So much here I do not understand

I don’t have any words to convey how I feel about the tragedy in Newtown.  I have only these three personal stories to share, and for some reason I feel compelled to do so.

Yesterday, after a beautiful, candlelight- and allelulia-filled Lessons & Carols service at our church, we came home in the spitting rain for a late dinner.  It had been a day jammed with errands and details, with the minutiae that compose our lives: haircuts, buying skates, frosting gingerbread cookies, shopping online for a last-minute presence for a best friend, an early hockey game. At each step I felt heavy with awareness of what a privilege every single one of those small things was.  Whit was difficult at dinner, picky about his food, and I just blew up.  I lost it.  Matt encouraged me to go upstairs, and after stomping out to make a point (that point being I am such a martyr) by taking the trash out in the driving rain, I did that.  I closed my bedroom door and folded laundry, and as I smoothed a pair of Whit’s long johns I sat down on the bed, overcome with sobs.  I was flooded with powerful guilt: how can I possibly be so ungrateful, when there are families out there tonight who would give anything for the privilege of a bickering child at the dinner table?  How?

This morning, I walked both Grace and Whit to the gate of school as I always do.  I had to go home before the 4th grade’s morning assembly, so I kissed them goodbye and jogged back to the car.  Once I’d crossed the street I turned and watched their backpacks and hooded heads (again, raining) walk away from me.  I was swamped with feelings: sorrow, fear, guilt, grief, gratitude.  I sat in the car and let them wash over me and then, tears still falling, I drove home.

Half an hour later I sat in one of the assembly rooms at school as Grace’s 4th grade class filed in.  The parents sat in a row against the back wall of the room, and the floor in between was filled with the younger grades all sitting criss-cross applesauce.  This was a previously-scheduled “environment assembly,” and the theme was taking care of our earth.  I’m willing to bet I wasn’t the only parent who was thinking of other things, however, as our children stood and sang in their clear, true voices, about how is “time to turn the tide.”  Tears swam in my eyes.  I looked around the room at the teachers who have cared for and shepherded my children over the years with a new and passionate admiration.  A few minutes later the 4th grade sang Big Yellow Taxi, and the words I know by heart rang out, filled with an unexpected, chilling resonance: Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

So much is gone.  Of course, of course, a million, unquantifiable times more for the families that lost loved ones in Newtown.  But for all of us, too.  In my opinion, his incursion on one of the world’s truly sacred spaces – an elementary school – has altered the world we live in forever.

This is the darkest week of the darkest season.  Friday is the darkest day of the year.  And yet how much more pressing this new darkness feels, this darkness wrought of an incomprehensible act, this darkness from the heart of someone who was a fellow human being.  We are moving towards the solstice, and there is still so much here I do not understand.

Too big to comprehend

Candles lit by pilgrims at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. 

Like everyone else, I am speechless about and stunned by the events at Sandy Hook Elementary yesterday.  Like everyone else, I feel an overwhelming desire to hold my children tight coupled with a devastating sense of helplessness.  There is also a powerful mixture of gratitude and guilt, that my children are safe, and, of course, a hovering fear: what if someday they are not?

There is one thing we can do, and I am so, so grateful to Gail for posting about it.  Her post is short, actionable, and to the point: please write to your representative.

My sister (who is both a mother and an educator, not to mention the wisest and most thoughtful soul I have ever met) and I emailed back and forth yesterday.  She shared my strong outrage that this should happen in school, a place that was always for the two of us a haven, a safe place, a home (I just wrote about why this is one reason I so love Hogwarts).  She said she was planning to make sure her children didn’t find out about Sandy Hook.  I would love to shield mine, too, but I’m not sure I will be able to.  They are older, and I fear they will hear.  To be prepared for those conversations, I clicked through and read Brene Brown’s resources about talking to children about violence and death.

Finally, I was moved by these words, which I read on SmacksyThe darkness that led to this and the suffering of those who lost children are both too big to comprehend.

Prayer for Newtown from Marianne Williamson, December 14, 2012

Dear God,
We come to You with broken hearts,
surrendering the catastrophe that has occurred  in Connecticut.
We cannot comprehend the darkness that led to this,
or the suffering of those who have loved and lost.
They are both too big.
But in You, dear God, there are Answers we cannot surmise and Light we cannot summon by ourselves.
For those who bear tonight the unbearable burden
of unimaginable grief,
who in their agony yell at the forces of fate…
For those who moan and those who faint,
for those who rage and those who pray,
we moan and pray along with them.
For tonight, those were our children too.

