Whitman

These are days

Yesterday Grace, Whit and I went back to Storyland. Our first visit was nothing short of magical and I wanted to experience that again. I am determined to jam this summer that I’m not working full of memories for the children. I’m anxious about what reality will look like once I go back to work, and I realize this may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance. To that end, I just made plans to take them both to Legoland (yes, in San Diego, ie almost as far as you can get from Boston within the continental US) for three days in early August. I don’t know if I’m insane. After Whit melted down at Chili’s tonight I was convinced I was. But once I caught a glimpse of his angelic sleeping face in the rearview mirror, I decided again that it was a good idea. Stay tuned.

They had another marvelous day at Storyland. We left an hour earlier than planned because it started pouring. As I pulled out of the parking lot I felt a pang of real sadness, surprised by how unhappy I was that this much-anticipated visit was over. I don’t know when we will be back, if I’ll be able to just take them here on the spur of the moment next summer, or even what next week holds.

As we sat in traffic in North Conway, the kids descended into their annoying and predictable bickering. Whit snapped at Grace, “I don’t like you, Grace. Not at all.” She surprised me by saying to him, calmly, “Whit, I know you don’t mean that. I know you care a lot about me.” Conversation closed. She turned and looked out of her window, ignoring him for a while.

After a dinner pitstop at Chili’s we drove the last hour to Boston. Whit fell asleep clutching the threadbare and treasured animal that he’s taken to calling his Beloved Monkey, a name that for some reason charms me. Grace was tired but not asleep, gazing out into the evening. It was simply a beautiful night, everything soft around the edges, the world draped in the faint pink haze of sunset. “Grace?” I spoke into the quiet stillness that had settled over the car. She nodded, caught my eye in the mirror. “I thought what you said earlier about knowing Whit loves you even when he said otherwise was really smart. Try to remember that in life. People say a lot of things they don’t mean.”

“Yes. I think sometimes people say things because they are tired, and cranky, and angry.” She lapsed into silence again and my breath caught in my throat at my daughter’s wisdom. May she hold onto this particular piece of it; I know I for one could use the reminder on an almost daily basis.

The song “These Are Days” came on the radio and about halfway through I realized I was singing along under my breath.

These are days you’ll remember …
Never before or never since, I promise,
will the whole world be warm as this.

I was startled to feel tears rolling down my face. These familiar roads, this beautiful city that I love, on the horizon, wreathed in pale pink fog, these sleepy children, these days passing faster than I can bear. Yet again of the loss that limns every single minute of my life lurched up into the foreground. My heart is so full of aches and fears right now, of feelings so big they threaten to overwhelm me. No matter how determined or desperate I am to make this summer full of warmth for Grace and Whit, of memories and joy, it will end. There is nothing I can do to change that. The keening anguish of this fact is sometimes truly more than I can bear.

I noticed that the license plate on the car in front of me was BEACON. Yes. This is my beacon, there is no question: remembering that this is all I have brings me back, over and over again, to right now. I drove through the beautiful dusk, feeling again the haunting awareness of how fleeting it all is, acknowledging reluctantly the unavoidable truth that my grasping at moments just makes them run through my fingers more quickly. Following my beacon, my eyes dazzled by the deep summer blue sky smudged with faint pink and gray clouds, and light glowing from below the horizon, I drove my children home.

Summer fever

A couple of weeks ago, Whit had a high fever all weekend.  He was listless and not himself, he threw up a couple of times, and his fever just would not come down.  Plus for three days in a row he took 2+ hour naps in the afternoon.  As delightful as his sleeping and his unusual desire for extra cuddling was, I knew something was wrong.

On Monday we went to see our beloved Dr. Rick.  Dr. Rick who is leaving practice in the fall.  Sob.  Another farewell, another changes, another factor contributing to the earthquake.  I am very, very tired of goodbyes, endings, and changes.  Have I mentioned that?

