Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Month: May 2013
Commencement
Years ago I described the fleeting nature of time as the black hole around which my whole life circles, the wound that is at the center of all my writing, all my feeling, all my living. Certainly that seems to be borne out by what it is I write, over and over again. At the very midpoint of the year, the sunniest, longest days, I find myself battling an encroaching sorrow, an irrefutable sense of farewell. The proof is in my archives.
The world bursts into riotous bloom, almost as though it is showing off its fecundity. The days are swollen and beautiful, the air soft, the flowering trees spectacular. The children gleefully wear shorts to school, the sidewalks are dusted with pollen and petals, and we round the curve of another year. We start counting down school days, we say goodbye to beloved babysitters who are graduating from college, and I find myself blinking back tears.
Every year, I’m pulled into the whitewater between beginnings and endings that defines this season. I can barely breathe.
It’s all captured in the event that so many of us attend, year after year, at this time: commencement. It was my own commencements that marked this season, for years: from grade school, high school, college, graduate school. And then there was a time when, though I wasn’t personally attending commencements, I felt their presence, sensed the ebb and flow of the school year. It seems that my spirit and the very blood in my veins will always throb to the cadence of the school year. And now it is my children who commence, who close a year and begin another, wearing too-long hair and legs, vaguely tentative smiles, and white.
Commencement. Isn’t this word simply a more elegant way of describing what might be the central preoccupation of my life? You end and you begin, on the very same day. You let go of something and while that I-am-falling feeling never goes away, you trust that you’ll land. And you do, on the doorstep of another beginning, a new phase, the next thing.
No matter how many times I’m caught from the freefall of farewell by a new beginning, though, I still feel the loss. As much as my head understands that endings are required for them to be beginnings, my heart mourns what is ending. That a seam of sorrow runs through my every experience is undeniable; it may sound depressing, but I genuinely don’t experience it that way. It is just part of how I’m wired, and it’s never closer to the surface than right now, as this school year winds down, as we celebrate the beginning that’s wrapped in the end, as we commence.
Friends who are family
Several years ago Matt called one of our closest friends, C, on April Fool’s Day. In a panicked voice he told her that I was at work in Providence, he was in New York, and Grace had fallen at school and broken a bone. He hated to ask, but could she go to the hospital? I swear she had pulled out of her driveway (and this woman drives fast, believe me) before he could tell her it was an April Fool’s joke.
I’ve never forgotten that. Nor have I forgotten the afternoon I drove by E’s house on a random afternoon and rang her doorbell. She came down and I didn’t say anything but just hugged her and started to cry. I was just having a really terrible day and wanted to see someone I loved, and she didn’t ask for any clarification before she just hugged me back.
I thought of those episodes with C and E this weekend, which we have traditionally spent together. I am richly blessed in many, many ways but perhaps first on that list is my extraordinary friends. For example, I have my dearly beloved friends from college. C and E are among the women I had my babies with, which is a shared experience powerful enough to forge lifetime bonds. My mother had friends like this, and they were so integral to my childhood that I published an essay once whose first line was “I grew up with four mothers.”
And now, I look at C and E and I think, bewildered, joyful, incredulous: these are those women for Grace and Whit.
Our lives are twisted together in ways I hope will never come undone. It’s impossible to fully articulate how much I adore these women and, also, how much I need them in my life. They were standing next to me when my life as a mother began; they both visited Grace the day she was born, for example, and we had our first children within nine months and our second within three. .
How do I love you, C and E? Let me count the ways.
I love you some enormous amount that is derived by a complicated equation. The inputs to the equation include eight children, an infinite number of trips to Costco, kombucha, two hundred Halloween decorations, 14 personalized red sweatbands, annual birthday celebrations big and small, Southsides, a sled track in New Hampshire, a sturdy three-legged stool, christenings, craft fairs, a cabin in the White Mountains with no electricity but 12 bunkbeds in a 10×14 foot room, olde tyme photographs of eight children in costume, margaritas in Utah, countless SomeE cards, snake-print (adult) and orange (child) pants, spiked hot chocolate at 10am, cardboard robots, toasts, and tears.
The equation is complicated, but the result is simple: overwhelming gratitude.
Everyday life is a celebration with you two.
