Grace

See the world

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Walking down the street in Palestine with my brother-in-law, Grace, and Whit.

It has been almost two years since the four of us went to Jerusalem to visit my sister and her family.  This, Grace and Whit’s first international trip, was a wonderful and powerful experience and it continues to echo through all four of our lives.  When we got home, I reflected on the immensely different ways that Hilary and I responded to our childhood of hopscotching back and forth across the Atlantic.  She and her husband took her three and five year old daughters to live in Israel for a year.  I have lived in the same house, in the city where I was born, for 12 years.

And yet.  Perhaps that childhood of mine, rich as it was with travel and cathedrals and museums and ski trips in Austria where I learned to speak a few German words and simultaneously striated with tearful goodbyes, acted on me in more ways than I knew.

Over the last year or two I’ve felt a new and firm desire to have adventures with Grace and Whit whenever we can.  Part of this comes from my keen consciousness of how limited the opportunities to travel together are now.  But another part of it comes from having watched Grace and Whit respond to a foreign land, culture, and language.  They soaked up more than I could have imagined in Jerusalem, and I want to make sure we continue exposing them to new places and experiences during our few breaks.  This doesn’t have to be international: last spring break we went to Washington, and the Grand Canyon is surely on my list of places I want to visit with the children.

Adventures.  New places.  Rich experiences that augment their sense of the world and their awareness of their place (important, but very far from the center!) in it.  These are what I’m after.

Last week, Grace, Whit and I somehow got on the topic of Great Pops, who has now been gone over a year.  We talked about how he had truly seen the world, and about how his life had been long and full and marvelous.  Grace remembered the Christmas card he sent the year he was 90, which featured a photo of him ziplining in Costa Rica.  And Whit recalled the photograph of him standing in front of the pyramids in Egypt that stood in his living room, as well as the picture of him skiing in front of the Matterhorn that now hangs on the wall of a bedroom in my parents’ house.

“Great Pops really saw the world, didn’t he?” Whit asked from the back seat.

Why yes, I thought.  Yes, he did.  “See the World,” by Gomez (a song I love) ran through my head.

And that’s what I want for Grace and Whit.  To see the world: not just globally, though that’s an undeniable part of it.  I want them to see their world.  In all of its majesty and multiplicity.  My childhood was extremely different from theirs, but one thing my parents did without question was show me the world.  This contributed to who I am today in ways I’m still understanding, but I know that a certain openness of outlook and orientation towards empathy resulted from the travels, adventures, and myriad experiences that made up my childhood.

I can’t wait to help Grace and Whit see the world.  There’s so much to look forward to.  I can’t wait.

Eleven years old

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Dear Grace,

Eleven.  It is the ultimate cliche, and the most unavoidable truth: where did the time go?  I swear it was minutes ago that I pulled you onto my chest, your squalling, red face as foreign to me as I’d been told it would be familiar.

Since your arrival we have had many years of sunlight, of startling beauty and stomach-hurting laughter and before-bed hugs so sweet my heart physically aches.  It is impossible for me to convey how much I love you, my Gracie girl.  I wish I could.  What I can do is try to capture who you are right now, at this moment, as I’ve tried to do every year on your birthday.  You are standing on a fulcrum, poised between two worlds, a liminal creature flitting back and forth across an invisible but indelible border, the little girl you were and the young woman you’re becoming both visible in your face.

You are in fifth grade.  You love to read.  Every night as I tuck you in I perch on your comforter covered with peace signs and wait as you finish your page (or, more often, your chapter).  Your brown hair splays on the peace sign-printed pillow behind you and you finally, reluctantly, slide a bookmark between the pages.

You say prayers every night, and they are simple and always the same.  You begin “Thank you for …” and list things that you are grateful for.  I never taught you this, and I love that it is how you instinctively end the day.  More often than not you say something about being thankful to live in this wonderful world and every single time it brings tears to my eyes.  Every night that I stand in your door and say I love you and that I’ll see you in the morning, I’m aware of what an extraordinary, incandescent privilege it is to say those words.

