My heart hurt – viscerally – i felt tight and achy deep in the chest
and it wasn’t my own pain.
I felt around my world, trying to find the source. I knew, but I couldn’t help wondering how I could feel the pain of another so personally within.
It seems the journey of a parent is the experience of heart ache, in joy and sorrow. The physical connection is ridiculous.
I think the cells of my two daughters and my cells mingling in the womb still have action at a distance all these years later – what a spooky happening!
Their cells mingle among my own and go off in alarm patterns in their times of stress or hurt or worry or in life crushing/life growing experiences and in big, joyful times, too. Each intensity of theirs sends signals to the hormone fire stations in my body, who then rush out with the fight or flight chemicals in me.
How come I am tumbling through 16-year-old emotions instead of holding a steady opening?
How come I feel elation, walking through the aisles of the florescent lit grocery?
Sometimes the phone will chirp, and I find out the answer. Or I may have to wait until the teary face or bounding joy comes bursting through the door, later.
I found myself typing words out, without a care for structure or meaning, just to take the edge off of my achiness, to sooth the hurt of my inability to change outcome or to walk through with them or even for them. Each girl has all the tools she needs to deal with rejection, depression, re-creation, but it physically hurts in the process – me. Detachment flies right out the window, of late.
I was overwhelmed again for just living this life, even as the sky hinted of a spring to come. Two cardinals outside sang and flashed bright red in the bare winter tree for me as I ran out in pj’s to take the girl downtown so she could teach little ones hebrew, releasing a song in my heart once again.
These girls and I will learn together about carving out the experiences we wish to have. We will learn and relearn about finding our passions, our energy, our focus, our innate ability to create our thoughts and watch our thoughts turn into our flow. We learn to find joy in the smallest of things, again.
My heart may take to aching again. My hands are tied in this. I allowed the souls of others to grow in my body and nothing I can do will stop the little cells from circulating in my system as these beings walk on through their own time tunnels.
I want to grab their hands and force timeline jumps – to sunny and cloudless skies – but they both get to choose for themselves. I will walk my path forever entangled with the gift of these overlapping trajectories.
Being born into this world, we step into an enormous round and spinning clock.
We are timeless, yet we agree to play by the minutes and the hours, the days and years, the rising and falling of tides, the spinning sun and the orbiting moon. We agree to begin and end, to bumble recklessly into birthing and dying. We are pulled on by the seasons, the gravity, the breaking down of our matter – you can date our bones, after we are gone and tell when we were animated. We feel the planets constantly pulling tricks on us with cycles of discomfort and harmony. We agree to marry change.
Living near the coast is still so cool to me; the breathing of the earth is palpable in the rising and falling of her waters. The tides were so evident when I lived on a boat. All day long, my living area was rising or falling, except for those few tender moments at the top or the bottom where all was still for about 30 minutes. Some part of me probably still registers this cycle, deep in a seawater womb within.
When arriving at the beach, I must see where the water is meeting the sand; its position is a lucy goose clock, a conversation starter; is it coming in or going out I set to many walking by? Most shrug; who cares? I am blatantly ignoring the phone app for tide schedules, here. I love the unknowing of such things, yet setting out for a stroll requires this information; at high tide, some parts the beach become inaccessible. This island is always shifting; where once the beach was eroding, now it may be growing.
Lately, I’ve been feeling the pull of a longer cycle, less daily than the tide, but more seasonal…decennial even.
Tick, tock; where am I now? Is the tide coming in or going out?
In one small moment, I see the tides have shifted recently here in the cycling of my life. I am somewhere new – a new section of the clock countdown of my life as marga. It has been coming; it was marked on the calendar, but the actual playing out of it, this transition, came in a moment no one saw but me.
As a parent, as the tide is shifting toward adulthood, that movement can be difficult to detect. Chloe not only has the strings to my heart memorized, she also, at times, can play the notes of a song that shifts the responsibility to me for everything from the chores to her happiness to the meaning of life, overall. When does it, this life, become fully hers?
