oh this is hard

You can and you can’t go back again

When I decided to go back to Legoland with Grace and Whit this summer, I worried that maybe it was wrong to try to revisit and recapture one of the most glorious memories of my time as a mother.  Perhaps we would all be disappointed, inevitably, and I’d regret the decision.  Ultimately I couldn’t resist the clarion call of those happy moments, and decided to risk a return.

And it was just as wonderful.  Different, but marvelous.  The whole four days we were there I was struck by the proximity of the past, felt last year’s four days right alongside this year, keenly aware of the ways in which things are the same and the way they are different.  Some combination of familiarity and maturity meant that the children felt masterful at Legoland.  Remembering the routine at the hotel and navigating the park, they knew what they were doing.

Whit went on the rides, Grace seesawed wildly between adorableness and surliness, and I had a blackberry to check.  This was all new.  There was sheer joy in their faces on the safari ride, they careened ahead of me down the hall from the room to the 5pm wine-and-snacks lounge, I took the elevator down while they raced me on the stairs.  This was all the same.

So much new, so much the same.  The children change with blinding speed and yet there’s a permanence to my bond with them, some eternity that beats in its core.  I found myself falling into the black hole of regret about all that has changed, mourning the younger children Grace and Whit were and the year that I’ve lost in the interim.  And then, just as quickly, I shook my head and tried to reimmerse myself in the moment I was living, knowing as I did that within weeks I’d be nostalgic for it.  As I walked through the park, a child’s hand in each of mine, I knew, vividly and viscerally, that immediately I’d wish I had that minute back.

I’ve sworn and promised that we’ll return to Legoland again next summer.  And I know that when we do I will slide back in the slipstream between now and then.  And I can’t wait.

I don’t want to leave

We got home from Legoland at 11 at night, so the kids’ clocks were all screwy.  I woke Whit up the next day at 10am, and he’d fallen asleep in the car that afternoon, something he hasn’t done in years.  I put him to bed early, a little surprised but very glad when he curled up with his new animals from Legoland without complaint.

A few minutes later I heard him crying.  His sobs escalated and finally he burst through his door, face crumpled, streaked with tears.  I was sitting at my desk, right near his room, and he flew down the hall into my arms.

“I don’t want to leave!” his face was wet against my shoulder.

Me neither.  I nodded in silence.

“No, Mummy, I really don’t.”  I pulled him up onto my lap, where he fits only awkwardly these days, feet dangling down and knocking against my shins.

“I know, Whit. It’s hard to come home from something like Legoland. It’s hard when something we have looked forward to for so long is over.”

He snuffled against my shoulder and then leaned back, looking me right in the eye.  “No, Mummy,” his voice was clear.  “I wish we hadn’t gone because then I wouldn’t miss it.”  My heart stopped.  Oh, how I know that feeling.  Much like my conviction that we have to accept the risk of everyday life and still, admire the blue sky, I know this to be true: you can’t skip experiences you know you’ll miss in fear of that missing.  No, no, no.

“Oh, Whit, no.  Don’t say that!  You can’t live like that.”  He frowned at me.  “I promise you we will go back,” I said, my voice fervent.

He bounced off my lap, suddenly, wiped his face and said, “Will we take direct flights?”

What? I was confused.  We connected in Dallas last year and this year flew on Jet Blue, with no stops, and he loved the TVs and was riveted the whole way in both directions.   I shook my head, laughing inside at the random skipping of his mind.  What a fascinating terrain the inside of his head must be.   I thought of one of his stock answers when I react to his random, funny interjections: I ask “Whit, where are you from?” exasperated and laughing at the same time.  He always answers, deadpan, “Texas.”  He is so funny, that guy.

Whit’s flare of humor quickly subsided, though, and he started crying again.  I picked him up and carried him to his bed where we sat for a long while, his tears slowly easing as I rubbed his back and kept whispering promises that we would go back.  Finally he went to sleep, his arm thrown over the green bear, Lego, that he won last year.

I can’t stop thinking about his words, though.  I am as certain as I am of almost anything that we can’t avoid doing things we love just to assure that we don’t have the heartbreak of missing them after the fact.  Right?  I do, however, know the seduction of this notion, and am intimately familiar with the moments when the intensity of the missing is so strong it feels unbearable. Pam Houston’s gorgeous words rise in my mind, shimmering with their truth.  Whit reminds me that this is a lesson I am learning over and over and over again; somehow I never seem to fully learn it.  It never stops hurting, either, that missing.  But that’s okay.  That is living fully.  I longer aspire to not miss things.  Instead, I hope to accept the missing as the other side of joy, the loss as an integral part of life.

I wanted her to see that the only life worth living is a life full of love; that loss is always part of the equation; that love and loss conjoined are the best opportunity we get to live fully, to be our strongest, our most compassionate, our most graceful selves.
-Pam Houston

My little soul mate

Last Thursday we dropped Grace off at camp.  My heart was still soggy from the night before, but I put on my sunglasses and got in the car and off we headed.  As we drove the familiar roads on Cape Cod, turned into the driveway with the archery range and sun-bleached grassy front fields, I was flooded with memories.  The smiling, white-clad Junior Counselors looked so young, and I choked up inside.  I was trying to reconcile the fact that I was just them with the knowledge that that was more than half my lifetime ago.

After a check-in at the infirmary (we passed the lice test, yay!) off we went to Cabin 50.

