as the emotional content, that shocked me the most.  I would get pulled under by a riptide of pain, unable to do anything about it.  And the incredible fear, that I had never anticipated.  I am familiar with emotional pain, in all its range, but I did not realize that physical pain carried with it a big emotional burden.  My mind would get on its hamster wheel: will this never improve?  Am I going to live like this for the rest of my life?  I can see how quickly chronic pain leads to immense depression.  I am not depressed, though: right now I am marveling, more than anything, at the power of pain.

My other observation is that pain is absolutely exhausting.  A few weeks ago I wrote about being tired, and about feeling quiet.  Some of that is surely seasonal, and the particular rhythms of my spirit and mood.  But the tiredness stuck around, persistent, thick, heavy, and I began to wonder if it was also partially caused by my pain.  Now I suspect it was (and is).  I am wading through thigh-deep snow these days, slow going, feeling spent, both emotionally and physically, more quickly than usual.

I read Kristin Noelle’s beautiful post last week with tears streaming down my face.  She writes of a harsh few months, of a demanding season, and of the release of finding herself in a soft place. These lines in particular moved me:

What if becoming (painfully, gut-wrenchingly, sometimes) aware of our fear is not always a sign that we’re far off from peace, but actually quite the opposite: a sign that we’re actually close enough to peace to start collapsing into it, to start admitting to ourselves or someone else how hard things have been?

Clearly, the ways that this last month have been difficult for me are more physical than emotional, though, as I said, there was a soul component that I had not expected.  What have this pain, and the pain’s handmaiden, fear, come to teach me?  I ask myself this over and over again, in the day and in the night, wondering, wondering.  Perhaps they are a sign, as Kristin says, that I draw ever nearer and nearer to peace.  I’d like to believe it.

Note: I believe, firmly, that both of my ailments were helped, not impeded (and certainly not caused by) the cleanse I was on.

Moments of wonder

Last night I folded up a big Target box and put it in the recycling bin.  The box was covered in sharpie words and crayon drawings, and has been a major focus of this house for several days.  As I took it out, noticing that the air is positively swampy with spring as I did so, I thought how thrilled I am that Grace and Whit still find a cardboard box to be a thrilling thing to play with.   The arrival of a big cardboard box is met with celebrating, and provides days of fodder for playing together or alone.  I love this.

It reminded me of the night, a few weeks ago, when I decided to make a chocolate fudge cake that I’d first made for Whit, on his request, last summer.  I surprised the kids with the cake in the morning, and gave them each fat slices for breakfast.  They looked at me, bewildered wonder on their faces, suspecting, I think, that I was going to announce that I was joking and snatch the plates away.  I wasn’t, and I didn’t.  They were thrilled beyond all reason at this tiny surprise.  Grace even told me recently that she had written a “whole page” in her journal at school about this, and I groaned at her that she wasn’t making me look very good in front of her teacher.

I get the same sense of awed pride when I asked Whit recently what his favorite part of spring break was.  He said, without hesitating, “Disney,” but then he went on, “but close after that, our trip to Walden.”  Or when, after a dinner full of rowdy, obnoxious bickering, they calm down, within minutes, when we go for a pajama-clad ‘notice things’ walk.  Furthermore, that they ask, over and over again, for these walks.

I know for sure that this is one of the things I most want to pass on to my children: the propensity for delight, the willingness to be amazed, an openness to the hugeness of small things.  Whether it’s a trait or an inclination I’m not sure; I don’t know that it matters.  I do know, however, that it is one way to assure a life full of joy.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be great sorrow, too.  As far as I can tell they are often twined entirely together.  If there’s one thing I want to do as a mother, it is to help Grace and Whit hold onto their capacity for wonder.

I noticed, as I tried to find a link, that I have more than a few blog posts with “wonder” in the title.  All of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe that’s what this blog is about: the wonder of ordinary life.  The wonder of that design, of which we sometimes glimpse the contours, though never the whole.  The wonder of human relationships, the sky, the turning of the seasons, poetry, the power contained in the light of a day.  The wonder of living in the slipstream of time, whose eddies are both utterly unique and totally universal.  That’s what this blog has been, for almost five years: a record of my moments of wonder, both in their thunderous joy and their swelling sadness.  And a love letter to those two small guides who have shown me the way here.

The universe, coincidence, and bad guys

One of my friends from business school lost a brother in 9/11.  My friend, his wife, and the rest of his large family started a foundation in their brother’s name.  On Sunday I wore a tee-shirt from one of their fundraisers to go running.  I didn’t have time to shower when I got back, and so, hours later, when I bathed the kids, I was still wearing it.

