It was a whirlwind weekend, with seven 8 and 9 year old girls staying overnight for a big birthday party (only about four months overdue--and little sleep was had by most; we stumbled out into the hallway at almost four in the morning to find three girls sitting by the fireside, playing Clue) to Merry's play practice and track shopping, to this morning, when Charley bolted out open side gate for a romp around the neighborhood just before we were due to leave for the bus.
It's no wonder that I can't seem to focus this morning. I feel like there's a machine in my head, spitting out ping pong balls: Pow! they ricochet off the walls of my brain, and Pow! they clatter around in my heart with their odd empty sounds.
I just pulled a reheated cup of tea out of the microwave and, with characteristic weak morning hands, dropped the whole thing; tea cascaded down the cabinets, pooled on the floor.
Martin's folks arrive on Thursday; the girls finish school on Wednesday; we have to prepare and execute the Easter Service on Sunday; I want to finish my book and send it off by Spring Break; I need to write a letter to my friend and shouldn't I have sent her a baby gift by now? I need to plant some gift-gleanings from my brother-in-law in the garden before they die; I need to clean the house; I need to hang curtains and wash the carpets and e-mail Merry's track coach. . .so many things. Some people make lists. I could do that. Make a list. Check things off. Something rebellious inside me refuses to do it.
Too, I recently had this dream about our friend who killed herself, and it's been travelling with me like a rock in the toe of my shoe. In my dream, I sat chatting with her as we so often did, and I was chiding her for trying to kill herself and telling her how relieved I was that she hadn't succeeded. As she spoke with me, I kept thinking (in my dream), Why don't I feel relieved? Why do I still feel this sense of dread and foreboding? And then I woke and I remembered why.
The dream dogged my steps for some days (including when my crown just fell off my molar on Friday afternoon because even with the mouth-guard, I've been grinding my teeth so hard at night I finally worked off my crown)! Then it finally hit me full-force on Saturday, an hour before Elspeth's guests arrived, when I went downstairs to do a final tidy-up in the Family Room before rushing back upstairs to vacuum before the girls arrived.
Merry was upstairs baking a cake; Martin was installing a window box for me on the front porch; the little girls were outside, biking. To my great dismay, I found Elspeth had opened all the sleeping bags and laid them all over the room, along with dirty socks hanging from the lampshade and leftover cereal from that morning. Normally I would just grit my teeth and go at it, but that afternoon I found myself whimpering like a dog with a hurt paw. Then, as I stomped around the room, tossing dirty laundry aside and tidying, I began to sob. Merry yelled from upstairs, "I'm out of powdered sugar! I need to go to the store!"
"I don't know what to do!" I wailed up the stairs. "I don't know what to do about that! Ask Daddy!"
Before I knew it, she walked downstairs. She saw me and said, "Mommy." And then she walked over and put her arms around me. "Don't worry," she said, "I'll help you clean up. We'll put away the sleeping bags together."
And so we did. And I told her that I was sad about Natalie, and she said, "I know how you feel. Sometimes you're just going along with your life, and then you remember that something really sad happened." She told me about how she'd been planning to write a story and realized that her character was going through something tragic, and then she'd remembered that her character's life reflected her own experience: two close friends lost--first, her best friend's mother to cancer, and most recently, our dear young friend whom Merry thought of as an older sister. That's rough.
We talked about it as we gathered sleeping bags and stuffed them into the bags and soon the room was tidy. We hugged each other for a little while longer and then she went up to finish her cake and I vacuumed the upstairs. That night, she and I gave the birthday party together and she was a wonderful companion. Martin and Merry and I watched "Groundhog Day" and drank soda and ate candy and laughed and laughed. We went to bed. The next morning, I had to remind her to clean her room. We were parent and child but too we were companions on this journey that we share.
And that's life. Good, so good.
We parents and godparents and aunts and uncles work so hard to shield our kids from grief and sorrow and pain. So often I turn away to cry or vent and then I put on my happy face and come back to be cheerful for the kids. I want my children to have happy childhoods and I will work toward it, however imperfectly, just as my parents walked that line between letting us experience suffering and the suffering of others while building joy and carefree moments for us. Occasionally my children find me in a moment of utter pain and woundedness, and I am amazed at the way they love me. So amazed.
And so grateful.
Let the hundred things that I have to do whirl in my head; let them gather and blow across my horizon like storm clouds. Underneath, there is a river that never stops flowing. And deep down below all the ripples and reflections, all is calm and all is love.
