Month: October 2010

Pictures from a birthday and ordinary life

A few images from Grace’s birthday and life around here …
Birthday morning: Grace’s favorite breakfast, cinnamon rolls
After an all-day field trip at Plymouth Plantation (which I chaperoned) we had birthday cupcakes at school.  I drove to the field trip with two other mothers from Grace’s class, and I think I may have scared them off permanently when I mentioned that I sometimes walk and sit in the local cemetery and then also referred to my dislike of music, strong tastes, smells, etc.  I think it is possible they think I’m a tiny bit weird.
After school Grace and I took our second-annual birthday pilgrimage to Barnes & Noble.  She had a couple of gift cards (fabulous birthday gifts!) and I’m eager to help her develop the passion I feel for bookstores, so off we went.  She now thinks of this as what we do to celebrate her birthday, and as far as I’m concerned that’s great.
I bought these lilies over the weekend because they were from a local farm.  I’ve never really had lilies before, and their flashy beauty struck me as they unfolded just in time for the birthday.  One small thing I’m proud of: from Memorial Day until late September I didn’t buy fruits or vegetables from anywhere other than local farmer’s markets.  It is kind of killing me to go back to Whole Foods, so I’m trying to stretch the local focus as long as I can.  Hence the new flowers.
After dinner of take-out sushi (Grace’s choice, but cucumber rolls are as far as she will go) we had her now-traditional birthday cake, which is half chocolate and half vanilla (both cake and frosting).  Yes, I’ve been baking up a storm.  Yes, I’m ready for my kitchen not to be awash in leftover sugar, sugar, sugar, but ooops, now it’s Halloween.

And also, a couple of photographs of our resident comedian, Whit.
Even Captain Rex gets tired out after a long day of lightsaber fighting.
Real men aren’t afraid to waltz with their buddies (note that Whit’s friend, the same age as him, is a full head taller … oh my poor wee little guy).
It’s good to fly before bed.

The past, present, and future run through our lives, glinting in the light

I’ve written lately about how all the various people we’ve been exist inside the people we are now.  I am frankly spellbound by the persistence of the past, by the way that carrying our scars and joys subtly alters our gait as we make our way through life.

It is hard-won, and earned, the eventual realization that we are finally who we are supposed to be.  That slow-dawning awareness is the space in which we can recognize, at last, the continued presence of those we have been along the way, and in which we can parse the way various people and influences have contributed to the contours of who we are.

Is the reverse also true?  Can we look back on our past and see strands of that truth woven through our lives?  From our spot at the top of the roller coaster, as Dani Shapiro so poignantly describes in Devotion, can we look back and see moments that hinted at the place we find ourselves now?  My instinct says yes.  This is something I’ve explored the edges of before, I realize, in a post from March called Beyond the headlights, retrospect and prospect, and letting go of my need for order.  That post probed on the “thing that makes it all make sense,” but it hews to a similar theme: at a certain point in our lives, with the understanding we’ve garnered over years, the path that may have seemed winding or random starts making sense.

What I’m thinking about today is slightly different: are there specific proclivities or choices we made in our younger years that hinted at the truest self we now know?  I think yes.  One example is the way I’ve spent many years being misunderstood as an extrovert.  I’ve written about being an introverted connector, and the latter half of that descriptor has been sufficiently strong to influence the way people interpret me.  But every year in boarding school, college, and in my pre-married life I chose to live alone (a single exception: my sophomore year at Princeton).  That is not the behavior of a true extrovert, and it makes sense now: I needed (and still do) a place to be by alone, to gather myself back together after spending my energy all day.

That is just one example, but the larger point, I think, is the way that the past and present – even the future – run through our lives, glinting in the light, sometimes visible to our eye and sometimes not.  It is not surprising to me, then, that I’m occasionally aware of the past pressing on me in a powerful, real way.  Something visceral endures from who we were, and from the road we’ve traveled.  Our samskaras (another beautiful image from Dani Shapiro) live on inside us, just as the potential and promise of who we are now guided us, albeit beyond all logical understanding, as we navigated our way here.

