oh this is hard

September 1, 2009

Annual trip to Water Wizz this morning. Grace, Whit and I were, as usual, about 15 minutes early. So we sat in the car, with the heat on. Note: summer vacation in September has some drawbacks. Especially at a water park. We met Clem, Campbell, and their father for some sliding fun. First up was the Lazy River which entails drifting around a circuitous circle, being occasionally drenched with waterfalls. Sounds great except it was freezing cold. Literally my teeth were chattering. Next up was the slide you see above. All four kids (ages 7, 6, 5, and 4) went down it. I had to go first, and Whit was right behind me. He came down backwards and flipped upside down in the landing pool. His face when he came up was absolutely priceless. Unsurprisingly, this first slide was his last of the day.

Clem shared Whit’s dislike of the slides, so the three of us took the mellower route. We were playing at Pirate Cove (basically a foot of ice cold water and a pirate-themed jungle gym, with occasional waterfalls – sense a theme here?) when Whit wiped out and skinned the bejeezus out of his elbow. He fell in Vermont, too, successfully completing a five-point skin: literally, both elbows, both knees, and his forehead. I didn’t see the fall but I can only imagine he took flight like Superman before coming abruptly back to earth. Anyway, today’s skin was a knee and an elbow and he was bleeding enough that they rushed me to the First Aid shack.

A couple of huge band-aids and we were back in business. By noon everybody was freezing cold and whiny and outright exhausted. I took Grace and Whit home for macaroni and cheese. Things went steeply downhill here. They were bickering over the screen door, with Whit wanting it wide open and Grace upset by this because it made the hummingbird feeder drip. There were raised voices, okay, fine, including mine. Then they were arguing over the macaroni and cheese box. Grace would not let Whit hold it. Which is, apparently, an offense worth biting over.

Which he did. I was at the stove when I heard Grace’s blood-curdling scream. I turned and she was wailing, “Whit bit me!” with a thorougly appropriate mix of indignation and horror. Whit saw my face and immediately started muttering, “I’m sorry, Mummy, I’m sorry!” I dealt with him in no uncertain terms and pretty soon all three of us were crying. I asked Whit to apologize to Grace, and he did, and she made me cry tears of pride over those of frustration and exhaustion when she said, totally sincerely, “I accept your apology, Whitty.” After a speedy lunch everybody went to their rooms for rest and screens of all kinds (computer, DVD player, old iphone).

The afternoon was mellow and we had dinner with the friends of Water Wizz (and last night) at a great old-fashioned pizza parlor in Onset. The food was great and the children had fun playing with the video games and pinball machines. There was ice cream afterwards and then it was home for early to bed. Grace was tired as I read to her and, as it had all afternoon and evening, her mood oscillated between surly sass and breakthrough tears.

I finally tucked her into bed, curling up next to her. I brushed her hair back from her forehead and whispered to her about how I loved her no matter what. I apologized for raising my voice and explained that I always loved her, even when I was disappointed with or upset at her behavior. I told her that the thing she did that made me proudest all day long was not going down the crazy black-diamond waterslides (my GOD my child is fearless, in a way I can tell is going to be bad news) but accepting Whit’s apology after he bit her.

I could feel her body relaxing next to me, watch her eyelids growing heavy. She murmured, so quietly I could barely hear her, “Mummy, I feel like I could snuggle with you forever.” My heart ached as tide of tenderness came in to wash out all of the yelling and anger and oh-my-God-I-suck-at-this emotion of the day. It always seems to do that, no matter how rough the day has been. Every day like this I doubt everything about them and myself as a parent, and then it comes, that overwhelming splash of emotion, both fierce and gentle, humbling, inspiring, and comforting me all at once.

What it is …

“Its about knowing when it is time to lay something to rest.
Its about understanding what no longer serves you (or, perhaps, what never even did) and finding a new way instead.
Its in ignoring the lure to remain a victim and taking a look at what you can do instead of remaining stuck in fear and blame.
Its in surrounding yourself with people and activities that bring you to your best, and keep you from collapsing within and fading away.
Its in having enough integrity to care for yourself in the best way possible and ditching that ridiculous “sacrificing self for others” mindset. What good are you to anyone if you have just drained your life force?
Its about remembering the times you were the most happy, the most content, the most at peace, and finding the right recipe for your soul. Its allowing yourself time and permission to enjoy those things that spark your heart.
Its in being open to experiences you never dreamed of, and allowing yourself the freedom to have an adventure no matter how small it may seem.
Its in giving yourself a flipping break for once, and putting a muzzle on the voices in your head that try to make you believe you suck, or are not capable, or that you always fail, or aren’t worth it… (to hell with those lies).
Its about asking for help.
Its about learning to receive.
Its about healing your life.

