Month: March 2012

To realize in the present

I can feel how large, how essential this moment is as it’s happening; that is what I have come to love about being an adult, to the extent that I can claim that title: that one knows more about how good things are, how much they matter, as they’re happening, that knowledge isn’t necessarily retrospective anymore.

When I was younger, I missed so much, failing to be fully present, only recognizing the quality of particular moments and gifts after the fact. Perhaps that’s the one thing that being “grown up” is:

to realize in the present the magnitude or grace of what we’re being offered.

– Mark Doty, “Heaven’s Coast”

Call for your help: Close to the Surface

I’m honored to be a semi-finalist in the Notes & Words essay contest.  I would be so, so grateful if you’d click here and like my piece.

The short essay, Close to the Surface, is actually based on a blog post I wrote here recently.  One input to being chosen as a finalist is the number of Facebook likes each essay receives.

Thank you so much for your help!

 

 

A constant transition

This is a time of transition.  I can feel us moving to another phase, another season, in every sense of the word.  I am aware of that deep in my body and my spirit.  I dislike change with every fiber of my being, and I wish I was able to let go more.  I’m really more of a holder-onner.  Still, I continue to remind myself that this is futile effort, and that my white knuckle grip on every day is only serving to exhaust me.  I wear a reminder over my heart.

We are shedding skins around here.  Spring is slowly creeping around the edges of our hours, and with every day it seems more inevitable, though I think there is snow forecast for this weekend.  It’s still raw and chilly, though, and we all shiver like the brand-new, slender crocuses.  Grace and Whit are re-adjusting, slowly, to the school routine after two weeks off; I’m waking them out of sound sleep in the mornings, yet finding them unwilling to go to sleep at night.  There have been some reminders in my life of how near the precipice is, always, and of how we tread, every single day, on the line between divinity and disaster.

And then I read these beautiful words by Rebecca at Altared Spaces, about the ultimate parenting transition.  I read this post on Tuesday and by halfway through I was literally sobbing – not just the standard tears-rolling-down-my-cheeks that happens every day, but full-on gasping for air, actively crying.  The line that gouged itself into me was this one: “I came here to let her go.”  I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Isn’t this, ultimately, the story of what we all came here to do, as parents?  Aren’t we letting to every single day?

Even knowing that, I’m chilled and stunned by the idea that someday – perhaps as soon as 7 or 8 years from now, if she goes to boarding school – I will hug and kiss Grace and watch her walk away.  I remember hugging my mother on the grass lawn in front of a dorm in New Hampshire in September 1990.  That was an particularly draconian farewell: she drove to Logan and got on an airplane to London.  Talk about far away.  I didn’t know until years later that she cried in the car driving away.  I went up to my little teeny closet of a room and sobbed my heart out.  I was scared and lonely and excited, and on the edge of something big.

There are certainly major, notable goodbyes and transitions in parenting, the ones that we all anticipate: kindergarten, high school, college, weddings.  But there are also tiny little goodbyes every single day.  Parenting is a constant farewell.  It’s replete with joyful hellos, too, of course, but it’s undeniable that every day holds an ending.  Every night before I go to bed I carry Whit to the bathroom, his blond head heavy on my shoulder.  Every single night I wonder if this is the last time.  I haven’t read Good Night Moon since I wondered if I ever would again.  The truth of that chokes me up, sits like a stone in the heart of me, a core of loss I simply can’t ignore.  Every day, infinitessimally but inexorably, they move further away from me.

I commented on Rebecca’s blog, letting her know how much her words touched me.  And she emailed me back and said this:

You are so passionate in the way you love your children. Sometimes I think you taste letting them go regularly. You live WIDE awake. At times that overwhelms you.

And I read her words, crying fresh tears, thinking: yes, yes, yes.  The big goodbyes will submerge me in emotion, fear and grief and pride all mixed together, of that I am sure.  But the little ones are in many ways harder for me, since they are so slippery, so difficult to note.  And I do taste them regularly.  I hope she’s right about living wide open; truthfully, I often doubt that.

And now, off to another bedtime.  More pages of Harry Potter, another turn at the Ghostie Dance, the Sweet Dreams Head Rub, and a full-body hug before bed.  Another night when my attention, my kiss, my hug can fix any problem at all.  How many more nights will it be my privilege to do, and be, this?  I don’t know, and that not knowing haunts me.  But tonight, it is.  I try to focus on that.

