oh this is hard

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.

Catastrophe and beauty, loss and joy

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I had a difficult weekend.  For reasons that I understood and those that I did not, by Sunday afternoon I felt raw and exhausted and emotional and cranky.  Matt and Grace went off to an afternoon of soccer games, and Whit and I headed to do a bunch of errands.  I was aggravated and short, and even as I snapped I knew that I was trying to head off a tide of sorrow.  After returning a couple of things, driving home in a clear, perfect fall afternoon, I suddenly turned into the local cemetery.  We drove back towards the tower that is one of our favorite places.

As we wound through the cemetery towards the tower, I noticed the tree above.  I gasped, pulled over, rolled down my window, and took the picture.  I think it’s my favorite of this entire fall.  Isn’t that always the way?  The most off-hand moments, the things we notice as we’re passing by, the mundane thing our son said after the bath on a Tuesday.  These become our favorite, our most cherished.    I heard the reminder: pay attention.

We climbed the tower, and the views were beautiful, but there were lots of people around.  Whit pulled on my hand and whispered in my ear, “Let’s go.  Maybe there aren’t any people at the fairy stream.”

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The fairy stream was empty, and so I perched on a rock and watched Whit as he began building cairns.  This is one of his favorite things to do lately.  My eyes filled with tears behind my sunglasses and my face crumpled as I began to cry in earnest.  I looked away, not wanting Whit to see.  There was a knot over my heart that felt like nothing less than all of life – catastrophe and beauty, loss and joy.  I looked up at the blue sky and listened to the wind rustling the trees around us and to the gentle burble of the stream.

My breath was ragged.  I blinked rapidly as the blue sky swam in my eyes.  Something physically hurt in my chest.  This is what heartache is, I thought.

“Mum?” Whit’s voice broke into my thoughts.  I looked at him but he was concentrating on his rocks.  “You could meditate to this sound,” he offered as he balanced a small, flat stone on another rounder one.  “You know, like the waves on calm dot com.”

I didn’t trust my voice not to waver so I just nodded when he glanced up.  I watched him and he continued stacking rocks, watching them fall, and starting again.  I don’t know how long we sat there, but eventually I became aware of the snarl where my heart is easing slightly.  I kept breathing, watching the yellow leaves above me dancing in the wind.

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“Mum!  Look!”  Whit held out a rock.  I smiled when I saw that it was heart-shaped, and he held it up to the left side of his chest.  “We should bring this back for Grace.”  He handed it to me and I said, “Good idea,” my voice normal now.

How astonishing this world is, I thought, as I sat under a cornflower October sky and watched my son balance rocks on top of each other.  It makes me so weary, always being open to the sorrow that beats right underneath the surface of every day, but I don’t know any other way to live.  I cry so often, and I’m prone to having my breath literally knocked out of me by the world’s sharp edges, but I can just as easily feel the wind on my skin, marvel at the light on leaves, and feel the radiance and majesty of this life pulsing through my veins alongside my own blood.

I am an extremely porous person; this unavoidable truth manifests in so many ways in my life, big and small, bright and dark, apparent and invisible.  My wound allows me to live in a state of near-perpetual wonder.  Every single day contains grandeur and terror.  I write about this over and over again, but apparently I still need to learn it.  On a day when so much felt so hard, all I had to do was sit in the sun and listen to the quiet bubble of a familiar fairy stream and watch my son working with rocks.  The world ministered to me.  Even when I feel sharp and heavy things inside of me, there is still this, this splendid, beautiful, broken world, this array of ordinary and startling riches, as bright as red leaves against the blue sky.

There is still my son reaching up to take my hand as we walk home in the silence.  And today, that is enough.

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The most fear I have ever known

Today I am honored to be posting at Jessica Vealitzek’s blog, True Stories.  I met Jessica through our collaboration on Great New Books, and I’ve loved reading her work (and she has a novel coming out!).  She asked me to write on the topic of when I was the most scared. 

It was hard to think of one, to be honest.  Outrunning an avalanche on skis in the Swiss Alps as a child?  Yes.  Having a spinal tap not once but twice, just this past January?  Yes.  When I thought I had a neurological condition twelve years ago?  Yes.

I thought about this one for a long time.  And when I figured it out, the words poured out of me.  I wrote about a fear, and a pain, that was both incendiary and incandescent.  One that made me question everything I thought I knew for sure.

Please come over to Jessica’s site to read my short piece about the most scared I have ever been.