musings

The shimmer of spirit

A few times – not often, but I can definitely recall specific instances – I have had the extraordinary experience of seeing the shimmer of a person’s spirit in their face.  It is a powerful reminder of how much about another human being is beyond, and beneath, what we can see.

Two years ago, I wrote about seeing sparkles behind my eyelids as I fell asleep.  Now I understand that I was catching sight of the caverns of my own spirit for the first time.  I wrote of sensing inside my head and heart “an expansive space, a black sky speckled with constellations whose forms I don’t yet know how to read.”  And I have had the immense privilege of glimpsing what Catherine Newman calls the “hidden geode glittering” inside another person a few times.

This has been on my mind because I recently re-read Phillip Pullman’s marvelous book The Golden Compass.  My father gave me the trilogy many years ago, and I devoured it, and for some reason I’d been feeling the tug lately to reread.  I very rarely re-read, but for some reason I did so.  Once again I was transported by the story, by the narrative, by the human and yet extraordinary character of Lyra and, perhaps most of all, by the device of daemons.

In the world of The Golden Compass, every human being is accompanied by an animal called their daemon.  This animal, the physical manifestation of a person’s spirit, is governed by a set of rules.  It cannot get further than a certain distance away from its human.  It cannot be touched by any other person.  And, most fascinatingly to me, the daemons of children can shift their shape, from one kind of animal to another.  Adults’ daemons, however, are fixed, and as the child grows up the daemon selects an animal and settles on it.  This parable of maturation has all kinds of ramifications, and when I think of it I feel both a hint of sadness and a tinge of truth.

The daemons have already reminded me, a bit, of Harry Potter’s Patronus.  It takes effort, skill, and dedication to conjure a Patronus, as well as maturity.  Not just anyone can do it.  The form that a Patronus takes is unique to the individual.

I realize now that the reason I love both daemons and the Patronus is that they are examples of the spirit made manifest.  They are Pullman’s and Rowling’s version of that glimmer I’ve seen in peoples’ faces.  And I love knowing that others (in particular others that I so esteem) recognize the same thing I sometimes see, and wonder if I’ve imagined.  I haven’t.  I will keep looking for it, everywhere I go.

Have you ever seen the shimmer of someone else’s spirit in their face?  Do you know Phillip Phillman’s The Golden Compass?  Do you love Harry Potter as I do?

This beautiful world, and the power of traditions

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Last week, on our fourth annual trip to Storyland to celebrate the end of school, I learned several things.

I learned that my children are as smitten with tradition as I am.  I had told them weeks ago that I knew they were getting old for Storyland, and this might be our last trip.  Halfway through our day at the park, Grace turned to me, eyes filled with tears, and asked, “Do you think this is our last trip, really?” I hugged her to me and said of course not, it was up to her, as long as they wanted to come, I wanted to take them.

Every aspect of this trip has ossified into ritual.  We stay at the same hotel, we go to the same water park, we eat dinner at one restaurant and breakfast at another, we start and end our day on Bamboo Shoots. I love our breakfast spot for many reasons, including that it’s called Priscilla’s, which was my grandmother’s name.  There was an unexpected wait (the place was jammed with Harley Davidson bikers, one of whose shirts resulted in a long conversation on why you’d have a shirt with b&^%@ on the back) and so we sat on the porch, deciding what to do.  “Let’s just go somewhere else, guys,” I said, glancing at my watch.

Whit looked at me, absolutely scandalized.  “But that would mess up our tradition.”  He folded his arms and sat down.  And so we waited.

I learned, again, that our family’s traditions form a scaffolding on which our life is draped.  I need to write more about this, but the older the children get, the more important some of our rituals, both big and small, seem to be to them.  They provide a reassuring rhythm to life, I think, as well as a space for them to still be children in a world that seems to be pushing them to young adulthood faster than they might want to go.

I learned that Grace is the voice of reason in my life.  As we drove home we talked about what would happen when we got home.  Maybe we can skip showers, I mused.  “Mummy, I think we need showers,” Grace chimed in from the backseat.  “I mean, after a full day at an amusement park?  Don’t you think?”  Good point, I admitted.  Showers it was.

