happiness

I went out for lunch yesterday with a woman I don't know very well. Her husband died three months ago and she bravely reached out to me after a mutual friend connected us; I was touched and truly happy that she did. We talked about widowhood and how impossible the first weeks and months are, about cruel paperwork and finances, about her husband and how terrible it is for her to do things they once did together without him.

She wanted to know how I did and do this. When do things got better, how do they get better, how does one make it through this darkness? If only I could offer her a blueprint, a map; instead I shared some books, resources, people who were helpful to me. I told her it stays awful for a long time and I honestly don't know how I journeyed from there to here, but I did, and that's saying something. 

Then she asked if I was able to enjoy things. Can I feel happy now? Does it come back?  

Oh, yes, definitely, I told her. It comes back. Just not the way it was before. Now joyful moments are lined with tender ache. When one of my kids triumphs, when I behold a beautiful sight or experience something new, a part of me squeezes because Mike is missing it. I can't share it with him, I can't look across a room and smile at him with a quiet mutual understanding that yes, this is marvelous. That absence lends a bittersweet cast to moments that were once simply happy.

It's been a packed week. So many things have been happening, and I've been scrambling to keep up. During the height of busy-ness I wasn't sleeping well, and by last night I was completely exhausted. I got into bed, read half a page, fell deeply asleep within minutes, and woke up eight blessed hours later to the sounds of my teenagers getting ready for school. 

Under the covers in my quiet bedroom it was warm and dark, and beyond that, out in the hall, it was bright and chilly. I couldn't force myself into that space. So I called to Frances, who came in to hug me and explain she and the rest of her morning ride-to-school crew were leaving early to stop for coffee en route. Gabriel waved from the hall on his way downstairs. Buried in my nest, I waved back. I listened to Frances, Gabriel, Tahra and Leo bustling around in the kitchen and the cats wandered into my room to walk back and forth across me and meow their wonderings about when I would come down to feed them. I was undeterred. I scratched behind their ears peacefully.

Wrapped in a blanket, Beatrice came in and stood next to my bed, looking down at me and my uncharacteristic sloth with mild concern. 

Mama, it's really time to get up. We'll be late. 

Yes, but it's so cozy in here. And I like listening to everyone downstairs. 

She paused, then cautiously lifted the edge of my comforter and felt for my arm. 

Oh Mama, she smiled. You're so warm. 

I beckoned to her. Come on in, I said. Just for a minute. We won't be late. 

She slid under the covers and stretched out long next to me, then rolled to face the painting of a comet on my bedroom wall in her little spoon position while I wrapped an arm around her ribs. Our legs arranged themselves into their customary alternating stack. We sighed in unison, warm and safe in the dark, while below the teenagers shouted to each other and slung backpacks and clomped heavy feet on the way out the front door. In their wake the house grew suddenly quiet, and sighed along with us.

Beatrice's back nestled warm against me. My nervous system whistled a happy tune and kicked a pebble contentedly down a tree-lined dirt lane, blue skies overhead. My bed was the very best place in the world to be, and my awareness of the ticking clock - pulling us towards animals in need of breakfast, the busy morning ahead, the evening of dance class and guitar lessons and making dinner and even towards Bea's fast-approaching adolescence and greater physical independence from me - didn't diminished it's best-ness in the slightest. It made it even better. 

In that precious moment, I felt perfectly, peacefully, simply happy. It lasted a few minutes, after which I threw off the warm covers to force us into action, and the day's cogs and wheels began whirring away. 

But the feeling lingered. I haven't forgotten. I'll tell my new friend the next time we have lunch.  

everyday heroics

After my last session this afternoon, I searched my inbox with the words 'teacher conferences' and found the itinerary for my evening at the high school. It started in 30 minutes, and would last until after eight. The only problem was that I hadn't arranged for anyone to pick Bea up from dance at seven. 

