Grace

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!

A sibling weekend

Saturday morning. For some reason, despite 12 solid hours of sleep, these guys were wiped out. They eased into their day on the living room couch.

Finally they worked up enough energy to sit up. Whit watched Grace playing on her DSI. He was enraptured. She was sufficiently softened up by his avid worship that she even let him play a few games. Trust me, this is definitely not the norm. Methinks Whit is figuring out how to manipulate his sister just like he plays the rest of us. It’s only taken him this long with her because she’s just a little sharper than the rest of the family.

Later in the day, Grace and Whit were playing in her room and I did not know what they were doing. I heard Whit exclaim, “let’s do the shoulder opener, Grace!” and I had to see. I opened the door to see them in a partner yoga pose of surprising complexity. Scattered all over the floor was a deck of cards for kids with hand-drawn yoga poses on one side and an activity to save the earth on the other (Grace’s “big sister” gift on Whit’s birthday). I was blown away at how long they had been entertaining themselves doing this. Then Grace held up a card that showed one person in a handstand, leaning against the other person, standing in tadasana. “Let’s do this one, Whitty! You do the handstand,” she suggested, surprising me not at all with her selection of who would play which part in the pose. I decided this was a good point to stop and pointed out that hand stands were best attempted with parental supervision.

On Sunday morning, Grace and Whit accompanied me to church (after we took Matt to the airport). What’s more holy than taking pictures with my iPhone before the service starts? They colored and ate their booty (pirate for him, veggie for her) and then they actually sat and listened for a bit. Whit looked carefully through the hymnal and the book of common prayer and was disappointed by the lack of illustrations. They enthusiastically participated in the peace, shaking hands and repeating loudly, “Peace be with you!” to our neighbors. Later on as the rector said the prayers over the bread and the wine, Grace, who was reading the BCP with me, said “The Lord be with you,” in unison with the rest of the congregation. Whit said (not in a whisper), “No, Grace, peace be with you.” This child, hilarious as he is, is becoming a liability in my short-lived church career.

They both joined me for communion, and Grace for some reason reversed her firm stance on No (red) Wine to take a sip from the chalice. She spluttered dramatically as we walked back to our pew, eliciting several giggles from other people in the church.

Grace went to a birthday party in the afternoon and Whit curled up with Star Wars and I curled up with bills to pay and thank you notes to write. Relaxation and fun all around! The party Grace went to was hip-hop themed, so she came home with this hat and a bunch of new moves which she promptly taught Whit.

They even went to sleep in good moods with each other. This has to be a record, and just as I think “my baby slept through the night!” is just asking for five nights of screaming child, I am likely jinxing it now. But it was lovely.

Watching Grace and Whit in a patch of sunshine, behaving benevolently towards each other made me think about my decision to have a second child. It’s no secret that my introduction to motherhood was difficult. The honest truth is I felt no impulse whatsoever to have another baby. Zero. In fact, truthfully, I felt dread and fear. But I also knew, intensely, that I wanted Grace to have a sibling. I feel guilty about this memory, because I worry it might make Whit doubt how fervently he is loved. Despite all of my anxiety, from the moment he arrived he brought laughter and joy in his wake, and he gave me the blissful newborn experience I so desperately wanted to have. And I haven’t for a single moment, ever, wished he was not here. I really do believe that a sibling is a gift. I have one, my older-and-wiser younger sister, and I can’t imagine my life – or myself! – without her. Seeing Grace and Whit this weekend made me think of the interwoven lifetimes that lie ahead for each them, the particular terroir they are growing in, and the tremendously good friend I hope they will always be to each other.

And I tried to pause over the weekend, to watch them, thinking: we won’t come back here.

Les artistes

The other night, while I was writing my reflections on Devotion, Grace wandered into my office. She asked for a pen and some paper and sat down on the floor by my chair. I didn’t know what she was doing until she asked me the name of a flower that was blue (I offered “hydrangea” – not, I realize now, the most poetic of words). When she was finished she looked at me, eyes luminous with pride, and announced she had written a poem. I admit I’m impressed.

Earlier this week, Whit and a babysitter took an outing on the subway to a local art supply shop. They spent the afternoon doing some painting. When I walked in the door he rushed at me, holding this canvas in his hand and excitedly announcing that he had painted it for me. I looked up at the babysitter in surprise, looking for her admission that she had helped. No, she said, he did it all by himself. I am simply blown away. This looks like Helen Frankenthaler to me, or like Georgia O’Keeffe – two of my very favorite artists. I think this one is destined for framing (a big statement for a woman who throws away about 90% of the avalanche of art that comes in the door).

I guess I am inadvertently running a little artists colony around here.

