On Wednesday Odette came over for dinner. Since she moved out we have established Wednesday evenings as “family dinner nights.”
We sat around the table and talked until way too late. It was raining Wednesday night–its been raining all week–as it has been practically all spring. When we finally wrapped up our food and put away the wine and the dishes, I announced we would take Odette home. We all put on our raincoats, and boots and opened the door.
To say it was a storm was an understatement. The sky was black and the rain was falling so hard that our normally bright street lights were covered. Wind lashed the branches back and forth. Thunder filled the space as though we were hiding under a garbage can and someone was banging on top. Then lightening lit up the sky. Max screamed and we all jumped back. “I guess I’ll just stay the night,” Odette said.
As we shook out our umbrellas I noticed that the ceiling was leaking. I grabbed a bucket and trudged up to the attic to see if I could find the place in the roof that would need some love when the storm had passed. As I was up above, I heard Max and Odette talking.
He was terrified of the lightening. As it filled our big picture window over and over he cowered.
“You know Max,” Odette said. “When I was a little girl in Rwanda, we would go out every day and take care of the cows. And sometimes a storm like this would sneak up on us. The sky would suddenly grow so black and even if it was day time we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us. But we would have to get back home. It was really scary, all that dark. The lightening was frightening too–those plains were pretty flat and we were afraid we would get hit. But we would pray for the lightening to come anyway, because it would show us where we were and would lead the way home..”
Sometimes the thing that scares you the most will lead the way home.
Max and I sitting on the steps of the coffee house where Odette works. We had gotten there three minutes too late and we thought we missed eating her delicious grilled cheese that he had wanted after a hard and exhausting day.
If anyone had every really been able to help me understand how hard motherhood would be I never would have taken the leap. Now don’t get me wrong, there is not a day that I regret that I leapt but I know my wimpy ol’ self absorbed young 30-something self never would have signed up if I really believed and knew in my gut how this job would turn me inside out and back again, fill me with joy and sorrow and desperate panicky fear all at once, bring up all my old primal insecurities, force me to do the brutal work of healing old soul wounds. Truth is, I might have been frightened away if I simply knew how much time I would spend making lunches that don’t get eaten, picking up toys that will just get dumped again, and driving endless and countess miles from activity to activity to drs appointments to playdates. Really. I am so glad I never really got it.
For nothing makes me happier than being Max’s mom. I feel as though I some how got snuck backstage to witness the greatest show on earth. Max has taken me on adventure after adventure across landscapes of the heart as well as real lives ones. With his beautiful smile, he cut away all the bullshit and revealed how purely I can love. He has given me new eyes and together we discover and uncover so much joy and silliness and wonder in the world. I don’t know if he will ever appreciate the tremendous gift he has given me simply by being here. Today on Mother’s Day, I didn’t want anyone to praise me for all I do for him. I wanted to hug him and play street hockey with him, and hold hands eating icecream and revel in all the joys that motherhood has brought me–I wanted to buzz the way I do when I see him leap over walls, his long hair flying out behind him and I yell,”Go Max GO!!!”.
If I am honest though, one of the hardest things about being Max’s mom is meeting his gremlins, the little voices in his head who tell him he is not good enough, or that it is all his fault. The worst of the bunch is the one who tells him that when bad things happen, it must be because he is an idiot and so therefor he must punish himself by refusing the icecream, sitting alone by himself instead of playing, hiding away and torturing his little heart. When did these monsters show up? When do our kids stop believing in themselves even just for a few minutes?
But what kills me as I see his little heart hurt is that I know these insecurities so very well. Apparently, I did more than pass on my freckles and chattiness, but as he grows I am witness him wrestle with the very same demons that I thought I had banished, or at very least tamed, years ago.
Oh they push my buttons those gremlins. And while I keep mine safely at bay these days, I can’t help but be flooded with empathic fear and hurt and sadness when I see him suffering so. Nothing I say really seems to change his mind when he is convinced he is to blame for the day falling apart and as I watch him fall apart with it, I feel helpless, helpless helpless. I know that those gremlins in his head are his to tame and while I can give him some tools, ultimately this is HIS work, not mine. I can support him, but alas I cannot fix it.
Now I finally understand what my mother told me when I held him as a newborn and she said that motherhood feels as though your heart is off walking around outside your body.
