Whitman

See the world

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Walking down the street in Palestine with my brother-in-law, Grace, and Whit.

It has been almost two years since the four of us went to Jerusalem to visit my sister and her family.  This, Grace and Whit’s first international trip, was a wonderful and powerful experience and it continues to echo through all four of our lives.  When we got home, I reflected on the immensely different ways that Hilary and I responded to our childhood of hopscotching back and forth across the Atlantic.  She and her husband took her three and five year old daughters to live in Israel for a year.  I have lived in the same house, in the city where I was born, for 12 years.

And yet.  Perhaps that childhood of mine, rich as it was with travel and cathedrals and museums and ski trips in Austria where I learned to speak a few German words and simultaneously striated with tearful goodbyes, acted on me in more ways than I knew.

Over the last year or two I’ve felt a new and firm desire to have adventures with Grace and Whit whenever we can.  Part of this comes from my keen consciousness of how limited the opportunities to travel together are now.  But another part of it comes from having watched Grace and Whit respond to a foreign land, culture, and language.  They soaked up more than I could have imagined in Jerusalem, and I want to make sure we continue exposing them to new places and experiences during our few breaks.  This doesn’t have to be international: last spring break we went to Washington, and the Grand Canyon is surely on my list of places I want to visit with the children.

Adventures.  New places.  Rich experiences that augment their sense of the world and their awareness of their place (important, but very far from the center!) in it.  These are what I’m after.

Last week, Grace, Whit and I somehow got on the topic of Great Pops, who has now been gone over a year.  We talked about how he had truly seen the world, and about how his life had been long and full and marvelous.  Grace remembered the Christmas card he sent the year he was 90, which featured a photo of him ziplining in Costa Rica.  And Whit recalled the photograph of him standing in front of the pyramids in Egypt that stood in his living room, as well as the picture of him skiing in front of the Matterhorn that now hangs on the wall of a bedroom in my parents’ house.

“Great Pops really saw the world, didn’t he?” Whit asked from the back seat.

Why yes, I thought.  Yes, he did.  “See the World,” by Gomez (a song I love) ran through my head.

And that’s what I want for Grace and Whit.  To see the world: not just globally, though that’s an undeniable part of it.  I want them to see their world.  In all of its majesty and multiplicity.  My childhood was extremely different from theirs, but one thing my parents did without question was show me the world.  This contributed to who I am today in ways I’m still understanding, but I know that a certain openness of outlook and orientation towards empathy resulted from the travels, adventures, and myriad experiences that made up my childhood.

I can’t wait to help Grace and Whit see the world.  There’s so much to look forward to.  I can’t wait.

What they’ve taught me

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How is it possible that this picture was taken five years ago?  August, 2008.  My teachers in swimwear.

It’s not a secret that I used to scoff when I read or heard people proclaim that their children were their “greatest teachers!”  Whatever, I used to whisper under my breath.  How is that possible?  But as has been the case with most of my firmly-held beliefs, the universe has proceeded to show me that my certainty is both wrong and a little bit arrogant.

By some combination of years and the maturation of both my children and me, or probably mostly through the alchemy between those things, I’m now glad to say that I have learned an enormous amount from my children.  There’s no question, in fact, that they’ve taught me and changed me more than any other human – any other factor, actually – in this life.

First and foremost, they have entirely reconstituted the way I relate to the world.  I used to be in a rush for the next brass ring, certain that wherever I was headed at high speed would hold the answers to all of my overwhelming questions.  That approach collapsed in somewhat grandiose fashion in my early 30s and now I view the “prize” as existing right here, under my feet.  Furthermore, I know that the questions are permanent and the answers evanescent.  Paradoxically, children are the most stubbornly here-now creatures in the world and simultaneously the most unavoidable reminders of how fast life passes.