Anyway.  Whit and I sat in the waiting room.  Well, I sat.  Whit lay down (see above).  He was quiet and subdued and altogether not himself.

“Whit, do you want me to read to you?”  (I was sitting in a third chair, by his feet)

“No.”

“Are you sure”

“Yes.”  He sighed heavily and lay there, staring into space.  I reached over with my right hand and rubbed his skinny little calves, marveling at how simultaneously tiny-thin they are and how grown-up-long.  With my left hand I read my email on my iPhone.

A few minutes later I felt him sitting up.  He curled up in the chair next to me, his legs drawn up under him, and leaned his head over onto my shoulder.  I put down my phone and turned to kiss his forehead.  Against my lips his skin felt hot.

“Whitty, are you okay, baby?”  He took in breath audibly and I pulled my face back so I could study him.  I could tell he had something on his mind.  “Whit?”

“Mummy,” he began, tentatively.  “What if the doctor can’t find anything wrong with me?”  He wouldn’t look at me, staring resolutely at the edge of the receptionist’s desk across the room.

“Why does that worry you, Whitty?”

“Well because if he finds something wrong then I’ll get better faster, right?”

“Well, maybe.”

“And if he doesn’t find something wrong maybe this is just how I will feel from now on?”

My eyes filled with tears.  Isn’t this the thing we all fear?  If we can’t name, and treat, or fix, or medicate the thing that is making us feel bad, then is it simply who we are?  I remember when the children were small being very relieved at an ear infection diagnosis, for two reasons – the first being that the antibiotics would quickly kick in, improving the screaming and up-all-night situation, and the second being that if there wasn’t an ear infection then didn’t that just mean that this cranky, yelling, ornery behavior was simply my baby’s personality?

I pulled Whit against me, cupping his bony, bird-like shoulder in my hand, squeezing him, feeling the fever radiate from his forehead and the exhaustion in his sagging body.  Of course a summer fever is not an internal demon.  Of course not.  But it did remind me of the deep human fear of that which we cannot fully understand or subdue inside us, and of the various ways this makes us act out, seek comfort, dull ourselves.  I was reminded of Where the Wild Things Are, of all the ways that we cope with the fearful demons we sometimes feel raging inside of us, and of the Jung quote that “the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”


Genetics

This boy.

This boy has two brown-eyed parents and four brown-eyed grandparents.

And those blue eyes.

(also, a continuing passion for mardi gras beads)

I can’t tell you how many people say, jokingly, “Hmmm … the mailman?” Each time, I ask, with varying degrees of patience, if the commenter remembers the basics of dominant and recessive genes.

This reminds me of my friend who has boy/girl twins. She told me she gets asked, at least once a week, if they are identical. To which she responds, well, there’s that pesky matter of gender …

I guess most people were just not paying attention when their junior high science teacher covered Mendel’s peas. To me, this was one of the most fascinating parts of school. But then again, I’ve always been a science nerd.

I’ve always loved the blue of my blog header. Cornflower blue, hydrangea blue, sky blue. Maybe all along I have subconsciously been seeking the color of Whit’s eyes.

Saying yes

Grace, Whit and I went to Story Land for two days. We explored the park, leaving no ride, show, or exhibit untested. We stayed in a hotel. We swam. We went out for dinner. We had whipped cream on our waffles this morning. More about this magical visit another day. But I learned one simple thing:

For two days I said yes instead of no. And it was delightful.

An endless alleluia and a constant goodbye

I know I write all the time about the powerful and perilous ways that Grace reminds me of myself, about how she seems to have a core of sensitivity, emotion, insecurity, and sentimentality running through her that I intimately recognize. Similarly, I’ve written before of Whit’s predilection towards lightness, his surprising humor, his lack of instinctive subservience to authority. I wouldn’t blame any of you for feeling I’m a one-note violin on this score.

