oh this is hard

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.

Om Nama Shivaya

Last night in yoga class the teacher (wonderful, jivamukti-trained Alanna) spent a while talking about sound, vibrations, e=mc2, listening, and being open to the universe. She asked us to think about someone who could benefit from our being more present, from our listening more carefully. I thought immediately of Grace. No hesitation: her little face with tangly hair falling in her eyes popped into my head.

At the end of practice Alanna turned the lights off and did a little bit of singing with the room lit only by candles. I would not normally describe this as my thing, but somehow I was porous to it last night and found it very moving. We did a call-and-response chant of Om Nama Shivaya (again, not my thing, but Alanna was singing it rather than chanting it, with acoustic guitar accompaniment … really just a hop away from some of my favorite music!). She asked us to put our hands over our heart and to think of the person we had dedicated our practice to. Tears streamed down my face as I imagined Gracie sitting next to me. My awareness of my own limitations was a physical ache, and I felt the desperate desire to be a more present, patient mother for her running through my veins in a visceral way.

I was reminded, then, of an experience I had while pregnant with Grace. When I remembered it I can’t believe I’ve spent so many hours whining about how her name was going to be Eloise. I was 20 weeks pregnant and at a new prenatal yoga class (that I actually never returned to, because there was a little too much breathing through our chakras and not enough downward dog). After a long shivasana, the instructor asked us to “go inside” (what does this mean, really?) and to “feel our baby” (and yes, I rolled my eyes here). We were supposed to listen for a single word, a message from our child, and to share it with the room. I was skeptical and, frankly, trying to figure out how I could leave the room without getting busted. And then this happened: a voice in my head said, clearly, “grace.” Her name has always been Grace.

Incidentally, these two experiences, separated by a wide gulf of years and many, many not-very-spiritual moments, make me think of Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk. Yes, I am biased, because I love Elizabeth Gilbert. But still. I find her premise fascinating, and compelling: that creativity should be thought of as an external force that visits us (with frustrating inconsistency) rather than something inherent to an individual. This, she posits, is a way to release some of the pressure to be inspired every single day. She also supports her theory with interesting data points from Big Name Philosophers.

This notion is central to a Philip Pullman’s extraordinary trilogy, His Dark Materials (which I could not recommend more highly). In Pullman’s beautiful books, both quick, enthralling reads and dense explorations of religion, identity, and the soul, children are accompanied by “daemons,” companions who are an external embodiment of their creativity. When we are children, our daemons shift between the shapes of various animals. As adults, they take a firmer form and settle into their final shape. Pullman seems to be claiming that children are comfortable with the fluidity of creativity and identity, and that as we get older this relationship grows more static, the exchange less easy. I find this idea fascinating and it clearly has the same root as Elizabeth Gilbert’s argument about artistic inspiration and whether its locus is internal or external to the artist himself.

If you agree with Gilbert and Pullman, which I think I do, I guess whatever we believe that spirit is visited me last night. And reminded me, in no uncertain terms, that Gracie deserves better from me.

Instinct vs doubt

Last week, an email popped up in my inbox outlining all of the afterschool activities available at my children’s private school. As I read about karate and hip hop and book club and chess, a familiar anxiety gnawed at me. Once again, I wondered if, in my rabid opposition to over-scheduling I have overcorrected and am depriving my children .

My daughter is allowed one after-school activity a week. My son has only just begun to show interest, but I will offer him the same choice. I remember when Grace was a baby I fretted to the pediatrician that while my friends were at Mommy and Me music, gymnastics, etc, I mostly took my baby to the dry cleaner and the grocery store. He reassured me, “Don’t worry, she just wants to be with you.” Then he said, “you think this is hard now? Wait until she starts asking for activities.” And he was right. Grace is almost seven, and she regularly asks to participate in more afterschool activities than I am prepared to okay. My response, repeated so often if feels like a chant or a hopeful prayer, is that “Different families make different choices.”

My active limiting of my children’s “programming” goes hand in hand with a general philosophy that refuses to build them up into exceptional geniuses. I wonder, again, if this has negative repercussions. Will they doubt that I love them? If adulatory motherhood is now the norm, will I seem cold and not proud in comparison? This could not be further from the truth. I am proud of them every day, with an intensity that continues to amaze me after almost seven years; I am proud watching my son struggle to stay afloat in the swimming pool and watching my daughter painstakingly sound out words in a Berestain Bears book as she resolutely, slowly, learns to read. I don’t think I would describe either of my children exceptional on any dimension, and that does not make me any less proud. In fact it might make me more so. I aspire to raise happy, well-adjusted children who know how to listen to themselves, something I am admittedly weak at myself (it occurs to me that perhaps much of the intensity behind my belief is aspiring to give them something I wish I had more of). I want them to be able to entertain, make choices for, and trust themselves.