A repost from exactly a year ago.  And guess what?  It is still a time of change.  The realization that is seeping slowly into my bones is this: life is a constant transition.

Social networks

I’ve established, to a painfully detailed degree I imagine, that I lean towards introversion.  Also, I work pretty much full time, so I spend a lot of time at my desk in front of my computer.  I also spend a large part of the day on the telephone for work, which means I don’t often talk to friends.  All of these factors surely contribute to the fact that for a long time email has been my preferred way to communicate with most people.

It’s not a surprise, then, that I’ve followed the explosion of social media in the last several years.  I was late to join Facebook, though I’m there now.  I love Twitter, and for years it has been my primary news source.  I visit Pinterest and Instagram (name: lemead) regularly.  I would love to connect with any of you in any of those places.

Part of why I’m eager to connect with people on Facebook, Twitter, and beyond is that I’ve made very real friendships in this virtual space.  Some of my relationships that began in the ether have become an important and sustaining friendship, including time together in the real world.  Aidan, Denise, and others (so many others!) have transitioned from twitter icon on my screen to people I’ve spent in-person time with.  In some cases these virtureal (hat tip: Aidan) friends have met my children, and I have met theirs.

I believe it goes the other way too, by which I mean when a dear in-real-life friend (made in the days before – gasp – the internet) moves, say, to China, you can continue your closeness through virtual channels for a very long time.  This applies also when your only, beloved sibling moves, say, to Jerusalem.

Have you met people in this virtual world who have become in-real-life friends?  What is your favorite social network?  Please let me know and I’ll pop over and follow you!

 

The story I can’t stop telling

On Friday night Grace was sleeping over at a friend’s house and Matt was out, so Whit and I had dinner together.  He picked a single daffodil from our back yard (the single daffodil in our back yard) and put it in a small vase for a centerpiece.  We sat down to a table set for two, with napkins and silver, and ate some lasagna that Grace had made the night before.

“This is good,” Whit said between bites.  “But if you made it would be better.”

“Why?”

“Well, it would be full of love.”  He chewed.

“I think Anastasia and Grace put love into this lasagna, Whit.”

“Yes,” he looked me right in the eye, and said without a hint of guile,  “but your food has more love than anyone else’s in it.”

Saturday morning, before hockey practice, Whit was milling around our room in his long johns.  I was still lying in bed.  He climbed in next to me, nestling under the covers and curling his body against mine.  I reached out and pulled him to me, noticing again how lean he is now, all long planes and sharp angles.  I could smell the back of his neck, could see the pale blond fluff where his hair ends and his skin begins.  Matt looked over at us.  “What are you doing?”

“Snuggling with Mummy,” Whit answered.

“Whit, you can bet Zdeno Chara doesn’t cuddle with his mother before he practices.”

I glared at Matt.  “Who cares?  I bet he used to.”

“Yeah, Daddy,” Whit mumbled.  “Who cares?”

Still, my eyes blurred as I held my son against me, my awareness of how numbered these days are so piercing I couldn’t have spoken without sobbing.  It won’t be long until my 7 year old son wouldn’t be caught dead snuggling, much less seeks my embrace out.  Before I know it a Friday night dinner with his mother won’t be the cause of major excitement.  I am sure I will remember that single daffodil, leaning in its overly big vase, with heartache.  It’s still fresh and yellow down there in the kitchen, and I’m already mourning it.

There’s no question I’ve found the story I can’t stop telling, the drum I’ll beat for the rest of my life.  Yes, as I’ve said, my subject chose me.  This way heartbreak and joy are woven into every moment of every day.  They are the two walls of this hall we walk down, one at a time, this life, these years.  When I stare at the back of Whit’s neck I fall into the chasm of memory.   Images of his infant neck and all the years in between telescope and I feel a kind of vertigo.  The speed with which it passes is simply breathtaking, and the immensity of the miracle of another human being overwhelms me utterly.

“It’s time to go, Whit.  Let’s get your pads on.”  Matt called over his shoulder as he left the room.  I glanced one final time at the back of Whit’s neck, squeezed his still-birdlike shoulders, and I let him go.