oh this is hard

Commencement

Beginners G

closing ceremonies of Grace’s Beginner year, 2008

Whit-B

closing ceremonies of Whit’s Beginner year, 2010

I’m not sure if it’s because I live in a college town, or if it’s a relic of my many years in educational institutions myself, but there’s something essential in my soul that still beats on academic time.  I feel the end of something as profoundly at the end of the school year as I do at New Year’s.  This time of year, when people swarm my neighborhood in academic robes and caps and when I keep reading graduation speeches, I feel the grip of some inchoate sorrow that feels as incongruous as the world is bursting into riotous bloom around me as it is undeniable, unavoidable.

The truth is, right now, I feel sad.  Today is the end of something.  As I wrote last year, “no matter how many times I’m caught from the freefall of farewell by a new beginning, I still feel the loss.”  Today our children celebrate their closing ceremonies, Grace and Whit moving from fifth and third grade respectively.  There’s excitement – the summer lies ahead, with beaches and camps and later bedtimes and lots and lots of joy – but there’s an undeniable sorrow, too.  At least for me.  Something that will never be again is over.  I will never again sit in my car at the corner and watch my third and fifth grader walk through the school gates, big backpacks bobbing on their backs.  All year long, watching them go gives me a lump in my throat and a swell in my chest, but that feeling escalates as we near the end of the year.

I drive through Harvard Square and notice that they’ve begun erecting the tents for graduation, and this always reminds me of the sharp ache I used to feel when they started putting up fences and tents for reunions at Princeton.  The fences marked off each major reunion’s location, but they also delineated the end of another year.  Still, to this day, I remember the tears that used to spring to my eyes.  And the same tears came, unbidden, as I watched Harvard transforming itself to celebrate another commencement.  Today we do the same at Grace and Whit’s school.

I feel out of step with the celebration in the air today and this time of year, the overwhelming, enthusiastic rush towards summer I sense all around me.  Hold back!  Wait!  I say silently, wanting another day to dwell in this, here, now.  I’m always keenly aware of life’s accumulating farewells, but I think this time of year is when I feel them most acutely.  Kunitz’s feast of losses seep into my waking and my sleeping.  Today, I’ll blink back tears as I watch my 3rd and 5th grade days come to an end, as I marvel at this glittering life, turning so quickly I can barely keep up.

And so we go on, round and round and round in the circle game.  Captive on a carousel of time.  Another end and beginning twined together.  Life itself is a series of commencements, isn’t it?  Every day, we commence.

I’m caught from the freefall of farewell by a new beginning, though, I still feel the loss.  – See more at: https://adesignsovast.com/2013/05/commencement/#sthash.qEhpjhfz.dpuf
I’m caught from the freefall of farewell by a new beginning, though, I still feel the loss. – See more at: https://adesignsovast.com/2013/05/commencement/#sthash.qEhpjhfz.dpuf
I’m caught from the freefall of farewell by a new beginning, though, I still feel the loss.  – See more at: https://adesignsovast.com/2013/05/commencement/#sthash.qEhpjhfz.dpuf
I’m caught from the freefall of farewell by a new beginning, though, I still feel the loss.  – See more at: https://adesignsovast.com/2013/05/commencement/#sthash.qEhpjhfz.dpuf
I’m caught from the freefall of farewell by a new beginning, though, I still feel the loss.  – See more at: https://adesignsovast.com/2013/05/commencement/#sthash.qEhpjhfz.dpuf

Can’t have one without the other

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We had a spectacular spring break.  The trip to the Galapagos was more magical than our everyday life, of course, and Grace and Whit, sponges that they are, soaked it all up.  As we headed home, on the last morning, Grace was tearful. In the airport lounge (as we embarked on what would be a full 24 hours of travel) she looked at me with mournful eyes.  “I don’t want it to be over,” she said, hugging me hard.  I nodded, my own eyes filling with tears.

“Why does it have to end?  Why does it have to be so sad?” she asked me, her voice muffled against my shoulder.  A wry smile flitted across my face, though she couldn’t see it.  Why does it?  This is something I ask myself every single day.