Independence is occurring from the minute breath says GO! Gradually, gradually, until, whoosh. Where am I?
We were finishing up our meal of take-out Thai a week or so ago when Chloe became determined that I should watch a tv show that she likes. We watched the first episode of “House of Cards,” until about 1/2 way through, when I realized that we had not cleaned up our meal.
I began to go to the kitchen when Chloe put her hand on my back and said, “I’ve got this. I want you to just watch the show.” She cleaned up the kitchen herself.
Why did this small gesture feel so big?
I know at 18 many would say, of course she can clean a kitchen by herself, and yes, she can and does, but it was the way she chose to do it, with love and care that marked some sort of shifting, with her focus, her kindness.
I am full of clichés, today. Might as well finish with a few more – Summer hints of fall. A rising tide lifts all boats. To everything there is a season. Maybe a purpose to everything under heaven, but more likely, every every every thing is an excuse to bring out the ukelele, devil cape, and red pumps, I am inclined to say 🙂
I do have sympathy for the following monologue that was performed for me in real time on Friday:
Why can’t you be like other moms? Why don’t we have family friends like other families? Why don’t you have plans for the 4th of July? Why don’t we have a group of family friends who all get together for like bar-b-ques and vacations, dinners and stuff? Why doesn’t my life look like my friends on Facebook?
I should have stayed out of town. Why did I come home where I am unhappy? Why are you so happy being alone? Why can’t you find a step-father for me?
(Oh good lordy, on that last one.)
The 4th of July, so american, every holiday, really, brings up the pull of normalcy, the old and insidious lie of fitting in – and standing out – at once. To be like everyone else will bring happiness. To be liked. To be good-looking. To dress well – to say the right things – to have activities and people to surround us – to have photo opportunities every few hours – to package our lives in an understandable and compelling form. To be desired. To be outside of the flow of normalcy feels wrong. To be in the flow of normalcy feels wrong. It is an interesting place, to be comfortable with the flow, finally, now, but to live with others who are still in the searching mode, wishing all were different, wondering, Where is the postcard version of our lives?
I listen to the storms of discontent of teenagers who feel free to express themselves. The storms are dramatic and loud, but they pass. I offer a freedom that is so close that it is not even perceived. I offer a large space for the sound and fury, for the rage not against the machine but to be more part of the machine…
I am present and still – and content, even so (quietly so as to not intensify the suffering by the contrast).
Despite my lack of normalcy, the 4th of July dilemma works out beautifully! We jog/bike to the river, where the fireworks can be view from 240 degrees – and after our arrival, with no car to park – we find a spot on a floating dock inches from the rapid current – families, smiles, colorful explosions reflected in the dark water, together with our american brothers, yet doing our own thing, too. In serendipitous wonder, we stumble upon a restaurant with a young woman singing with her guitar and we split an appetizer and relax and talk before our jog/bike back home, late at night. We are whistled at from a car of boys and I question, Who are they whistling at? I know the answer, but it is funny to throw myself in the mix 🙂
Stepping out of the role of parent, teacher, wise one, can be tough when the voice of complaint wants a response and there is no response that pleases – I’ve tried them all.
When I talk, I imagine my voice often sounds like this:
Years move on in measured beats, bit by bit, ever changing, chinese water torture/pleasure drops; something new is coming around. Even if I think it is the same, it is not. A malcontent teen has to experience on her own, and her movement and turning may be slow and then suddenly fast – any snapshot is not the whole story.
Shift shift shift the angle of your boom and watch the wind fill up the sail, let the line go slack and watch the stillness hold you there at sea – never motionless even then. Learn along the way. Go below, stay above, jump overboard and swim with sharks, burn your skin, drink salt water, eat ramen and sardines for days. Drown and watch another avatar appear. Never Game Over – never never never – hell or heaven, every second, burn and rise, burn and rise – bread as flesh, loaves and fishes, fisher of men, age of pisces, dawning of aquarius, summer, fall, winter, spring, repeating yet never the same.
