Grace

My child, in child’s pose

I looked over at Grace in child’s pose on the yoga mat next to me, noticing her closed eyes, her long eyelashes, the peace on her face.  My child, in child’s pose isn’t a child anymore.  A couple of weeks ago I took Grace to her first yoga class.  It felt like a big moment, introducing her to a practice that’s been an important part of my life for almost 20 years now.

I had to check my math.  I went to a couple of yoga classes in college, but began practicing regularly in 1998.  Which was 18 years ago.  It was surreal to be in a yoga class with my teenage daughter next to me.  I thought of my mid-20s self, when I was just learning the poses that are so familiar to me now.  I thought of the time that she announced herself to me in shavasana when I was about 20 weeks pregnant.  I thought of my first yoga class after delivering Grace, when I burst into tears with relief at being back on my mat.  I thought of the hundreds and thousands of times that I’ve flowed through vinyasa in my life.

All through class I kept looking over at Grace.  She could sense my gaze, I think, and each time she’d look over, and glance at me with a grin.  I could feel, somehow, the awkwardness of trying to twist my body into the poses for the first time (I thought, suddenly, of kything, the wordless communication that occurs in A Wrinkle in Time and where you can feel what another person feels) as I watched her watching me and the teacher, piking up into downward dog, wrapping her arms in eagle, bending forward to wrap her fingers under her toes in padahastasana.

Mostly, I found myself stunned by being here already.  I know, I know, this is a drum I beat ceaselessly.  But time’s whipping by so quickly my head is spinning.  The baby who turned over in my belly in a prenatal yoga class now stretched next to me on a mat, her limbs nearly as long as mine.  In shavasana (the word ease in my mind) I turned my head and saw Grace’s face, eyes closed, at peace, her arms at rest on the mat, her fingers curled slightly upward.  She was – she is – welcoming what is to come.

May I keep learning to do the same.

Things Grace and Whit do alone

I loved this post by Elisabeth Stitt about 10 things children need to be able to do on their own by middle school.  The post, and the topic, reminded me of Jessica Lahey‘s marvelous book, The Gift of Failure, which I read, loved, and reviewed this fall.  Lahey asserts, as does Stitt, that we need to let our children do more, in every way.  Their learning certain skills and activities both prepares them for adulthood and lifts some of the stultifying burden of doing everything from parents.

I share this view.  I want my children to emerge from our household able to do a load of laundry, cook a simple dinner, and interact confidently with adults.  With that in mind, here are a few things that I both encourage and expect Grace and Whit to do by themselves.  These tasks make my life easier (though at first I am always nervous, of course) but far more importantly they build their confidence and sense of mastery in the world.

Cook dinner.  Late this summer, when Matt was away, I went to a late afternoon yoga class and left both the children at home and asked Grace to make dinner. She cooked hamburgers on the stove, cleaned everything up, set the table, lit candles.  It was pleasurable for me and hugely gratifying for her.  She’s asked several times since them to be allowed to make dinner alone, and each time I joyfully say yes.

Fold and put away their laundry.  It was reading Lahey’s book that made me realize I have to stop putting away Whit’s laundry and refolding his tee-shirts when he rummages through them.  Who cares.  He can find what he needs, and the lesson of re-doing everything he does is far more toxic than letting a little mess stand.

Walk to and from school.  We don’t do this often in the morning, since I prioritize sleep.  As soon as our school allows it, I like Grace and Whit to walk the 0.75 miles home alone.  They know the way home that has stop lights and crossing guards, and I think they enjoy the downtime.

Solder metal.  Whit as a soldering iron and he uses it unsupervised.  It took both Matt and I a little while to get used to this idea, but the pride Whit feels when I wear a necklace he fixed for me with his soldering iron – every single time – delights me. Plus, I love that I didn’t have to go to a jeweler.

Shake hands with, address by name, and speak with adults. We are old-fashioned and use Mr. and Mrs. by default.  Grace and Whit still struggle in some cases to make eye contact with grown-ups, but it continues to be an expectation.  We spend a lot of time as a family and rarely seat the children at a separate table.  I expect them to interact with adults, to make conversation and respond when spoken to.  They’ve both learned from a very early age that it’s very important to ask questions of other people.  I’m constantly amazed at how few people do this.

