nostalgia

Wild horses

I’ve written before about my beloved teacher James Valhouli, the first person who really made me believe I had something to say.  Sitting at my desk here, I look right at a photograph of Mr. Valhouli.  He was without a doubt the most important teacher I’ve ever had, and I still think about him every single day.  I’ve also written about Andre Dubus, a writer who meant a great deal to Mr. Valhouli and whose eulogy at my teacher’s funeral left an indelible impression on me.

So it was with enormous anticipation that I went this week to hear Andre Dubus III read from his new memoir, Townie.  I’ve heard terrific things about the work, most materially from my writing group friend, idol, and general can-always-be-trusted-in-matters-of-books friend, Katherine.  Andre Dubus III blew me away.  He is charismatic, funny, and brilliant, peppering his Haverhill accent and salt-of-the-earth personality with from-memory quotations from the likes of Richard Russo and Flannery O’Connor.  I cannot wait to read his story.  When he signed my copy, I shared my vivid memory of his father.  It turns out Andre was at the funeral himself, and Mr. Valhouli appears in Townie; this single slender detail was enough to fill me with both kinship and nostalgia.

I headed home steeped in these memories, thinking of how Exeter’s importance to me grows in parallel to my distance from the years I spent there.  As I get older I appreciate more and more the enormous impact the place had on me.  It’s the place in the world where I was most baldly lonely, and it has also been the most influential in setting the course of my adult live.  The awakening that took place inside me around Mr. Valhouli’s Harkness table, in his classroom with Cavafy’s Ithaka hanging on the wall, was the essential one.

What’s fascinating to me is that this intellectual birth occurred in a place where I had so few important relationships.  In fact, it’s become a bit of a tomb in my memory, a mausoleum of the mind, a place whose defining characteristic is the fact that I was lonely there.  But the fact is this isn’t right.  I fell in love with a boy for the first time at Exeter (well, I thought so at the time. time offers perspective.  regardless, it was my first “real” relationship.).  There are very, very few people in my life I’ve ever felt this way about.  He then broke my heart.  It’s not a coincidence that my senior year, hurting and sad and wondering if I’d ever recover from my stunned sense of betrayal, I threw myself into my English class with the great teacher called Mr. Valhouli.  The universe took care of me, filling every single empty and broken space in me with language and literature, with conversation over hot tea in Mr. Valhouli’s family’s home, with his small, cramped writing in the margins of my papers, with his lively black eyes, somehow fiercely animated and profoundly compassionate at the same time when he looked at me.

And as I drove home, the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses came on the radio.  Exeter was already pulsing through my veins and a memory overtook me so vividly it took my breath away.  I focus so much in my memory on the life of the mind that has come to define my two years at Exeter that I rarely remember the awakening of the heart that took place there too.  I was going home to London for Christmas vacation, desperately anxious to say goodbye to my first boyfriend for what felt like the eternity of two weeks.  We sat in the dining hall, watching the minutes tick towards the time my bus left for Logan, and I felt tears well up in my chest.  I begged him to write me a note telling me he loved me, so that I could carry it with me while we were apart.  He was unenthusiastic about this idea, which, though it now seems understandable, upset me at the time.

As we bickered about this, he doodled on a corner of his notebook.  He was an artist who loved to draw and cartoon, and this was characteristic.  I didn’t even look at what he was drawing.  Hours later, on the airplane headed to London, I found a folded piece of notebook paper in my bag.  I don’t know when he slipped it there.  In his handwriting that I’d recognize even now, he’d written, wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

I remember feeling touched though a bit dismayed that he could not say Those Big Words.  Thinking back on that gesture, however, it seems like one of the most romantic I’ve ever received.  Dubus said something in his comments about how memoirists ought to play with the facts of their life, about how memoir is not autobiography.  And I agree.  When I think back on the arc of my life, Exeter was about Mr. Valhouli, about Andre Dubus, about the power of both language and pedagogy, about the impact someone who really believes in you can have on your entire life.  But tonight I’m also remembering the parts of the story that I haven’t told much, to others or to myself, those details about the pencil on looseleaf paper and the wild horses.

my Gracie girl

This was one of the most special days of my life.  One of our days at Disney, Grace and I snuck away to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  We were both spellbound.  I have never been somewhere more crowded – honestly.  Harry Potter made walking through the Magic Kingdom seem like an amble on a deserted beach.  But still…. still.  It was absolutely magical.  We walked around Hogsmeade, bought a wand, drank Butter Beer, explored Hogwarts castle, and rode twice on the Flight of the Hippogriffs (above, photo taken from car in front of us).  I don’t like roller coasters and neither do either of my children (coincidence?  perhaps not) but this was a nice, not-scary ride that we went on twice.

In this photo I see sheer joy radiating from Grace.  And from me.  We were both enchanted by the world of Harry Potter brought to life, but I know that part of the happiness was sharing it with each other, and only each other.