Today as I held him on my lap as he sobbed through the breakdown of the day, I decided to stop telling him he was wrong and I simply just said, “You are so precious to me. It stinks that the world is so disappointing sometimes. I don’t know what to do about it. But we can sit here together and be sad for a bit if you want. And then we can eat grilled cheese and do grocery shopping. And by the way, this was the best mother’s day of my life because I got to celebrate that no matter what happens, I have you.”
Happy Mother’s Day Max. I am so glad I didn’t know then what I know now. I can’t wait to see where we go next!
The other day I was standing in my friend Maureen’s kitchen. I can’t remember exactly how it came up but I remember distinctly saying this, “You know, these days I find myself mostly doing things that I am not very good at.”
Gone are the days when I filled my spare time with things I had done for years, things I felt naturally talented at, things that made me feel accomplished. Dance, knitting, baking, my work. All these activities left me feeling like an expert, good about myself. Smart. Strong.
Instead I find that I am spending my time exploring things that are new. Things that make me feel wobbly. Things that make me feel a little scared. Things that are hard and that I can’t seem to master no matter how long I work at it, but things I need to do, or things I love to do, or things I simply just want to do.
I may be attempting to make some headway on the disaster that is my house, trying to demystify being organized with a tornado for a son who inherits his habits from me. I could be slogging away at guitar, working my way through muffled notes and sloppy rhythm, trying to loosen up my stiff right hand, while strengthening my weak left one. I find myself wobbling around a skating rink, going round and round, trying to avoid an embarrassing spill. Or singing really rough harmonies that sound slightly flat. I may be trying to bake without wheat flour, or garden in the shade. Or I may be sitting on my cushion desperately trying to quiet my mind or on my mat working my way into a pose.
These days I feel so unpracticed at everything I do, I am such a beginner. And make no mistake, its a role I embrace. For so long I was so scared to try anything that I didn’t think I would be good at. I let a lot of opportunities to try new things pass me by for fear of looking dumb. I thought I wouldn’t be able to enjoy something if I didn’t master it and if I thought there was little chance of mastery…well…I just let it go. But now, I am beginning to love doing things just to try them out without any pressure to succeed. Just to experience them. Its hard and it requires a whole new story of myself to protect my little eager heart, but I am bit by bit embracing it and feeling my life deepen.
I never would have embraced this “beginner’s lifestyle” if motherhood hadn’t forced me.
I plunged into the sea of beginning, when I became a parent. I went from being an accomplished, confident and completely masterful woman to a beginner in every way shape and form. It was all so new. I was so unpracticed, even the simplest things seemed impossible: breastfeeding, changing diapers, getting those little shirts over those big heads, getting out the door on time, taking a shower. In the 36 hours of my labor I transitioned from being an expert to being an outright, brand spankin’ new beginner.
What I came to believe was that even if I didn’t know how do to something, I would and could learn if it really was important enough. After weeks of showing my breasts to complete strangers I finally figured out how to feed my child discreetly even while waiting in line at the grocery. I could dress Max with one hand and sip an iced latte held in the other and could change a diaper in under 10 seconds flat.
But truth be told, the minute I mastered anything in this parenting gig, the minute I thought I had motherhood down and had begun to feel “good” at this new job, I was sunk again, thrown once more into the land of change, and mystery, and exploration without a map. If the last 7 and a half years have taught me anything, it is the inevitability of trading in mastery for mystery.
This has been accentuated by the fact that I am a girly girl mom raising a boy’s boy son. In addition to all the mysteries of child development, I have had to immerse myself into the secret life of boys. Without a partner to turn to to say, “You handle this,” I find I need to delve into topics I never would have imagined that I would need to explore, let alone master
Which leads me to “safety yellow” colored jock straps. Or rather, the choices between yellow mesh gym shorts with built in cups or yellow cycling pants with built in cups.
Max is starting a hockey program on Saturday. He has been counting down the minutes until I finally let him play. While I made him really work to earn the chance to play, truth be told, I was so excited that he was embracing a sport I knew. I thought that maybe, my own wobbly skating aside, I would get a pass on the beginner thing this time. That finally, he would enter a phase where I could skate along on information I had mastered long ago. That I was getting a long deserved mom’s rest in the stands where I could comfortably discuss the icing calls with the veteran hockey moms from game 1 on. Better yet, I could feel an expert again-if not at playing hockey, then well…at watching hockey…and being a proper hockey mom. In fact, I might be able to tell a few of those other moms a thing or two about off-sides and slashing and holding and all that.
