oh this is hard

One phone call from our knees

A song I love by Mat Kearney came on while I was running yesterday, and one line was stuck in my head all day:

I guess we’re all one phone call from our knees.

The song was referring to a phone call bearing bad news. And I thought of the phone ringing in the middle of the night when Matt’s dad got his heart. I thought of while my mother’s best friend and her mother were dying, and about how every time the phone rang I would startle, and pick it up with icy dread in my stomach. To this day when the phone rings after about 8:30 in the evening my heart lurches, and I assume someone is in the hospital.  One call.  One moment.  One fleeting choice.  On our knees.  Or worse.

I thought more broadly of the decisions, choices, and coincidences that shape our lives irrevocably. As Dani Shapiro says in Devotion, “I had tuned left instead of right; had taken (or not taken) the trip, the flight, the challenge, the chance” – each small choice we make takes us to where we are. A job interview taken, a second drink agreed to, a leaning into a kiss rather than away, walking a different way home. If you imagine our lives as a line etched into space, moving backwards and forward, going through forks in the road, there are some spots that would be luminous in the retelling, glowing with the importance that we did not know they had until after the fact.

Some of the big forks in the road announce themselves, with neon lettering and loud honking sirens: who to marry?  where to go to school?  what job to take?  But I believe that many of the choices that actually create our lives, and, perhaps more importantly, who we are, are small, surprisingly imperceptible in the moment.  And then, over years, the ramifications of each choice make themselves known.  Our lives echo with the decisions we make, with the steps we take, forward, back, left right.

It is the phone calls in the night and the emails out of the blue that are on my mind today, the innumerable small snowflakes of life’s decisions that build into the immovable, permanent icebergs of our lives.  I’ve written before about this, more focused on the the internal experience of these shifts, of this gradual contouring of who we are.

” I am thinking about my personal mythology, about the moments of my life that shaped who I am today. Some of them are big, I know, like the births of my children, but many of them are small. In fact I think it is true, this notion of destiny taking shape in silence. Often the true shifts that change our direction irrevocably happen invisibly to others. This is the terrible, wonderful privacy of this life: nobody can know our internal terrain well enough to walk it without guidance.”

It occurs to me now that being brought to our knees need not always be a tragic thing: one could spin Mat’s lyric around to say that one small phone call, one event we may not have controlled, could bring us to a position of communion and worship with this world.  I imagine he meant the more obvious and negative meaning, but I like my interpretation, which just says to me that both good and bad changes are always a single moment away.  The veil of our glorious, ordinary lives can be pierced, for good or for bad, in every second.  Which just brings me back to the same persistent theme that tugs at me every time I sit down to write: what we have is this.  Right now.  And only this.

Struggling against a strong undercurrent

Sometimes when Whit wakes me up in the night, I feel like I am swimming towards his voice through extra thick, viscous water. I often feel a little unsure of the direction his voice is in in the first place, and it is definitely an effort to focus on it and to locate him. That’s how my thoughts feel lately. I feel swamped, like I am struggling against a strong undercurrent to even stay upright. My own inner voice, by which I am trying so earnestly to set my direction, feels thready, weak, and my own fragility feels insurmountable.

Life sometimes feels like I’m wading through murky water barefoot. I never know what will be underfoot next, and often it is a prickly or pointed shell, unknown slimy seaweed, or a spot where the water surprises me with its eddies, threatening my balance. Once in a while I have a sudden, sharp flashback to a sunny day in the spring at Princeton, at freshman year houseparties, when I jumped in the large school fountain with my friends. We were all tipsy and laughing, but there was a moment of concise clarity when I remember feeling the coins that littered the bottom of the shallow pool with my bare feet. For a moment, alone and silent amid the screams and giggling, I was acutely aware of feeling the dreams and wishes of so many strangers under my feet.

The great majority of the time, though, I’m here, and not there, and I am walking on and through much less pleasant things. There are lots of changes on the way for me. I can see their colors glinting from beyond the horizon: already the light of my life is filtered through their unfamiliar prism. While I feel an occasional flare of excitement, I also feel a lot of fear, settling like chilly dust in the bottom of my stomach and of my thoughts, pulling both down with an unavoidable heaviness.

Every step feels like an effort against the water’s weight. I traipse clumsily through my days, trailing my familiar cloak of tiredness and sadness. I am working so hard to be patient for my children, to stay open to the ordinary life that has carried such glittering gems in its hands, but I am not doing a very good job. Even yesterday, when I finally noticed that the world has burst into an exultation of spring, a riotous celebration of new life and potential, I felt it in a muted way, as though I was seeing through the mesh of a screen window, everything slightly obscured and traced with gray.

What I know now that I did not before is that as persistent as the water around my ankles is, as unstable as it makes me feel, I will probably not fall. As distant and faint as the voice calling me forward sounds, through the fog that swirls inside my head, I will probably not lose it altogether. This constellation of influences and feelings, whose coming I cannot predict, makes me unsteady, but it has not yet toppled me. And so forward I go, one foot in front of the other, trying not to startle at the unexpected sharpness of shells and pebbles under my feet, into the wind, head bent forward, trusting, trusting.