This year you joined a club soccer team and the level of instruction and play went way up from the town team you’d been a part of for several years.  I don’t think you have ever actually worked at a sport before, but you are now, and it’s extraordinary to watch the results.  I was at your game, several weeks ago, when you scored your first goal.  The smile on your face was unlike any I’ve ever seen.  And then, just last weekend, your undefeated team suffered their first loss.  You were playing goalie, and you let in the other team’s winning goal.  You were absolutely devastated by feeling that you had let down your team.  I didn’t like seeing you sad, but I was actually glad that you took responsibility for what happened and am certain you learned something from the experience.  Just yesterday, you played the exact same team again.  You had been anxious on and off all week about this game, aware of what you felt was a failing on your part and desperate to beat them.  Your coach may call you “little Gracie,” but you were downright ferocious on the field.  Determination radiated from you.  With one minute left in the game, you made the game-winning goal.  Sweet redemption.

It’s clearer and clearer to both of us that I’m a strict mother, and that you are going to be slower to have (phones, a late bedtime) and watch (TV shows, PG-13 movies) certain things than most of your classmates. Once in a while we talk about this, and you always tell me that you like being a kid still, and that you understand that there’s no reason to rush towards adulthood.  Who knows how long this understanding will last, but for now I do get the sense that you’re grateful for boundaries.

You love top 40 radio and we sing along, together, when we’re driving.  Right now we particularly like belting out Roar, Wrecking Ball, and Royals.

Friendships are still a complicated area for you.  You are completely devoted to your best friend from camp, miss her every day, and are counting minutes until your annual trip to visit.  You’re still finding your way through the murky swamp that is fifth grade friendship, and you are sometimes thrown off balance by the way that loyalties can shift.

You and Whit love each other but you also fight a lot.  I call you The Bickersons, and many mornings you’re huffy and aggravated with each other by breakfast.  But you also have your arm around him in every single picture I take and one of your favorite things is to tuck him in (including performing the Ghostie Dance) when I am not home to do so.

You worry so, so much about pleasing other people, Grace.  Lately I have observed that when I ask your opinion about something, instead of offering it, you often say you’ll do want whatever I want.  This is drawn straight from my playbook, my girl, and I can therefore tell you authoritatively it’s not a path to happiness. You have to learn to say what you want, what you think, and what you mean.  The people who are worth having in your life will appreciate this.  I promise.  It’s something you and I are talking about, and I want fiercely to steer you away from road of pleasing others above all else that I walked for a long time.

You are tall and lean and your shiny brown hair has a marked wave in the back.  You like it when I put it into two wet braids after a shower.  Your cleft chin and deep mahogany eyes are so familiar to me that sometimes I fall into them.  Your feet are huge and I can already tell you’re going to be taller than I am.  You still have a little girl’s body but all around you your classmates are changing shape and I know what lies ahead.

The truth is that I am afraid of what comes along with this physical change, of the separation that I know has to happen between us as you move into your own young adult self.  I know that the closeness between us had so stretch, and I want so much to trust that it will come back, a different amalgam, yes, but still there.

As much as I dread this looming transition, though, I’m even more devoutly sure that it has to happen.  The ache in my heart doesn’t matter as much as does giving you the space you need to move into your own dance.  It’s not that you haven’t been dancing already, but a different music is playing now, and the choreography is starting to change.  I vow that I will never stop listening to your list of what you are thankful for, tipping my face up to look at the funny-shaped clouds you notice, baking you homemade birthday cakes, or holding your hand if you want.  I’ll be here to braid your hair and listen to your disappointments and hear you read your book report on Umbrella Summer out loud.  But I’ll take a deep breath and turn away from your closed door, too, and watch you walk down the jetway to an airplane by yourself and not ask you what you talked to someone about if you choose to keep it private.