Its possible. It really is.”

Oh Jen Gray, thank you for these gorgeous words. I am so glad I found your blog, full of exquisite words and images and deep wisdom. Thank you.

Sadness at Lake Champlain

Jenn’s words today (as they have other days) have me nodding and blinking back tears. Oh, Jenn. Yes. I know. First of all, I am not tired of your musings, nor do I suspect I ever will be. Second of all, I can relate to the sense of feeling pressure to be over it already, to get through this, to get out of my own head. Pressure to just stop fretting so. To stop being so sensitive, so sad, so stormy. And I imagine you know the answer to all of that pressure that I feel like screaming: You have no idea how much I wish I could!

This is as good as any summary I could write of where I am right now:

I parent… I owe. I miss. I yearn. I cry. I try. I fail. I try again…I’m not out to get anyone. I don’t think I’m special, or different, or that my sadness is worth more than yours.

I would never presume, Jenn, to say I know where you are. Of course I don’t and I could not. I do know, however, the bleakness of true chemical depression. For me that was an experience that changed my life, making me far more empathetic and less judgmental of people who struggle with mental illness of all kinds. It was a kind of darkness of the mind that I hope never to visit again. It was a time when I felt true despair of a kind I have only touched on since. It was a scary episode, and it left me with both a deep respect for others who struggle with psychological demons and a profound fear of returning there myself.

Where I am now – I think, I desperately hope – is different. This is a more common oscillation of attitude, though this particular valley has been long and deep. I do feel lucky in that I know, or I think I know, that my clouds will lift. I have no choice but to trust these rhythms of the mind, this gentle sine curve of mood that takes me through periods both blindingly sunny and disconcertingly dark.

It strikes me as an apt metaphor that while I refuse to go on roller coasters in the real world, I am in a very real way riding one inside my head on a regular basis. I wish I had more control over my thoughts and reactions. This is the inexorable pull of Buddhism and meditation to me: the dream of letting go of my monkey mind. Oh how appealing is this concept and, thus far in my life, how absolutely beyond my reach.

I sit here, listening to Lake Champlain lap up against the rocks below my cottage, watching the mist shift in the dark trees across the even darker water. My mind and my heart are both empty and full at the same time. I feel half asleep and agonizingly aware. My words come slowly, haltingly, and I doubt each one. I tell myself that these periods of sadness are, in retrospect, fertile times of growth and learning. I know this is true, but that doesn’t make me enjoy the passage any more.

Jenn, the reason you words mean so much is that it is indescribably helpful – maybe more helpful than anything else, actually – to know I am not alone in this journey. I think what we all want most of all is to be seen – and embraced – for who we authentically are. Reading words that ring so true is, for me, one way (the only way?) to feel felt and acknowledged. Thank you, Jenn. Consider my feet up on your coffee table. And thanks for letting me join you.

Pain punctuated with joy

Kate, at sweet/salty, is one of my favorite Internet writers. Her words are magical, full of gorgeous imagery and big leaps and blunt honesty. I love her post today. Some excerpts:

We like to think that life is joy punctuated with pain but it’s not. Life is pain punctuated with moments of joy.

The optimist in me wants to disagree with Kate about the joy/pain balance of life, but the pessimist in me senses that she is right. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, really, what the equation is, as long as we appreciate the joy and it sustains us through the pain. Of course everybody’s particular calculus is different, the balance of happy and sad, of light and shadow. It’s no secret that mine leans towards shadow, which is probably why Kate’s words resonate so strongly with me.

Life is not fairly represented in a Flickr photostream. It is not false, but it is not the whole truth. Memories are kneaded into something different from what we actually experienced. In the gulf between the two there is necessary sorcery.