(even re-reading this before publishing, I feel aware that I am whining … and feel the need to say of course, of course I recognize my tremendous good fortune, my privilege, my luck, my health and that of my children … yes, yes, yes, and I mean to draw no parallel between the agitation of my mind and the very real perils that many people find themselves in)

Moment of truth by the tub

On our last day in Sanibel, Grace and Whit were horsing around in the pool. She dunked him aggressively and he was very upset.   My mother immediately reprimanded her, asking her to get out of the pool for a few minutes. Grace, in classic form, dissolved into tears. She sat on a chair by the pool, wrapped in a towel, hot pink goggles pushed up onto her forehead, forlorn and in full-blown pout mode.

Finally I asked her to come back to the condo with me and we walked, hand-in-hand but in silence, through the parking lot. She was sniffling and, I could tell, making a real effort to calm herself down. Often she asks for “deep breaths,” where she sits on my lap or we hug and take deep breaths together – this has been effective but I am now thinking she needs to figure out how to calm herself down without me. Anyway, she was trying hard and I could tell.

We got to the condo and I turned on the tub for her, because she was freezing and her purple lips were chattering. As she stood in the bathroom, naked and shivering, I looked at her suddenly all-grown-up body. She is so tall now she comes up to almost my chest. She seems startlingly unfamiliar, lean and lanky, with endless limbs, though I can still see that faint birthmark, more texture than color, on her left hip. I remember noticing that birthmark for the first time when she was mere days old.

She turned to me and I could see she was still crying. Overcome with identification and empathy, I crouched down in front of Grace, realizing that she is at that awkward height where standing I’m too tall but crouching I’m too small. I looked up at her tremulous face. “Gracie?” she looked at me, a tear spilling over her right eyelid onto her cheek. “It’s hard to be the older one, I know. Isn’t it?” she nodded at me. “I was that, Grace. I know. Everybody expects you to be grown up all the time. It’s hard, isn’t it?”

Her face just crumpled. She leaned into me, hugging me awkwardly as she was now taller than I was. “It’s so hard, Mummy. Sometimes I just get carried away and I lose control,” she choked on her words, crying hard now. I pushed her away only so that I could look her in the eye. “I know, Gracie. I know,” I said, firmly, “sometimes what you feel is really strong, isn’t it?” She nodded mutely, tears flooding down her face. “I know, love, I know.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I folded her body, all angles and long, skinny bones into my arms. We stayed like that for a long moment until she broke the embrace, wiping her eyes. She looked at me and I could tell she felt embarassed. “Grace.” I looked at her, almost sternly. “I know. And I know what a good, good girl you are, and how hard you try. I know. I promise. And I can tell you that your feelings, for the rest of your life, will be really strong. I still feel like I lose control sometimes. And it’s scary.”

She stared at me, a combination of fear and thanks in her eyes, and I could see how much she wanted to believe that I was being sincere. I think we both felt we’d revealed a lot, so she stepped into the tub and we moved on to other matters, but something essential happened in that bathroom. I saw a young version of myself and she saw that the strength of her emotions was going to be a lifelong battle. Yes, Gracie, I know what it is to feel out of control. I know what it is to feel pressure to be the “good one” and to do as others want you to do. I know all of those things. I wish I could teach you how to stop those feelings, but i can’t. I honestly have no idea. I wish I did.

The great Catherine Newman

I’ve been poking through my archives today, leafing through old posts and reading quotations that I want to post again.  These are all by Catherine Newman, who is without a doubt one of my favorite writers – her book Waiting for Birdy is fantastic, and I miss the blog she used to write for babycenter.  Hers is one of the voices I hear in my head, one of the perspectives I hold most dear.

*****

“In the deep of night, I am inclined towards heartbreak. I lie awake the muscle in my chest beating like a metronome, ticking away the rhythm of life’s passing, while outside the cicadas answer with their own clicking, also like a metronome, like a bike shifting gears, like a person in Greek mythology doomed to clip their toenails forever.  I regret every time I’ve spoken sharply to the children, every time I’ve answered curiosity with distractedness, met need with impatience, countered gentle trust with self-importance.  In the night, these occasions spook around me like the ghosts of Bad Behavior Past, hauntingly distorted.

I’m not being hard on myself, not exactly.  I don’t expect perfection.  I know that I have appreciated this journey; inhaled the children’s hair and smiles, crouched down to listen, lay down to comfort.  Every day I have gathered handfuls of my own gratitude and flung them skyward, exalted; I have knelt down in gratitude to press my humble face to its grit.  But oh, I have taken so much for granted.”

****

“Another person is like a geode lined with hidden glittering.”