Stay in this vessel from ballast to the top of the mast, bow to stern, move throughout the river of time, see the full buffet – and do not skip dessert. Today, Chocolate Mousse for breakfast, pleasure in the unplanned days that bring bike rides and frog symphonies, and cheeky waiters, and organizing rooms, and found lost items, and rolling thunder, and fertile silence.
Ah life, said Emily Webb, you are too beautiful to imagine. Oh no, here are the actual lines: Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
― Thornton Wilder, Our Town
These words – a wave rising, not original, not profound, just a mass of water that wants to move up, then sink down again, again and again, for no reason. Living life, in the moments, in the sensations, hello.
Though the ruckus at our table may make you fall out of your chair,
don’t pretend; it’s not like you haven’t heard
the word FUCK before.
Bow your head to this,
the smallest of things are given:
blueberry,
grain of rice,
a tear,
an apology unforeseen,
a smile.
Rough waters can calm to a gentle bath
with I’m sorryI spoke to you that way – yet
easy to miss
is the enormous turning
that has taken place within
for those words to ever be spoken.
Gather the smallest parts
of you
that you have flung away.
Sit down and eat together.
Remain through awkward silences;
wait out the shouting match;
the profanity, cruelty, fear,
see the pain beneath the anger;
hold tight, hold tongue,
and remain.
Miracles are often on the other side of hopelessness,
believe me, only
micro moments on the other side;
you might as well be in a new
world now, one hidden and impossible
only a moment ago.
Peace is here,
if you have the courage to
sit still
when every part of you
wants to flee.
*******************************
I was one of those moms who worked hard to soften her voice. I have a driving force that longs for interactions to be lovely. My learning has often had to come with some bold and ugly contrast to the soft and lovely shell to help bring me into the REAL. And what is not to love about REAL. We are hungry for truth, I think; well, I know I am. And truth has the space to be whatever it is – it isn’t wrapping itself inside a packet for sale. The stench of pain needs space to breath.
The life of the modern American teen is seasoned with raw and brutal information – I do see evidence of the Kali Yuga’s growing darkness since the time of my teen years and I do not often know how to help my girls navigate these waters. Giving space for the truth of their feelings and experience often looks a bit intense and ugly, to my tender eyes, at least. But I have enjoyed a rawness I’ve seen in film for the reflection it offers back to me.
I love family scenes in movies.
Some are able to capture the grittiness that comes from the mashup of personalities that come to gather at the family table. I embrace that stab at truth, for our world often just reflects to us the washed up, dressed up, keep a lid on it version of reality. We need to see the underside of interaction, for in this shadowy version, we can see souls at work on the deeper threads and themes of growth – the intense growth that people have chosen in the experiences of family.
Walking through the ugly helps us get to the otherside, but denying the ugly, turning away – only extends and increases the shadow. The messy yuck of feelings, denied their voice, grow into demonic howls of torture.
I say, now after all these years, give messiness the floor when need be. I will be a mom who shows up for the graduation, dressed appropriately, as long as I am also showing up for the pie throwing (turkey in the lap) at the dinner table later.
It takes courage to live this life, full of personalities, suffering, imperfection, failure, the word fuck flying around the room in anger! Squeeze the illusions of conflict, confusion, identity, jealousy, every flavor of your suffering, out of your being in the vice grip of the family table. Walk away with a diploma from this Earth School.
Only one friend has ever told me her IQ; she had a high one, and she much identified with her quick comprehension and multiple, impressive degrees. I enjoyed her edgy sarcasm that felt refreshing amongst all the proper moms on the playground.
But her cleverness, after a few glasses of wine, became a cruel streak which she used to debilitate others and build herself up. She came into my life with a gift; she helped me to demystify the mind. She helped me see that being intelligent and well-educated did not lead one to happiness and heart opening. Obvious, I know, but up to that point, I had some faulty thoughts in this area.
