musings

Pain punctuated with joy

Kate, at sweet/salty, is one of my favorite Internet writers. Her words are magical, full of gorgeous imagery and big leaps and blunt honesty. I love her post today. Some excerpts:

We like to think that life is joy punctuated with pain but it’s not. Life is pain punctuated with moments of joy.

The optimist in me wants to disagree with Kate about the joy/pain balance of life, but the pessimist in me senses that she is right. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, really, what the equation is, as long as we appreciate the joy and it sustains us through the pain. Of course everybody’s particular calculus is different, the balance of happy and sad, of light and shadow. It’s no secret that mine leans towards shadow, which is probably why Kate’s words resonate so strongly with me.

Life is not fairly represented in a Flickr photostream. It is not false, but it is not the whole truth. Memories are kneaded into something different from what we actually experienced. In the gulf between the two there is necessary sorcery.

I love this image, of the sorcery that exists in the gulf between experience and memory. Yes, how true it is, that even as we live moments we are not always sure of how they will transmogrify in our memory. Some of the “big moments” of my life are blurs in my memory, while some of the most mundane and unspecial days are the ones I remember with the clarity and dazzling color of light through a prism. Some of the memories that I return to the most often for comfort and inspiration, crystalline in their gorgeous power, are of experiences that I did not realize the importance of as I lived them. Most, in fact.

I wanted to hang my motherhood up on the hook that has MOTHERHOOD pasted above it in Office Depot ticky-tack, and wipe my hands on my pants, and walk away for a while.

I disgust myself with how ungrateful I can be. I mourn the ability to be as blindly ungrateful as I please. I love my kids but I miss myself. I’m tired of wrangling and refereeing and spotting.

I very recently bemoaned my own lack of gratitude. My own inability to get out of my own way to see the glory and beauty of my life. I am so thankful to Kate for admitting her own moments of wanting to just be herself, without hangers-on and people needing her. I know the feeling well, and wish I had my own hook to hang one of my identities on for a while now and then. My children are at a tennis lesson and I miss them. Then they are home and I miss the silence of their absence. I look at them sleeping and am overcome with a wave of love so simultaneously fierce and gentle that it shocks me. They wake up, start bickering, and within five minutes the gentleness vanishes and the fierceness has shifted to something decidedly less sweet. Repeat. Ad nauseum. Is this seesaw just the way it is, from now on?

Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy’s death touched me deeply, as it did many people. He is certainly a mythic figure for Americans, and probably for those of us from Massachusetts in particular. I wish I knew more of Kennedy’s legislative legacy and particular political achievements. I don’t. I do know, however, that he emerged from a life of immense privilege to support those whose voices are underrepresented. His persistent and patient backing of healthcare reform, civil rights, and efforts at creating economic well-being is laudable. I have great respect for someone raised in an affluent environment who turns those advantages to the greater good. That Kennedy, despite a privileged upbringing, dedicated himself to the needs of those whose lives were very different, is the thing I admire most about him.

Beyond that, though, the tall man with the shock of white hair was a walking embodiment of human frailty and greatness. His entire life was circumscribed by early mistakes, by his restless streak and personal demons. Isn’t Ted Kennedy, in fact, the average person writ large? Full of great charisma and courage and also deep flaws and uncontrollable appetites. Forced to redefine his life and who he is because of events both in and out of his control.

Perhaps this is why so many Americans resonate with Ted Kennedy. We see in him, magnified, our own struggle to reconcile our weaknesses with our strengths and our own desire to make something of our lives, despite mistakes and tragedies. We identify with a person blazing with profound sadness, flaws, and faith and wrestling with unanswered (and unanswerable) questions. We desperately ache to transcend our own limitations in order to be a better version of ourselves for those we love. For me at least, this is what is the most compelling thing about Ted Kennedy. His humanity, in all of its complex beauty and pain, was somehow visible and tangible to all. His struggles with it defined his life, as most of ours will too, in their own smaller ways.

Fundamentally, Ted Kennedy’s is a great story of redemption. He found his way back, with halting steps and spectacular flubs, to a place where he contributed much and ultimately became the flag-bearer neither he nor family expected him to be. As Norman J. Ornstein was quoted as saying in the final paragraph of the New York Times obituary, “He was the survivor. He was not a shining star that burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact of the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end up by far being the most significant.”

A heart, a gift, and wonder

My father-in-law had a heart transplant on November 26, 2002. I think about it all the time, but especially around Thanksgiving. Grace was born on October 26, 2002. That was, needless to say, an emotional and scary time. I was in the deep dark hole of postpartum depression, Matt was at the hospital every evening after a horrible day at more-people-laid-off-every-day work, and Grace was screaming her head off 20 hours a day. Oh, and John was at MGH where he was basically going to leave with a heart or in a coffin. It was not a fun period.

He received a heart a dark, damp November night. There are many amazing things about that day. His surprise granddaughter who is named Grace for many reasons, not the least of which is her appearance being an act of grace for its correlation with his illness, was one month old. It was two days before Thanksgiving. It was also his and my mother-in-law’s wedding anniversary.