Pack their own lunches.  I still sometimes do this, but the truth is I do that because I love it.  Grace in particular enjoys packing her own lunch and both are hugely capable of it.  Even when I pack lunch, they both know that the first thing they do when they come in the door after school is empty their lunch boxes and put the glass containers from the day in the dishwasher.

Do their own homework, alone.  Both kids know that if they need help or have a question, they can ask.  They do, from time to time.  Otherwise, the expectation is that they manage their own homework.  We received an email from school recently asking parents to back off from “helping” with homework.  In many cases it was clear the work was not done by the children themselves, the email said.  I laughed out loud, since while I have many issues, that is not one of them.  I think expressing interest in what they’re learning at school is vital.  I think doing their homework with them is damaging.

What should Grace and Whit be doing alone that they’re not?  What are your kids doing alone?  Do you agree with me that this is important?

A weekend of light and darkness

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What a weekend.

On Friday I watched Grace’s final cross-country race.  As we waited for the start, it rained.  And then an extraordinary rainbow appeared, like I’ve never seen before. The photo above has no filter.  There were a lot of schools at this final race, so there were separate girls’ and boys’ races.  Grace has had an excellent cross-country season but one speckled with a lot of anxiety; her fears about performance have gotten the best of her and propelled us to a place of wondering how to keep a sport she enjoys and is good at from being destroyed by nerves.  It’s been an emotional few weeks as we grapple with how best to handle these worries.

In short, I wasn’t really sure how this last race of the season would go.  I stood and watched as 73 girls lined up by school on the starting line.  The gun went off and I so devoutly wish I had a photograph of Grace as she strode across it.  She took the lead early and definitively but much more striking to me was the look on her face as she set off.  I have literally never seen her look so determined.  I told Matt I think on my deathbed one of the images of Grace I’ll recall is her at that moment.  There was something both intimately familiar and brand-new on her face as she set out: serious, singele-minded, dogged.  Every tear from the month was there, too, but behind this new resolve.  I watched her in awe.

Off they went.  “I don’t think she’s going to win,” I whispered to my mother, standing next to me.  A girl who came in 3rd in States to Grace’s 12th was in the race, and there were a lot of runners.  “I just want her to feel good about it.”  Mum nodded, agreeing.  We watched in silence.  Our home course is a straight out-and-back so there is no glimpsing the runners mid-race.  I stood with my parents and waited.  After what felt like forever we saw the first runner in the distance.  I could not tell if it was Grace.  I looked for her green sneakers, which have always identified her for me from far away, but I couldn’t see them.  The second runner could be her, I thought, but the gait looked unfamiliar.  My chest felt tight as Grace came into clear view.  She was the lead runner, and she was way out in front.  Nobody was near her.  And what made me happiest was how masterful she looked, how strong, how confident.

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She crossed first, ending the season on a terrific high note.  I am proud but far more importantly, so is she.  And she feels good about having wrestled some demons this year and of having come out feeling she can still find joy in running.  I know this will not be the last time these fears raise their heads, but I also know that having vanquished them once will help give her confidence the next time they arrive.

IMG_8730While Grace cheered on the boys’ race, I watched the sunset over the Charles River.  I admired it, and photographed it, but felt a vague and inchoate sense of uneasiness too.  The sky looked thunderous, dramatic, full of portent.  Like the strange, eerily truncated rainbow earlier, there was something unsettled in the sky.  It was as we drove home that we learned about the Paris attacks.  The sense of accomplishment and pleasure of watching my new teenager running quickly dissolved into desperate sorrow and worry about the world.  I instagrammed a photograph I had taken of Grace and Whit lighting candles in a church in Paris 6 months ago.

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My mother confirmed that she heard from her cousin who lives in Paris and that his family was safe.  We spent the weekend doing family things but I had Yeats’ seminal lines from The Second Coming in my mind the whole time:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

It’s hard not to be totally overcome with fear in moments like this.  The world feels like it’s spiralling out of control, and everywhere we turn it seems like there is a threat (if not international terrorism, then home-grown school shooters).  We cancelled a trip to Exeter on Saturday to see the Exeter/Andover game, which I think came out of some deep-seated desire by me to stay home, stay together, stay quiet.  We told the children about the attacks and watched our family friend reporting on television from Paris.  They had lots of questions, which I tried my best to answer in a balanced way.