I was beginning to get used to the idea that I could finally rest my weary little ego in the land of mastery. That is, I was resting until I got the email. From my darling and helpful good guy friend. The one who keeps me informed about guys stuff I need to know. The email from the friend that knocked me off my high horse and informed just how little I really knew. It was the email where he started to fill me in on jock straps.
Apparently there are all different kinds and I as a parent will have to help Max choose. He needs a special hockey jock strap which is different from the one his karate teacher had ordered him for that sport. Apparently the standard issue hockey jock shorts are safety yellow. Talk about a mystery… Yellow? Safety yellow? Its been hours since I learned this and I am still baffled. Why on earth, do they make them yellow? I mean, they are hidden, beneath black or blue or red hockey pants. Yellow bike helmets, I get it…but yellow underwear? Is it to make sure they don’t get thrown in the wrong pile of the wash? I have no idea and am not sure that I will ever know. But it simply a sign, a little laughable sign from the universe that even in the area I thought I would have down, I just don’t know how much I don’t know. And that there is no way to escape swimming in the land of beginning. There will always be a mystery.
So I am setting off, yet again, on another uncharted adventure. Me, my son, his yellow penis protecting underwear and I. I get to practice all over again, the art of being a beginner, of starting from ground zero, of knowing nothing and plunging in anyway, of just giving it a go and seeing where it leads. We always start right where we are completely new.
As for the whole mastery thing, well, I still would like to believe that one day I will get it all down. But truth be told, the richness of my life these days is coming from embracing the mystery. Parenting has taught me that in ways that are humbling and funny, sweet and torturous. And it will teach me over and over again.
On the mat I felt so stiff and sore tonight Tight in all the usual places and some surprising ones as well.
“Notice,” my teacher said, “where your mind goes when you feel stiff. Can you stay with the irritation? Can you stay with it long enough to let it teach you? What does it say? Notice without judging where your mind goes…Now bring it back…Stay present if you can and see what you can learn…”
This is a scene that replays a lot in our house these days. Max has done something he knows is wrong or disrespectful. I call him on it and he immediately looks away in discomfort. To look me in the face means having to see my disappointment or perhaps my stern face. As I talk to him I see his brain has moved onto calculating hockey stats or maybe to building legos. “Look at me,” I tell him. “I need to know you are present here with me. I know its uncomfortable but I need to know you are learning here. You can’t learn if you don’t stay with me”
The teacher is the student is the teacher is the student….
Staying with pain, with irritation, with disappointment, with fear. Whether we are 7 or 39 we rush away, rush toward anything that will dull the ache. Dreams of a sweeter tomorrow, ice cream or booze, new toys and new friends and new adventures. We leave the chores and the laundry undone while we search for the things that may soothe our heartache. Its so scary to stay here and keep going when we feel so uncomfortable…
But if we aren’t paying attention, we miss the lesson. At worst I am doomed to live it over and over again…or at very least to have lived through pain for naught.
These days I am finding myself compelled to stay, stuck to the spot like glue, to linger with my discomfort just a little. To stay with the irritation for just one more breath. To hear what it is whispering. To hear it without judgement…If we can clear away the clutter we can tune in to our silent, certain knowing
I am stripping down a lot of the things that used to distract me. I am clearing out the clutter and the things that make noise. And yes I am hearing some things–not just hearing but listening and taking them in. Some things are things I would rather not hear, but they are true and I need to absorb their wisdom. Other things are useful and helpful and I wonder how I could have missed them. And some things, some things I am learning are downright delicious. Like relearning the fact that when I hang upside down with my head cradled in my arms, it may hurt but I can stretch out my spine and relieve compression and tightness that I carry and even misinterpret as stress. Or that nothing is more healing than holding my son and hearing what his heart really needs.
This Christmas was the first Christmas where it happened. Max sat, surrounded by a mountain of carefully picked out gifts and cried. Santa Claus and I, we had failed to deliver him the Christmas he had hoped for–or rather the gifts on his list he had so desperately wanted.
I took a deep breath, and realized that this was a moment to teach. Teach about disappointment and recovering from it. Teach about the bounty of gifts that he had, how lucky he was. Odette told him stories about what children in Rwanda get for Christmas. Slowly but surely his big old tears stopped falling and he started to happily, joyfully play with the gifts he had received, suddenly aware of the magic they represented.
Looking back at our Christmas now, I can’t help but see a powerful lesson beginning to unfold for me too.