I learned that Caramel Bugles are troublesomely good.

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I learned yet again of the wisdom in Storyland.  I take a picture of this sign every single year.  And it just gets increasingly true.

I learned that every year the edge of time’s passage cuts me more sharply.  My favorite part of the (long!) drive up involves 14 hilly and twisty miles through the woods with glimpses of Crystal Lake on the right.  It’s absolutely beautiful.  As we passed the landmarks we know so well (the raft in the lake!  the archery targets!  the stilled ski lift!) I felt a pang of grieving this trip, even as we set out on it.  As I watched Grace and Whit barrel down the water slides, their laughter echoing off the cavernous roof, I felt the familiar prickling up and down my arms that I’ve come to think of as the physical sensation of total presence, as well as the somatization of my distress about time passing.  Even as I lived the moment I’d so anticipated, I was already mourning it.

As we walked through the doors of Storyland, leaving on Friday afternoon, I felt a tightness in my chest.  I looked back over my shoulder and the park’s bright colors blurred because my eyes were full of tears.  I blinked quickly but could not hide my emotion.  The sting of sorrow at the end of something we had looked forward to took my breath away.  I feel this way every year, but it keeps getting stronger.  Surely the day is coming when I’ll sit down outside the gates of some activity or place and simply refuse to leave.  Life’s endings bring me to my knees, face to face with all that is transient.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that my heart regularly breaks open at the constant reminders that these moments I so thoroughly love are flying by.  They will be over soon, and I am not ready.

I learned that I do still remember some college Chemistry.  Whit brought one book on our trip, an introduction to the periodic table.  As we drove up he talked about different elements, and more often than not I remembered the abbreviations, or their color, or their basic state.  He was impressed and I was proud (fun fact: if I hadn’t majored in English at college, I would have chosen Chemistry).  One thing is true, for sure: the conversations with these two just get more and more interesting.

I learned that my children are aware of this life’s poignant beauty in a way I never used to be.  As we drove home through the outrageously glorious dusk light, I said several times, “Oh, guys, look: what a beautiful world this is.”  I pointed out smudges of clouds at the horizon or the way that the dark green trees flared against the hydrangea blue of the gloaming sky.  Not one single time did they shush me, or ask me to turn up Katy Perry.  They always looked, and noticed.  At one point, unprompted by me, Whit sighed from the backseat, “It is so beautiful, Mummy.”  And yes.  It is.

It is an astonishingly beautiful world.  How grateful I am that Grace and Whit can see it.

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This is thirty eight

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I loved our This is Childhood series this winter.  I loved writing This Is Ten about my first child, my pioneer, my grace, my Grace.

I keep thinking of things that describe my now, and thought I would write my own grown-up version.

So: this is thirty eight.

Thirty eight is solidly in the middle of my life.  Thirty eight is realizing that there are likely as many years behind me as there are ahead.  It is acknowledging that life is no longer a green field, that certain doors are closed, that some choices are irrevocable, and that many of the big what-ifs that haunted my childhood have been answered.  Thirty eight is also realizing that despite these answers, there are far, far more new questions.

Thirty eight is new lines at the sides of my eyes and mouth.  From smiling, maybe, but still.

Thirty eight is wearing my wedding ring all the time though my engagement ring rarely.  Thirty eight is not knowing which band was my wedding band and which my husband gave me on the day our daughter was born, because they are identical.  I don’t think it matters.  Thirty eight is wearing my mother’s wedding ring for a time, when she was unable to.  Thirty eight is knowing that one of my favorite pictures from our long-ago wedding shows that I wore my grandmother’s ring on my right hand when I walked down the aisle.

Thirty eight is realizing that certain shorts and skirts are now just too short.  Thirty eight is wondering if this is the summer to put away the bikinis.