It is truly a miracle, the fact that someone else’s heart beats in his chest. All we know is that the donor was 28 years old (the age I was at the time of the transplant). And I imagine that the donor’s death was likely untimely and tragic. But oh what a gift they gave. I was always a organ donor but am now an evangelist for the cause. And please, everybody, know that just having it on your license is not enough. Your next of kin and family need to know your wishes, because it is they who will be in the situation of making that call should the worst case scenario occur.

It is an absolute miracle. I wish I had better words that didn’t sound trite, but I don’t. He was released from the hospital after two weeks, which shocked me at the time (seriously? four days for your c-section and two weeks for your heart transplant?). It was a slow road back to feeling good but honestly his quality of life has been excellent.

So excellent that I often forget to remember what tremendous good fortune we have had. I remember that first Thanksgiving, Matt, Grace and I drove to my family’s big (usually 30+ Meads around tables) celebration in Marion. We were both shell-shocked, from the transplant and the post partum and the sleeplessness and the sheer earthquake quality of the last month. Everybody was incredibly gentle, with kind and generous words about John (at that point he was not even out of anesthesia yet, and much remained uncertain). The theme, though, over and over, was “Wow, you have a lot to be thankful for.” And I’m not proud of this, but I remember thinking: No we don’t. Are you crazy? To be in this situation in the first place?

Oh how selfish those thoughts were, I see that now. Of course we were – and remain – wildly lucky, fortunate, and blessed. And , yes, yes, deeply, deeply grateful. I am only ashamed that I am not more actively thankful every single day of what a gift it is to wake up in the morning and have an able body and a sound mind. It is so easy to lose track of that good fortune, to dwell only on my anxieties and fears and issues and small pains. I try to remember, to bring myself back to the core of gratitude, to the awareness of how hugely blessed I am.

Today, I guess, is one of those days, where I am trying to tug myself back to the perspective I know I ought to have. One of those days that I am aware of how our everyday lives are absolutely laced with miracles. May I learn to remember this more often. As my father-in-law, with someone’s extraordinary gift beating in his chest should remind me.

A letter on the first day of kindergarten

Lisa Belkin at Motherlode today published a letter from a mother to her son, marking the occasion of his starting kindergarten.

I read it with tears streaming down my face. And then I remembered that on precisely the same occasion last year I wrote a letter to Grace. Rereading that made me cry even more.

That day feels like yesterday, and in two weeks I will send both of them off together to the Morse Building, Grace to first grade and Whit to Beginners.

Another year gone by, both endless and so fast my head spins.

Om Nama Shivaya

Last night in yoga class the teacher (wonderful, jivamukti-trained Alanna) spent a while talking about sound, vibrations, e=mc2, listening, and being open to the universe. She asked us to think about someone who could benefit from our being more present, from our listening more carefully. I thought immediately of Grace. No hesitation: her little face with tangly hair falling in her eyes popped into my head.

At the end of practice Alanna turned the lights off and did a little bit of singing with the room lit only by candles. I would not normally describe this as my thing, but somehow I was porous to it last night and found it very moving. We did a call-and-response chant of Om Nama Shivaya (again, not my thing, but Alanna was singing it rather than chanting it, with acoustic guitar accompaniment … really just a hop away from some of my favorite music!). She asked us to put our hands over our heart and to think of the person we had dedicated our practice to. Tears streamed down my face as I imagined Gracie sitting next to me. My awareness of my own limitations was a physical ache, and I felt the desperate desire to be a more present, patient mother for her running through my veins in a visceral way.

I was reminded, then, of an experience I had while pregnant with Grace. When I remembered it I can’t believe I’ve spent so many hours whining about how her name was going to be Eloise. I was 20 weeks pregnant and at a new prenatal yoga class (that I actually never returned to, because there was a little too much breathing through our chakras and not enough downward dog). After a long shivasana, the instructor asked us to “go inside” (what does this mean, really?) and to “feel our baby” (and yes, I rolled my eyes here). We were supposed to listen for a single word, a message from our child, and to share it with the room. I was skeptical and, frankly, trying to figure out how I could leave the room without getting busted. And then this happened: a voice in my head said, clearly, “grace.” Her name has always been Grace.

Incidentally, these two experiences, separated by a wide gulf of years and many, many not-very-spiritual moments, make me think of Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk. Yes, I am biased, because I love Elizabeth Gilbert. But still. I find her premise fascinating, and compelling: that creativity should be thought of as an external force that visits us (with frustrating inconsistency) rather than something inherent to an individual. This, she posits, is a way to release some of the pressure to be inspired every single day. She also supports her theory with interesting data points from Big Name Philosophers.

This notion is central to a Philip Pullman’s extraordinary trilogy, His Dark Materials (which I could not recommend more highly). In Pullman’s beautiful books, both quick, enthralling reads and dense explorations of religion, identity, and the soul, children are accompanied by “daemons,” companions who are an external embodiment of their creativity. When we are children, our daemons shift between the shapes of various animals. As adults, they take a firmer form and settle into their final shape. Pullman seems to be claiming that children are comfortable with the fluidity of creativity and identity, and that as we get older this relationship grows more static, the exchange less easy. I find this idea fascinating and it clearly has the same root as Elizabeth Gilbert’s argument about artistic inspiration and whether its locus is internal or external to the artist himself.

If you agree with Gilbert and Pullman, which I think I do, I guess whatever we believe that spirit is visited me last night. And reminded me, in no uncertain terms, that Gracie deserves better from me.