A few years into parenting, realizing I was watching my children grow before my eyes, I was struck dumb by how bittersweet being a mother was.  I had not anticipated the heartbreak it entailed.  The passage of time took a seat at the table of my soul and refused to get up.  As Grace’s pants grew too short and Whit’s shoes seemed too tight overnight, I was unable to ignore the incessant turning forward of my days.  I took pictures constantly.  I wrote letters to each child on their birthdays.  I started blogging to record the little moments of everyday life that I knew I’d forget.  Were all of these attempts to memorialize my days, like insects frozen forever in amber?  Or were these actually efforts to better inhabit these days, because I realized quickly the details only really revealed themselves when I was paying attention?

I’ve decided it was the latter.  Being Grace and Whit’s mother has taught me how I want to live in this world.  It is nothing less than that.  I have learned to look at the light of this hour, and now that I can see it, I refuse to look away.

But I have learned other things, too.  Grace has taught me about the power that passion has to light up a life.  Watching her fierce attachment to and fascination with animals has made me realize viscerally something I’ve always known intellectually, which is I didn’t have that kind of animating interest in my childhood.  I still don’t.  And I wish I did.  The arrival of a dog causes genuine delight for her, she devours books on all kinds of animals, and farm camp’s barnyard chores were one of her favorite things this summer.  She has shown me something else I’ve sensed but never been able to articulate, which is that deep sensitivity can be both blessing and burden.  When I watch her ascertain the mood of a room without any formal input I can see her empathy rise to the surface.  Like a heat-seeking missile she often goes right to the person who needs her the most.  I’ve also seen the ways this sensitivity can gouge her when it’s turned inward, when she takes things to heart that don’t deserve that or allows people without kind intentions close to her.

From Whit I have learned a great deal about how the world responds to warm and outgoing people.  He is often my front man.  He is not shy in the least.  And through watching how people interact with him I’ve learned how the opposite approach (which is my default) can seem cold and aloof, distant and unfriendly.  Now and then I take a deep breath and try to plunge into a conversation with a smile, and I swear that I always think: “what would Whit do here?”  He has taught me about the ways that humor can soothe and distract, and that it is often the very best way to change the energy in a room.  He too has shown me the way true passion can manifest: the boy is a natural-born engineer, and is constantly fiddling with Legos.  He’s now brought them into the bathtub.  I’m certain he dreams in Legos.  It’s just one way that his 3D orientation to the world shows up.

I’ve learned the hand gestures to a song about llamas, who Geronimo Stilton is, and the importance of having putty to play with while you work at school.  I’ve discovered that I love Bugles, ridden a roller coaster for the first time, and learned the profound peace that can come with curling up with a child in a twin bed at bedtime, simply to be together for a few minutes.  I’ve learned the lyrics to more Taylor Swift and Katy Perry songs than I can count, what purpose all those hockey pads serve, and that there are three sizes of soccer ball.

There is so much more I could say, but even writing this has made me think about how perhaps this realization comes equally from an orientation towards gratitude as it does from one towards noticing.  And that simply takes me back to where I began this post, to the most essential thing I have learned from Grace and Whit: being aware of and thankful for all the details of this ordinary life of mine.

More Whitticisms

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Whit was on fire this summer.  He keeps making me laugh harder.  I kept a list of some of his comments, which reminded me of why I started blogging in the first place: to record the everyday details of my life that I knew would slip through my fingers, no matter how hard I tried to pay attention.

So, again, here I go, trying to press the details of my blond, blue-eyed son into amber.  I want to capture him at 8.5, when he still sleeps with Beloved, his worn-out monkey in his arms, wears a pair of pink goggles (his favorite) without hesitation, skates confidently across the ice, builds Legos in the bathtub, and reads books about the periodic table for fun.

In early July, he had a tummy bug for a couple of days.  He spent the days lying on the couch dozing and watching TV while I worked.  On day two I finally took him to the grocery store and asked him to pick out anything he wanted, because I was so desperate for him to eat something.  He chose Gatorade and Phish Food.  After the first time he threw up, he curled up on the chair in my room.  We weren’t sure yet if he had a bug or if the nausea would pass.  “How do you feel?” I asked him.

“I feel better now,” he told me.  “You know, like how there was great weather after the hurricane last year?”