You have stood by me during difficult days and rejoiced with me during happy ones. You love my children dearly, just as I love yours. Our husbands are close friends. I think we all know we hit the jackpot. We are godparents and fairy godparents to each others’ children. I feel sad all the time that I don’t see you as often as I like, and aware of how certain choices mean I’m not in the day-to-day flow of your lives. I hate that fact. But it doesn’t change that you are those rare friends who are truly family, and I am more grateful than I can express. I hope to spend the rest of my life as the third leg of your stool.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Parts of this post were originally written in 2010. I love these pictures from several years ago, because their blur seems to represent the effervescence of our time together, the constant laughter and motion that marks how the two of you inhabit my life.
whatever story we tell
Only the rereading counts, Nabokov said… For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.
-Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to Matt, the man who many people who read my blog aren’t sure exists. He does, I promise. I just don’t write about him. I have to draw the line somewhere …
On past birthdays I have extolled Matt’s well-known and lesser-known good qualities, listed things he is to me, and written a plain say of thanks and celebration.
Today, to mark another birthday, the 16th we have shared, I wanted to remember a few particular moments when my husband has distinguished himself. To be married to me is not easy, I assure you. It’s also not always fun. Interesting, always. And while the list of memories we’ve shared would fill several hundred pages, there are a few that make me chuckle whenever I think of them. They also demonstrate Matt’s fortitude, patience, gentle humor, and keen intelligence.
****
When we had known each other 2 months, we planned a 6 week trip to Africa. In retrospect this seems like an act of wild faith, a reckless demonstration of certainty that we had no business having. After climbing Kilimanjaro (among the least traditionally romantic, but most powerful experiences we have ever shared) we spent a week on safari in various parts of Kenya.
On day one, we piled into the beaten up Land Rover that came out of Safari Central Casting. Off we headed into the Masai Mara. Within 30 minutes I was green with nausea. “Matt,” I whispered, “I need him to stop the car.” He looked at me, alarmed, but he made our driver stop. I ran to the back of the Land Rover and threw up. This was repeated multiple times a day for a week. And Matt, my brand-new boyfriend, who does not himself get carsick, never once complained. Not once.
When you consider a safari – which you should, because our week was spectacular – I urge you to just think about whether you get carsick. Maybe Dramamine is a good idea.
****
As I’ve mentioned, Grace’s labor was a long one. 39 hours of labor, she was posterior, over 2 hours of pushing. I will always be thankful for how fully onboard Matt got with my commitment to a medication-free delivery. While his nature probably did not lean in the Ina May Gaskin direction, he saw how important it was to me, and he fully supported me for the weeks leading up to the delivery and for the endless, brutal, howlingly-painful hours.
There was some humor laced in among the screaming, though.
At about 36 hours, I was sitting on a birthing ball, bouncing, delirious with pain and exhaustion. Suddenly I looked up, locked my eyes onto Matt’s. I saw fear in his face. I’m sure he was wondering: what now. Through gritted teeth, I said, panic-stricken, “Matt. We cannot do this. We can’t afford a baby. We aren’t ready.”
For the rest of my life I’ll never forget the bewildered expression on his face when he answered me. Lifting an arm and gesturing, as if to indicate the delivery room, the hospital gown, the enormous beach ball stomach. “What exactly is your plan?”
****
Every single year, Matt has a favorite birthday present. A month or so before his birthday every year he starts talking about it, eagerly awaiting its arrival. This favorite gift is from my sister and brother-in-law, who give him both an Amazon gift certificate but, far more importantly, a thoughtful list of book suggestions. Matt says this list has over the years provided his favorite books, and I personally think this fact says a lot about both my husband and my sister and hers.
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I have mentioned that I am a casual cook. When we were first married, we lived in a small apartment with a commensurately tiny galley kitchen. I was occasionally overcome with fits of culinary ambition, and there were more than a few grand flame-outs.
In particular, there was the chicken and caper dish for which I purchased, by mistake, green peppercorns. Matt gamely crunched through several bites before throwing in the towel. Then there was the time I made something that called for 2 canned chipotle peppers, but I instead included 2 full cans of chipotle peppers. In this case Matt made it through two bites. After two, his eyes streaming, having downed three full glasses of water, he apologized and choked out, “Linds, I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
****
Happy birthday, MTR. I love you. Please join me in wishing a happy day to this second twin, this Gemini, and this MIT graduate (my father is also all three of those) with whom I share my life.