I’m extra aware, lately, of how short the time grows in which Grace will always, without question, choose my company.  She wants to be with me all the time.  This past weekend, after a Friday sleepover she was tired and weepy on Saturday evening.    When Matt and I left she clung to me, crying, asking me not to go.  To assuage her, she asked me to list how many nights in a row I’ll be putting her to bed starting on Sunday night.  These moments can be intensely frustrating for me, but I try to remember that soon enough I will miss them.  I’ll be nostalgic for the time – now – when I am a balm for all of her troubles. For the time – now – when a kiss genuinely helps a bruised knee and an extra cuddle truly does chase away bad dreams.

Sunday morning Grace and I sat in her room and played with her American Girl dolls.  From across the room, she said, out of the blue, “Mummy?  Did you know that if you don’t use your imagination you lose it?”  I was startled and then agreed with her, thanking my own mother and instinct and whatever other influences have contributed to my distinctly under-programmed, free range parenting style.

Then we walked down to the stores a few blocks from us, doing errands, and she happily bounced down the street with her hand in mine.  I don’t know how much longer this will last, but I know it’s not that long.  In the afternoon, at the park, she kept calling my name, wanting to be sure I watched her do the monkey bars or launch herself into a full flip above the swings, holding the chains.  Sometimes it feels like Grace needs me witness something for it to be real.  She’s got a wicked, uncanny sense for when my attention wavers, too, and always, always calls me on it.  Often with tears.  This, too, can be daunting: I try to focus on her as much as I can, but sometimes I do falter.   Watching her react, I always feel a wash of emotion, guilt mixed with aggravation.

And then, just as quickly, the reminders come flooding in.  This will pass.  These days are numbered.  It won’t be long til she doesn’t want my attention at all, and I’ll want to go back and relive every single park afternoon when Grace’s voice, calling my name, echoed in the early spring air.

As I write this I hear two things in my head: Grace and Whit’s giggles, from next door, and these lines from Ben Folds:

Life flies by in seconds
You’re not a baby Gracie, you’re my friend
You’ll be a lady soon but until then….

One day you’re gonna want to go
I hope we taught you everything you need to know
Gracie girl

And there will always be a part of me
Nobody else is ever gonna see but you and me
My little girl
My Gracie girl

Two wheels

On Saturday Whit asked to try biking without his training wheels.  He’s a cautious fellow, uninclined to try something new until he’s fairly sure he can do it.  In the past he has been adamantly opposed to trying to bike on two wheels.  So we though we ought to jump on his new interest.  And we did.  Matt unscrewed the training wheels and off we went, two blocks up the street, to our park.

We decided to use the basketball courts because of how flat they are.  Matt stood behind Whit, helping him balance, and breaking into a slow jog, pushing Whit on the bike.  And like millions of parents before him, he let go. And Whit biked away.

He flew.

He biked on his own the very first time he tried.  When he slowed to a halt, disembarking inelegantly by letting the bike clatter to the ground, his face was lit by a huge, radiant smile.  He wanted to try it over and over again.  And so we did.  I stood back, my shadow vivid on the cement basketball court from the sun overhead, and I watched.  My eyes filled with tears.  This, so soon after Grace had pierced my heart with the heartbreakingly familiar I-want-to-be-littler comment.

Finally, we walked home.  Whit wanted to bike down our street to home.  I ran ahead and waited for him in front of our house.  As Matt got him started at the top of the street, I noticed a neighbor walk out onto her front porch on her way to her car.  She paused, watching Matt and Whit.  Her children are probably 5 years older than mine.  Watching her watching us, I thought: this is it.  This is one of those moments.  I had that powerful sense of observing myself even as I lived, that awareness, uncomfortable in its intensity, that I was passing over a threshold.  And then I turned to watch my youngest child pedal towards me down the street on two wheels.  And to hug him, fiercely, blinking back tears, after he made it all the way to me.

With special thanks to Kathleen Nolan, who reminded me of this poem:

To a Daughter Leaving Home
(Linda Pastan)

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Did the shadow of what was coming cast its darkness over the light of a moment?

Reading A Double Life reminded me vividly the weeks and months after Grace’s birth, which were the darkest of my life.  As she recounts it in her memoir, Lisa Catherine Harper’s depression seems considered, thoughtful.  I plunged back into my own, remembering how inelegant my complete and utter collapse was, how inchoate the roaring of desperation in my ears.  I had no idea what was happening to me, but I knew firmly that I’d made the biggest and most permanent mistake of my life.

For years I’ve wondered if I could have somehow known what was coming.  As I’ve mentioned, I think the seeds of my depression were sown in my surprise pregnancy, and in how out of control I felt of the endeavor from the absolute beginning (fair question: is there ever a way to feel in control of such a fundamentally uncontrollable enterprise?).  There are two places I go to look for clues, wondering if with the wisdom of perspective I can see the shadow of what was coming casting its darkness over the light of a moment?