You have taught me so very many things, but among the most important is that all we can do is look to what’s coming and greet it with eyes and arms open.  It’s time for me to start living that lesson, Grace, my dear girl, my only daughter.

Happy eleven, my Grace, my grace, the girl who made me a mother, my first baby, one of my two greatest teachers.  I love you.

Mummy

Previous birthday letters to Grace are here: ten, nine, eight, seven, six.

Entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart

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Eleven years ago tomorrow

We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters’ lengthening flight. – Letty Cottin Pogrebin

As often as I have witnessed the miracle, held the perfect creature with its tiny hands and feet, each time I have felt as though I were entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart. – Margaret Sanger

 

What they’ve taught me

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How is it possible that this picture was taken five years ago?  August, 2008.  My teachers in swimwear.

It’s not a secret that I used to scoff when I read or heard people proclaim that their children were their “greatest teachers!”  Whatever, I used to whisper under my breath.  How is that possible?  But as has been the case with most of my firmly-held beliefs, the universe has proceeded to show me that my certainty is both wrong and a little bit arrogant.

By some combination of years and the maturation of both my children and me, or probably mostly through the alchemy between those things, I’m now glad to say that I have learned an enormous amount from my children.  There’s no question, in fact, that they’ve taught me and changed me more than any other human – any other factor, actually – in this life.

First and foremost, they have entirely reconstituted the way I relate to the world.  I used to be in a rush for the next brass ring, certain that wherever I was headed at high speed would hold the answers to all of my overwhelming questions.  That approach collapsed in somewhat grandiose fashion in my early 30s and now I view the “prize” as existing right here, under my feet.  Furthermore, I know that the questions are permanent and the answers evanescent.  Paradoxically, children are the most stubbornly here-now creatures in the world and simultaneously the most unavoidable reminders of how fast life passes.

A few years into parenting, realizing I was watching my children grow before my eyes, I was struck dumb by how bittersweet being a mother was.  I had not anticipated the heartbreak it entailed.  The passage of time took a seat at the table of my soul and refused to get up.  As Grace’s pants grew too short and Whit’s shoes seemed too tight overnight, I was unable to ignore the incessant turning forward of my days.  I took pictures constantly.  I wrote letters to each child on their birthdays.  I started blogging to record the little moments of everyday life that I knew I’d forget.  Were all of these attempts to memorialize my days, like insects frozen forever in amber?  Or were these actually efforts to better inhabit these days, because I realized quickly the details only really revealed themselves when I was paying attention?

I’ve decided it was the latter.  Being Grace and Whit’s mother has taught me how I want to live in this world.  It is nothing less than that.  I have learned to look at the light of this hour, and now that I can see it, I refuse to look away.

But I have learned other things, too.  Grace has taught me about the power that passion has to light up a life.  Watching her fierce attachment to and fascination with animals has made me realize viscerally something I’ve always known intellectually, which is I didn’t have that kind of animating interest in my childhood.  I still don’t.  And I wish I did.  The arrival of a dog causes genuine delight for her, she devours books on all kinds of animals, and farm camp’s barnyard chores were one of her favorite things this summer.  She has shown me something else I’ve sensed but never been able to articulate, which is that deep sensitivity can be both blessing and burden.  When I watch her ascertain the mood of a room without any formal input I can see her empathy rise to the surface.  Like a heat-seeking missile she often goes right to the person who needs her the most.  I’ve also seen the ways this sensitivity can gouge her when it’s turned inward, when she takes things to heart that don’t deserve that or allows people without kind intentions close to her.

