Grace

Summer 2013

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Spring is the only season that I experience without an undercurrent of sorrow, because there is so much that lies ahead, but it is in summer that I feel I most fully live.  In June, July, and August, life is swollen with family moments, studded with the rituals that have come to mean so much to my children, and lit with bursts of fireworks both real and figurative.  For the last few years I’ve reflected on the summer that was: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.

In late August, I kept hearing Sophocles’ words, over and over again in my head: one must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.  And that is true of this most marvelous, rich, joyful season, too: it is really after Labor Day that I can really see how extravagantly wonderful our summer was.

This summer went by faster than ever.  Oh, what a cliche this is.  And yet it is so true.

In June, for the fourth year, Grace, Whit and I marked the end of the school year with a trip to Storyland.  Their mild agreement that perhaps they were getting too old for Storyland turned by the end of the day into stringent pleading to promise we could come back.  They love our tradition and so do I.

The weekend at the end of June that we spent with Hilary and her family was so humid that my computer shut itself down.  But it was wonderful nonetheless: swinging on swings over a big muddy puddle of rainwater, my father blowing out candles surrounded by his found grandchildren, those children lined up on the edge of Brea as we sailed, four feet dangling towards the splashing water.

Our hydrangea bush exploded into glorious bloom.  Once again I was reminded of the metaphors that are all around us: by late July I had to cut hundreds of past-their-prime blooms in hopes that we might get another round of new flowers.

We spent the Fourth of July with Matt’s family in Vermont.  The children loved being with their cousins.  Later in July we went to Legoland for the fourth time.  This is an extravagant tradition, to be sure, and maybe a silly one, but I can’t express the pure joy that descends on all three of us the minute we walk out of the airport in California.  I have no doubt that the three days in July we spent at Legoland will be among my most cherished of this entire year.

Coming home was hard, but we had a short but sweet visit with Whit’s godmother, my dear friend Gloria, to look forward to.  She came through on her way from Maine to Beijing, we all remembered how fiercely we adore this friend of my heart that I’ve known for 23 years.

Grace and Whit both went to sleepaway camp.  For the first time in 10 1/2 years Matt and I were alone for 10 days.  Saying goodbye was hard, mostly because of the reflection that it forced on time’s heartbreakingly swift passage.  Then, in August we had two weeks alone with Whit.  I spent my birthday with one of my oldest and dearest friends, at the place where we met and where our daughters how flourish.  It was marvelous.

We spent a week by Lake Champlain as a family, for the fifth year in a row, and it was pure magic.  Grace and Whit love it there, and Matt and I do too.  We swam and ran and water skiied and laughed.  The vacation, just like the end of August time that holds it, was tinged by end-of-summer pathos.

I read All That Is and A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, The Engagements by Courtney Sullivan, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, Still Writing by Dani Shapiro, Early Decision by Lacy Crawford, Ready for Air by Kate Hopper, Looking for Palestine by Najla Said, & Sons by David Gilbert.  I spent long hours revisiting some of my favorite poetry books.

Grace and I were deep in Harry Potter 7 while Whit and I were on 4.  They both remain entranced by Harry’s world.  Grace and I read Little Women at the same time in August: she marked the pages she read before bed and then left the book for me, and I’d read the same passage.  The next day we talked about it.  We read A Wrinkle In Time (my favorite book from childhood) the same way last year.

We managed to fit some of our favorite rituals into the last week of the summer.  We went to the beach for an end-of-summer day, we swam at Walden Pond, we visited the tower nearby and built stone cairns near the fairy stream.  We spent Labor Day in town for a change, because Grace had a soccer tournament.  It was calm, mellow, and surprisingly wonderful.

There was plenty of yelling and exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed by all kind of small things.  And I’ve already forgotten those moments, as the summer slides into memory, crystalline, shimmering.  And how I miss it, already.

 

10 Questions for Grace and Whit

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I loved Ali Edwards’ 10 Questions for Simon post a couple of weeks ago.  I decided to ask Grace and Whit the same 10 questions (well I changed one, #2, which was originally about Batman), and it feels apt to share their answers now because they are both at sleepaway camp.  This is Grace’s third summer, so I was expecting the tears (mine) and heart-rending goodbye (also mine).  It was the first time I left Whit at camp and … wow.  I miss them.

1. What is your favorite thing right now?

Whit: Legos
Grace: soccer and dogs

2. What food do you love most?  How about least?

Whit: most: mac & cheese and least: sweet potatoes
Grace: most: summer squash and least: fish

3. How do you feel about going into 3rd/5th grade in September?

Whit: I feel good about it.  I am excited to see my friends again.
Grace: I’m excited about it.  I’m looking forward to doing the Soul Cake and the play.

4. What are you thinking about the most during the day? 

Whit: That’s a really hard one (and if his litany of random questions is representative, I can vouch for this).
Grace: Probably how lucky I am to have a family that loves me and takes care of me.