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As we packed for Lake Champlain, I suggested Matt pack some Diet Coke and white wine for me.  “But it’s room temp, Linds,” he said back.

“Isn’t there a fridge?” I asked him.

“Yes, there’s a beer fridge in the cabin,” said Whit confidently.  How does he know what a beer fridge is?

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During one of our long drives, these were three separate comments that came from the backseat:

“Did you know that the graves in New Orleans are above ground?:

“If you had to vote on the national bird of the US, would you pick an eagle or a turkey?”

“No, the fact that it goes from day to night is the earth spinning on its axis.  The fact that we have seasons is because the earth spins around the sun.”

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On our last night in Vermont, we had dinner as a foursome in the main dining room.  This includes a jacket and tie for the men, and has become a favorite tradition of our time on Lake Champlain.  Everybody was relaxed and happy.  At one point our conversation turned to Grace’s preference for listening and Whit’s for talking.

“You never stop talking, Whit,” I said.  “Sometimes it might be nice for you to just be quiet for a little while.”

“But at the same time, everywhere we go, everybody knows Whit.  After four days at camp here everybody says hi to him, waves, laughs with him.” Grace offered as she spread butter on her bread.

“That’s my strategy!” Whit laughed from his corner of the table.

****

Like all humor that I find funny, Whit’s contains a grain of wisdom.  I hope he never stops making me laugh.

The thing I most want to do for my children

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We got home from our marvelous week in Vermont on a Saturday evening.  Everybody was exhausted and deflated.  The end August loomed, and the big summer things we’d been looking forward to were all behind us.  On Sunday, Matt had to go to work, so Grace, Whit, and I were left with an open day.  We did some errands in the morning, moving slowly, sinking back into regular life.  It was a glorious, outrageously perfect late-summer day.  I suggested a picnic in the park that is three blocks from us.

Grace and Whit responded with enthusiasm.  We packed turkey sandwiches, some goldfish, some tortilla chips and guacamole, and water.  They threw a frisbee for a while and I watched them in the almost-deserted park.  I could sense Grace’s month-old self snuggled in her blue Patagonia fleece one-piece, asleep in my arms as we took our first Christmas card as a family on the rise over to my right.  I could see both of their four year old bodies running in their first soccer games on chilly fall Saturday mornings, smiling as I remembered how often the parental cheering consisted “Wrong way!  Other goal!”  I could hear their pealing laughter as they made snowmen in the enormous, untouched drifts of snow in last winter’s blizzard.

After a bit they came to sit next to me on our towel.  We ate our sandwiches in the shade and in silence, and after a few minutes Whit sighed, “Oh, this is nice.”

“It really is, isn’t it?”

I’m not sure how, but we started talking about facing fears.  We talked about fears we had surmounted, and what we were still afraid of.  We all shared stories.  It was a rare half hour of perfect peace and happy equanimity.  After we finished our lunch we sat for a bit longer, noticing things in the fenced-off city garden plots next to us.  Grace tilted her head back to watch an airplane streak across the sky, pointing up at it, mouth open.  Then we packed up our trash and our towel and headed for home.

I am rarely prouder of my children than when they enjoy small moments like this.  I honestly think this might be (one of) the key(s) to happiness: finding joy in the most mundane things.  It’s also an outright goal of mine as a parent, trying to make the ordinary special, trying to shape a memory out of a regular old day (even knowing as I do that we can’t always control which moments coalesce into the pearls strung on life’s chain).  The day after the picnic, I left my desk an hour early to take the children to our beloved fairy stream, where we worked in companionable quiet for a long time building cairns.  It was spontaneous, it was something we do all the time, but despite that – or maybe because of it – it was an exceptional experience.

How can I protect Grace and Whit’s propensity for joy and their orientation towards wonder?  How can I keep them from becoming jaded in a world that leans towards cynicism so early, so quickly, and so finally?  How can I help them continue to find the white lines of exhaust from an airplane across a hydrangea blue sky or the quiet stacking of small rocks at a bubbling fairy stream things worthy of their time, their attention, and, sometimes, their awe?