“Oh, Gracie.  You can’t have one without the other,” I said.  She pulled away and looked me in the eye, a question in her face.  “You know, the amazing experience is part of it and then being sad it’s over is the other part.”  She nodded silently, chewing her lip.  We sat in silence, the huge ceiling fans in the Guayaquil airport spinning slowly overhead.  I watched Grace’s knee jiggle as I thought of the two edges of this world, of the joy and the sorrow, of the beauty and the pain, of how inextricably linked they are, of how ambivalent I feel that my daughter is learning this lesson already.

******

The last night of break, Whit came out of his room a few minutes after I had tucked him in.  I walked him back into his dark room and sat down on the edge of his bed.  “What’s on your mind?”  His cheeks were wet and he had clearly been crying.  He shook his head and I waited.

“I want to go back to the Galapagos, Mummy.  And I am just sad.  Sad about everything that’s over.”  I stroked his blond hair off his forehead.  “I’m sad we’re not going back to Legoland.”  I nodded.

“I know, Whit.  It’s always sad when things are over.”  I had a lump in my own throat as I spoke.  Over and over again, Grace and Whit seem to go straight to the heart of all the things I find the most difficult.  This is what they do: they drag me to confront the emotions with which I most struggle.

“So many things,” he hiccuped, “that didn’t seem that much fun at the time, like the hot slow bus to the turtle farm, or the long layover in Guayaquil, or the flight where we didn’t sleep…” his voice trailed off.

“Or that lunch in Puerto Ayora when you were so cranky,” I offered, and a small smile cracked his face.

“Yeah.  All of those things.  They didn’t seem that much fun when we were going them, but now I miss them all.”

Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember. – Oscar Levant

I read this quote the day after that bedtime conversation with Whit, and I think it’s saying what he was, too.  So often things take on the sheen of joy after the fact, their memory burnished with something that wasn’t necessarily there as we lived it.  I don’t think this is a bad or a sad thing, though it does make me more aware that the experiences that feel like a slog (and Whit is right, that long bus ride back and forth across Santa Cruz qualifies) often become cherished memories.

It’s all connected, all of it: the delight and the sorrow, the experience and the memory, the difficulty fading into the background as the joyful center of an experience moves to the front.  You can’t have one without the other, of any of these dualities, of that I’m sure.  It’s a bittersweet thing, to watch my children learn this, and they both did on our trip to the Galapagos and in its wake.  And it’s something I’m still learning, too.

 

Grit and heart

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I write all the time about the confounding, mysterious nature of memory, and of how it is the smallest, most minute moments that often endure the most sturdily for me.  Once in a while, though, there is an experience that trumpets its power even as I live it.

Whit’s championship hockey finals were one such moment.  His team (Mite AAA) made it to the finals in their league.  I can’t speak for the other parents, but I know that this team came together in a way that I never imagined back in September.  The playoffs occurred over the middle weeks of March, and lots of kids were out on spring break.  Whit missed the two semifinal games, in fact, because we were in the Galapagos.  But he was back for the championship game, albeit basically fresh off a 24 hour trip home and a redeye flight.

At full strength, our team has 12 players.  The day of the finals, we had 8.  One was a goalie, which left 7.  That means only two subs.  The other team had fully three times as many subs as we did.  They were favored.  We lost to them the last time we faced them.  I admit I watched our boys – who seem simultaneously so little and so big when they are on the ice – with a vague sense of trepidation.  This might be ugly, I thought to myself.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Those boys – and I say boys because our female member was not there – skated with more grit and heart than I have ever, ever seen.  They were absolutely exhausted; the lack of subs took a major toll.  But the other team never led and with 5 minutes to go we were up 5-3.  When the third period ended we were tied 5-5.  This led to a 5 minute sudden death playoff, and somehow, with determination I’ve never seen before, the boys kept it tied.  Nobody scored.  We screamed ourselves hoarse, and a wild hope – we could actually win this – galloped in my chest.