How quickly this life can shift, from rainbows and victory to heartbreak and fear.  I’m accustomed to some back-and-forth; it is how I’m wired, after all.  Yet the amplitude of the oscillations seems to be growing, and that unnerves me, I’ll be honest.  I’m trying to remember the joy on my daughter’s face as she sprinted across the finish line first, and the glow of that otherworldly rainbow, and even the way my son curled into me on the couch as we watched Christiane Amanpour reporting from the streets of Paris, familiar now to Grace and Whit as they have been so long to me.

I’m not willing to let go of my stubborn belief that there is much light in the world, but there are surely times when that belief feels more attenuated, when the darkness threatens to overwhelm it.  This is one one of those times.  Do you know what I mean?

The end of childhood

“The end of childhood,” the author intoned from the stage, “is pretty universally thought to be start of middle school. Generally, seventh grade.” Tears sprang to my eyes and I slid my gaze sideways, glancing at my seventh grade daughter sitting next to me. We were at an event at our local library, a panel of Middle Grade authors, a Monday night in late September. I looked down at her long legs, taking in her feet, in my Jack Rogers sandals. I peeked at her face. She was staring at the stage, rapt as some of her favorite writers talked.

Grace was three weeks shy of 13 that night, and she and I sat in the audience it felt as though many themes of her life and mine collided in my head and my heart. Here she was, a new middle schooler, the end of her childhood upon us. How is this possible, I thought, able to sense the baby and child she was and the woman she’s rapidly becoming animate, all at once, in the liminal creature sitting next to me?

It was as though I left that library auditorium for a bit. My mind cartwheeled through the years and I thought about letters I wrote to Grace every year on her birthday. I remembered the piece I wrote about the ten things I wanted her to know when she turned ten. Already, that was three years ago, and here she is, on the brink of being a teenager and, apparently, at the formal end of childhood.

I have been keenly conscious of time’s passage my whole life, but having children brought a new sharpness to that awareness.   And in the last months the sense that my time with Grace living with me and nearby is limited has reached a fever pitch. Everything feels heightened, poignant, crucial. I think constantly of the lessons I want to make sure to have imparted to her, knowing that there’s more road behind us than ahead when it comes to years with her living under our roof.

My mind snapped back to the panel on the stage in front of me as the moderator began taking questions. I leaned over towards Grace, clasping her hand in mine and squeezing it. She leaned her head onto my shoulder and we both listened as the authors answered questions from the audience.

I left the event with the authors pensive, even melancholy, which to be honest is the state in which I live much of my life. That night after tucking Grace in, and listening to her prayers, which are so familiar that I can say them along with her, I leaned against her closed bedroom door. Every single time I say “I’ll see you in the morning” to a child in a darkened bedroom I am aware of what an incandescent privilege it is. I went up to my desk after a moment at her door and sat at my desk. I looked through the birthday letters I had written to her, feeling the throb of loss and gratitude that I now recognize as the central rhythm of my life.

I know there are many, many adventures and challenges ahead in the teen years, but 13 does feel like the end of something.

I wrote this last month after a wonderful event at the Cambridge Public Library, and today, now that Grace has crossed the bar (Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar springs into my mind here) into her teens, felt like the right moment to share it.

13 Years Old

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As a junior bridesmaid at the wedding of a dear and long-time babysitter, September 2015.  You were so grown up, standing up at the altar, I gasped out loud.

Dear Grace,

Well, it’s here.  You’re thirteen.  Today.  This fact is inconceivable and inevitable at the same time.  And extraordinary.

In the last six months you’ve turned into a full-blown young woman in front of our eyes, and I stare at you with outright awe on a regular basis. Sometimes you sense my gaze on you and turn, looking over at me and saying, “what?” as you flick your ponytail off your neck.  I always smile back and shake my head, murmuring “nothing.” My colicky baby, my pigtailed little girl, she’s all gone now, absorbed into this long, lean person who’s almost my height and who wears my shoes (though they’re getting tight) and who runs way faster than I do.  The only time I can still glimpse the baby you were is when I creep in to kiss you goodnight before I go to bed.  Your face in slumber contains shadows of the baby and little girl you were.