She also helped me to detach from the importance of my own words. I remember the feeling of being hurt whenever I was cut off in conversation. This friend, in her verbal cruelty, showed me that a cut off in conversation might be a blessing, a break to take a breath, switch gears, a chance to be more mindful in our words. What this friend began in me has been furthered by my kids: they get so tired of my words and explanations.
They are always cutting me off.
They say to me all the time, “just tell me what you want me to do; don’t say because.” They want me to just say what I want, but not to say why.
Often, when I use an explanation for whatever I am asking, or doing, or thinking, there is no explanation necessary.
I am grateful for the reason to stop and just trust what they are telling me. For a while when they said to me, “Don’t say because,” I was confused…what does that mean? They were showing me that mostly the WHY is self-evident and over-explanation is tedious to listen to. Let me give an example:
“You really need to clean up your room because you have been losing things lately and your dirty clothes are not making it into the hamper to get clean.” Ugh. I don’t like even typing that.
They know all of this already. I can say: “Clean up your room. Put your dirty clothes in the laundry.”
Or better yet, “What do you think needs to be done in your room today?”
This over-explaning does not only apply to parenting. I am beginning to suspect it is more universal.
When Eden was sitting beside me while I was grading essays, she told me to stop explaining so much. I feel compelled to write out explanations to students telling them not only what is incorrect, but also explaining why it is incorrect and explaining how to correct. Goodness, overkill! “They don’t read all of that, mom. If they really want to understand, they will look it up or they will ask you.”
Something clicks inside of me.
Ah, explanations are a lack of trust!
I feel like I need to explain my actions or requests “because” I don’t trust you to get it; or I don’t trust myself in asking for it. I am not trusting my students to learn on their own when I offer all of this explanation. And the truth, they don’t read all of my statements; most just look for the number grade and move on. All that work, dust in the wind. 🙂
I am going to work on eliminating the word “because” in my home and at school and see if I can.
I think I will speak more clearly, more powerfully.
I am thinking about Achilles today. What if I had the story wrong? What if an Achilles’ heel does not point to a spot of weakness but instead a spot of strength? How could one see it like this when the Achilles heel is what caused Achilles’ death? I am thinking today that Achilles’ humanity might have lain in his unprotected spot, even if it took him out. I don’t have much to support this view, I readily admit, from his tale anyway. If Achilles were my lover, I would kiss that tender heel everyday!
What is weakness? What is strength? These questions play in my mind this morning as I make breakfast for Eden because she is amazed that I am capable of making a quick and tasty omelet for her. She thinks that I am hopeless in the kitchen. The weakness I’m wondering about is not my cooking ability, but rather my willingness to accept her youthful teasing me for lack of skill. Isn’t the life journey funny? We can go from strong to weak and from weak to strong at the flip of an invisible switch.
Eden has taken over much of the cooking in the past few years, in ever growing amounts. She finds recipes that I would shake me head at saying, “too much trouble,” and goes to it with abandon. Last night, she fried dough in coconut oil to make “from scratch” cannoli shells. The whole house has a sweet smokey smell; one of my pans looks forever altered. No matter; I cheer her on from another room. Her slate clean of experience stands in contrast to my many years that lead me to ever increasing simplicity. Food is sustenance anymore, not a hobby.
Part of her transition into “cook” has been in jabbing at my own cooking skills. Tis true, I’m not the greatest cook anymore; I think I’ve hung up that apron of identity. As she explores her own interest and talent, she pushes off against me to define herself. I am still quite capable, but she likes to make fun of my recent fails of substituting ingredients to stave off trips to the store, resulting in less than pleasing dishes. I bow out; I relish my slippery identity and story that gives me an internal grin as I allow her free reign in the kitchen, even if it comes with a comparison to me. There is not pride here in letting her know about all the years I did know my way around a kitchen. Have at it, girl. 🙂
I don’t mind being the butt of the joke here, but for years, my lack of ownership and slipperiness of identity seemed a huge fault.