May a legion of angels come upon the parents
and bring to them an otherworldly touch,
an otherworldly comfort
and otherworldly sense that their children are well,
that they are safe with God,
and shall be with them always.
Give to those who grieve what no mortal force can give…
the touch of Your Hand upon their heart.
May all who are touched by this darkness
be lit by Your grace.
Please wipe away all tears, dear God.
as only You can do.
We present to you our brokenness, and the horror and pain of those who grieve.
May those who died find joy in the immortal realms.
May those who mourn them be comforted in this hour of their agony.
And may our prayers and actions be guided by You, dear God,
to create a world where this occurs no more.
Amen

Both sad and liberating

As usual, I was both fascinated and touched by your questions on my Sixth Blogging Anniversary post.  I wrote about what I am reading, and which blogs I most devotedly follow.  Now, a different question:

Parenting “emerging adults” is an exercise in letting go and it’s both sad and liberating. If you ever want to write about “healthy consequences” or “natural consequences,” that would be interesting to me. What I mean is letting kids learn from negative experiences rather than constantly rescuing them. This discernment has been hard for me because it’s a balancing act–trying to figure out when they need scooped up and loved versus when you should let them squirm in their own doings and let them figure their way out themselves.

I have thought about this a lot.  I believe absolutely in letting kids learn from negative experiences, and in resisting the urge to rescue them every time they trip. In fact I would call this one of the central challenges of parenting.  I return, again, to Erdrich’s red string that ties our hearts: we have to give children enough rope that they can learn to fall and get up, while trusting that they are still close, that they know the bond we share doesn’t fray when it’s stretched.

As with all things, I only have my instinct to guide me here.  And a whole lot of love.  I’ve been mulling the question almost non-stop since I became a parent 10 years ago.  Several years ago, I wrote this:

It (developing resilience, letting children fail) is about letting my children be, even when there is conflict between them. It is about letting them lose at games and sports. It is about not shielding them from the world’s ugly and hard edges, not coddling them when things are going to hurt. It is about sticking with rules even when they cause disappointment or, more likely, screaming tantrums. It is, fundamentally, about teaching children that the world – and my world – does not revolve around them. This is a hard lesson to impart, full of discomfort and sadness. But it is also probably the most important thing I can teach Grace and Whit.

Obviously parenting, and the need to let go, is on my mind often.  More recently, I wrote this:

They don’t belong to me. On that I am absolutely clear: the crystalline, sharp clarity of sunshine on icicles. No way. I brought them into this world and that is all.  I love my children too much to handicap them with over-protection. I love them so much that I continue to challenge myself to let them go a little bit, knowing that that letting go lets them build muscles, physical and emotional, that will help them stand steadily in life’s waves. To let them go I have to trust them. And myself. And I do.

I read these two passages now and I nod, because I still agree with every word.  It’s actually reassuring to me, a reminder that our parenting philosophies are formed early, and remain sturdy, even as they adapt to the various seasons we move through.  There’s a particular poignancy to the idea of letting go right now, though: it feels keener, this need to release my grip, and closer, the day when they will leave me for good.  This is true particularly of Grace, who grows so fast, in every sense of the word, daily.

I don’t know how to actually answer my reader’s thoughtful, thought-provoking question.  I wish I did!  All I know how to do is vigorously agree that this is both a challenge and essential.  I do believe that this effort – watching our children fail or err while simultaneously making sure they know they are profoundly loved and supported to the best of our abilities – is central to parenthood.  I am still very much figuring out how to do that.  I know that my efforts are helped by my fierce belief in both a benevolent universe and the sometimes-surprising strength of my own children.  \

I would love any of your thoughts on this: how do we toe the line between support and space, between prodding our children to become independent while also filling them with security and the knowledge that they are deeply, unequivocally loved?

Love and instinct

The long, coltish legs of an almost-young-woman

A few weeks ago, in a beautiful post called Pretty, Kelle Hampton wrote this about parenting: I don’t have all the answers, but I have good instincts and I love my kids something fierce.

I’m not sure that I have ever heard a lovelier description of what I believe parenting is.  Instinct and love.  That’s all I have ever had.  As Grace’s tenth birthday nears, what parenting means to me has been on my mind.  I’m not entirely sure why.  What I do know is that in the last several months we have crossed a line, Grace and I.  We have walked into a new season together.

I have never had all the answers.  Far from it.  But lately the questions are different, and I don’t feel like I have any of the answers.  I am daunted by decisions about technology, boys, body image, confidence, and identity.  For the first time, I confront closed doors and eye rolls. The issues that rise up feel newly fraught, and I’m ever more aware that the patterns she and I set now will take us through into the teenage years.