I love this image, of the sorcery that exists in the gulf between experience and memory. Yes, how true it is, that even as we live moments we are not always sure of how they will transmogrify in our memory. Some of the “big moments” of my life are blurs in my memory, while some of the most mundane and unspecial days are the ones I remember with the clarity and dazzling color of light through a prism. Some of the memories that I return to the most often for comfort and inspiration, crystalline in their gorgeous power, are of experiences that I did not realize the importance of as I lived them. Most, in fact.

I wanted to hang my motherhood up on the hook that has MOTHERHOOD pasted above it in Office Depot ticky-tack, and wipe my hands on my pants, and walk away for a while.

I disgust myself with how ungrateful I can be. I mourn the ability to be as blindly ungrateful as I please. I love my kids but I miss myself. I’m tired of wrangling and refereeing and spotting.

I very recently bemoaned my own lack of gratitude. My own inability to get out of my own way to see the glory and beauty of my life. I am so thankful to Kate for admitting her own moments of wanting to just be herself, without hangers-on and people needing her. I know the feeling well, and wish I had my own hook to hang one of my identities on for a while now and then. My children are at a tennis lesson and I miss them. Then they are home and I miss the silence of their absence. I look at them sleeping and am overcome with a wave of love so simultaneously fierce and gentle that it shocks me. They wake up, start bickering, and within five minutes the gentleness vanishes and the fierceness has shifted to something decidedly less sweet. Repeat. Ad nauseum. Is this seesaw just the way it is, from now on?

A heart, a gift, and wonder

My father-in-law had a heart transplant on November 26, 2002. I think about it all the time, but especially around Thanksgiving. Grace was born on October 26, 2002. That was, needless to say, an emotional and scary time. I was in the deep dark hole of postpartum depression, Matt was at the hospital every evening after a horrible day at more-people-laid-off-every-day work, and Grace was screaming her head off 20 hours a day. Oh, and John was at MGH where he was basically going to leave with a heart or in a coffin. It was not a fun period.

He received a heart a dark, damp November night. There are many amazing things about that day. His surprise granddaughter who is named Grace for many reasons, not the least of which is her appearance being an act of grace for its correlation with his illness, was one month old. It was two days before Thanksgiving. It was also his and my mother-in-law’s wedding anniversary.

It is truly a miracle, the fact that someone else’s heart beats in his chest. All we know is that the donor was 28 years old (the age I was at the time of the transplant). And I imagine that the donor’s death was likely untimely and tragic. But oh what a gift they gave. I was always a organ donor but am now an evangelist for the cause. And please, everybody, know that just having it on your license is not enough. Your next of kin and family need to know your wishes, because it is they who will be in the situation of making that call should the worst case scenario occur.

It is an absolute miracle. I wish I had better words that didn’t sound trite, but I don’t. He was released from the hospital after two weeks, which shocked me at the time (seriously? four days for your c-section and two weeks for your heart transplant?). It was a slow road back to feeling good but honestly his quality of life has been excellent.

So excellent that I often forget to remember what tremendous good fortune we have had. I remember that first Thanksgiving, Matt, Grace and I drove to my family’s big (usually 30+ Meads around tables) celebration in Marion. We were both shell-shocked, from the transplant and the post partum and the sleeplessness and the sheer earthquake quality of the last month. Everybody was incredibly gentle, with kind and generous words about John (at that point he was not even out of anesthesia yet, and much remained uncertain). The theme, though, over and over, was “Wow, you have a lot to be thankful for.” And I’m not proud of this, but I remember thinking: No we don’t. Are you crazy? To be in this situation in the first place?

Oh how selfish those thoughts were, I see that now. Of course we were – and remain – wildly lucky, fortunate, and blessed. And , yes, yes, deeply, deeply grateful. I am only ashamed that I am not more actively thankful every single day of what a gift it is to wake up in the morning and have an able body and a sound mind. It is so easy to lose track of that good fortune, to dwell only on my anxieties and fears and issues and small pains. I try to remember, to bring myself back to the core of gratitude, to the awareness of how hugely blessed I am.

Today, I guess, is one of those days, where I am trying to tug myself back to the perspective I know I ought to have. One of those days that I am aware of how our everyday lives are absolutely laced with miracles. May I learn to remember this more often. As my father-in-law, with someone’s extraordinary gift beating in his chest should remind me.