Monthly Archives: October 2016

What Never Changes

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boyIt’s bittersweet, more sweet than bitter, bitter than sweet. It’s a bittersweet surrender.

When I moved to New York, I would lie in my bed with the window cracked open because I was too cheap to turn on the air-conditioning, and I’d listen to the sounds of the city outside my window. At first it was an onslaught for my ears: yells, laughter, music, the occasional retching from a patron of the bar on the corner (the times that patron wasn’t me). After a few weeks, the city’s sounds became a symphony that lulled me to sleep: brakes squealing and cars honking made me feel less alone as I drifted off to their music. When I’d come home to visit and lie in my childhood bed or in the guest room at The Sis’s, the silence would overwhelm me; the absence of the city actually kept me awake. I was reprogrammed. I had changed.

Now I sleep with earplugs. The only noise that breaks through them are the (all-too often) cries of my own children. I need silence again–I’ve changed back. But not totally

This past weekend, upon some hardly concealed threats, The Husband booked a hotel room for me and I camped out there Friday night. I spent most of the time lying on the bed, reading and watching TV and trying not to spill wine on the sheets. It was glorious. And it was quiet. Too quiet. I felt assaulted by the silence, by the absence of my children’s laughter before bedtime, by the emptiness without their calls of “Mommy” in the morning. Don’t get me wrong–it was amazing and I’ll do it again in a heartbeat. But it wasn’t everything. And so, on Saturday morning, I pointed the car home and I went back.

I know I will always go back, not because I’m perfect, but because I’m not. Perfection is never leaving in the first place–and let it be clear that I’m not talking about parenting here. Perfection left that building a long time ago, Pinterest boards be damned, and it ain’t coming back, no matter how your kid’s Hollywood-studio-budgeted birthday party turned out. I think the point of our changing and changing back and leaving and coming back is to show what, to show who, never changes and never leaves.

And thank God for that, because it is a weight off my shoulders.

I got The Kid’s OT evaluation emailed to me last week, and it showed the changes: improvement in every single area. A lot of it dramatic. And I watch him climb the play structure at the playground, his anxiety there a thing of the past (even as mine thrives). The road ahead is long, but the one behind is too, and both are brutally beautiful. So much else has changed: I used to narrate our car rides and every other experience, describing all I saw in the desperate hope that he understood and it would unlock his own words. Now? He narrates from the couch, from the toilet, from the elevator, from the backseat, reminding me which way to go, telling me who lives close to where we are and what exit we’re on and how Beth’s house is close to horse riding and, when a car cuts me off, “That driver is CRAZY!” because I said that long ago (might’ve included an adjective ahead of crazy but you don’t know my life) and when we pass the library, whose workings I described to him LAST YEAR, he tells me he wants to go there and get a card. All those months ago, listening? You’re damn right. Understanding? Every single word.

I’ve changed too: I see the world through his eyes now, noting every fire hydrant to either show him later or tell him about now; in Sydney, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning when I spotted a cafe car wash in our new neighbo(u)rhood. There is no earplug that will block out their voices, no distance that can separate us, not even a hotel that can keep me from going back. They have wonderfully ruined everything that used to be just mine, and made it ours.

There is no going back, and when it’s all said and done and I’ve had a night off to rest from it–there’s really no wanting to. There is us now, this messy and glorious reality that holds me within it, and even room service–oh how I love you, room service–can only compete for so long. There is that moment in the pool every week, that becomes moment after moment, of finding the spot to return to that keeps me breathing, keeps me going (mostly) in a straight line, keeps me in my lane. The place, the people I keep coming back to: this is home.

And when I drive back on Saturday morning to the sound of “Bittersweet” that just happened to cue up–the inextricable beauty of the not-so-polar-opposites, this bitter and sweet life–they meet me at the door, TH and Little Brother and TK, who grins and pulls my hand and says it: “Mommy came back.” And I pray that I always will while I know that what matters more is the One who never leaves.

Team Us

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nightA couple of weeks ago, as we were preparing The Kid and Little Brother for The Husband’s work trip (read: vacation) to Australia, TK started throwing around a troubling phrase. “Mommy always leaves you,” he would say to me, in discussions over TH’s departure or apropos of nothing, and I was affected in two ways: 1) we still need to work on pronouns (though his occasional use of the second or third person is a bit endearing and can come off like a royal affectation, which in his case I believe is totally warranted–all hail King James!) ; and 2) the thought that he sees things this way broke off a piece of my heart and set in adrift in the sea of guilt that seems to always surround me. In reality, I think he just misunderstood that I was going with TH again, and once I assured him I was staying home, he stopped saying it–especially after I emphatically added, “Mommy doesn’t always leave you! Mommy always comes back.” He finally began repeating the latter sentence: Mommy always comes back.