But, for now, I still get hugs at bedtime and requests to snuggle.  Grace continues to love simply being with me, whether we are reading or doing errands or working on a puzzle.  I know these days are likely numbered, and I’m sure this is why I hold each afternoon chatting idly as I cook and she draws at the table more and more tightly.  My awareness of how fleeting this time is is so keen as to be painful.  Every minute contains an ending, as well, of course, as a thrilling beginning.

The mothering ground is shifting under me in a particularly dramatic way right now and I’m trying to find my footing.  I have no choice but to trust that the instincts that have always been strong will continue to guide me through.  There’s no question that the ferocious love is undimmed.  Just as I figured out how to coax a colicky baby towards sleep (though it took me a while, and an ocean of tears) I will figure out how to parent a nascent adolescent.  Right?  I have to believe this is true.

Love and instinct.  Instinct and love.  Here we go.

If you have children in the 9, 10, 11 year old range, does this sense of transition feel familiar?  Any tips, advice, or words of wisdom are most welcome.

 

Life, Loss, Love

Recently Chris Yeh, my friend and business school classmate, and I both lost someone very dear to us.  My 94 year old grandfather died in August and Chris’s beloved 12 year-old dog passed away in September.  What they had in common were long, full lives and relatively short illnesses at the end.

Chris and I didn’t know each other that well at HBS.  We have developed a friendship since then that I prize highly, and it occasionally produces thoughtful exchanges like the one we had almost two years ago about optimism, the underrated virtues of melancholy, and the conundrum of memory.

Our recent conversation, about grief, the way it can derail even the most prepared people, and how we talk to our children about death, began when I commented on Chris’s thoughtful post about Kobe’s death.  Chris and I are the same age, 38 (Chris is still 37 for another three weeks, he wanted me to note!), and I think that’s relevant here, as we both careen into middle age and towards the inevitable passing of the generation(s) above us.  Our conversation was a powerful reminder that try as we may to prepare, life’s losses will startle and destabilize us.  Here’s what we shared:

Lindsey:

So sorry, Chris. I love the way you describe Kobe, and in particular how you enriched these last few months. Xo

Chris:

Thanks Lindsey!  As you know yourself, I find writing therapeutic.  Writing out my thoughts helps me get them out of my head.  It’s going to be a tough conversation with the kids tonight.

Lindsey:

Oh, wow.  Yes, it is.

Talking to Grace and Whit about Pops’ passing was difficult because this is their first real experience of death.  I found they were interested in both the enormously granular details: what does the urn look like?  Do the bones burn when you cremate someone?  What happens to his clothes? And in the biggest of the big picture questions, also: where does Pops go?  Is he able to see Gaga (my deceased grandmother) now?

I love how you said that no matter what walls of rationality we erect, the experience of losing someone dear smashes through them.  I had this experience with my grandfather’s death last month.  Yes, he was 94.  And of course it was not a surprise, at least intellectually.  But it was still a loss, and still sad, and though I know people mean well when they point out what a wonderful and full life he had it somehow feels like they are denying the loss.  I hope that you aren’t feeling that way when people comment on how marvelous Kobe’s time here was.

Chris:

It’s funny how kids fixate on the specific details.  Marissa, for example, saw one of those Discovery Channel specials on one of those services that stuffs your pets after they pass away.  She asked me if we could get Kobe stuffed.  In the end, I decided I didn’t even want her ashes.  I have many wonderful things to remind me of Kobe, including a host of photos and videos.  I don’t need some carbon atoms that happened to be in her body at the end.

I do appreciate all the well wishes from friends—it’s amazing how much you hear from folks on Twitter and Facebook as well.  The thing is, the people who point out what a wonderful life she had are right—she did have a wonderful life, a fact which I’m sure I’ll appreciate much more in a few weeks.

I remember writing about this at some point in time—like many people, I deceive myself into believing that I can fix anything.  Whatever the problem, I can pull some strings, or talk to someone, and I can make it go away.  But when cancer comes knocking, there’s no insider you can turn to, no secret treatments.  It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or how many people you know.

And that’s scary as hell, especially for folks who are used to thinking of themselves as bulletproof.

Life has a way of reminding us that we’re not, and that’s something we just have to accept.

Lindsey: 

I so utterly, absolutely agree.  And maybe this is just a classic thing to happen in your late 30s, this reminder.  I look ahead and I see so much mortality and stuff we can’t control ahead, just as I had started feeling like I have a vague handle on it.  And now I am newly aware that I certainly do not.