Cabin 50 is directly across from Cabin 54, the place where I first laid eyes on Jessica and commenced a lifetime friendship.  I’m not sure Julia and Grace were as moved by this detail as Jess and I were, but we both noted the proximity of the place where it all began, and smiled, eyes glistening.  We helped the girls unpack, Grace on the top bunk and Julia on the bottom.  Then they put on suits and we headed up to the pool, with the other new Juniors, for their swimming test.

The daughter of another dear friend of mine from camp was also in the girls’ cabin.  Three of them!  My head swims looking at this picture, remembering when we were 10 and when we were 16 and when we were 21, of all the experiences we shared in this very same place.  And we all have girls, and hopefully they are embarking on a similar road, together.  I had tears in my eyes the whole time we were there.

There was no good time to leave so we did so, somewhat abruptly, at the pool.  They were waiting for their test and we were the only parents still there.  I can’t get the way Grace looked at me out of my head: her eyes were filled with wild surprise, nearing panic, and sadness swamped her entire face.  I hugged her and kissed her and walked away.  Their JCs and counselors swarmed around the crying girls, their white backs blocking them.  So we couldn’t see, as we walked, if they were still crying, but we sure were.  I don’t like the way I left her, but I’m not sure if any moment would have been better.  At least this way, my friend said, they had something to focus on immediately, a task to dive into, both literally and figuratively.

I was utterly shocked by how sad I was, all day long.  It pains me to admit that – what mother didn’t expect to miss her child? – but it’s true.  I knew I’d miss her, but I didn’t really think through the visceral, physical missing: the tears that wouldn’t stop, the ache in my chest, the way I winced every time I glanced back at her empty booster seat.  I know this kind of independence is precisely what I want for my child, and it’s impossible to overstate how completely I trust this camp to take care of her.  I know she will have a wonderful time.  But still.  Her face, the tears, the abandonment: they rise up in my head, over and over.  I guess this is her first experience of Pema’s timeless wisdom about being thrust out of the nest.

I emailed a close friend later that day, expressing the way sorrow had startled me, sharing how much I missed my daughter.  She responded immediately with this: “Not surprising. She’s your soulmate in many ways.”  These lines stunned me with their truth.  This isn’t the first time this friend has knocked me back with her insight and support.  My soul yearns for its little partner.  Of course it does.

And still, I believe absolutely that this experience will be excellent for her.  I hope she makes sturdy, possibly lifetime friendships, I hope she tries new activities, I hope she develops confidence in her own ability to be in the world without me, and I hope she internalizes the camp motto, emblazoned above the outdoor theater:

wipers

For the last several months, it seems like every time I get in the car for a long drive it starts to pour.  Last Friday I drove through the most intense rain I’ve ever driven through.  It was actually pretty scary: when I got out of the car I realized my hands hurt from gripping the wheel, which I hadn’t even noticed I had been doing.  My jaw hurt from being tensed.  There was also thunder and lightning.  Which I normally  love, but when making my way down the highway surrounded by trucks barreling above the speed limit, not so much.

The wipers were going as fast as they could go, and still it was not nearly enough.  I noticed that just the fact that my wipers were on high made my body tense slightly and my anxiety tick up.  I felt a tightness in my chest, there was a slight aggravation in my voice and a quickness to my breathing, all almost imperceptible but not to me anymore now that I can’t help but notice everything.  It stresses me to not have any reserve.  If it’s not enough, these wipers on high, there is nothing else I can do.  Well, other than pull over.  This reminds me of my behavior when physically challenged, of the way I get nervous anticipating that I might not be able to do something (but well before I am actually at my limit).

And the other than pull over part is, I think, essential to the stress.  When the wipers really can’t do the job, even on their fastest setting, I have to figure out another way.  It is the universe telling me – through rain, literal or metaphorical – that the current coping system is no longer working to deal with the weather.  And realizing that I’m running out of rope, or that my road is coming to a bend, or choose your own metaphor … well, all of these things scare me.  A lot.

My wipers are going really hard right now in my life.  I’m definitely at the fastest speed and I’m not sure it’s enough.  There is a lot sluicing down on my windshield: worries about both my parents and my children, anxieties personal and professional, fears of many flavors.  The concerns are sloshing around, occluding my vision, and no matter how hard my wipers go I can’t see the road ahead clearly.

Recently I heard a doctor say that a situation had to stabilize before he could even remotely figure out what was going on.  The underlying issue would not “announce itself,” he maintained, until the rest of the surrounding flux settled down.  This made sense to me and immediately my mind began to spin it into a metaphor.

Maybe it’s time to pull over.  I just don’t know what that looks like, and furthermore I’m not certain I can, given the forward propulsion to some of the things that are raining down in front of me.  Of course Doctorow’s famous words come to mind: “You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  I try not to think that I can’t even see a fraction as far as my headlights.  I can only inch forward, hoping that reckoning will keep me safe on the path.

Oh.

And it recurs: there is nothing to do but to trust.  And to let go.  Even as my wipers frantically flip back and forth, and as I walk with anxiety in my chest for the mere fact of their speed.  Even so.

Inexorable as the tides

summer 2007

summer 2011

Still rocking the 3T seersucker suit.  What happened to my baby?

first day of Beginners, September 2009

last day of Kindergarten, June 2011

My baby is 6.5  He swims competently, though inelegantly.  He reads short words.  He loves Star Wars and Legos.  He beats up on his sister.  He makes me laugh every single day.  He is about to lose a tooth.  He still curls up in my arms when I pick him up at night.  He tells me he loves me as much as the sky.  He has a very strong sartorial point of view.  It’s not his fault, but he also makes me cry every single day.

The transitions, big and small, keep coming at me, inexorable as the tides.  When will I learn to let go, to float on them?