I’m beginning to understand how much of grace is about just showing up.

This was my prayer in the days leading up to TH’s trip: God, show up. Help me help me help me, and show up. And don’t let me miss you. Eyes to see, ears to hear, and such. My forthcoming period of solo adulting–five days with The Mom’s help but six days following that were all me–hung over my head like a black cloud and, as I told a friend who understands, made me feel as if I were living the experience multiple times before it actually happened. Maybe that’s why it felt like somewhat of a relief once the time did arrive: no more rehearsals, no more prep, just showing up.

I told the women about it at the weekly Bible study I attend, and before you skip the rest of this post in light of that, allow me to reassure you that this ain’t your typical women’s Bible study. It also ain’t the ones I’ve visited throughout my life, which often consisted of about twenty minutes of talking about how a verse made us feel followed by an hour of prayer requests that were really opportunities to talk about ourselves and other people (sort of like my late grandmother’s “Sewing Club,” which would have been more aptly named “Gossip and Bitching Circle”). These are not women who would have clutched their pearls in horror at the thing I told them: that I was afraid to be alone with my children this long. That one of my prayers, besides “Show up” and “Help,” was “Please make me a person my children don’t need to be shielded from.” Instead of disapproving head-shakes, I was met with nods, understanding. Grace. These are people who know just how wonderful and shitty motherhood, and we, can be. They said to call, to come over, to know we weren’t alone. They showed up.

And since then? In this past week of child-infested solitude? People haven’t stopped showing up. My prayers haven’t stopped being answered. It has been an at times rough, but also profoundly beautiful, time with the boys at home, our little triangle punctuated by phone calls and FaceTime with TH as a reminder of what our full shape really is, but the time between those reminders being full of sweetness we wouldn’t have known otherwise: the mornings that kick off with TK lying beside me on the bed, whispering, “Mommy mommy mommy,” and leaning in for kisses. The countless refrains of “Wheels on the Bus” for LB in the car and over the changing table. The post-dinner couch huddles, with two small but growing bodies draped over mine, sponsored by Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and wine. The chaotic baths and bedtimes that always end with two boys safe in their beds. My own sleep, sponsored by God and Advil PM. My anxiety, always lapping at my heels like that guilt, has been gloriously muted. Maybe out of necessity, in part–after all, as the only game in town this week, if I leave the ship we’re headed straight for that iceberg–but also in a remarkable display of grace and faithfulness on the part of the One who hears prayers and does something about them, if only we will look. I’ve found it easier to step out of that perpetual anxiety and see it for what it is–a part of me, not an all-encompassing whole, and a redeemable one at that. I’ve been able to cast it aside more readily, and less pharmaceutically, than usual. Which is not to make light of how crippling it can be, but is also to acknowledge how much greater grace can be.

And in all of it, the gifts of grace that are others showing up for us in the midst of our splintered team. Australian friends bringing TH over to their home for dinner and celebrating his arrival. Our friends here–the deacon who sat with me during an entire MRI having the boys and me over so that I could have a glass of wine and real, deep talk with his wife; the college/NY/forever friend who fed us dinner and supplied us with a playground, trains, and wine (recurring theme); the church friend who’s showing up today with her two.

During so much of what is our wonderfully typical square-shaped life with our team of four, I realize I’ve been pitting myself against the kids, against TH, delving into a me-against-them mentality born of a misguided sense of self-preservation. There hasn’t been a lot of “self” this week as much as a bunch of “us.” And I’ve seen how beautiful and life-giving it can be. That I don’t have to run from it to still be me; rather, this is me. Their mom. His wife. It’s so not a bad deal.

I got TH three different-sized jerseys for his birthday, each with a number on it: one for him, two for TK, three for LB. Maybe they’ll wear them on Friday, when I take a quick break to spend a night in a local hotel. I’ll be me there too, reading all the books I haven’t gotten to, drinking wine in my room, and peeing like nobody’s watching BECAUSE THEY WON’T BE. The next morning, though, I’ll wake up, and after a little time on my own, I’ll probably end up checking out early. I’ll point the car toward home, which I think of as the place you always return to; for me, the place where a triangle of males will be waiting to fill back out into a square and find out that Mommy, like grace did for her, always comes back.

On Your Knees, Under the Same Sky

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brosThese are my favorite three months of the year.