One is in my photographs.  It’s no secret that I take pictures of everything.  These photos do not become a silent, untouched mausoleum on my hard drive.  No, they are a living, breathing record: I return to the photos over and over, revisiting experiences, remembering moments.  I’ve done that a lot with the pictures of the days surrounding Grace’s arrival.  I can see a certain tentativeness in myself, but other than that I don’t think I see any concrete evidence of what hovered ahead of me.  I’ve looked at the pictures of her first weeks on earth an awful lot too, and those make me mostly sad.  I see a shell-shocked woman, overcome with a numbness so complete I don’t remember very much from that time.  I realize how that that numbness was sheer survival instinct – I was so deeply wounded that I think experiencing the raw feelings all at once would have swamped me utterly.  The picture above, moments after I delivered Grace with my own two hands, is the last one where I think I look like myself until many months later.

The other place I can pick up crumbs that show me the path I was on at a given time is my quote book.  In the specific quotes that moved me enough to hand-write them into my books I can decode something of where I was emotionally at a specific time.  In these books I see more clues than I do in the photographs, a deeper, subconscious anticipation of what lay ahead.  One week to the day before Grace’s birth I entered the James Baldwin quote that has come to be so incredibly important to me: “Trust life and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.”

Two days before her birth, I added these lines from William James: “I am done with great things and great plans, great institutions and great successes.  I am for those tiny, invisible, loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets…”  It’s as though I knew I was moving to a world whose focus was small acts, deep individual love, and a power beyond sight.

And then, three days after Grace was born, the day after we brought her home from the hospital (incidentally, those photographs terrify me – my eyes are both blank and blazing, full of what I recognize now as abject terror), I wrote this: “One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life … and that word is love.” (Sophocles).

It took me many, many long months to learn what I can see now so brightly in these specific quotations and in their chronology.  I’m grateful that I now understand how the path unfolded, though I remain bruised by the experience of walking it.  In some strange way being able to revisit the woman I was then, through words and photographs, allows me to extend compassion to her, to attempt to heal in some out-of-time way the wounds I still carry from those days.

Do you have places – written, photographic, filmed, or otherwise – that you can return to, looking for a record of who you were at a specific moment in your life?  Places where you can see threads of your life glinting through, even when you weren’t aware of them at the time?

There are many ways to hide from your life

I’ve been thinking an awful lot about achievement, and the Race to Nowhere, and the ways we hide from our lives.  Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how complicated it gets when the ways you hide from your life are applauded by the world.  For me this has mostly been true: whether it’s running or studying with a fierce concentration or following the tide of popular sentiment down a path that might have been the wrong one.

This is a kind of hiding in plain sight, right?  None of your behaviors speak of anything being wrong.  In fact, they are celebrated.  For me, the pinnacle of this was at Exeter.  I’ve been very frank that my two years at Exeter were difficult for me.  I think late adolescence is an emotional and awkward time for most people, and some extenuating circumstances made mine especially challenging.  My parents were across an ocean (and in this pre-cell day, we spoke once a week on the payphone in the basement of my dorm).  My heart was broken at the very beginning of senior year when the first relationship of my life exploded in front of me (and in a hurtful, and public, way, no less).

What did I do?  I ran and I studied.  That is it.  I ran for an hour every single day, mostly in the woods out behind the gymnasium (across the bridge that appears in A Separate Peace), but when it was really freezing I’d run laps around the track suspended above the cage.    My senior year GPA was 10.8 (out of Exeter’s characteristically-unusual GPA scale of 11).  I read and I wrote and I studied and I went to bed every single night well before 10.  I didn’t have many close friends.  I didn’t have another boyfriend.  I didn’t ever break any rules, didn’t experiment with drinking or smoking, as so many boarding school denizens do.

It was a fraught time.  I was a liminal creature (Peggy Orenstein ascended even further in my pantheon of favorites when she used this, one of my favorite words, in Cinderella Ate My Daughter).  I was moving from girlhood to adulthood, and I was doing it mostly all by myself.  In this dark time, one I remember as still and ever-moving at the same time, I had one firm guide: James Valhouli, my English teacher, the first person to believe I had something of value to say.

But all of my coping mechanisms, things that I understand now were ways of avoiding actually engaging with my life, looked like success from the outside.  I was profoundly unhappy, but I don’t think anyone who didn’t know me well could tell.  I don’t know what the conclusion of this is, necessarily, but I do know that it points to a truth I’ve often referred to here: outsides and insides are not always congruent, and we ought to be slower to judge others based on the external indicators they display.  It also reminds me that there are many, many ways to hide from our lives, to numb ourselves to the things that hurt, and we would be well-served to approach all others with compassion.  They, too, are likely grappling with demons, even if we cannot see the struggle.