A foot in two worlds

In September I saw my words in print for the very first time.  The Princeton Alumni Weekly published an essay of mine called “A Foot In Two Worlds.” The essay explores one of my most fundamental and lingering fears, which is that by choosing to work part time and ‘stay home’ part time I’ve in fact done a poor job at both.  By refusing to let go of either “world” I have failed at both.  It is worth noting that I think the bifurcation between “home” and “work” is a bit antiquated, and that that categorization is simplistic and fails to capture what is in most cases a complex dance rather than a binary distinction.  Still, the fact remains that I have chosen to work part-time in business settings since my children were born, and I’m full of doubts about this path.

My friend Lacy wrote me a thoughtful, provocative email yesterday responding to the essay, full of her classic sensitivity and intelligence.  She posited that in fact the point I make isn’t about a choice at all but about being present and really surrendering to whichever experience I’m in at a given time.  And I think she’s right.  After all, I do say this:

I think it’s about my wiring, my frantic restlessness, the way I struggle to be fully engaged in one thing at a time.

I’ve been thinking about Lacy’s comments, and about the distress I feel about my work/home choices are maybe, in fact, a red herring.  Maybe I just regret not really immersing myself in anything, fully, for the last many years.

This summer, being home full-time with Grace and Whit for the first time, was nothing short of a revelation.  My part time schedule meant that I have always been able to do the random Tuesday afternoon birthday parties, and the doctor’s appointments, etc, but the day-in and day-out participation in the mundane details of my children’s lives was new.  It was only when I capitulated to what I might have previously called monotony that the divinity revealed itself.  And now, somehow, the details of this domestic life are newly bright to me.

I hope I can likewise find myself fully present and committed to a professional challenge.  My new job, maybe, a book, maybe, who knows.  I frankly ache to feel in the professional realm the same sort of deep peace, combined with a fundamental opening, that I’ve felt towards my life with my children.

I’ve heard from many readers of my Alumni Weekly piece, and am happy to know that others relate.  I’m sorry, though, that the note that we seem to resonate on is one of malaise, of fundamental restlessness.  I find myself wondering if this is not about the work/life balance mothers are aiming for, but instead about some profound truth about the human condition.  Surely the challenges of working and mothering, of meeting the needs of myriad people, of trying to navigate the choppy waters of identity, personhood, and fulfillment contribute to this sense of frustration and unhappiness.  But maybe they aren’t actually its fundamental source.

I don’t know – I am thinking through this as I write it.  I sense something greater here, in the debate about work/life “balance,” a grander theme.  The topic is fraught and complicated, for sure; Lacy called it “volcanic” and I agree with her.  But the reason it’s so charged, I think, is because it probes at our innermost fears about how we are living our lives.  These fears are projected onto the scrim of professional/personal choices, but I suspect they run even deeper than that.  These fears are about the way we engage with the world and with those we love best, and about the way we spend our only true wealth: our time and our attention.

Eight

Dear Grace,

Eight years ago you made me a mother.  EIGHT.  How did this happen?  I feel like it was yesterday but also a lifetime ago; I can’t remember my life without you in it.  I can’t even really remember before you were a full-blown person.  It seems like you have always been one of my very favorite companions, the person who accompanies me more than almost anyone else, with whom I share private jokes, paragraphs communicated through single glances, and commentary from morning to night.

You seem both infinitely older than last year and utterly the same.  You grow ever more liminal, shifting between the ages you have been and will be with grace that is both reassuring and alarming.  Just in the past few weeks you’ve started to demonstrate the dissonance that I imagine will mark the tween years, with a new moodiness, frustration with me, unwillingness to accept apologies.  Some of this, I know, is just exhaust from the challenges you are having at school, and I promise I am trying to be patient as we work through it.