Never let it be said, however, that these children rest in their neat categories. Tonight, after reading several pages of Star Wars Heroes (another post: the Jedi emphasis on controlling your emotions – I’m fascinated that this may be taking real hold of the minds of our young boys, given the wild passion for Star Wars), I tucked Whit into bed. He was unusually clingy, consenting to snuggle in my lap while I rocked him, listening to a lullabye, a tradition that is all but gone now. I kissed him good night and went downstairs to read Harry Potter to Grace.

A page or two into the terrifying scene at the Quidditch World Cup where the Dark Mark hovers over the eerie forest (Grace: “Mummy! I’m scared! Can I hold on?” = her gripping my upper arm with two hands, so hard she left white finger marks) I heard Whit’s door open and his snuffling, tearful voice. “Mummy?” he called plaintively. “Yes, Whit?” “I’m sad.” I asked Grace if it was OK for me to go check on her brother and (surprisingly) she agreed easily.

Whit was in the bathroom. Looking at the floor, he kicked at the tile by the tub idly. He said, without looking at me, “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Oh, Whit, please?” He looked at me and dissolved into more tears. I picked him up and carried him back to the rocker. He was limp in my arms, his tearful face nestled wetly against my neck.

“Whitty, what’s wrong?” He was crying hard, speaking in short bursts between his hiccupy sobs. “I don’t want to be a kid, Mummy. It’s hard to be a kid.” “I know, sweetheart, I know.” “Mummy, I want to be a baby still.” We launched into a fairly detailed conversation about how he didn’t want to grow up and it was all going too fast and he wanted to still be a baby and be carried around. I was somewhere between shocked and blown away. Has he been reading my blog? Reading my mind?

Grace tiptoed into Whit’s room and he let her come over and stroke his hair back from his forehead. He looked right at her and told her why he was sad. “Oh, Whit, I know that feeling. I get sad about that too,” she said sincerely. What? Do my children feel the same contraction and expansion in their chests that I do, that same echoing sadness that seems to pulse with the closing of each moment?

I thought about how their bodies seem to be longer and leaner every single day; a similar growth must be happening in their hearts and spirits. That growth, sudden, overwhelming, must be scary and disorienting. I thought fiercely: I always want them to be able to talk to me about this.

Blinking back my own tears, I took the children on a quick tour through their babyhoods. I showed them the tiny hats they had each worn in the hospital, the doll-sized newborn diapers (I saved a couple of clean ones), the plastic bracelet I wore during each labor & delivery stay. Whit dug deep into his sock drawer to unearth a pair of 3-6 month socks with robots all over them. “These were mine, right, Mummy?” he asked urgently. He wore them to bed tonight.

We then went to the family room and leafed through the two photo albums that covered the first nine months of Whit’s life. He alternated between giggling and crying as we pored over the pictures. One in particular, of him lying on the floor, curled up, asleep, still a newborn, he exclaimed, “I think that’s on this very rug, Mummy!” He was right. He looked at the rug with an expression in his eyes that I recognized deeply: this place, here, was there, then, and it’s here now, and it’s the same and yet not… where did that moment go? Is it here?  How could it not be here?

We talked some about how it is normal to feel sad sometimes about things that are over. About how it is hard to be a kid. Also, about the things that they can do now that they couldn’t when they were babies (Storyland, playdates, pizza, scootering, TV). Whit wisely said, “But I didn’t know about those things then, so I didn’t care that I couldn’t do them.” Hard to argue with that.

I finally got both my children settled and on their way to sleep, but now I sit here, lost in memories of those years of new babies and new horizons. I was a different person then, something I was reminded of when I saw the pictures with Whit as a newborn. I’m aware, as I am often, of the ways that minutes and hours and days add up to years, but with very irregular contents. The days stretch like taffy, sagging in the middle, the moments crystallize like glittering gems, the years pile up haphazardly, and what is built is a life.

Parenting – life itself! – is an endless alleluia* and a constant goodbye.

And, I am 100% biased, but I admit that tonight’s little exercise reminded me of how utterly adorable I thought Whit was as a baby.



*attribution to Newman and Hank for the best Christmas card message ever.