vacation's end

On Friday I wrangled Beatrice into bed way too late per usual, and was rushing us through her goodnight routine with a distracted mind. It ends with a sacred 'two minute snuggle' which is typically performed in silence. If we start talking it messes everything up and we have to restart the clock and begin again.

So after the final five goodnights, I draped an arm lightly around her ribs two-minute-snuggle style and quietly settled in to think of all the things I still had to do before I could close up shop for the night, feel annoyed at myself for not doing more to mitigate Beatrice's perpetual sleep resistance, and begin to think of steps I could take to support earlier bedtimes. Until she interrupted my thoughts. 

Mama. Mama! C'mon. Snuggle like you mean it. 

She explained she is always the little spoon and as such depends on the big spoon to come a little closer and provide a proper nest for her to nestle into. She wanted full contact. All the way. Like I meant it; like my mind and my body were in the same place, right next to her.

Oh, you're so right. Sorry about that. 

I scooted up as close as I could and wrapped my arms and legs around her, tight, then let all that weight relax and crush her a bit. She laughed. 

That's better!

Before I confess the following, please forgive me for articulating challenges that are associated with having two months off in the summer. I know I'm really lucky. But this year in particular I felt oppressed by my own expectations. In June and July I expected myself to complete various house projects, train our dog, teach Frances to drive, teach Beatrice to ride a bike, make time to nurture and care for myself, garden, provide the kids with fun summer adventures, help Beatrice go to sleep at night in her own bed and stay there until morning, and...oh yeah, finish writing that manuscript. I wouldn't be working, so there would be plenty of time!

Well. A few days ago I told the three of them that I couldn't wait to be a working parent again. Turns out this whole stay-at-home gig is too exhausting. I do a lot of dropping off and picking up, grocery shopping, hopefully putting things on the stairs where they sit neglected until I take them upstairs myself, pleading with Bea to get off a screen, struggling to balance the often-conflicting needs of three people, nagging them to do chores, feeling guilty when they struggle. Just because I have two months off work doesn't mean anything about parenting gets any easier. I forgot. 

And it fills all the spaces. Every available nook and cranny. 

A friend and I wallpapered my bathroom but I haven't made the dining room curtains or put up paint samples. The hanging basket of flowers on the back deck has turned to a shriveled symbol of my inability to water regularly. Beatrice still doesn't know how to ride a bike; it is my widow's shame. It's so easy to focus on the things left undone. 

And it's the last week of July! A week from today I will go back to my office, where I haven't worked since March 2020. It's shocking to think how long it's been since I enjoyed lunchtime chats with my coworkers and in-person therapy in the quiet and cool of my office. These are wonderful things to look forward to. 

And when I begin, I will say goodbye to the summer expectations because my summer will be over. Honestly, there is some relief in that.

But I'll also have to say goodbye to 9:15 barre class, open time with my kids, sleeping til seven, admiring the sunflowers, and companionable hours during the day with my adorable, infuriating untrained dog. It's okay. And luckily I'll have August to acclimate before the kids' fall schedules begin and I will have to crouch inside my barrel and brace myself for the rapids and inevitable trip over the falls of multiple evening activities and transportation coordination and childcare and so. many. emails every night about school and dance and cross country and mock trial and music lessons. 

At least that's how a part of me is feeling. Serious Sunday night dread. 

But then I remember like you mean it. I want to mean it. I want to be there for my life, even when my life is being a stretched-thin solo full-time working parent of three. If I don't mean it, I'll miss the snuggles. I'll miss the sky, the taste of coffee, the outrageous pleasure of a hot shower. I'll miss them.

I saw a photo of someone I don't know's baby shower on Instagram this morning. My mind immediately took me to the memory of baby Frances's fat hands pushing down on my bare thigh to pull herself up to standing while I sat on the floor at my sister-in-law's baby shower so many years ago. Our baby with her enormous brown eyes and soft wispy hair, taking everything in, leaning into my body when there was a barely a boundary between us; she knew the warmth and solidity of me would always be right there for her like her own hands were always right there whenever she lost her balance. My heart hurt, the memory was so vivid. Frances. Now she drives herself to work with increasing confidence while I watch and direct her from the passenger seat.  