You really are a teenager: on a regular basis you cycle between moods with such velocity I can’t keep up. Still, so far, we always come back to the bond we’ve shared for 13 years.  I’ve written often about my fears about these years, and, suddenly, they’re upon us.  In some ways, I’m glad they’re finally here.  As usual, I was daunted by the dark cloud of anticipation and fear, and the arrival of the rain has brought with it a kind of relief.  I studied the mother-daughter bond in these years, and the often-painful separation that marks it, 20 years ago, as a senior in college.  And now I am living through the process I studied so closely.  Then, I identified as the daughter, striking out from her mother, but now, I’m on the opposite side of the table.  I knew this season would be emotional, but it surprises me daily how much.

Here we go.  You’re lately demonstrating a new kind of groundedness. There’s a lot of social drama this year at school, and an undercurrent of both nascent boy-girl tension and friendship uncertainty animates many of your days.  You have been talking about wanting to remove yourself from this drama, and that makes me very happy to see.  We speak often of focusing on school, and family, and running, and of distancing yourself from influences that make you feel bad.  I know I can’t insulate you from the social whitewater that swirls around seventh grade – and furthermore I know I shouldn’t, even if I could – but I’m proud to see you choosing to step away from it as much as you can.  I hope that home continues to be a safe place, a bulwark against the anxieties of school.  A place where we can keep curling up next to each other to read, give compliments at family dinner, watch Survivor, and talk about what happened in your day.

Sports have become a very important part of your life.  You played tennis a lot this summer, and well.  We cheered you to the 12 and under championship at our tennis club.  You’re a new but passionate hockey player.  Cross-country continues to be your primary focus, and these days you run at least five days a week. You demonstrate a commitment and determination to succeed in sports that is as foreign to me as it is inspiring.  You are also a real team player.  At one of your early cross-country meets you finished and then, when I said it was time to go (I had been standing around in the rain for a while!), you told me you wanted to cheer on the rest of the team.  And you did, standing at the finish line cheering every person on by name the very last runner crossed.  Late last week you were voted one of the team’s co-captains, and we could not be prouder.

You love to write and read and are making a real effort not to say that you’re “bad at math.”  You’re not.  Science is probably your favorite subject and you still want to be a vet when you grow up.  You have a job, walking a neighbor’s dog twice a week.  You often bring her by to see me as you head out, and each time I notice the tangible bond that exists between you.  I’m sorry that we don’t have a dog.  I’ll be honest and blame the fact that I work from home and that we don’t have a yard as much as your brother’s terrible dog hair allergy.  I hope that your relationship with Gracie, the well-named chocolate lab three doors down, can assuage some of your grief and frustration that we don’t have our own puppy.

You’re so responsible and organized that sometimes I forget that you are just thirteen.  I never ask you about your homework or remind you what needs to be taken to school on a given day.  You simply have it all under control.  You room is the neatest and least cluttered in the house.  You have beautiful handwriting and you read and type quickly.  I hope that your devotion to order and your deep desire to make others happy leave room, somehow, for some mess.  It’s only in midlife that I’ve learned the magic that can exist in chaos, whether virtual or literal. I was a kid much like you, Grace, with a deep-seated need to please and perform.  I know from many years of devoted map-following that you have to learn this lesson for yourself, though I’m still looking for ways to help guide you to it.  I also know you’re living your life, not mine.  I am standing at the side of your race course, cheering you on.  I know you can’t really see me, because you’re in the woods.  I can’t always see you.  But I’m here, and I’m going to cheer until the end of time.

Last Friday you texted me in the morning: “last school day as a kid!” Tears filled my eyes immediately.  I would like to think you can still be a kid, at least some of the time, and at least here, at home, with me.  But I know we’re heading into a new season, embarking on a new path.  As always, all we have is trust and instinct and love.  But boy, do we have a lot of that.

I love you, GBP, always have, always will.  You’ll always be the girl who made me a mother, my first child, the baby who arrived after 2 straight days of back labor, screaming.  You burst everything open that morning at 11:20 am, October 26, 2002, and it’s never been the same again.  It hasn’t always been easy for me to reckon with that, as I know you know, but my God, I’d never, ever do if differently.  Welcome to your teens.

xox
Mum

previous birthday letters to Grace: twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six