Thirty eight is thirteen years of marriage.  It is knowing all the ways that marriage is both less and more than I thought it was, when I walked into a church wearing white and hearing thunder.  Less score-keeping, less candlelight, less drama.  More small acts of kindness, more forgiveness, more abiding.  Fewer flowers, but more cups of coffee made exactly how I like them, without being asked, brought to me in bed in the morning.

Thirty eight is realizing that my lifetime passion for peonies probably has something to do with their life span, which is as short as it is spectacular.  It can’t be an accident that I love best of all the flowers that blaze more brightly and most briefly.

Thirty eight is not having any more grandparents.  It is hearing about the illness and death of my friends’ parents.  It is going to funerals, and also christenings, more often than weddings.  Thirty eight was leaving my injured mother’s side before surgery a couple of years ago to run home to my daughter, who was crying that I wasn’t spending enough time with her.  Thirty eight is the middle place.

Thirty eight is knowing who your friends are, for real, for certain.  It is understanding that though there will be a small handful of true native speakers, it is okay for many friends to access only certain parts of you.  These friendships, while different, can offer great joy, deep laughter, and tremendous companionship.  Thirty eight is still learning that not everybody will like you, no matter what you do.

Thirty eight is drinking homemade green juice and Diet Coke most days.  It is developing a taste for kombucha, and drinking coffee with coconut milk and xylitol.  It is drinking wine still, but not as much, because I’d rather sleep and I’ve realized that alcohol interferes with that.

Thirty eight is finding that each year she grows more sensitive, more aware of life’s beauty and pain, more attuned to the world around her.  Thirty eight cries every single day, and laughs that much too (see: lines on my face).

Thirty eight is in the heart of the grand love affair that is motherhood, both smitten by and exasperated by her daughter and son. Thirty eight is watching, awestruck, as these children develop into people in whom bloom traits uncomfortably familiar and absolutely foreign in equal measure.  Thirty eight reads Harry Potter aloud, packs lunches, drives to and from soccer and hockey and baseball practices and games (see photo), plans surprise adventure outings, and can still make a bruised knee feel better with a kiss.

Thirty eight is its own kind of phosphorescence.  Different than ten’s ephemeral incandescence, but no less dazzling and no less fleeting.  Just like ten, just like life itself, thirty eight is bewilderingly beautiful, maddeningly confusing, achingly bittersweet, and vanishingly transient.

 

It’s not all shiny

Receiving comments and emails from people who read my words here is among my very favorite things in the world.  Once in a while, however, the contents of those messages can make me uneasy.  Sometimes people comment that it seems I have a “perfect” life.  Other times I get adulation about my “perfect” children.  And, lest you think everything I hear is nice, sometimes I get slapped down for being unaware of how good I have it.

The truth is my life is very far from perfect.  My children are far from perfect.  Nothing here is perfect, and I know also that nothing anywhere is perfect.

It’s not all shiny here.  It’s not all wonder and noticing the streak of an airplane across the evening sky and reading poetry aloud.  Those things exist, absolutely: usually every single day.  But there is also shouting, and impatience, and tears.  Years ago I remember someone telling me in a disgruntled tone that they couldn’t possibly be “present” for every moment of their life.  They had a job to do, and dishes to wash, and on and on and on.

I was taken aback by that, and realized I was not communicating what I meant by “being present” clearly enough.  I meant, and mean, it quite literally: being awake, being aware, paying attention.  That does not mean loving everything.  There is plenty that I don’t like in this life of mine.  There is no question that the rooms of my days and of my heart contain mold and dust and there are regrets piling up in the corner.

But there is also so much good.  And I sincerely hope that one thing I am is aware of and grateful for my good fortune.  I don’t enumerate my blessings because I suspect that would be boring, and because it feels like gloating.  But I am incredibly, intensely conscious of how fortunate and privileged I am.