I don’t know, but I am pretty sure this is the thing I most want to do for my children.

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Summer 2013

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Spring is the only season that I experience without an undercurrent of sorrow, because there is so much that lies ahead, but it is in summer that I feel I most fully live.  In June, July, and August, life is swollen with family moments, studded with the rituals that have come to mean so much to my children, and lit with bursts of fireworks both real and figurative.  For the last few years I’ve reflected on the summer that was: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.

In late August, I kept hearing Sophocles’ words, over and over again in my head: one must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.  And that is true of this most marvelous, rich, joyful season, too: it is really after Labor Day that I can really see how extravagantly wonderful our summer was.

This summer went by faster than ever.  Oh, what a cliche this is.  And yet it is so true.

In June, for the fourth year, Grace, Whit and I marked the end of the school year with a trip to Storyland.  Their mild agreement that perhaps they were getting too old for Storyland turned by the end of the day into stringent pleading to promise we could come back.  They love our tradition and so do I.

The weekend at the end of June that we spent with Hilary and her family was so humid that my computer shut itself down.  But it was wonderful nonetheless: swinging on swings over a big muddy puddle of rainwater, my father blowing out candles surrounded by his found grandchildren, those children lined up on the edge of Brea as we sailed, four feet dangling towards the splashing water.

Our hydrangea bush exploded into glorious bloom.  Once again I was reminded of the metaphors that are all around us: by late July I had to cut hundreds of past-their-prime blooms in hopes that we might get another round of new flowers.

We spent the Fourth of July with Matt’s family in Vermont.  The children loved being with their cousins.  Later in July we went to Legoland for the fourth time.  This is an extravagant tradition, to be sure, and maybe a silly one, but I can’t express the pure joy that descends on all three of us the minute we walk out of the airport in California.  I have no doubt that the three days in July we spent at Legoland will be among my most cherished of this entire year.

Coming home was hard, but we had a short but sweet visit with Whit’s godmother, my dear friend Gloria, to look forward to.  She came through on her way from Maine to Beijing, we all remembered how fiercely we adore this friend of my heart that I’ve known for 23 years.

Grace and Whit both went to sleepaway camp.  For the first time in 10 1/2 years Matt and I were alone for 10 days.  Saying goodbye was hard, mostly because of the reflection that it forced on time’s heartbreakingly swift passage.  Then, in August we had two weeks alone with Whit.  I spent my birthday with one of my oldest and dearest friends, at the place where we met and where our daughters how flourish.  It was marvelous.

We spent a week by Lake Champlain as a family, for the fifth year in a row, and it was pure magic.  Grace and Whit love it there, and Matt and I do too.  We swam and ran and water skiied and laughed.  The vacation, just like the end of August time that holds it, was tinged by end-of-summer pathos.

I read All That Is and A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, The Engagements by Courtney Sullivan, The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, Still Writing by Dani Shapiro, Early Decision by Lacy Crawford, Ready for Air by Kate Hopper, Looking for Palestine by Najla Said, & Sons by David Gilbert.  I spent long hours revisiting some of my favorite poetry books.

Grace and I were deep in Harry Potter 7 while Whit and I were on 4.  They both remain entranced by Harry’s world.  Grace and I read Little Women at the same time in August: she marked the pages she read before bed and then left the book for me, and I’d read the same passage.  The next day we talked about it.  We read A Wrinkle In Time (my favorite book from childhood) the same way last year.

We managed to fit some of our favorite rituals into the last week of the summer.  We went to the beach for an end-of-summer day, we swam at Walden Pond, we visited the tower nearby and built stone cairns near the fairy stream.  We spent Labor Day in town for a change, because Grace had a soccer tournament.  It was calm, mellow, and surprisingly wonderful.

There was plenty of yelling and exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed by all kind of small things.  And I’ve already forgotten those moments, as the summer slides into memory, crystalline, shimmering.  And how I miss it, already.