Whitman

wings

I always think of their shoulder blades as wings.  Their wings, poking through their skin.  And his little back has two freckles on it now, marks marring his white, skim-milk skin, my skin.  Life beginning to make its mark on my child.

The wings, though, are on my mind today.  The wings.

This past winter Whit went through a phase when he slept every night with his hand clasped around the little compass my parents gave him in his stocking for Christmas.  I always wondered, when I went in to kiss him goodnight, where his dreams were taking him.  Where was he flying, in his sleep, guided by the true north he could always check in his palm?

May they have both a compass and wings, my children.  Oh, please, please: never let them lose that physical sensation of wonder, that feeling that I always associate with wings beating in my chest.  And please, please: let me help them each find their own internal compass, that needle that tugs north.  That internal compass which can be trusted to orient us, no matter what whitewater we tumble in.

I’m still looking for both my compass and my wings, and, oddly enough, my children provide them for me better than anything else in my life.  They seem to have both already.  Maybe we’re born with our wings and our compass, and the task of our lives, at once simple and enormous, is not to lose them.

Inexorable as the tides

summer 2007

summer 2011

Still rocking the 3T seersucker suit.  What happened to my baby?

first day of Beginners, September 2009

last day of Kindergarten, June 2011

My baby is 6.5  He swims competently, though inelegantly.  He reads short words.  He loves Star Wars and Legos.  He beats up on his sister.  He makes me laugh every single day.  He is about to lose a tooth.  He still curls up in my arms when I pick him up at night.  He tells me he loves me as much as the sky.  He has a very strong sartorial point of view.  It’s not his fault, but he also makes me cry every single day.

The transitions, big and small, keep coming at me, inexorable as the tides.  When will I learn to let go, to float on them?

Welcoming what is to come

Recently, Whit, Grace and I spent the afternoon at a water park.  Whit doesn’t do water slides (note: this may change soon, as he didn’t do rollercoasters until last week, when he suddenly tried one and is now a Huge Ride Guy) so we spent a lot of time in the wave pool.  We headed into the waves, Grace and Whit erupting into giggles as the water splashed up our legs.  When got to the deeper water, where the waves were big, both kids started thrashing around.  I grabbed them both, holding one against each hip, marveling at how enormous, lean, and knobby their bodies are now.  Because we were in water I held them easily, feeling slippery skin against skin, looking back and forth at their smiling faces.

“So the thing, guys,” they leaned their heads towards mine, listening above the roar of the waves, “Is to just float in the waves.  Let them bob you around.  Don’t fight them.”  I saw Whit’s eyebrows raise skeptically.  “No, really, Whit.  I know it sounds crazy.  But try to just drift in the waves.  You’ll see.”

I let go of them and Grace immediately flipped onto her back, trying to float in the undulating water.  Whit plummeted again below the surface and came splashing up, panic and delight mixing in his eyes.  He grasped for me, water splashing everywhere.  I took his arm.  I put my arm around his waist and held him against my side, watching Grace in the waves.  It was not lost on me that this is how I held him, all the time, when he was a baby and toddler.

A few moments later I noticed that Whit was pushing away from me, trying to pry my fingers off of him.  “Mummy!”  I looked at him, surprised.  “I’m trying to drift!  Let me go so I can try to bob!”  Laughing, I let go of him and smiled as I watched him, trying to relax his body, trying to trust the rising and falling water.

After a minute or two both kids came back to me, tired, tethering themselves to my body.  Whit said, “Let’s hold hands! Let’s make a family circle!”  And so we did, my feet firmly planted on the floor, both kids bobbing up and down in the water as it moved around them.  Johnny Cash’s voice, singing “…will the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord, by and by..” sprang into my head my head and stayed there for the rest of the evening.

Grace and I took another few trips down the water slides and I wrapped up in some towels and gave them the five minute warning.  They wanted to go back into the wave pool so I sat on one of the faded yellow plastic chairs, watching, as they stepped tentatively into the splashing water.  When they got deep enough that Whit couldn’t touch anymore, I watched them both trying to float.  And then I noticed that Grace held Whit in her arms, helping support him in the roiling waves.  Tears sprang to my eyes as I noticed how her arms reached instinctively for him, how he clasped her with complete trust, their dark heads next to each other as they looked away from me towards the source of the waves.

Whit started to wade out of the water.  Close to shore, he grinned at me and then suddenly turned back again towards the pool.  He held his arms up above his head, open, walking back into the waves.  Startlingly, I thought of the minister at his christening, a tall, imposing man who had held his arms up like that while I cradled Whit above the font.  His arms open in benediction, he’d boomed, “Welcome, Samuel Whitman Russell.  Welcome, all of us.”

