Time Ripping at the Seams
I have been able to spend some time this holiday season with my sister Sarah, her husband Jon, and their adorable little dumpling Elena. Elena is 9 months old now, and suffice it to say that she’s about as cute as you can get without a prescription around here. And I don’t think it was just because I got to be there when she was born (on International Women’s Day, I might add). Trust me, I’ve seen my fill of babies, and Elena outweighs most of them both in looks and in stature.
Sarah, at 39, knows it is likely that she won’t be having anymore children, and described to me the heartbreak that comes with every change Elena makes: nursing less, becoming more social. Her ennui essentially boils down to the awareness that some day Elena will be grown, and will no longer need her. I know that feeling, and I know how painful it is to smile at each passing cuteness while inside you’re mourning its passing. Feeling that sense of loss — or trying to avoid it — is why many women keep on having babies well past the time they should stop. Eventually, though, everyone stops having babies, and their babies do grow up, and they do leave home. The heartless (yet truthful) thing to say here is that ultimately we are all alone no matter how we surround ourselves with possessions or people, and we may as well get used to feeling it. That is not the right thing to say to a nursing mother though, so I did not say that to Sarah.
It reminds me of my current favorite New Yorker cartoon, of a TV stage where the host is standing with a contestant in front of Door #1, #2, and #3. The lights are on, the audience is hushed, and the man is about to make his decision. The perspective of the cartoon allows us to see what choices lie behind each door: a New Car, a Maui Vacation, or the Grim Reaper. I can tell this post is now in danger of topping the maudlin-o-meter, but I have to say it: family life is often like experiencing all three of those choices at once.
For instance, this Christmas: Bowen came up from Santa Cruz, Lyra escaped from her busy coffee-making schedule in SF, Jojo was here for the presents, and my nephew Alex whom we rarely get to see came to spend the day too. It was so wonderful to have them all with me, to stuff our faces with food, laugh at each other, and watch movies when we were sick of talking. Yet below the surface, I felt all these subtle shifts taking place. I am adjusting to the fact of having grown children, and they are working hard at being grown. One of us will say something to the other, and I will feel this ripping sensation, as if the very fabric of our relationship is caught by the tip of that scythe and the pattern does not hold. It is hard work, growing up, and painful all the way around.
In fact, if I wanted to scare them I’d say (truthfully) that just being alive is incredibly painful, as much as it is glorious and joyful. But why would I want to scare my kids? They probably already know it anyway, but maybe they thought that it would cease being painful as soon as they figure out who they are and what they want out of life — say, by the time they’re 25 or so.
No, the fabric has been ripped, and who knows what kind of crazy tatters will remain before some sublime adult relationship emerges from all this chaos? To me the hard part is not feeling the tearing of my heart as another child breaks away in another way, it’s trusting that love will remain in the space that has opened up. You have to trust in something that is nothing tangible, that is an absence of habit or pattern. That is really freaky. There are prescriptions for the kind of fear and anxiety brought about by having to trust invisible love.
Visible love is second nature to decent parents: here, I’ll get off of work to take you to your dentist appointment. I’ll give you money to go to the movies with your friends. I’ll cook food you like when you come to visit. Invisible love is trickier: I trust you to be where you say you are going to be. I trust you to stay alive in my absence. I trust you to love me even if I’m not doing things for you.
Eventually, so I hear from friends whose kids are my age, a new pattern emerges from all that trust that is more suited to a relationship of adults. I’m looking forward to the day. Like so many things about this adventure of parenting, I’m not sure I got to that step with my own parents. But parenting has been very good to me. It has allowed me to heal a lot of raw spots left over from my own upbringing, just by being able to do something different with my children. I know Sarah feels that with Elena too. At last, that is something hopeful (and truthful) that I can say to Sarah: the joy that you feel with Elena, and the healing that her presence brings, will not diminish with time but will continue with surprising twists and turns for the rest of your life.
December 29th, 2005 at 6:10 am
Thanks, hon — lovely post.
I had my only child at 42, and have been very aware constantly of being in the process of losing whatever moment I’m enjoying. This is useful, for living in the moment work. But still, the shifts over time are constant and vertigo-inducing.
I think a lot about the time coming, as with your kids, when he moves away, physically and emotionally. I try to not live there, but to be ready for it nonetheless.
One of the things I learned early on is that, though I trust my own self with the Goddess completely and beyond measure, I DON’T trust my child with her. I want, really, deeply, at level of bone, to be running the whole show.
Well.
So that’s been for me the main lesson. Letting go, constantly, and trusting that his relationship with the cosmos is just as trustworthy as mine. And that it’s NOT mine. And I can’t run it.
love love love, sugar.
December 29th, 2005 at 10:48 am
Oh yes, running the whole show–I know that one well. When you have children in your 20s, as I did, it is possible to go for long periods of time secure in the knowledge that you have been, are, and will be running the whole show indefinitely. Partly this is because at 20 something you have the energy to do it, or at least keep up that illusion, which as the 40s encroach you simply do not have anymore.
Constant and vertigo-inducing, yes. It’s interesting how this internal state affects our perception of the state of the world, and possibilities for change at a social and political level. In my 20s, I thought a few good demonstrations should neatly change the course of events. Now I think only slow change, coupled with the ability to withstand vertigo and contemplate all sides of an issue, is what will work.
December 29th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
I cannot even imagine what that is like. It has been challenging enough navigating my way into my own adulthood, let alone watching children do so.
Funny - I am rereading “The Golden Compass” and your post makes me think of the severing of the daemon from the child - or the fact that the daemon cannot go very far from the child in the first place. You’ve been really tied up intimately in your children’s energy bodies and that cannot be so anymore. Not that I’m saying that you are a hamster, goose or polecat, but the only time I talk to people about submitting life force and say that in some cases it is justified is when talking about small children. The life force is just so bound up together already, and it is necessary at first (obviously) to be making decisions for another.
Anyway - I always love your writing and it was good to see you Solstice eve (tho I needed to get back home and do some more magic that night, hence my early departure).