overheard while making lunches yesterday morning

Gabriel: Beatrice? Would you like to pretend to sleep on my chest like when you were a little tiny baby?

Beatrice: Yes. I want to snuggle with you, Gabriel.

...And then I peeked around the corner into the living room and saw her wipe her nose on her sleeve and solemnly climb onto the couch and relax into his arms. They were so still, and it lasted for at least two minutes. Moments before, Beatrice had flung herself onto the couch, sobbing about some piece of plastic or candy or trash or something that someone else had and she didn't (happens thirty times a day). I was ignoring the anguish and hoping she would eventually get distracted. Enter Gabriel, who must have been feeling particularly compassionate and wise just then, and most likely in need of a snuggle himself.  

It still boggles my mind how powerfully I respond to the quality of the connections the children have with one another. When they bicker, I experience nearly intolerable anger. Part of me would like to kill them just to make them stop being mean to each other. Better to be dead than a name-calling tattletale? Maybe...? But you know, there is no logic when I feel The Rage.

In just the same way, my heart becomes intolerably full when they treat each other with gentleness, kindness, humor. It is so joyful I want to cry, or dance, or shout - a kind of shivery, embodied joy that demands expression. When I stumble onto a precious, brief moment that is happening independent of me, in which they are creating a safe harbor for one another - a refuge from the growing up storms within and without - then I really know that everything is okay. God is real, love is real; we belong to one another in profound ways that I cannot begin to comprehend.

Makes me think of a lyric from an old Belle and Sebastian song:
a family's like a loaded gun
point it in the wrong direction, someone's going to get killed

I'm not sure I understand it the way Stuart intended but it has spontaneously popped into my head many times as a parent, often when I am able to step back and note the intensity of my emotions, which hurtle every which way, all in a day's work. You can't help but worry about the potential for someone getting hurt. The stakes are so very high.

On the other hand, point it in the right direction, someone might find a kind of peace and safety that makes the risk worth taking a million times over. I doubt that Gabriel and Beatrice will remember those two minutes in any kind of conventional, narrative sense when they are all grown up. But I know that their bodies and souls will.

ordinary conditions

For over a year, the very last element of my bedtime routine (after the teeth-brushing and face-washing and pajama-donning) was climbing under the covers and reading a few pages of War and Peace. It was a lot more like checking in with old friends just before I fell asleep than reading a novel. Hello, Natasha? You are still feeling wretched? Yes, yes. I understand. That is tough. Well, I am a little stressed out myself. Okay then, goodnight. See you tomorrow. 

It was perfect. The military bits in particular put me right to sleep. The only problem with War and Peace was that it ended. 

So I turned to Anna Karenina, which I read many years ago and loved. I thought it might work the same way for me - it's another very very long book full of well-observed imperfect people living their regular imperfect lives, after all. But alas, I stay up too late! The characters are far more likable. I empathize (mostly) with their faults and recognize their limitations. The absence of Napoleon (and Tolstoy's raging irritation with Napoleon) is a blessing. The overall effect is far less soporific. 

I loved Levin the first time I read this book, when I was maybe 22. But I think I felt a bit condescending towards him. The pride of youth may have colored and distorted my vision. Oh Levin, I thought then. You're so cute. You get so worked up. I love that about you. 

Now I feel my connection to him in a new way. I read this a few nights ago. It's just after Levin and Kitty share their engagement:

Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who with an affected but tender smile came to congratulate her favorite pupil. Before she had gone, the servants came in with their congratulations. Then relations arrived, and there began that state of blissful absurdity from which Levin did not emerge till the day after his wedding. Levin was in a continual state of awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness went on all the while increasing. He felt continually that a great deal was being expected of him--what, he did not know; and he did everything he was told, and it all gave him happiness. He had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything that had ever happened.

I don't think I could understand that last sentence (a perfect sentiment!) when I was 22. I don't think I understood it until the moment I gave birth to Frances. I had wanted a pregnancy unlike the medicalized and corporatized pregnancy the world would sell us. We didn't want to do what one does; we wanted to do what was unique and beautiful and authentic. But it didn't really matter whether or not we tried to create some kind of extraordinary experience. In the end, she was a newborn, like every other newborn, and she was the most extraordinary newborn that had ever existed. I cherish every detail of the story of her birth. But now I also recognize that the intimate ways in which it maps onto so many other birth stories are what make it more precious still.

A couple of weeks ago I endeavored to pack up two enormous boxes full of maternity clothes and send them to my sister Rachel in Iowa City. The odds and ends that didn't make the cut went straight to Goodwill. I cried as I sat there amongst the piles. My rational mind took me by the shoulders and said - firmly - but Meagan, you don't actually want another baby. You don't want to be up all night and nearly go out of your mind and feel even more stressed about money. True, true. But also - rational lady - let me just point out to you that it is very likely that I won't have another baby, and that is a terribly sad thing. That makes my whole body want to cry, just for a little.

I think it wouldn't matter how many kids I had; I'd still feel smacked with a nasty wave of grief while packing away all signs of pregnancy from the basement and backs of dresser drawers. My baby is no longer a baby. That time is drifting further into the past.

I am thirty-seven years old. Once I resented being put into positions where I felt pressured to do exactly as other people did. Now I drive a minivan, and take my kid to baseball practice, and forget where I put my keys, and it doesn't really bother me at all. I talked to two different friends about the sadness of knowing you are (probably, mostly, almost certainly) done having babies over the weekend. Embracing my sameness is what allows me to share that maternity clothes grief in a way that feels very true. We are so imperfect, so predictable, so human - just like other people - and that doesn't make us less special. In fact, as for Levin, it might make our joys and sadnesses more and more special and more unlike anything that has ever happened.