The pull of the current can be so strong. I have learned the powerful expectations I have of myself as a parent from my culture, my peers, my own perfectionist bullshit. It's impossible; a set up. You can't be there for your life from the inside of a jolting, bouncing barrel. You can't shiver with the pleasure of a baby's hands on your skin. I want to set an intention right now, on the cusp of this new almost-post-pandemic approaching-a-normal-that-never-was season. 

Here is my prayer: God, give me the strength to say no, to take a breath, to resist multitasking, to tolerate and even embrace imperfection. 

Help me to make the space to live like I mean it. 

sing a song

A few nights ago I dreamt I was writing a song. In the morning I told Frances about it. She listened with an open, smiling expression, and when I was done asked, well, want to write a song with me?

Hmmm. Yes! I mean, I think so. Can I do that?

Her invitation was delivered with simplicity and an implicit faith that writing a song was something we could definitely do, no big deal, like taking a walk or making a phone call. Like making breakfast. She happens to write amazing songs so speaks with some authority about the apparent mundanity of all this. So the next morning when I woke up way too early, even though I don't know how to write a song, I tried out some lyrics at the kitchen table.

She found them later - you wrote a song! - and then asked if she could try setting it to music. Which she did, I kid you not, in about eight minutes. We sat down at the piano and identified the parts that sounded way too sentimental, the lines with too many syllables, figured out what was missing and what could use more rhyme. The back of my throat gathered tears throughout this easy collaboration with my musical daughter. I kept telling her how she was blowing me away. She kept laughing and telling me it was just basic music theory, nothing special.

Are you kidding me? I don't think so. She is a songwriting goddess. The way she can arrange chords and make simple words fill up with emotion and meaning they didn't have moments before, when they were sitting flat and pencilled on the page, strikes me as magical. 

We went through a few versions and finished it yesterday. We sang it together for my mom, Beatrice, Diana and Teb last night after dinner; I could barely hold off the tears. It's a song about turning forty-four next week, which is the same age as my dad. It's about having to grow up without him, and not wanting to leave the space his years made, and I sang it with my daughter who will someday turn forty-two and contend with being the same age as her dad. 

Later, Diana emailed me the poem she had recently written after her uncle died, about the experience of going to the site where his plane had crashed with family. It took me breath away. Reading it, I felt something of what it was like to be there, the quiet and light, the absence and presence.

And then this morning I received a letter from my friend Christine, inside of which was folded a poem she wrote that will be published next month. The poem is about learning that Mike died while she was at the beach. After dropping Beatrice at camp and Frances at work, I only had time to read the letter before going to a barre class. Afterwards, sweaty and content, I climbed back into my car and sat parked on Prince St with the windows down, the cool morning air and sounds of street life gently pushing against me as I unfolded her poem. 

You can read it in The Southern Review soon, if you're interested. It is very beautiful and like Diana's poem, took me right inside her experience: the water all around, the sun too bright, the shells on the beach.

I held that piece of white paper lightly in my fingers and a raucous brass band outside the Market nearby began to play. The joyful music fully cracked opened the pain of Christine's loss for me - her son's godfather died! - and it filled my whole body. Just for a moment, a gasp. Then I took a breath and nosed into the flow of traffic.

And all of these brushes over the past twenty-four hours with words and music that stretch towards what it is really like to live in the face of loss, mystery, and love have left me with a feeling of poignant tenderness that pulsates right at the surface, right where my skin and the air touch one another. The tenderness is for our particular stories, but even more than that I am moved by our human impulse to take pain and make it into something beautiful we can touch and give one another.

A song, a poem, a porcelain teacup, a photograph, a dance. Art can contain a crushing avalanche of hurt and transform it into glistening veined pebbles, the kind you can't bare to leave on the beach but take home and save in a glass jar instead. It can take the brute absurdity and outrage of death and transform it into an exquisite shape we can hold in our hands.

I love that. I love being a person and living in this world with other gorgeous maddening yearning people who make exquisite things out of what we are given. 

After we sang our song last night, Frances asked me if I wanted to write other songs (that is, after she trains me up so that I can actually sing the songs I write, which she insists is possible). 

I think they'll all be sad, I said. I can't really imagine writing any other kind of song.

That's okay, she said. Me neither. 

(The Frank O'Hara poem up top was on the wall of an exhibit at MOMA,where Frances and I visited last week for her 16th birthday).