From Whit I have learned a great deal about how the world responds to warm and outgoing people.  He is often my front man.  He is not shy in the least.  And through watching how people interact with him I’ve learned how the opposite approach (which is my default) can seem cold and aloof, distant and unfriendly.  Now and then I take a deep breath and try to plunge into a conversation with a smile, and I swear that I always think: “what would Whit do here?”  He has taught me about the ways that humor can soothe and distract, and that it is often the very best way to change the energy in a room.  He too has shown me the way true passion can manifest: the boy is a natural-born engineer, and is constantly fiddling with Legos.  He’s now brought them into the bathtub.  I’m certain he dreams in Legos.  It’s just one way that his 3D orientation to the world shows up.

I’ve learned the hand gestures to a song about llamas, who Geronimo Stilton is, and the importance of having putty to play with while you work at school.  I’ve discovered that I love Bugles, ridden a roller coaster for the first time, and learned the profound peace that can come with curling up with a child in a twin bed at bedtime, simply to be together for a few minutes.  I’ve learned the lyrics to more Taylor Swift and Katy Perry songs than I can count, what purpose all those hockey pads serve, and that there are three sizes of soccer ball.

There is so much more I could say, but even writing this has made me think about how perhaps this realization comes equally from an orientation towards gratitude as it does from one towards noticing.  And that simply takes me back to where I began this post, to the most essential thing I have learned from Grace and Whit: being aware of and thankful for all the details of this ordinary life of mine.

The thing I most want to do for my children

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We got home from our marvelous week in Vermont on a Saturday evening.  Everybody was exhausted and deflated.  The end August loomed, and the big summer things we’d been looking forward to were all behind us.  On Sunday, Matt had to go to work, so Grace, Whit, and I were left with an open day.  We did some errands in the morning, moving slowly, sinking back into regular life.  It was a glorious, outrageously perfect late-summer day.  I suggested a picnic in the park that is three blocks from us.

Grace and Whit responded with enthusiasm.  We packed turkey sandwiches, some goldfish, some tortilla chips and guacamole, and water.  They threw a frisbee for a while and I watched them in the almost-deserted park.  I could sense Grace’s month-old self snuggled in her blue Patagonia fleece one-piece, asleep in my arms as we took our first Christmas card as a family on the rise over to my right.  I could see both of their four year old bodies running in their first soccer games on chilly fall Saturday mornings, smiling as I remembered how often the parental cheering consisted “Wrong way!  Other goal!”  I could hear their pealing laughter as they made snowmen in the enormous, untouched drifts of snow in last winter’s blizzard.

After a bit they came to sit next to me on our towel.  We ate our sandwiches in the shade and in silence, and after a few minutes Whit sighed, “Oh, this is nice.”

“It really is, isn’t it?”

I’m not sure how, but we started talking about facing fears.  We talked about fears we had surmounted, and what we were still afraid of.  We all shared stories.  It was a rare half hour of perfect peace and happy equanimity.  After we finished our lunch we sat for a bit longer, noticing things in the fenced-off city garden plots next to us.  Grace tilted her head back to watch an airplane streak across the sky, pointing up at it, mouth open.  Then we packed up our trash and our towel and headed for home.

I am rarely prouder of my children than when they enjoy small moments like this.  I honestly think this might be (one of) the key(s) to happiness: finding joy in the most mundane things.  It’s also an outright goal of mine as a parent, trying to make the ordinary special, trying to shape a memory out of a regular old day (even knowing as I do that we can’t always control which moments coalesce into the pearls strung on life’s chain).  The day after the picnic, I left my desk an hour early to take the children to our beloved fairy stream, where we worked in companionable quiet for a long time building cairns.  It was spontaneous, it was something we do all the time, but despite that – or maybe because of it – it was an exceptional experience.

How can I protect Grace and Whit’s propensity for joy and their orientation towards wonder?  How can I keep them from becoming jaded in a world that leans towards cynicism so early, so quickly, and so finally?  How can I help them continue to find the white lines of exhaust from an airplane across a hydrangea blue sky or the quiet stacking of small rocks at a bubbling fairy stream things worthy of their time, their attention, and, sometimes, their awe?

I don’t know, but I am pretty sure this is the thing I most want to do for my children.

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