5. What’s on your summer wish list?

Whit: I want to make a lot of friends at camp and become good at swimming and archery.
Grace: To convince Daddy to get a dog.

6. What do you love most about summer?

Whit: I like the extra time away from people who are always crowding me at school.  I love Legoland and swimming.
Grace: Being able to be with my family a lot more, and having extra time to do things.  I love going to Marion with Nana and Poppy and swimming out to the raft.

7. What do you like to do with your brother/sister?

Whit: I like it when Grace plays with me, and sometimes I feel fortunate to have a sibling and sometimes I don’t feel that.
Grace: I like it when you’re out and I can tuck Whit into bed at night.  I like helping him with homework.

8. What does your brother/sister do that you don’t like?

Whit: It annoys me when she rejects playing with me.
Grace: It bugs me a lot when he wants to play with me and I want to just read by myself.

9. If you could travel anywhere right now where would you go?

Whit: Back to Legoland.
Grace: Paris.

10. What book are you reading right now?

Whit: Brixton Brothers #2.
Grace: The Bad Beginning, which is the first in the Lemony Snicket series.

I love right now more than I have any other moment in my life

afterlightIt was an emotional ride to go from the 24/7 togetherness of Legoland to dropping Grace and Whit off at camp last Thursday.  You could view it as I spun it to them: so many memories to sift through while we’re apart!  So much water in the well of closeness!  But you could also say to yourself: wow that was a tough transition.  And the truth is I’m still reeling from it.

On Wednesday night I could sense that both kids were apprehensive; they were unusually quiet.  Even though this is Grace’s third year at camp, it’s the first time she’s gone for 3.5 weeks.  And it is Whit’s first time.  I read them both Harry Potter, one at a time (Grace is on #7 and Whit is on #4 and I am still not bored of Harry’s world, even after a third complete read).

I tucked Whit in first.  He asked me to lie down with him, and so I did.  He stared up at the bottom of the bunk above him and asked me, out of the blue, “If I went through a black hole and was still alive on the other side, would I end up in another universe?”  After a soft chuckle I told him I didn’t know, but I’d prefer he not try that, at least not yet.  I turned my head, next to his on the robot-print pillow, and looked at him.  He kept staring up at the slats above him, which I noticed recently are covered with stickers.

We lay in silence, and I looked at the curves of his face, as familiar to me as my own hand.  His profile hasn’t changed from when I first saw it on a cloudy ultrasound screen, and it feels like only a few heartbeats ago that I lay in that darkened room, a technician swirling a wand over my just-beginning-to-bulge belly.  After a couple of long minutes, during which I swam through the swirling waters between then and now, which are both infinite and instantaneous, and which are full of phosphorescence, I leaned over and kissed his cheek.  “Good night,” I murmured.  “I love you.”

“I love you too.”  He didn’t turn to look at me, and I could see his that his eyes were glistening.

I sat up and looked at him.  “I love you as much as that universe, Whit, or that black hole.”

“I love you as much as all the universes, Mummy.”  I left the room before I began to cry.

I pulled it together before walking downstairs to Grace’s room.  I stood in the door and watched her reading in bed.  The small clip-on lamp on her headboard cast a pool of light around her, and I could see the shadows of her eyelashes on her cheeks.  Her legs looked impossibly long.  It was a full two years ago she stopped me in my tracks, this same night, before camp, when she told me sternly that my life was full of magic.  I have never forgotten that, because it is.

The next day we got up early to drive to camp.  Matt told me later that as the children were eating breakfast, he overheard Whit tell Grace quietly that he was “feeling kind of anxious.”  She apparently reassured him.  When we arrived at camp I was flooded all over again with memories and with an intense gratitude that Grace and Whit now share this place that meant (and still means) so incredibly much to me.  Grace’s best friend, the daughter of my best friend from camp, arrived, and the whole planet seemed to click into place.  All was well.

I helped Grace settle into her top bunk in the cabin that I lived in in the summer of 1991, met her counselors, and watched her happy reunions with a few familiar faces.  She did not cry, but she kept asking me to stay.  I finally told her firmly that I had to go and left her with a long hug and our secret sign that means “I love you.”

In Whit’s cabin I encountered a wall of broad-shouldered blond young male counselors whose names I promptly forgot, settled Beloved on his pillow, and heeded his vociferous insistence that he did not want to unpack his underpants.  He said he was ready for us to go and my saying “I love you” out loud made him flush.  He looked at me sternly, making it clear that was not okay.  But then, as we left, his eyes eyes followed us to the door and, before we were out of sight, he gave me our private sign for “I love you.”

And then we drove away.  I cried on and off for the whole ride home.  I am not sad because I have any single inkling of doubt about how wonderful this experience will be for Grace and Whit.  I don’t.  I am sad because I miss them; being alone for 10 days makes abundantly clear how much time I spend with my children in a normal day, and reminds me of how much I love their company.  It’s not that I forget that, exactly, but I am definitely more aware of it when they’re gone.

But most of all I cried because 10 years of my life with small children at home is already gone.  I was, and am, sad for all that’s over, for the years that have fled, for all that I can never have again.