Next came a shoot-out.  I’ve never seen a shoot-out before, but basically the teams take turns skating from the middle of the ice and shooting on the other goalie.  The first round is 5 players each.  We were down one goal by the time it was Whit’s turn.  I knew – and he knew – that it came down to this.  It was up to him.  He had to score or the entire game was lost.  I can’t imagine the pressure that he felt on his tiny shoulders, and my eyes filled with tears as I watched.

He did not score.  36 minutes of regular play, 5 minutes of overtime, and 4 rounds of shoot-outs came to an end and the other team flooded the ice, jubilant.  I could see from my perch in the stands, through Whit’s mask, that he was crying.  By the time they came off the ice I saw that most of the team was.

Whit was irate and upset all the way home and we let him rant.  But by the time he went to bed, he was sorrowful.  “I let my team down, Mum,” he told me in a whisper.  I lay next to him in his bed and talked about how proud I was of him and his whole team.  I told him I had rarely seem him dig deep like that.  I told him he had been tenacious and brave and strong in the face of long odds and deep exhaustion.  I told him that sometimes things don’t go our way, and this one didn’t.  I told him I understood that it felt like it was his fault, though of course it was not that simple.  I told him I was wildly, incredibly impressed with how his team played and held off the #1 seed who so outnumbered them.  They had been the underdogs and while they didn’t win, I’m pretty sure everybody in that rink was impressed by their play.

Matt came in to tuck Whit in and offered that it was way better to have gotten to the finals, and to face that disappointment, than not to have gotten there at all.  Right?  Whit thought about this for a moment before grudgingly agreeing.  I considered it too: not making the championship and not having lived through that white-knuckle game would have hurt less.  But what an achievement that game was.  Just before bed we’d gotten an email from Whit’s coach sharing the image of Whit lying on the ice after being checked into the boards, with 3 minutes of time left, doing everything in his power to keep the puck from going down towards our goal.  “What else could a coach ask for?” he has asked, and reading that, I cried.  All eight of those boys gave it everything they had.

Matt left and I lay with Whit for a few more minutes.  “It was a really great season, Whit, and an absolutely remarkable game today,” I told him in the hushed darkness.  He sighed and I felt him nod on the robot-print pillow next to me.  He rolled on his side, pulling his monkey, Beloved closer to his neck.  “I’m really, really proud of you.  And I think you’ll remember this day for the rest of your life.”

And so will I.

All you ever have

photo 3Sunday morning.

Much of the time, our family of four functions fairly smoothly.  Sometimes, though, we don’t.  Some days everybody’s edges feel especially jagged and as we rub up against each other emotions protrude and tempers flare.  Yesterday morning was one of those times.  All was not well at the homestead.  Matt and Grace left to do an errand.  Whit busied himself building something with Legos and blocks.  I put in a load of laundry, emptied the trash cans, finally sorted through the holiday cards (March 2nd seems like time).  I felt a familiar restlessness running under my skin.

Finally I went upstairs to our family room, lay down on the couch, and watched Whit.  He was building a luge track using blocks, legos, clipboards, and small rubber tires.  It was elaborate, and he kept testing and adjusting, testing and adjusting.  I glanced out the window at the tree that has accompanied me through the last 13 years, remembering sitting in this very room nursing a colicky baby Grace and watching dawn spread across the sky through the tree’s familiar branches.

As often happens, I felt the years between then and now collapse in on each other, telescoping into a tunnel of memory and loss.  My eyes filled with tears as I watched Whit play, overcome suddenly with emotions more complicated than I can fully parse or name.  I felt gratitude for this life, this boy, these bright Legos, this warm room, the years I’ve been able to be Grace and Whit’s mother.  I felt guilt for all the hours and days and weeks I have failed to appreciate, all the times I was distracted and short and not present enough.  I felt awareness of all that was over so keenly it felt like a physical pain in my chest.  I felt the frantic and dizzying sensation of time slipping through my fingers even as I try to grasp on.

What I didn’t feel, though, as I swam in that tearful wave of thankfulness and sorrow, was any of the frustration and aggravation that had marked the first hours of my day.  By sinking into the now of my life, by watching Whit carefully, by breathing and just being, I had touched again the hem of heaven, reminded myself of what matters, of all the divinity that glints through our daily lives like mica glittering in the concrete pavement.