I'd asked my mom a few hours earlier when I finally confronted the fact that I could not be in two places at once, but she couldn't do it. And I couldn't bear to ask anyone but the woman who gave me life and is biologically determined to love me for a favor. Not after the cascade of asks prompted by Tuesday's cross country banquet which coincided with dance class drop offs and pick ups, my minivan not starting that morning, a sick babysitter, losing my phone for four entire hours while I was on call, yesterday's early dismissal from school, arriving a few minutes late to every session I had today because I squeezed in an orthodontist appointment and Beatrice's teacher conference before my morning sessions and those ran late, and needing a ride for Gabriel to get to his guitar lesson tonight. 

It seems that all I have done this week, actually this life - at least this widowed single parent life - is ask people for favors. Sometimes I can't make myself ask, even though I'm thinking about it before I go to sleep for the six nights prior, not until the last pressured minute, and then I have to ask in a much worse, less respectful of other people's time kind of way (I can't believe I'm asking this but is there any way you could grab Bea after swim tonight blah blah blah I appreciate it so much blah blah blah I can't believe I forgot to ask earlier UGH GROAN put me out of my misery already make me stop putting exclamation points on the end of the countless thank yous I text a day so I appear somehow less threatening and like the kind of person you can't help but take pity on and don't resent having to help all the time.)

So yeah. There was nothing to be done but cancel the last four conferences of the evening, since Beatrice was already at dance class and could not be left outside in the dark in the middle of Lancaster County when it was over. I scrambled to sign into the school website to use their messaging system and sent a bunch of apologies to my kids' wonderful teachers, probably with lots of unnecessary exclamation points in them, decided I'd finish my notes tomorrow, and ran out to the parking lot.

A new favorite album filled the gray spaces of my car as I drove from my office to the high school. I slowed to a stop at a busy red light and my eyes rested on a beautiful pair ahead of me on the sidewalk. They were a young mother and her skinny seven or eight year old son, walking side by side. They both had excellent posture, and they both wore capes. Wait - what? As I rolled closer to them, I could see from behind my windshield that their capes were in fact a white towel around the boy's shoulders and a pastel striped pillowcase around the mother's. They held the linens clasped around their necks so that they fluttered behind them. They wore the slightly off ensembles of recent immigrants or refugees, people I often met with when I worked in the clinic, dressed by church clothing drives or the mission at the other end of town. They looked a little out of place yet so regal, the way they proceeded together in those capes. 

I suppressed an urge to roll my window down and smile and wave and say: you two look like superheroes! To somehow salute them, acknowledge their brilliant presence on the cracked city sidewalk in the golden November light, already fading fast, a sight so arresting that it tethered my racing, fretful mind back to this body, this earth.

When the parts of me came back together like that all at once, I cried. A thousand tender thoughts moved like a rushing river through me, unformed awarenesses and memories more felt than truly thought. They were about motherhood and childhood, perseverance and untold stories held quietly inside, the kind my clients entrust to me, about love so big it can't help but push against the edges of your heart and ache there until something gives and the space expands. About aloneness, about fearing you aren't enough for your children and knowing you are at the same time, and about how everything changes and changes and sometimes the best you can do is stay close to the people you love and walk proudly through it in a cape of your own design. 

It was sudden and surprising. I felt my throat tighten, the gasp and sting and heat. The light glowed green, and tears gathered as I drove on. One overflowed, spilling a hot trail down my cheek that then cooled in the evening air, becoming a soothing stripe just as comforting as a cold pack fetched by one of the kids when I hurt myself. 

When I left work, I wasn't feeling like a superhero at all. Then I saw two superheroes right there on the street, shining their humanity so brightly that I could feel my own, such that the mere sight of them let all the you're not doing enough and you're a burden slide out of me in a few big sobs. I made it to the school, where I ran into other parents I know and met a few of my kids' teachers. They like and support Frances and Gabriel a lot, which made me smile. Beatrice enthusiastically described her final across the floor sequence on the way home from dance and though I couldn't really follow, that made me smile too. Then dinner, dishes, laundry, tv, a snuggly goodnight.

It was enough. More than enough: it overflowed.