“Who is the man whose name is on your tee-shirt, Mummy?” asked Grace idly, tracing her fingers through the bubbles in the bath.  I swallowed.  Both she and Whit know in general terms about “when the planes flew into the buildings” but they don’t know more than that.  Were they ready?

“Well,” I began, “Remember how we talked about the day when the planes flew into the buildings?  A friend of mine’s brother was in one of the buildings, and he died that day.”  I paused.  Both Grace and Whit were quiet.

“The pilots flew the plane into the building?”  Grace looked at me.

“Well, no.  The bad guys on the plane took over the cockpit.”

“How?  And what did they do to the pilots, Mummy?”

“I think they used force to get into the cockpit.  And the pilots,” I looked straight at her, hesitating.  “Well, they died.”

Grace’s mouth formed a silent “o” and she looked down at the bathwater.

“Why didn’t your friend’s brother get out of the building, Mummy?”  If Whit were any child I’d have sworn he wasn’t listening, so busy did he seem with the bathtub dinosaur toys.  But clearly he wasn’t missing a word.

“Well, Whit, they couldn’t get out.”

“Do you think they felt it when the plane hit the building?  Did they feel it when the building fell down?’

I was at a loss for words.  How to convey this day, so enormous, so terrifying, in a gentle, age-appropriate way?

“I don’t know what they felt, Whit.”  I spoke slowly, trying for gentleness.  “I wasn’t there.”

The conversation went on to talk about security at airports, and how things are much different now than they were before 9/11.  Grace and Whit wanted to know a lot about the bad guys, who they were, how it is that they killed themselves for their countries.  I had to be very clear that these people were not heroes, despite this act.  Based on their very specific questions, and the way that they wouldn’t let the topic go, I decided that they deserved real answers.  By the time we were finished talking, both kids were dry and in their pjs.  This was a long, detailed conversation, and left us – as most conversations in my life do – with more questions than answers.  What is it to really hate a people, when you don’t know them?  How do you life with intense fear, as the people on the planes must have felt?  Who was Osama Bin Laden and why was he so angry?  What does it feel like to feel the ground beneath you fall out, and to tumble to the ground?

Grace wanted to pray for the people who died in 9/11 when she was going to sleep, and so we did.  And I woke up to the news that he had been killed.  In my Monday morning oblivion I didn’t even realize the coincidence (or not) until Kathryn emailed me to point it out.  And since that moment goosebumps have buzzed up and down my arms and neck.  A reminder of the great river of humanity, both seen and unseen, that we all travel in.  Everything is connected.

All day long I’ve been reading messages, tweets, blog posts, and articles about Bin Laden’s death.  This morning, driving from school to the grocery store, I listened to NPR reporting on the massive celebratory throngs that has sprung up all over America last night.  They played a recording of BU students belting out America the Beautiful.  They compared the mood of the crowds to the emotional, triumphant reaction to the Red Sox winning the World. Series.  What?

And all day, I’ve felt ambivalent about this.  I’m not unhappy that Bin Laden is gone, though I am wary about celebrating an active murder no matter what the reasons behind it.  But I think my ambivalence is more general: why are we celebrating anything about an event, and an ongoing situation, so full of pain, misunderstanding, and sorrow?  While I can definitely see the justice in this outcome,  I feel sad, not joyful, not proud, about this reminder that our world is most certainly not in a place of compassion and empathy.

Last night, as I tucked Grace into bed, she asked me again about the planes and the buildings.  It was clear from her tone that she had been thinking about it all day.  “What happened to the bad guy?” she asked me, and the hairs on my arms stood up.  I looked straight at her, deciding in that moment she deserved, again, a real answer.

“Well, Gracie, he actually died yesterday.”  Her eyes widened, the whites glowing in the dark of her room.  “The US military found him and killed him.”

“They did?”  She asked faintly, curling her beloved brown bear more tightly into her chest.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, they wanted to keep America safe and make sure he couldn’t plan anymore attacks.  And I guess they wanted to punish him for having caused so much pain.”

“Oh.” She was quiet.  “Are we supposed to be glad about that, Mummy?” Her voice wavered.

“I don’t know, Grace.”  I hugged her, smelling the shampoo I was her hair with every night, hearing the achingly familiar lullabyes from her CD player.  “I don’t know.”

I want to fill them up with poetry

Grace, Whit and I went to Walden today.  Over the years I have been there often, pulled by something beyond me, and I always go in the winter.  I like it empty and quiet.  I like to be the only person (people) there.  I like it when I can feel the spirituality crackling in the air.  I could today.

As we made our way around the pond Grace and Whit took detours to explore the woods and paused to wonder at the fact that the pond is still mostly covered with ice.  It is definitely not warm here yet, even though it is officially spring.  The trees are still defiantly bare, and their black branches net the sky.  Today that sky was gray, with occasional beams of sun breaking through the thick ridges of white-gray clouds.

