oh this is hard

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.

What does the heart hold?

What does the heart hold?

The heart holds love, of course. The many, complex manifestations of love in our lives: fierce devotion, fiery ardor, well-worn attachment, profound connection. The heart holds our faith, which flickers and dances depending on the day. The heart is striated with our scars, from times that people have hurt us consciously or unconsciously. These remnants of pain can surface when we least expect them, like long-buried sense memories that come back with power that can overwhelm. The heart holds our fears, which we face down with varying degrees of courage and conviction. The heart holds our dreams, the things we hope for. When we reveal these dreams we unveil our tenderest, most vulnerable selves. The heart holds the things we are sure of and the things we are confused about. Certainty and ambiguity coexist in every cell of the heart.

Yes, the content of the heart is immeasurable, both ineffable and concrete. The heart is nothing less than where our humanity lives. The essence of our human spirit, which is at once the determining factor of what our life experience is and the sum total of it.

No wonder it hurts so much sometimes.

Loneliness and friends and 1st grade

Gracie has been sort of a whiny pain about her birthday party lately. It’s going to be joint with another classmate and she can’t stop complaining about that. She doesn’t want to share, she doesn’t want to share, she doesn’t want to share. Well, shocker.

I’ve gotten pretty short about the whole topic as ingratitude is one of my least favorite things. Tonight she came out of her room in tears at about 745 and I was not remotely patient. She told me she was having nightmares from a movie she saw recently and I sighed heavily and marched her back to her bed, delivering a none-too-heartfelt Sweet Dreams headrub and extra hug.

I was reading Google Reader in my room a few minutes later when I heard her door creak open. She tiptoed out, obviously waiting for me to hear her. I decided to wait her out a sec and listened in silence. She hesitated and then went into the bathroom, apparently killing time. Finally I said, “Grace?” That was all the opening she needed, I guess, as she walked into my room with tears streaming down her face.

I pulled her up onto the bed with me and lay next to her. Resigned mothering, I think you could call it. I cast a longing look at my book and asked her what was going on. She started telling me again about how she did not want to share her birthday party; I think she could tell from my body language that I was closing up again because she dissolved into more vigorous tears. I battled my own impatience and asked her gently what was really going on. Finally, eyes closed, she choked through her tears, “Mummy, I’m scared nobody is going to want to play with me. They are all going to want to play with Caroline.”

I felt a wave of empathy and identification almost knock me over, with sharp rocks of guilt cutting into my ankles. She went on to tell me about how all of the girls in her class have a best friend and she doesn’t and she feels like she does not fit in. She described the playground dynamics and how she often gets left out since what she likes to do best is swing by herself. Oh! Swinging by herself – one of my very very favorite things to do (Still, to this day, I can be found swinging on playground swings. A lot).

I don’t have an answer for her. The vague sense of alienation that has defined much of my life swelled up in my own heart, my sense of myself overlapping with my sense of her into one big intertwined mess of sensitivity and differentness and heart and an aching desire to belong.

I wrapped Grace in my arms, looking down at the side of her face, noticing that the chestnut colored hair by her temple was soaked with tears. I kissed her forehead and just rocked her, shhhing quietly into her hairline. I told her that I felt alone a lot, and lonesome a lot, and that that did not mean that she would not find friends. I told her about all of the people who love her, citing a couple of dear friends outside of school.

I remembered a few mornings ago when I dropped both kids off at school. Whit dashed into the early morning activity room, leaving both Grace and I in the dust. I had to go and so I asked Grace where she wanted to wait until 8:10. She said she did not want to go into the activity room, and I felt an unsettling awareness that she sort of wished she could just dissolve into the wall until she had her clearly-defined seat in her classroom to take.

I steered her to a chair over by the double doors to the playground. “Sit here,” I said, sitting her down and kissing her on the cheek. “What should I do, Mummy?” she asked me plaintively. I told her to read her library book, and she refuted that with “But I already read it.” Fine. I told her to count. “What?” she asked, puzzled. “Count. I count everything, Grace, all the time. Count windows. Count people. Count backpacks.” She didn’t even challenge me, but smiled happily and said, “Okay.”

Tonight as I listened to her slowly ebbing sobs I remembered that morning’s keen awareness of Grace’s discomfort. When I tucked her into bed a few minutes later, I kissed her and held her face in my hands. Her eyes were incandescent in the dark, still wet with tears, red-rimmed. She stared right at me, her desire for me to make it all okay disconcertingly clear. If only I could, Gracie. I hugged her and told her I would always love her, no matter what, that she would always be my very favorite daughter in the whole wide world. She nodded wordlessly at me.

I’ve been wondering all night if telling her that her uncertainties are familiar to me was the right thing. I don’t know if that reassured her or scared her. I don’t know if I ought to have been more glib, telling her of course she will make friends and everybody loves her. Even if that is so, I’m not sure I could. My own wariness about people and my own hesitation about whether or not people like me is such an omnipresent part of who I am that I can’t fake otherwise.

Tonight was just another reminder of how my own worst qualities are animate in my child. Another glimpse at the load she carries because I am her mother. Oh, my poor insecure tearful girl. I love you, Gracie. I’m sorry that your inheritance from me is so complex, that it includes such swampy marshes of the soul.

Day One

School started on Tuesday. First grade for Grace, Beginners for Whit. It was sentimental for me when my first-born child was a Beginner, but now my baby is. Wow. There are many pluses to this new moment in my mothering adventure: there is a new logistical ease, having them in a single school, with one dropoff and one pickup. Whit is so excited to be at Big Kid school with his big sister, and Gracie has been unusually generous towards her brother this week, telling him what to expect and all about his teacher (who she had as well).

But, still. My babies are all gone, as are my toddlers. They are big kids now, full of energy and noise and complexity and, I realize, a dwindling number of hugs and hand-holdings (sad farewells) and sippy cups and carseats (less sad: one of the major achievements of this summer has been that Whit climbs into the car and buckles himself in and out – my GOD what a life-changer that was). I know I don’t want to go back, I really, truly know that. But I don’t know that I want to keep moving forward this fast, either. Of course it’s not up to me, and that I know as much as I know anything at all.

Every achievement, every milestone, is limned with an elegy. And they just keep walking away.