My phone, which I’d forgotten was on the table next to the couch, beeped.  I glanced over.  My best friend from high school, a woman I see not nearly enough but still love fiercely, had texted me this quote.

The tears that had threatened to fall did so now, slipping down my cheeks. Thank you, universe.  Thank you friends and children and love and trees and everything about this daily life.  Thank you.

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An elegy to what was and a love letter to what is.

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I have never been particularly maternal, I never babysat, and I never daydreamed of the day I would have my own children. I was as surprised as anyone, then, when I realized that motherhood was the love affair of my life, the subject that found me, the role that made everything else in my life make (at least some) sense.  After Grace and I made it through months of colic (hers but also, I’m pretty sure, mine) and a dark year, we entered a period that I think of now as what Laura Ingalls Wilder called the happy golden years.

But lately, I am in a new season of motherhood.  At first there were isolated events, rolled eyes and crossed arms, flares of aggravation I did not understand.   These moments, each on their own as small as a speck of light in a wide night sky, came together into a constellation that was eventually impossible to ignore.  Something is changing.  Something is different.

For a long time I worried that my days with Grace at home would never end.  I waded through her dark and sleepless first months for what felt like an eternity.  Then, truthfully, I rejoiced that that time had ended.  We dove into the happy hours of early childhood, celebrating all the things we could do together – swimming, tennis, reading, adventures. Grace (and her brother) was my favorite companion and I was hers.  And now, suddenly, the end of something is undeniably in sight.  It reminds me our annual summer trip to the White Mountains: we hike for what seems like forever in the trees and are always startled when, all at once, the summit comes into view.

Grace’s years at home with me are well over halfway done.  The time of me being her favorite person, of my company always being her first choice, are surely almost completely over.  I am so keenly aware of how numbered these days are that I can barely think of anything else.  It is not an exaggeration to say that my every experience is filtered through the prism of time’s passage.

I have said goodbye to sippy cups and diapers and sleep schedules and baby food and cribs and high chairs and even, mostly, to carseats.  I have welcomed yoga pants that I sometimes mistake for my own when I’m folding laundry, a riot of peace sign patterned sheets and towels, a closed bedroom door, and handwritten postcards home from sleep-away camp.

I don’t worry about SIDS anymore, or about whether I’m producing enough milk, or about putting a baby to bed slightly awake so she doesn’t get used to falling asleep in my arms.  Instead I worry about Facebook, and friends who have cell phones, and when it’s ok to get her ears pierced, and the insidious approach of eating disorders and body image issues.

The predominant emotion of this time, as Grace embarks upon the vital transition from child to young adult and to an autonomous and independent sense of self, is wonder.  Wonder upon wonder, so many layers I have lost count: there is awe, fear, and astonishment, and also an endless list of questions.  I gaze at my daughter, coltishly tall, lean, all angles and long planes, and wonder where the last 10 years went.  It is not hard to close my eyes and imagine that she is still the rotund baby or chubby toddler that she was just moments ago.  At the same time I can see the young woman she is rapidly becoming in her mahogany eyes.  And there are so many things I wonder about: separation, mood swings, puberty, boys, technology, school pressures, body image, and more.

I’m reminded now and then of the fears and concerns that flummoxed me when Grace was an infant.  The world shifted more then, when I brought home a crying newborn, but this transition feels second only to that.  Then as now, I’m guided by only two things: love and instinct.

Overnight we’ve gone from a world where a never-ending ribbon of days unfurled in front of us, so many they overwhelmed me, to one where every moment feels finite, numbered, and, as a result, almost unbearably precious.  It feels like as soon as I figured out how to truly love being a mother with children at home, it’s almost over.  More and more, I feel the tension between holding on and letting go.  I want to help Grace find her footing in the uncertain terrain of adolescence, but I never expected it to be so bittersweet.

And all I know what to do as we move into this new season is to pay attention, to look and listen and write it down.  Everything I write, everything I live, an elegy to what was and a love letter to what is.

This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.