In our world, stepping up to the plate in an overt way is honored. I understand the value of overt, forthright power, but my flow has always been a bit different. In part, I may be this way because I found myself born into a family with lots of activity by the time I got there, the youngest of three, loved dearly but a bit of an afterthought. I fit into an already established group versus altering the family dynamics much myself. I have always enjoyed watching…
(No, I’m not Chauncy Gardner:)
Surprisingly, once I had a job in sales. I was supposed to go to college campuses and convince professors to select the textbooks that my company had published amidst a large stack of competitors. I listened and learned about sales techniques and steps for “Closing” people, but this process just never fit my flow. I went and met with the professors, but I found myself asking questions and listening instead of closing. Even though I still made sales, the premise of trying to influence another in this way would have always caused me discomfort – to make myself into something so foreign made my stomach rumble. In the process, I came to understand the role of professor and decided to get into teaching instead.
What I am trying to say is that, at that point, my inability to SELL felt like a flaw. Every time I met with a professor and I was so far off script, sitting and listening and engaging in real conversation often unrelated entirely to my purpose there, I felt deeply flawed as a human.
I have memories of people picking up on what I think may be a sensitivity to others and scoffing at me. One lunch sticks out in my mind where I waited for a conversation to organically finish before I asked for the salt to be passed, which resulted in a woman saying how weak it was to not ask for what you want. She couldn’t believe that I did not interrupt the conversation. I was in my 20’s and her observation of me in what she perceived to be a lack of self-confidence left me feeling exposed and worthless.
From these callings out, I sometimes tried to do the flip in behavior. I came on strong, I voiced my opinion with insensitivity, I didn’t hold doors for people as I had places to be, haha, but that never felt true. I often didn’t want to voice my opinion; I usually could see the other side just as easily. I wanted to hold doors because that felt true to me. To wait for natural breaks in conversation is organic to me.
I also take a moment here, internally, to recognize how my lack of agenda and flexibility made me vulnerable to the unhealthy dynamics in my marriage. I had trouble seeing the motivations of another person who not only had strong intentions for himself, but worked diligently to convince and steer me in directions he wished for me to go, as well, that did not match my internal compass.
What a gift my life has been! I can look at how this weakness did give me an Achilles’ heel. I was given the gift of a marriage with a person that would force me to step up to the plate in a sense and say, “No, I may be easy-going, but I do still get to steer my own ship. Amen.”
There is a shadow aspect that needs examining, here. Finding the strength here means understanding where this sensitivity is appropriate and where I need to speak out and say, NO!
When I was proceeding through my dark night of the soul, one place I ventured was a Thich Nhat Hahn Meditation group that met in the basement of a Baptist Church. My very first visit, I noticed a person coming in late, going to great lengths to make sure that the door made no sound at all upon her entry. She slowly held the knob and turned it at a snail’s pace to not allow the slight click to sound as the door shut fully.
The click from the door may not have been heard, but one click that did occur was the sound of a light being turned on above my head.
There was value in the time she took to enter without disturbing others. I recognized her sensitivity to the experience of others in meditation, and thus could see this value in myself. She mirrored the beauty of a sensitivity that I possessed as well, and her gesture allowed me to see it in myself.
I am sensitive to others, I am strong in this, yet I can also choose when and where I am sensitive; I can choose with whom I wish to spend my time and donate my listening heart. I can understand the strength and weakness in the same quality.
I kiss and bless my own heel, my best feature, for sure:)
“If you try to avoid or remove the awkward quality, it will pursue you. The only effective way to still its unease is to transfigure it, to let it become something creative and positive that contributes to who you are. Nietzche said that one of the best days in his life was the day when he rebaptized all his negative qualities as his best qualities. Rather than banishing what is at first glimpse unwelcome, you bring it home to unity with your life…..One of your sacred duties is to exercise kindness toward them. In a sense, you are called to be a loving parent to your delinquent qualiites” ― John O’Donohue,
Life as Improv 