Listen to this "On Being" on vulnerability that my friend Kara sent me: http://www.onbeing.org/program/brene-brown-on-vulnerability/4928
It's no wonder that I can't seem to focus this morning. I feel like there's a machine in my head, spitting out ping pong balls: Pow! they ricochet off the walls of my brain, and Pow! they clatter around in my heart with their odd empty sounds.
I just pulled a reheated cup of tea out of the microwave and, with characteristic weak morning hands, dropped the whole thing; tea cascaded down the cabinets, pooled on the floor.
Martin's folks arrive on Thursday; the girls finish school on Wednesday; we have to prepare and execute the Easter Service on Sunday; I want to finish my book and send it off by Spring Break; I need to write a letter to my friend and shouldn't I have sent her a baby gift by now? I need to plant some gift-gleanings from my brother-in-law in the garden before they die; I need to clean the house; I need to hang curtains and wash the carpets and e-mail Merry's track coach. . .so many things. Some people make lists. I could do that. Make a list. Check things off. Something rebellious inside me refuses to do it.
Too, I recently had this dream about our friend who killed herself, and it's been travelling with me like a rock in the toe of my shoe. In my dream, I sat chatting with her as we so often did, and I was chiding her for trying to kill herself and telling her how relieved I was that she hadn't succeeded. As she spoke with me, I kept thinking (in my dream), Why don't I feel relieved? Why do I still feel this sense of dread and foreboding? And then I woke and I remembered why.
The dream dogged my steps for some days (including when my crown just fell off my molar on Friday afternoon because even with the mouth-guard, I've been grinding my teeth so hard at night I finally worked off my crown)! Then it finally hit me full-force on Saturday, an hour before Elspeth's guests arrived, when I went downstairs to do a final tidy-up in the Family Room before rushing back upstairs to vacuum before the girls arrived.
Merry was upstairs baking a cake; Martin was installing a window box for me on the front porch; the little girls were outside, biking. To my great dismay, I found Elspeth had opened all the sleeping bags and laid them all over the room, along with dirty socks hanging from the lampshade and leftover cereal from that morning. Normally I would just grit my teeth and go at it, but that afternoon I found myself whimpering like a dog with a hurt paw. Then, as I stomped around the room, tossing dirty laundry aside and tidying, I began to sob. Merry yelled from upstairs, "I'm out of powdered sugar! I need to go to the store!"
"I don't know what to do!" I wailed up the stairs. "I don't know what to do about that! Ask Daddy!"
Before I knew it, she walked downstairs. She saw me and said, "Mommy." And then she walked over and put her arms around me. "Don't worry," she said, "I'll help you clean up. We'll put away the sleeping bags together."
And so we did. And I told her that I was sad about Natalie, and she said, "I know how you feel. Sometimes you're just going along with your life, and then you remember that something really sad happened." She told me about how she'd been planning to write a story and realized that her character was going through something tragic, and then she'd remembered that her character's life reflected her own experience: two close friends lost--first, her best friend's mother to cancer, and most recently, our dear young friend whom Merry thought of as an older sister. That's rough.
We talked about it as we gathered sleeping bags and stuffed them into the bags and soon the room was tidy. We hugged each other for a little while longer and then she went up to finish her cake and I vacuumed the upstairs. That night, she and I gave the birthday party together and she was a wonderful companion. Martin and Merry and I watched "Groundhog Day" and drank soda and ate candy and laughed and laughed. We went to bed. The next morning, I had to remind her to clean her room. We were parent and child but too we were companions on this journey that we share.
And that's life. Good, so good.
We parents and godparents and aunts and uncles work so hard to shield our kids from grief and sorrow and pain. So often I turn away to cry or vent and then I put on my happy face and come back to be cheerful for the kids. I want my children to have happy childhoods and I will work toward it, however imperfectly, just as my parents walked that line between letting us experience suffering and the suffering of others while building joy and carefree moments for us. Occasionally my children find me in a moment of utter pain and woundedness, and I am amazed at the way they love me. So amazed.
And so grateful.
Let the hundred things that I have to do whirl in my head; let them gather and blow across my horizon like storm clouds. Underneath, there is a river that never stops flowing. And deep down below all the ripples and reflections, all is calm and all is love.
Listen to this "On Being" on vulnerability that my friend Kara sent me: http://www.onbeing.org/program/brene-brown-on-vulnerability/4928
Comments