****

“And I’m remembering an email my friend Brian wrote me a couple of years ago, about his sons: “There WILL be a day when they don’t want to be carried up the stairs … But the idea that the last time will go unmarked and slip away without being cherished just made me so sad.”

I’m trying to hold this in mind when Ben wants me to put his socks on or carry him in from the car when he’s actually still awake or stay with him and Birdy while they fall asleep at night. I feel the familiar ripping-away impulse — the same impulse you might have if, say, a baby had been stapled to your bosom — and sometimes I act on it, whispering, “I’ll check on you guys in a few minutes,” and unwinding the arms that are boa-constrictored around my neck, loosening the very claws of love from the hem of my shirt, trotting out before the poor lonely bed-goers can make their emphatic case for my company. But sometimes I just lie there. Let there not be a last time, I think — a last time that slips away without being cherished.”

****

“I don’t know what to say about this — the way I incline towards sadness, latch on to it as it floats past, ride up into its currents. But it keeps me grounded somehow, however paradoxical that may sound…Looking into the face of loss is like a bell of mindfulness for me. This very heart that pounds sometimes with anxiety — this heart is beating! These very noisy children who make me want to fill my ears with rubber cement — they are vibrantly alive! This very full-to-bursting life — well, it’s life, life itself. “

****

“Sure, there are recurring themes: anxiety and impatience; my chaotic efforts at peace or the way I lumber after gratitude.”

****

“I am still confused sometimes about what it means to be a parent — how much you advise, how much you leave alone. They are yours but also their own. They reflect me and surpass me. I am their trusted shepherd, and it is a privilege to have them in my flock. Love and grief, holding hands and skipping down the lane of my crazy heart. When my eyes fill with tears in the car, it’s joy, yes, but I don’t think it counts. It’s way too bittersweet.”

Trusting Them and Myself


I really love this piece, Parenting in the Age of Paranoia: A Small Manifesto. The author says a lot of things that I agree intensely with. Many sentences left me nodding firmly to myself. Like this one:

We do our child a great disservice when we protect them from all risk and harm, as great as letting them go into the world unable to read.

Um, yes. I agree with this absolutely. I think the thing that the author said that was new for me, though, was about how the social norms of today make her self-conscious about being the kind of mother she wants to be:

Horribly, my social group is creating a construct whereby I can’t easily give my daughter her freedom without sending her the message that I don’t care about her. This is a first attempt to strike out against that. When enough parents are saying they restrict their children’s freedom out of love and responsibility, I have to defend my desire to let my kid experience new things- it’s not indifference and negligence. It’s being the kind of parent I would want to have, and putting her as a person above my own desire for comfort.

I am so familiar with this. The stinging criticism I endured when I let Grace fly alone (twice so far), for example. Or the raised eyebrows when I tell people I take her biking on busy streets, or let her walk to the general store alone in Marion. I’ve been chalking these reactions up to my own sensitivity, my own anxiety about my choices. But Quinn makes me realize that some of this is about the social environment, too.

The article renews my commitment to raise children who trust their own instincts, who feel safe and masterful in the world, who know what it is to fail without someone there to pick them up within four seconds. I believe that all of these experiences are incalculably valuable for a child. I also believe they are hard for the parent, both because it’s difficult to see our children hurt or failing and also because we endure the judgment of much of today’s parenting community.

There are, as Quinn reminds us, no guarantees. I think back often to my first pregnancy, when I just wanted to get to 12 weeks so the risk of miscarriage would go down. Then I wanted the triple screen blood work to be normal, then the 18 week ultrasound to be normal, then to have a full-term pregnancy and to deliver a healthy baby. At each milestone I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that some major risk was now over, that I was closer to the safe and secure reality of a healthy baby. And then Grace was born. And I realized, in a few days or weeks or months, that, oh my God, the risk is never gone. She could get sick. She could get hurt. All kinds of trauma could befall. And, as Quinn also says, something bad could happen to me. There are no guarantees.

This is not a reason to protect her (or him) so much that they are ill-equipped for life in the real world. My conviction that the world is a fundamentally good place is sturdy. It has been called naive. But I really believe it, in the marrow of my being. And so I don’t want to teach either of my children to fear the world. No. I want them to dance out into it, confident and brave, full of skills to cope with inevitable setbacks. I want to send them out without safety net so strong they never venture far enough to experience it onto their own. I am so proud of my children when they demonstrate independence. So very proud.

They don’t belong to me. On that I am clear, the crystalline, sharp clarity of sunshine on icicles. No way. I brought them into this world and that is all. One of my favorite bloggers, Jenn of Breed ‘Em and Weep, said this best of all:

I want you to grow up central only to yourself. I want you to find your center, to be your own pivot, your own point of balance, your own anchor. I don’t ever want you thinking you are the center of the universe, and be shocked to find that it is not at your beck and call.

I’ve long loved the story that Warren Buffet said he loves his kids too much to leave them enormous inheritances. This is a similar philosophy: I love my children too much to handicap them with overprotection. 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.