As we walked I told Grace and Whit about Thoreau, about how he chose to live simply, to focus on the natural world around him.  Our adventure quickly turned into a Notice Things Walk, and each called out when they saw something worth sharing: a peculiar knot on the side of a tree trunk or the pattern of stones leading down to the water that looked like stairs.  When we arrived at the site of Thoreau’s cabin, we saw this sign and a pile of rocks.
As Grace read the lines, so familiar to me, and I felt my chest tighten.  They both had questions about the last line.  We talked about what meant to live a life so full that you felt sure, at the end of it, that you’d truly lived.  I had sunglasses on so neither child could see that my eyes brimmed with tears.  Then they busied themselves building a cairn in the rock pile, as others had done before.
Whit was very curious about the cairns and he moved carefully among the stones, examining the various piles.  I imagined what those who erected these monuments were commemorating: the example of a life thoroughly-lived, the commitment to art, the desire to immerse oneself in nature.
And then we were off again.  The trail wound its way around the pond, a multi-season combination of dead leaves and tenacious patches of snow and ice.  We walked in companionable silence, Whit’s hand in mine.  He announced, apropos of nothing, that when he went to college he still wanted to live at home.  “Why?” Grace piped up from ahead of us.  Whit didn’t answer right away, just squeezed my hand.  “I want to live at college for sure,” she averred confidently as she danced, occasionally skidding in her tractionless Uggs, along the path.

“Well,” Whit said, not looking at me, “Being with Mummy makes me feel safe.  And I want to stay safe.”  I gulped, remembering the time he told me that holding my hand makes him feel like his heart would never break.  I desperately wish I could keep his heart from breaking and keep him safe forever, but I know that neither of those things is in my control.

I gripped Whit’s little fingers and kept walking, breathing the piney Walden air, hearing Thoreau’s words in my head.  Ahead of us Grace’s red and white parka bobbed up and down.  The air was still, the bracing cold of winter mitigated by the promise of spring.  The only sound was our footsteps.

I want to make sure my children know the feeling I get at Walden, the soaring in the chest that speaks of a similar expansion in the spirit.  I want to encourage them to engage with life and to learn what it has to teach.  I want to fill them up with poetry.  Even more, I want to help them see the poem that lives in every day of their lives.

There are many ways to hide from your life

I’ve been thinking an awful lot about achievement, and the Race to Nowhere, and the ways we hide from our lives.  Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how complicated it gets when the ways you hide from your life are applauded by the world.  For me this has mostly been true: whether it’s running or studying with a fierce concentration or following the tide of popular sentiment down a path that might have been the wrong one.

This is a kind of hiding in plain sight, right?  None of your behaviors speak of anything being wrong.  In fact, they are celebrated.  For me, the pinnacle of this was at Exeter.  I’ve been very frank that my two years at Exeter were difficult for me.  I think late adolescence is an emotional and awkward time for most people, and some extenuating circumstances made mine especially challenging.  My parents were across an ocean (and in this pre-cell day, we spoke once a week on the payphone in the basement of my dorm).  My heart was broken at the very beginning of senior year when the first relationship of my life exploded in front of me (and in a hurtful, and public, way, no less).

What did I do?  I ran and I studied.  That is it.  I ran for an hour every single day, mostly in the woods out behind the gymnasium (across the bridge that appears in A Separate Peace), but when it was really freezing I’d run laps around the track suspended above the cage.    My senior year GPA was 10.8 (out of Exeter’s characteristically-unusual GPA scale of 11).  I read and I wrote and I studied and I went to bed every single night well before 10.  I didn’t have many close friends.  I didn’t have another boyfriend.  I didn’t ever break any rules, didn’t experiment with drinking or smoking, as so many boarding school denizens do.

It was a fraught time.  I was a liminal creature (Peggy Orenstein ascended even further in my pantheon of favorites when she used this, one of my favorite words, in Cinderella Ate My Daughter).  I was moving from girlhood to adulthood, and I was doing it mostly all by myself.  In this dark time, one I remember as still and ever-moving at the same time, I had one firm guide: James Valhouli, my English teacher, the first person to believe I had something of value to say.

But all of my coping mechanisms, things that I understand now were ways of avoiding actually engaging with my life, looked like success from the outside.  I was profoundly unhappy, but I don’t think anyone who didn’t know me well could tell.  I don’t know what the conclusion of this is, necessarily, but I do know that it points to a truth I’ve often referred to here: outsides and insides are not always congruent, and we ought to be slower to judge others based on the external indicators they display.  It also reminds me that there are many, many ways to hide from our lives, to numb ourselves to the things that hurt, and we would be well-served to approach all others with compassion.  They, too, are likely grappling with demons, even if we cannot see the struggle.