This awareness often adds to my guilt about the melancholy that hovers over me much of the time.  How can I possibly feel sorrow, and these prickly emotions, when I have so very much to be thankful for?  But I do.  And even in the wake of my oft-churning sadness comes a reminder of all the blessings that surround me.  At my saddest and bleakest I still can’t forget all that is beautiful about this life.  In fact I suspect it is precisely my sorrow – which comes directly from my awareness of how fast this life passes – that makes me so aware of loveliness and joy.  They come from the same source, and perhaps are even just sides of a single coin.  This experience, this life: sadness and joy, light and dark, beginnings and ends.  It’s all one.

But back to my point.  And I do have one: my messy, noisy, imperfect life.

Years, ago, I remember Katrina Kenison joking that her husband would “love to be married to the woman who writes the books.”  How this resonated with me, then and still now.  Sometimes when I am rushing everyone out the door in the morning, asserting that we are going to be late, late late!!! (despite the fact that I have literally almost never been late), Matt will turn to me and say: remember, Linds, live every moment.

Bedtime is a good example. I know how sacred bedtime is, how much I love these moments, how desperately I wish I had back all the bedtimes I wished away over the years.   And yet, still, sometimes I trip up and snap at a child who is dallying before bed.  Always, almost immediately, I am overcome with guilt.  I wasted this bedtime, I think.

Daily, I demonstrate in myriad ways my distraction, aggravation, irritation, impatience.  All of those emotions throb through my life, and I know I’m far from alone.  In fact my friend Aidan wrote about this very topic recently.  I know this frustration, this sense of falling down over and over and over again, is human.  I also know others who feel misunderstood, though I’m not familiar with many who have been directly accused of misrepresenting themselves (as I have).  I don’t, and I am not.  This is my life.  It is imperfect, and it is chaotic, and it is full of disappointments and regrets and mistakes, of raised voices and hurt feelings and tears.  It is also full of brilliance and beauty and joy.  I just choose to write about the latter more than the former.  But I assure you: it’s all there.

Have you ever stumbled in the perilous gulf between perception and reality?  Have others ever made assumptions about your life that don’t feel right?  Do you get aggravated, short-tempered, and irritated?

 

Narrow and deep

One of my favorite posts on this blog, My life has simultaneously narrowed and widened, written 18 months ago, still runs frequently through my mind.  I wrote then of how I had radically cut away my external commitments in order to focus on a few things, most of all our family.  I ended with a exhortation to look closely at how you spend your time, because I believe it is the truest reflection of what you genuinely value.

I have been thinking about this lately, because since writing that piece my life has continued to narrow.  It has also kept surprising me with its expansion.  Last year I took Grace and Whit to an iMax movie about cavers at the Science Museum.  That’s what my life feels like sometimes: as I funnel through a small hole into a darkness that I can’t see my entire world shrinks to the circumference of my body.  And then, suddenly, after passing through the fear of the unknown, an enormous, echoing cavern opens up, visible only to me, lit by the headlamp I’m wearing.

From the outside, my life might look small.  I often feel like I have to defend it to others.  We have a strict one-night-out-per-weekend rule.  I don’t do a lot during week in the evening.  I say no to an awful lot of stuff, mostly for myself but also for the children.  I feel guilty about these decisions all the time, by the way.  I feel constantly that I am disappointing friends and family.  Our weekends are consumed with sports games and around the edges we go for family walks, play board games, read books, sit around the dining room table and laugh and talk.  I’m not willing to give these things up.

And yet our lives feel wide and expansive at the same time.  We walk out to Crane’s Beach on a narrow wooden boardwalk, rickety above the sea grass, and then, at once, the ocean yawns open in front of us: that is life.  The vista grows small and then startles me with its sudden breadth.

I’m doing so much less on almost all dimensions of my life.  I have far less help.  I have almost no non-profit and school-related commitments.  I suspect I’m often simply not invited to things because I’ve said no so often.  And I am doing so much more in a couple of arenas: I’m working a whole lot more, and I’m spending a lot of time with Grace and Whit.  There is no extra time.  There is only this.

And while I do feel a persistent sense of letting people down, and a need to defend our choices, I also know that I am happy with the values that my choices reflect.  I am spellbound by the sparkling universe I have glimpsed, by the glitter-lined geode I can now see.  I can’t look away.