Ironically I began my winter by teaching the lesson I would spend all winter learning. About the trickiness of hope and attaching myself to vision of what my future happiness looks like. About the disappointment that comes from yearning and longing and about how I lose sight of the gifts in my life when I am looking for that one elusive cherished desire. And I learned this winter about how while hope can leave me drunk on possibility of how wonderful it might all be one day, the hangover is an empty feeling and the sneaking suspicion that maybe I am not really quite enough.
Yeah, this winter, in very small ways hope kicked my ass. And I saw hope for the sneaky character it is, something that makes me feel warm and fuzzy now and again but something which can turn every day into the Christmas where I sit surrounded by gifts sobbing.
I have to admit, as spring time images of hope come fluttering into view, I have not done a good job receiving them openly. I have wanted to scream at the top of my lungs–OH NO PEOPLE….DON’T YOU DARE COME TALKING TO ME ABOUT HOPE. DON’T YOU SEE HOW TRICKY AND DESTRUCTIVE IT IS? YOU THINK I AM GOING TO GET SUCKED IN AND SET MYSELF UP FOR DISAPPOINTMENT AND MISS ALL THE GIFTS IN MY LIFE? YOU MAY BE A SUCKER…BUT I AM NOT!
And yet, something tugged on me and my grouchy, self-righteous ways. Tugged on me like a little child pulling on my sleeve. The child that does not give up, saying “mom…mom….mom…” over and over again until I listened, maybe a little reluctantly.
What if HOPE isn’t about the future? What if HOPE is not another word for longing? What if HOPE isn’t about holding onto something that hasn’t yet materialized? What if we have been misusing the word all this time? What if we have somehow bent it out of shape? What if all this time that I was “holding onto HOPE” I was clutching something else?
What if HOPE is about the present? What if HOPE is about recognizing the beauty and the joy even in the most mundane and ordinary moment. What if HOPE is about finding love in the midst of horrible pain and just focusing in like a laser on it–not because it predicts a better day coming, but simply because it is beautiful and perfect exactly as it is? What if HOPE is about seeing the possibility in now? The action I can take right now that opens up a whole new way of being, regardless of where it takes me? That makes joy and love present right now–regardless of what happens next? What if HOPE is about savoring every moment of life for the gifts and the joy and even the challenges and lessons that it brings?
What if I had it all wrong all these years? Well…what a wonderful time to start again, I suppose.
These are some of the things that I have been thinking about all winter…that I have been turning over in my head as spring has started to bloom.
Jen Lemen and Stephanie Roberts have this lovely project called Picture Hope. They have a proposal to travel the world looking for images of hope and capture them on film. They have been voted as the number one most popular idea and now they are going with 19 other ideas to a final adjudication. I am so proud of my friend Jen and her soulsister Stephanie. I suppose it would be easy to start hoping that it all comes together and that they win the big prize. Truth is, I know that they may or may not win in the end and I can’t let my little fragile heart go wishing. Instead I will simply sit in the joy that through daring to see the possibility and take a step forward to challenge us all to see hope–not as something abstract and future oriented but something that can be captured with a lens they are already living the dream.
Max, my son, was named after the boy in the wolf suit in the Maurice Sendak story. From the moment I first felt him move inside, I somehow knew he would be my wild thing. And I loved him and his untamable spirit with every bit of my soul. No other name would do.
Where the Wild Things Are is one of my all time favorite books. I loved it as a child. I loved it as a teacher. I love it as a parent. And now, I cannot believe that they are making a movie out of it.
What is life if it is not an epic journey in a boat we create out of hope and fear? Who are we if we are not all sweet tender children in wolf costumes, angry and imperfect, but authentic, taming our monsters and loving them all the same, embracing our fears and then setting sail back home to ourselves to our hearts to everyone who loved us exactly as we are,fierce costume or not.
I cannot wait.
This was the scene at my house yesterday evening.
The mother (that would be me) was hunched over her computer, paying bills and trying to solve yet another money issue.
The Boy: Mom, is this a permanent marker?
The Mom: Um…show it to me?
The boy thrust the marker in front of his mother’s computer screen. She did not look at the child-just the marker.
The Mom: Nope. No babe…Its not permanent
The Boy: Oh thank goodness.
The Mom: Max…why thank goodness?
And then she looked..
.
Thank goodness nothing is permanent.
When I drop Max off at school lately he has taken to asking me, “When will I see you again?”. He asks with an urgency that is heartbreaking.
Not that long ago, he would beg me to drop him off at the curbside, let him walk into the school and find his way to his classroom. Now he wants me to walk him all the way to his teacher, hug him twice, kiss him and answer his question with specifics. He needs to know.