But I do feel guilty when I hear other parents talk about their child’s early reading, particularly impressive physical coordination, or early language acquisition. I simply don’t speak of Whit and Grace in those terms. Maybe I should? Am I dooming them to a life of mediocrity by refusing to extol virtues that I don’t really see? Don’t get me wrong: I love my children dearly, and because of that I think they are both downright terrific. I believe, however, that to focus on their exceptional promise and prowess at X or Y is to saddle them with both expectations and limits. I also view a lot of this exceptional-izing as competitive and I simply refuse to parent that way, because it undermines our tremendously strong common purpose: to support our children as best we know how.

But I do find myself wondering whether both my stubborn refusal to let my children fill their free hours with “enriching” activities and my disinclination to laud them as little prodigies is in some way harmful. I fear that I am letting them down by not being more flowery in my praise of them, and yet I keep bumping into my fundamental instincts that point in another direction. Even in an area where I feel relatively confident about my biases, doubt creeps in, mingling with my intuition; perhaps this combination of fear and sureness is the definition of motherhood. Is it driven by anything external, or is it just my own lack of confidence speaking? Is it inescapable, this essential uncertainty? I think it is this insecurity that underlies the comparisons and the effusive, designed-for-public-consumption praise. So for now I’ll keep following the intuition that howls loudly in one ear while trying to answer the doubts that whisper in the other.

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters


A thinking woman sleeps with monsters. – Adrienne Rich

Cherish your wilderness. – Maxine Kumin

It’s thesis day around here, clearly, with Anne Sexton this morning and Adrienne Rich and Maxine Kumin this evening. I know I have both monsters and wilderness in me, and I know I share Sexton’s view that there is nothing uncomplicated about love.

Have been sort of heavy-hearted today, feeling an inarticulate and undefined cloud of vague sadness hovering around my head. I find myself wondering if I am even capable of happiness untouched by this melancholy that is just part of who I am. Actually, I know I’m not. So what I wonder, I guess, is whether I care. Of course this thought exercise is not very practical since I can’t change it, even if I wanted to, but it is interesting.

I am incapable of experiencing joy unlimned with loss. I am always, achingly aware of the imminent farewell that hovers around any happy moment. I am simultaneously in the moment and already grieving its passage. I am a palimpsest whose first layer is one of deep sorrow, and no matter how much paint I apply on top, that orientation towards sadness always shows through. This is okay with me: some of my favorite expressions of beauty, like the deep blue of a hydrangea or the fire of a summer sunset, seem to share, somehow, this underlying sense of joy’s intractable connection with loss.

Despite my endless ruminations, I have actually accepted this part of who I am rather peacefully. I struggle to relate, in fact, to people whose outlook on life is more simply sunny. These people are often a breath of fresh air to me, and a positive influence, but I am fundamentally unable to understand the way they are wired. Surely my life would be simpler if I was able to live my life without preemptively mourning the fact that every day will pass, without dwelling on my inability to capture and hold the things I love most dearly. But it would not be my life. So instead of wishing I was someone else, I will try and try, as summer fades into fall and the world again reminds us so viscerally of loss and time’s passage, to embrace my own complicated, squirrel-like mind.

Less Obvious Free Ranging

LinkI very much like this essay about “free ranging in less obvious ways” on Free Range Kids (an excellent blog I highly recommend). The author, Leah R. Weiss Caruso, discussed the less visible side of free range parenting. She describes a variety of ways that children need to be let to fail in order to learn to pick themselves up.

I could not agree with this more strongly. I have often lamented my own lack of resilence and perhaps as a result of my own insufficiency with this vital trait, I desperately want to help you both develop it. I think this is exactly what letting children fail accomplishes: it develops self-sufficiency and the ability to recover from setbacks.

This is, for me, a tremendous parenting challenge. When I hear Grace and Whit starting to bicker I am quick to jump in, shushing them and asking them to stop fighting. I think what I should probably do is leave the room and assume they will figure it out (hopefully, though not certainly, without an ER visit ensuing).

It 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.