October, November, December–are you kidding me? We kick things off with pumpkin everything. I get some scorching-but-still-divine “me” time with my oven and mixer, baking until The Husband complains about gaining weight and The Kid asks for countless “big cookies.” Leaves crackle under our feet and the temperature finally, gloriously drops. Then it drops more to usher in November and Thanksgiving and the Macy’s Parade and the dog show and then…THEN it’s the grand finale, my favorite month of the year, the month to rival all others and stomp all over them with its romantic frostiness, prevailing goodwill, and sacred magic. CHRISTMASTIME, BITCHES.

(All praise to God.)

This year, though…it’s different.

These three months in this year, they share their glory and wonder with anxiety and anticipation. I ride them on a wave of ambivalence, knowing this will be our last Southeastern fall for awhile. Our last Christmas living in this house. Our last full season here, our home, before another place becomes home. It took years for this place to feel like home. Now we start all over again: new house, new schools, new therapists, new friends, new church, new country, new HEMISPHERE. Every day carries an undercurrent of last-ness, of finality, of nervous energy and, often, thickened teariness.

I’m a crying, gassy mess.

Last week I took TK back to the outdoor camp group–the one I had such a hard time finding the week before? That one. He approached this week’s treehouse with interest and hesitation, his own ambivalence written on his face, in his timid steps. He jumped on a trampoline. He pushed a rake around. Then he was invited to the top of the treehouse via a curved staircase.

He went. I followed him.

And when we got to the top, he got a bit too brave. He approached the edge a bit too closely, and was met with the leader’s gruff voice and pre-emptive, protective push. He was startled, and he looked to me with tears in his eyes, which is THE. WORST. for me, even when it’s a necessary evil, and I comforted him. Then it was time for the reason we’d come up there: the zip line.

He didn’t want to do it. I did and didn’t want him to. I’m split all down the middle these days, and not just because of Australia but because of life. Because of love. Because of kids. Nothing gets to be simple. But I nodded my head at him. “You’ve got this, buddy.” He sailed off, his face unconvinced. Terrified.

And then…the terror melted into euphoria and when he landed, I ran to meet him, and when he turned to me, his smile was the biggest.

He did it again.

When I moved to New York, my terror turned to euphoria. And, also, to bouts of depression, to deeper faith, to friendships, to falling in love. To finding home. And I’m about to do it again, with two boys and a husband in tow.

There are no shortcuts.

It hits me that I still want there to be. That I, in spite of all the rough-hewn paths of beauty, still, deep down, want ease and simplicity. I want to walk among soft clouds and perpetual sunshine. Then I read, in this amazing thing, what Heather Havrilesky said: “If you’re only walking in the clouds, you don’t feel where you are.” Then, on a Sunday morning, the question and an answer: “What is it that has brought you to your knees? Because it’s there you’ll find the love that is outside of you and for you.” And I realize it doesn’t show up on the sale rack or the luxury aisle, the eternal that is working itself out in our midst.

There can be ease and simplicity to the point of nothingness, or there can be this: these seasons split right down the middle, full of goodbyes and hellos, winter switching into summer, excitement and dread. Sitting outside one afternoon while the boys play with the Halloween decorations, I feel a lightness to the cooler air and for a second can’t remember if it’s fall or spring. I think about TH who is at our new house in Sydney, where the buds are bursting into life as the leaves fall from trees here, and realize it’s both.

It’s only when I’ve been brought to my knees that I’ve been able to really look up, to see now that we will always, no matter where home is, be under the same sky. The same sky that has covered us through the early days, when I filled out the OT survey on behalf of the kid and shook my head through tears over all he couldn’t yet do. Then last week, I answered the same questions with a smile at all he’s accomplished. There is the free fall, the sailing through the air in terror before the terror-melting grin appears. There is all that’s been left in our wake as we trod this path, all the tears and joy that have been and will be.

At lunch one afternoon as TH sleeps in Sydney and The Mom helps me here, we sit outside among other tables. TK finishes his PB&J and starts working the area: he approaches a couple at a table and grins at them. He walks up to a group of men and puts his hand on the back of one of them as if they’re old friends. This formerly silent boy is leaving joy in his wake as his Little Brother watches and laughs, gleeful. Then TK sidles up to the two men at the table next to us and begins a lengthy conversation full of complete sentences, and one of the men turns to me:

“He should go into politics. Or something where you speak a lot.”

And I tell them the story, how he didn’t say a word a year ago, because I love this story now that used to keep me up crying at night. It is our story. It is his.

He talks the whole way home under the same vast sky.

Eyes to See and Ears to Hear

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selfieLast week I bounced The Kid out of one of his regular therapies to try something new–another kind of therapy. A friend who knows TK had told me about an Outward-Bound-type afternoon camp for kids with challenges/gifts like spectrum disorders, anxiety, ADHD, dyslexia, etc. I thought the camp sounded great (for me, too, though there was an age limit), and I got a hall pass from his Tuesday therapist to try it. So I left Little Brother with a sitter and headed west with TK.