I have wondered why this sudden change…worried about it really. After all isn’t he supposed to be moving in a straight, linear path toward independence? Isn’t he? Or is it more like a spiral, a rising and falling, a cycle, a coming and going…
This fall, we have had some disruption in our life, in our routine. Max has had to face cancer, see it on the worried faces of our loved ones, feel it in the absence of his Nana. Every day there is a different schedule, a patchwork of makeshift solutions. There is a lot of spinning, no wonder he wants to hold on tight.
But I also wonder how much of it is simply the rhythm of growing up, the venturing out to come running home again. I wonder how much of it is that he has grown so big so fast that he needs to retreat and find his footing. He needs to anchor himself in the everlovin’ arms of mama.
I find myself drawn to this rhythm, this cycle, this venturing out in the world only to return to that which we know is true and safe. That it is the coming home again that makes it possible to set out again. We are always in movement, sometimes forward and sometimes back again. I guess the biggest mistake I ever made was thinking that it was all forward motion. Its circular around and about, a walk into the center of ourselves, to the heart of the matter, to our centers and out again. Round and round.
This week I discovered a small labyrinth only two blocks from my office. In the bitter cold I have gone and walked around and around, following the winding path, before ending at the center and then turning to walk back out again. I have been all by myself in the quiet, the rose garden bare, the wind brutal. But I go nevertheless. Its an exercise in coming home I suppose, in riding the cycles–the giving and receiving, the coming and the going and the coming back again. It is grounding and it quiets the voice inside me, the one that wants to plaintively cry out, “When you will come back again?”
I know before long, my little one will be off on his own again. Filled up with love, strengthened and secure he will set out again to explore, to be his own person. He will roll his eyes when he sees me coming. He will stop asking when I will return. I may feel worried in a new way then I suppose until I remember its all just one big spiral, one cycle, and the expansion will one day contract again anew.
On Saturday night, after dropping off a dear friend with her family, Max and I went to the Festival of Lights at the Mormon Temple just outside of DC. It was bitterly cold and Max and I snuggled together under the extra layer of my coat, walking like a three legged monster through the fairy land. Each barren tree was transformed into a firewords display–frozen in the height of its glory.
“Mama,” Max asked me “Why do we decorate with all these lights at Christmas?” I reached deep into my knowing to answer him, not satisfied with pat answers such as ”tradition” in a place that seemed so full of magic.
“Well, baby…See its like this. This is the deepest, darkest, coldest time of the year. Its the time of year when it seems like summer will never come again. But the light reminds us of God’s love. We decorate the trees and our house with the lights to remind us that even in the darkest hours that God’s light is here. When Jesus was born he brought light to this world and thats what we celebrate at Christmas. Truth is baby, we all carry God’s light inside us. The Christmas lights remind us that we need to let that light shine–even when–especially when the night is darkest.”
“Cool”, he said.
Cool indeed.
This season has been especially still and quiet on our end. We have had few parties and instead have opted to stay in and go to bed early. It has felt right. This season, I have felt so much like one of those shepherds. Those shepherds keeping watch in the deep dark night, not sure what will come, but trusting, trusting that they shouldn’t be afraid.
For the last week or so these words are the ones that echo over and over again in my head
A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices…For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees…oh hear the angel voices….Oh night divine…Oh night when Christ was born
No matter our religous beliefs, no matter what we what we call it, Christ, God made human, is born over and over again in each of us. We are called out of the dark, still, silent night to love unconditionally, and be light for one another. This is our birthday, each of us. This is the reminder of the light that was given to us when we were born. This light–this magical light…Let it shine, tonight and every night.
May you have a blessed and beautiful Christmas and may you know stillness, inner peace and light.
Here in the crisp dark cold early Monday morning, the week stretches out before me infinitely. It feels like it will be a thousand years before I see you again. A thousand years and a thousands disappointments, before you climb into my lap and wrap your arms around me again, whispering Mama. My heart is aching seven ways this morning and I haven’t even left yet.
Life moves on. It marches in a way that feels unexplainable. Every time I am there I am not here. I don’t want to be anywhere else. All around me people are going about their lives. They are cleaning and working and lifting and doing. I am watching, from 10,000 feet up–maybe even 30,000–wanting to be there with you. I want to help you move that couch. I want to help you decorate that tree. I want to help you do that grocery shopping. I want to help you write that essay, cook that meal, fix that car, do that homework, sing that song, plan that trip.
I miss you.