Chris:

This year has been one long message from the world.  From Kobe’s death, to my friend Don’s successful fight with cancer, to my having to walk with a cane for two months because of my own misadventure.  While I’ve adamantly insisted that these are just freak occurrences, and not the signs of age, I’m starting to lose that conviction.

When I’m focused on other things, I can pretend that Kobe’s death was just a dream, and that she’ll return from a trip, same as ever.  But whenever I really think about it, I can’t escape the images and memories.  I notoriously hate hospitals.  And no matter how kind and helpful the doctors were, all I can remember is Kobe getting weaker and weaker until finally she couldn’t even stand.  That’s a concrete reality that changed how I look at the world.

I knew that Kobe would die someday, just like I know that my parents will die someday, just like I know that I will die someday.  But until a week or two ago, that was an abstract, far-off knowledge.  Now it’s all too real.

I’ll admit that in the past week I’ve thought about how it will feel when my parents die.  I’ve even thought about my own death.  I imagine that I’ll fight to the end, but if I lose consciousness, death may take me unawares.

But I’ve also learned a lot about grief and grieving.  Kobe was a daily part of our lives, which means we’re surrounded by reminders of her.  I decided that the best thing to do was to face them head on, and focus on the happy memories.

I placed a canvas print of Kobe above our kitchen table, so that we all see her at every meal.  Quite coincidentally, I had just ordered a photobook of Kobe’s pictures—the most recent was taken the week before her death—Marissa had dressed her in a bikini top and grass skirt, and she’s looking at the camera with the same expression of patience she always had with Marissa.  Both Alisha and I have taken to looking at the book every day.  While it brings up the pangs of grief, seeing all those happy pictures pushes those hospital images out of my mind and lets me focus on happy memories.

Lindsey:

What you say about death being abstract until, suddenly, horrifyingly, it is concrete resonates with me.  I know that a large part of my grief about my grandfather’s death was my anxiety about advancing another step on the big board game of life.  Now my parents are the only generation above me.  And of course this has implications for them that scare me: thinking about my parents being ill or – devastatingly – passing away absolutely cripples me.  I can’t even begin to fathom what that will be like.  Some of it is more selfish, I suspect, too.  We grow ever closer to the top of that ferris wheel, as I often think of it.  Before we know it, it will be us and just us.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about moving into midlife, into the afternoon of life (as Jung called it), and how my children are coming into full bloom just as I begin to sense those ahead of me fading.  Not my parents, yet (and what a blessing that is) but others around me.  It’s a multi-layered thing.  It’s teaching my children about death.  It’s watching them deal with it for the first time.  It’s realizing that I can be distracted from my own grief because I’m so busy taking care of theirs.  It’s learning to sink into my role as the center of a family, and accepting the sometimes-heavy responsibilities that go with that.  It’s not easy, and sometimes – often – I just want to curl up on my grandparents’ couch, fall asleep, and have my young, vibrant father scoop me up and carry me to the twin bed upstairs that used to be my mother’s when she was a girl.

Chris:

One memory that has always stuck with me is the day my grandfather died.  It was 1986, so I think I was 11 going on 12.  My grandfather passed away quite suddenly of a heart attack while undergoing dental surgery.  I was sad when my mother told me, of course, but what I always remember is when she told my father.  This was before cell phones, so he had no idea that his father had passed away until my mother told him.  She pulled him aside to their bedroom for privacy, so I didn’t see when she told him.  When I next saw him, it was clear that he had been weeping.   In my entire life, I had never seen my father cry until that day.  I’m sure that he knew his father would die someday, but it was still a terrible blow.

As we rise up that Ferris wheel, I think the greatest comfort we can have is our children, and our children’s children.  Think of the Bible, and its endless droning litany of descendants.  Yet as I get older, I begin to appreciate the power of that litany.

Scientists tell us that as we get older, time passes ever more quickly for us.   By the time we reach age 13, we’ve lived half of our subjective life (your 80th year passes a lot more quickly than your 5th).  Kind of depressing.  But life gives us a way to fight that passage.  When I’m with Jason and Marissa, time passes much more slowly (this isn’t always a good thing!).  As parents, I think we get great joy and benefit out of seeing the world through our children’s eyes.  Then, as the wheel continues to turn, we see the world through our grandchildren’s eyes, and if we’re lucky like your grandfather, our great-grandchildren.

When I talk to people about parenting, I tell them, “There is no substitute for having children.”  I always meant it in the economic sense of substitution, i.e. there is no equivalent experience.  But now I see that having children is probably the most common yet fundamental way we have of defying the passage of time, aging, and the inevitability of death.  To create life, however transitory, is the strongest statement we can make about our existence.