Google Maps failed me. I struggled to find the street number of the church whose playground was the meeting point. We passed a school, then an unmarked building beside it. I cruised that parking lot no fewer than a half dozen times, which was unfortunate because (a) it was not the destination, and (b) the school next door had a playground, natch, and it was in plain view of TK’s searching eyes. Within five minutes we were both crying: he from the certainty that I was keeping him from the right playground, and I from the uncertainty that I wasn’t. Either way, our twin anxieties reached a fever pitch right there in the car, his urgent pleas stoking my frustration, my expletive-laden anger barely kept under my breath, our begging each other to just look. Or listen. Or go. Or wait. It felt like hell. And this was a few hours after I’d gone to the ophthalmologist and found that I’d been wearing the wrong prescription for a year.

I finally stopped and asked a traffic cop if he knew what I was looking for. He pointed me in the right direction, and we landed in a spot about fifty yards further than I’d driven–just past the traffic light where I’d turned around twice, fearful of going too far. I parked and turned around to TK. “I’m sorry it took me so long to find the right place,” I told him. He looked back at me, his tears drying. “Mommy went the wrong way,” he responded solemnly. “Yes I did,” I replied. “And I got frustrated.”

For the next thirty minutes, he played and climbed and ran and occasionally circled back to me to recap: “Mommy couldn’t find it. Went the wrong way.” It was funny the first few times. Then over the next week, I heard it more: “Mommy couldn’t find the playground. Went the wrong way. Mommy got frustrated.” We watched an episode of Daniel Tiger, who happened to also be frustrated and sang a song about it that I can’t get out of my damn head. I grew weary of the refrain: my frustration, my propensity to be lost, my wrongness. It began to sound less like an observation than an indictment. Not that I’m defensive or anything.

I seem to keep getting reminders that I’m looking in the wrong place, listening to the wrong voice. Two weeks after the rest of my family, I got a stomach virus last week that knocked me flat for twenty-four hours. All the plans I had flew out the window and I could no longer look around at all I had to do but only stare straight ahead. At my TV, which played The Hunger Games. Which was kind of awesome, interrupting sprints to the bathroom aside, because who gets to watch movies on a Sunday afternoon anymore?! Then there’s my phone, whose camera I broke during an ill-advised temper tantrum; I happened to throw the phone indiscriminately across the room and it happened to perfectly hit a steel drawer handle, which broke into pieces as my phone’s screen cracked into about fifty fissures. Now my camera won’t cooperate for photos unless I flip the screen into selfie mode. There’s a metaphor here, I just know it.

Little Brother turned two last week and we flipped him around too, his carseat now front-facing, and the once-reliable mid-morning nap afforded by our errand-running disappeared for a couple of days: I would glance at him in the rearview mirror and see him staring around, saucer-eyed, in wonder at this new view. And then there’s TK, whose teacher told me that he has been protective of one of the smaller guys in his class, a boy in a wheelchair. When he requires extra assistance to get out of the chair or be pushed down the hall, TK will come alongside him and “supervise” the teachers’ assistance or walk beside both boy and teacher in the hallway. When I asked TK later that day about his friend and what he likes about him, he told me, “He rides a motorcycle.”

In moments like these my eyes overflow by the beauty of all that I’ve seen so dimly, so wrongly, or allowed to remain unseen altogether. TK looks at a wheelchair and sees a motorcycle, and I want my vision changed to match his now.

A Thursday morning, and I’m doing laps at the pool when I see a woman at the other end sitting on the edge of my lane. I paddle back from my end toward her so that she’ll know this one is occupied and move along. When I reach the end, she’s smiling down at me. “Oh! I didn’t even see you!”

I took it a little personally. It’s hard not to when you’re the sole woman in a house of males, the mother of two young boys: the frustration over not being listened to, or of being seen primarily as an object to be climbed upon. My fellow swimmer was playing into one of my biggest complaints and, I suspect, one of my deepest hurts: feeling invisible. I smiled thinly and headed back toward the opposite end, the water enveloping me, and there in the waves I’d generated I heard a voice speak into the place that is deeper than sound: “I see you. I see you.” It took my breath away and gave me new life, like it always does, this never-not-surprising reminder that I am seen and loved and not forgotten; that this being seen changes everything. It changes my 3 am-anxiety attacks about moving to Australia; it changes my worries for my children; it changes my marriage; it changes my drive to the damn grocery store. It changes everything, because it means that the truest thing about me is not that I look at my phone too much or that I have an unruly temper or that I miss so much. It swallows all that up because it means that the truest thing about me is how loved I am, how held and protected and seen.