There’s no question that I love right now more than I have any other moment in my life.

But that doesn’t erase the anguish I feel over all that is over.  I wish it did.

As we crossed the Sagamore Bridge it began to rain lightly.  The familiar, beautiful, astonishing world was blurred and refracted through the raindrops on the windshield.  I thought of Grace and Whit, of the sandy wooden floors of their cabins, of the low voices of the JCs singing Taps at the end of an evening assembly, swaying, arms linked around each others’ shoulders, of the dunes that slope down to the beautiful sailboat-spotted bay.  I thought of all that changes and all that stays the same, and gratitude swelled alongside sorrow in my chest.  It kept raining, and we drove home.

 

 

 

Memory

Recently, one afternoon in the car with Grace, a song came on the radio and I heard her wistful voice from the backseat, “The first time I heard this song was with Audrey on the way to the Solstice.”

I nodded.  As it often does, my mind hopscotched to another place, thinking about how often a song has triggered a memory for me too.  And also of one of the topics I mull the most often: the confounding nature of memory, and the peculiar way that most of our lives blur into a colorful slurry of recollection while certain moments stand out, brilliant, crystalline.  And of the ways that these moments are very rarely those we think they’ll be. They are often the smallest moments, insubstantial as we live them.  Very rarely I can recall being aware, even in an experience, that I will always remember it; there’s a shimmer in the air and a corresponding tingling like every cell of my body was especially porous.  In those moments I always think of Wordsworth: “In this moment there is life and food for future years.”  But far, far more often, I am amazed by the memories that endure, bright and complete, and, equally, by those that do not.

I am fascinated by what we remember, and why.

I’m sure there is some message in the moments that remain after our memories of the rest of our life sifts through our fingers.  I just haven’t discerned it yet.  They still seem random to me, shifting around like shards in a kaleidoscope, different ones rising to the surface, bidden by any number of small triggers (a song, a smell, a person, or something less identifiable).  I keep thinking of the night sky, and how you squint to see stars, and by drawing lines between them you discern constellations.  I’m sure that could be done with my memories, but I don’t yet know what shapes they form.

All I have as of now is these bright pebbles of memory, shined to brilliance by being turned over and over in my mind like a stone in my hand.

Like sitting in my college roommate’s parents’ car outside the grocery store in Nantucket, waiting for another one of our friends, the sun hot outside, singing along to Edwin McCain singing I’ll Be.

Like the sensation of goosebumps running up and down my arms and then the wild, unbidden, uncontrollable tears as I walked down the aisle at the end of my grandmother’s funeral, my cousin, who held her ashes, walking right in front of me.

Like the bewilderment I felt as I spoke to Hadley on the phone on my way home from Trader Joe’s, a 10 day old Grace in the backseat, as I answered the simple question of “what did you get?” with a long pause as I struggled to remember.  And then, “Wine.  And almonds.”

Like the ache I felt as I sat at preschool in Paris and watched my mother’s back disappear through the schoolyard’s large green gate.  As the moments ticked by I held her image in my head, imagining her walking down the street, back to our apartment.

Like the certainty that descended on me as I stood on the steps of Blair Arch, the most famous and dramatic architectural feature on a campus full of them.  It was a hot, sunny Labor Day, 1991, and I said firmly to my father, “Dad? I want to go to school here.”

Like the sound of hundreds of school girls singing “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day,” leaning out of classroom doors into the great hall fronted by an enormous organ, the air full of celebration and holiness, of youth and energy of a tangible sense of Christmas that I have neither forgotten nor matched.

Like the smell of candles and centuries in the crypt of the Assissi Cathedral as I battled sudden and unexpected emotion.  My sister, standing next to me, caught my eye and in a single look made clear she understood that I was feeling something big and inchoate and that she was right there.

And now, I know Grace is beginning to string memories like pearls on the string of her life.  Like hearing a song on the radio while driving to the very last Solstice Ball.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you remember, and any understanding you have as to why.

 

 

The Worry and the Wonder

When I was a very new mother, a close friend sent me a subscription to Brain, Child magazine.  It was the only magazine, she offered, in which she found the full spectrum of emotion and experience of motherhood.  I agree with her.  I was honored when they published a short story by me last year (fiction!  shocking!) and today I’m delighted that they are running an essay of mine on their blog.  I hope you’ll click over and read The Worry and Wonderment of Parenting.

“All of these fears are real.  But I know there is one central, overarching worry.   It is that our relationship will irrevocably fray.  I worry that if that happens we won’t recover the closeness we share now.  I believe fiercely in the importance of my daughter’s blossoming independence, and over and over again I actively foster it.  But in my deepest, most honest mother heart, I worry that I’m not myself strong enough to weather months or years of her desire and need for distance.  My most common and frequent worry – occurring to me several times a day, at least – is that this season of my life is almost over.

But twined through all these worries, there is so much wonder.”

… please visit Brain, Child to read the rest of my essay.  Thank you!