Arms spread, Whit walked back into the waves.  Welcoming what is to come.  Without fear.  May I do the same.

I know the feeling

This is, as I’ve said before (ad nauseum, you might say), a time of year tinged with sadness for me.  The endings and goodbyes come one after another, waves lapping onto the shore of my life, eroding anything I have written in the sand.  An extra farewell this year is the fact that Matt’s parents have sold their house in Vermont, the house that Matt grew up in, the house where the family has gathered  for years, the house that is one of Grace and Whit’s very favorite places to visit.  The picture above was taken on their very last morning there, looking out over the field that unfurls gorgeously, its colors undulating with the seasons, in front of the house.

On Sunday night Whit was beside himself, unable to go to sleep because he was crying so hard.  He sat on my lap and wept, face wet with tears, wailing over and over again that he didn’t want Grandma and Grandpa to sell the house in Vermont.  It reminded me of the night a year ago when he dissolved into genuine, heartbroken sobs about the fact that he was no longer a baby.  His humor and little boy bluster sometimes camouflage his intensely sensitive core.  He was not comforted by my reassurances that there were many more fun visits ahead, just in different places.  He just sobbed and sobbed, burrowing into my neck like he did when he was much littler, and cried his heart out.  I know the feeling.

Today I picked the kids up from school because it is the last day of regular pick up.  Grace ran up to me, a friend in tow, frantically asking for a playdate with this girl and one more.  The girl standing next to her is moving out of state at the end of this week, and this was literally the last chance.  I said, as gently as I could, that we could not do it, because Grace had a doctor’s appointment.  Long minutes of negotiation ensued, complete with arms crossing, feet stamping, and voices being raised.  When we walked to the car, Grace was in angry tears and Whit was uncharacteristically quiet, not quite sure what was going on.  In the car I told her that this was the last pick up of the year, that I was disappointed that she was acting this way.  She crumpled even further, cried harder.  Almost immediately I apologized, and told her that was unfair of me to have said; there have been hundreds of wonderful pick ups, I said, and there will be more.  One day is not a big deal, and I ought not freight it too much with being the last. She said she felt worse, even worse, about having marred the last pick up of second grade.  She wept.  I know the feeling.

We got home and curled up on her bed to talk it out, and she turned her bad mood around surprisingly quickly.  But her rapid disintegration at school, the urgency of the request, and the emotion in the outburst all speak to how sensitive she is, too, to this season of endings.  While transitions are hard for everyone, I suppose it’s shameful that it’s taken me this long to realize that my children may struggle especially with them, as I do.  When Grace and Whit evince these qualities, straight from the heart of who I am, I am overcome with both compassion and guilt.  I relate intensely to how they feel, but I also feel enormously responsible for the fact that they have these feelings at all.  I wish I could lift this from their shoulders, this inchoate anxiety about change whose darkness can cloud even the most radiant days.  But I can’t.  I think all I can do is try to remain gentle with them about the complicated, non-rational emotions that swirl in times like these.  To allow their sadness room to breathe while also reminding them of all that is bright.  After all, I know the feeling.

Carwash

I was very excited about my stay-in-the-dorms plan for Princeton reunions.  And it turned out to be great, in many ways.  Very convenient, we had our own bathroom (super bonus), and the kids thought it was a huge adventure.  The downside?  We were literally right over the dance floor, which was rocking until well after 2:00 am.  And the light streamed in early (see: aforementioned lack of biblical flooding) so they were up at 6:00.  For children who usually get 12 hours of sleep, 4 was a big difference.  This is all a long way of saying we drove home on Saturday night after the post-P Rade celebrations rather than spending the night.  Whit fell asleep before we hit route 1 and slept until 10am on Sunday.

And then Matt went to the office for most of the day on Sunday and Monday.  What to do with a holiday weekend and no plans?  I like these unscheduled days, but had not thought ahead to, perhaps, sign us up for trapeze.  It was very hot – enough that Whit exclaimed, “I feel like we are still in New Jersey!” when we went outside.  So, after some errands, we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean.  This was my first installment of the series, I confess, and my primary reaction is who knew mermaids were so terrifying?  Yikes.

We got home and the kids had punched the 3D lenses out of their glasses.  Grace has not taken them off since.  The big entertainment before dinner?  Washing the car.  And you would think these two went back to Disney for the utter joy that they felt.  I cooked dinner, occasionally drifting to the front windows to watch them, and they sprayed each other and the car, scrubbed with kitchen sponges, and giggled. They were soaked and happy when I finally asked them to come in, 45 minutes later.

One of my clear priorities as a parent is that my children are easily delighted.  I am proudest of myself as a parent – and of them – in the surprising, unexpected moments of wonder.  And this was one.