In general, though, Gracie, you are so good natured, such good company.  We went for a walk yesterday, you and I, seeking some fresh air before dinner and noting as we set out that this was the very last Sunday afternoon that you would ever be seven.  We observed the colors of the wet leaves, bright against the dark sidewalk.  We picked up trash and threw it out.  You stopped to smell roses, literally.  You held my hand happily, comfortably, and we sang some of the songs from Wicked as we walked.  It was an hour I’ll treasure.

I know the days of holding hands, of my being (most of the time) your absolute favorite person to spend time with, are numbered.  I know there are more complicated days around the corner, and as I said, I’ve begun glimpsing their colors on the horizon.  I’m really savoring what we have now, the lingering days of your early childhood, the hand-holding, the fact that you still ask for a kiss on a bumped knee, the way that I can still solve most of the problems you bring to me.

It hurts me as much as it frustrates you, believe me, that there are hurts I can’t fix.  The situation with your friends, the complications you have stumbled onto, for example: I just can’t make that go away for you.  Welcome, dear girl, to the world of tricky relationships, deep feelings, and unwitting hurts.  Sometimes I wish I could keep you protected, forever, from these kinds of wounds, these kinds of sadnesses.  But I know I can’t, even if I did really want to, which I’m not sure I actually would, because I know how much brilliance and joy there is in the world, alongside the loss and pain.  I want instead to teach you that powerful emotions, while scary, won’t destroy you.  They will, in fact, teach you, push you, help you grow.  And I want to show you, by word and deed, that all we can do is welcome what comes, from within and without, and try our best to accept it.

Your primary passion right now is reading, though you also love math and computers and science.  This past winter you had mono, so you and I spent more than one weekend ensconced next to each other in bed reading side by side while Dad and Whit went skiing.  It was pretty dreamy.  Another thing we have been doing lately is circling a local reservoir, you biking while I run, chatting all the way.  You’re enthusiastic about traditions and adventures, and you named our recent after-dinner walks the Notice Things Walks.  It is you who says grace before dinner, you who taught me about the kissing hand, so that I never have to be alone, even when you’re away from me.

You love your brother dearly, other than when he’s whomping you over the head with a sword.  Listening to the two of you together is one of the central joys of my life; my favorite is overhearing you talking to each other through the heating vent when you are in your respective rooms.

You wrote all of your birthday thank you notes yesterday, and I was delighted to see that you wrote your name on the back flap of each envelope, without any prodding from me: Grace Eldredge Russell.  I love that you used your middle name, an acknowledgment of the strong matrilineage you and I are both privileged to claim as ours.  You are blessed with four active, adoring grandparents, and for that I’m immensely grateful.  I can’t help wishing my grandmothers had had a chance to know you, Grace.  They were forces of nature, both, and I know they would be proud of you.

I tucked you in tonight, for the last time as a seven year old.  Your bed is crowded with stuffed animals, and I’m forever trying to demote some of them to the drawers under your bed, but you keep bringing them back up.  You have a new Pillow Pet that you love, though you told me last night, eyes shining, that nobody will ever replace your most treasured animals, Brown Bear and Yellow Bear, whom you’ve slept with since birth. Most nights when I go in to see you before I go to sleep those bears’ little threadbare noses tucked right under your chin, clutched to your chest tightly as you sleep.

As the lullabye CD that you’ve listened to at bedtime for eight years played, I sat in the darkness and rubbed your back.  Your eyes fluttered shut and mine filled with tears.  The song Blackbird began, the notes of which bring me back more viscerally than anything else to the early days of your babyhood.  I thought about the dark night, eight years ago, when you and I struggled together to bring you into the world; that night feels remote and close at the same time.

There are rocky passages behind us, Gracie, and I know there are more ahead.  I hope we can always draw on the well of this time, this golden moment, this era of Legoland and Storyland and singing along to Top 40 in the car and secret handshakes and reading Harry Potter aloud before bed, your head in the curve of my shoulder.  May we always remember these hours when you still slipped your hand automatically and un-selfconsciously into mine, these weeks when the world unfolded so gloriously that your eyes widened every morning in awe.  These are the days of miracle and wonder, indeed.  May they last a while longer still.

I love you, Gracie.  Happy birthday.