Melancholy isn’t always a disorder that needs to be cured. It can be a species of intelligent grief which arises when we come face-to-face with the certainty that disappointment is written into the script from the start.
– Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
Photo by Grace, the weekend before camp. We are standing in front of the tender in which we left our wedding (photo here), many, many years ago.
For the I’ve-lost-track-of-how-many year in a row I’m going to take August off. I plan to spend the next month living this vast design a little more than usual. For the first half, it will be just me and this guy, above. For the second half, all four of us.
I will be back in September and I hope you will be too!
Another year. Another camp drop off. Her sixth summer, and his fourth. The camp I adore.
Another reminder of the dizzying speed with which this world is spinning, with which the years are flying by.
Three years ago I wrote that I love right now more than I have any other moment of my life. And that is still true. I still love right now more than any other moment. That fact is heartening, yes, but it’s also bittersweet: the years with Grace and Whit at home grow shorter, the shadows behind us lengthen. I feel the same way about that indelible fact as I do about looking into their echoingly empty rooms: it’s like pushing on a bruise. I can’t avoid the reminders of this life’s breathtaking beauty or its keen sorrow, nor the ineluctable drumbeat sound of time’s passage.
The truth is it was a difficult drop off. There were some tears, which had also filled the days leading up to the 21st. I wasn’t entirely prepared for these tears, this anxiety, this fear. My children are getting older, camp is a familiar, joyful place – where was this uncertainty and clinginess coming from? Maybe it’s just about age and stage, as I’ve described before, a last gasp of attachment before the children (the teenager in particular) push off for the other shore for good.
It was a difficult morning, last Thursday. I left even though I was being begged not to. As we drove down the Cape, I was sad, confused, reminded yet again that the minute I think I have understood this life – her sixth summer, his fourth, we’ve got this! – I’m shown that in fact the only constant is change.
What I do know is that her cabin – Courageous – is well-named. I know that she and Whit (who, in case you’re wondering, despite some challenges last summer, bounded into his cabin and shooed us out before his bed was even made) are in excellent hands. I know they will flourish. I know that even if there is some homesickness, the opportunity to face our difficulties and triumph is one not to be squandered. We watched Grace do it last fall with cross-country, and I’m confident she will again. In fact maybe the point is this discomfort; without some sorrow and some tears, we wouldn’t be maximizing this summer opportunity. Maybe. I am not sure. I know I miss my little soul mate, and her entertaining brother around whom everyday is a celebration. I miss them, but this is the right thing for them. So, courageous all, we forge head, separated by miles but connected by the raveling red yarn that ties our hearts.
Rabih’s awareness of the uncertainty makes him want to hang on to the light all the more fervently. If only for a moment, it all makes sense. He knows how to love Kirsten, how to have sufficient faith in himself, and how to feel compassion for and be patient with his children. But it is all desperately fragile. He knows full well that he has no right to call himself a happy man; he is simply an ordinary human passing through a small phase of contentment.
Very little can be made perfect; he knows that now. He has a sense of the bravery it takes to live even an utterly mediocre life like his own. To keep all of this going, to ensure his continuing status as an almost sane person, his capacity to provide for his family financially, the survival of his marriage and the flourishing of his children – these projects offer no fewer opportunities for heroism than an epic tale….The courage not to be vanquished by anxiety, not to hurt others out of frustration,, not to grow too furious with the world for the perceived injuries it heedlessly inflicts, not to go crazy and somehow manage to persevere in a ore or less adequate way through the difficulties of married life – this is true courage; this is heroism in a class all its own.
– Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
Seven Signs You’re Overparenting – I don’t generally love instructive posts about parenting, but I find this one illuminating. Helicoptering is so pervasive as to be almost passe now, but I love the concrete behaviors this writer identifies to help us parents understand what it really means.
Unsolicited Advice I’m Sharing with My Three Sons – Agreed on the coffee! Also on the notion of collecting words, the power of being self-deprecating, the mentors, the truth, and having children.
My Favorite Vacation: Summer Camp – Dominique Browning on the power of summer camp made me both smile and wipe away tears. Anyone reading here knows I worship(ped) camp and enjoy watching my children there now. “And this is being a grown-up camper in the world, forever young enough to wonder at the mystery and magic and pleasure of it all.” Amen. May we all stay forever young (Forever Young is a song that reminds me, incidentally, of camp).
Before the Fall
Grace and Whit are off to camp tomorrow. There are some pre-drop-off jitters at our house. I’m thinking back to Michael Thompson’s Homesick and Happy: How Time Away from Parents Can Help a Child Grow
I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly. You can find them all here.