Light and shadow: a triptych

When I ran yesterday I was struck by the vivid difference between the side of the street in the sun and that in the shadow. In the darkness of the shadow, the sidewalks were still covered in a crust of ice with powdery snow on top (ideal ankle-breaking conditions), while the other side of the street was awash in running water. It sounds so obvious but this difference seemed really stark to me. And I thought about how for me, inquiry and writing are like sunshine: in that light, under their direct power, the ice and snow and slippery, sharp things melt away. Their form changes, their power to hurt dissolves. This is, maybe, why I write about and muse on the darker things that bother me: by focusing my attention on them, I can change the form of their matter (though I can’t make the matter disappear altogether).

****

On my sunniest days, I am still the mottled pattern of light through a leafy tree. Even the brightest rays of sunshine are partially occluded by shadows. I love the pattern that these shadows make, and find fascination in their order and disorder, but I realize this is personal taste. Some prefer a more direct beam of light. I myself side with Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Glory be to God for dappled things.” There is contrast and life in the interplay of light and shadow that reminds me of the texture of my spirit.

****

Grace is olive-skinned, dark-haired, with brown eyes just like mine. I can already see that she struggles under some of the same emotional storm clouds that I do. Her light is marbled with shadow, which makes it intimately familiar to me. Whit has skim-milk skin like mine, blond hair, and bright blue eyes. He is a free spirit through and through, he is sunshine without boundaries, he is a splash of bright yellow light against a red barn in the height of summer. Even as I write these characterizations, I am aware of their overly reductive and simplistic nature. Of course my children are more than these caricatures, their personalities each combed through with light and dark in individual, complex ways. But today this is how they seem to me, standing silhouetted against the setting sun of another day, their shadows lengthening behind them.

Grace: success and sadness

Grace’s school report arrived yesterday. I was not aware that they were coming out, and as usual the detail and granularity of the teachers’ comments and insight impressed me. Grace is having a great year. Forget her very good marks – what I was proudest of was the number of times different teachers (Jesus I had no idea how many special subjects she takes now – good God) commented on how she is thoughtful, aware of others, generous, and a good friend. As far as I’m concerned that goes a lot further than being good at counting by 10s.

One of the few places that Grace had a lower ranking was in “leadership instincts.” This made me sad, because I think it reflects a growing timidity that I’ve observed, a certain muffling of her voice by anxiety. It also reminded me, of course of my own issues with taking charge and formally leading.

I told Grace that I was proud of her because her teachers said she was working hard. I mentioned how glad I was to hear that she was a good friend and she was kind and great at both listening and helping others. This praise did not change the fact that she was sad this weekend. I was reminded again that my little girl is as sparkly and as fragile as spun glass.

It was an ordinary Sunday. Grace, Whit and I took Matt to the airport mid-afternoon and then embarked on an afternoon of random errands that I tried to spin as an adventure. We took some change to the Coinstar machine (mysteriously, an absolute laser light show of excitement for my children). We went to the drycleaner (free lollipops help make this an ever-anticipated stop). We bought some lettuce and some bread. We took a ride on the subway (and then rode home, without exiting the station. This is one of my favorite activities with G &W, and I love that they are so easily entertained).

On the subway, Grace seemed quiet, and on the way home, she burst into tears. I asked her what was wrong. She shrugged and said, tears rolling down her face, that she just felt sad and didn’t know why. My heart ached with identification, guilt and the desire to make her not sad anymore. At home she crumpled into a mournful little heap at the bottom of the stairs. The rest of the day she was quiet and tearful, repeating over and over that she was “just sad” and “didn’t know why.”

I reassured her that I knew this feeling (and how) and that I was quite sure it would pass. She clung to me as I tucked her in, thanking me for always cheering her up and making things better. The whole afternoon made me feel heavy with guilt about her “just sadness.” There’s no question in my mind this is my bleak influence; what I don’t know is if it’s a learned behavior from watching me or a trait inherited from the very fabric of my DNA. I don’t think it matters much.

Once again I felt aware of the way I am a mother who is more shadow than sun, the way my complicated ambivalence plays occasional discordant notes into the song of my relationship with my children. My poor, poor daughter, tugging behind her the heavy freight of my moody melancholy. I imagine her pulling Whit on the sled up a snowy hill, her body bent forward with the effort of pulling such heavy weight, her feet slipping on the snow, her progress halting and excruciatingly slow.

Oh, Gracie. I am so sorry. I wish I could lift the weight of this birthright that I gave you unwittingly (but also, perhaps, inevitably). Your sensitivity is so familiar and so keen that I flinch to witness it displayed, as I did today. I have long believed in telling you the blunt truth (like when Whit asked if a shot was going to hurt and I hesitated before saying, quietly, “yes”) so I won’t pretend that there won’t be many more “just sad” days. There will be.

There is much sadness, Gracie, much inexplicable darkness, and I too know the feeling of a wave of unanticipated and inchoate anguish sweeping you off your feet. When you thanked me for “making everything better” before bed, I told you firmly, fiercely, that it was my job to do that. It is my job to hold you during the sorrowful days, reminding you that at least you are not alone. It is also my job, maybe more importantly, to remind you of all the stunning joys and blinding light that exist alongside the gloom. There is so much more light than dark, Gracie, of that I am certain. I promise to help point it out to you.