the Gypsy Mama sobbed her grief
into her only handkerchief
Perhaps you too have read Madeline and the Gypsies aloud dozens of times. That couplet always grabs me as I glide through the concluding lines of the story. I pick up the pace because I know Beatrice will insist on lingering over the picture of all the girls doing outrageous circus-inspired gymnastics on their little iron bedsteads when Miss Clavel comes in to say goodnight, and it's past time (it's always past time) for me to say goodnight to Beatrice already.
Squat, neckless Gypsy Mama is clad in her voluminous black shawl, her fat fingers covered with garish jewels, sitting hunched and alone on the side of the circus ring crying, while nearby Miss Clavel is joyfully reunited with Madeline and Pepito. The galloping rhythm of those rhymes plunges us towards resolution, when everything will turn out right. It really does encourage us to slide over her grief. It's barely a hiccup on the way to restored order.
But how I identify with the bereft Gypsy Mama! She's the anti-Miss Clavel, her physical opposite as well as her opposite in child-rearing philosophy. Teeth brushing? Never heard of it.
Well, unlike her, I do in fact support things like bedtime and school attendance. What I connect with is her vulnerability and her pleasure in everyday life (they go hand-in-hand I think). Despite existing within the confines of rhyming couplets and heavy-handed stereotypes (of course she kidnaps the children) she so clearly enjoys those kids. She makes them harlequin costumes, stays up late with them singing around the campfire, teaches them circus tricks. Teaching my kids how to do anything - bike-riding, swimming, loading the dishwasher - is an emotional trial usually taking me months to complete. I know that teaching Madeline and Pepito how to ride the circus steed was no small feat. They probably whined and cried a lot. She stuck with it anyway. That's commitment. That's love.
And then she lost them. Part of her had to know that was a possible outcome, seeing as how she kidnapped them, but she loved them anyway.
Throughout the past two years, whenever anyone hears about our ongoing battle with Mike's cancer, there's usually a moment when the fact that we have three kids sinks in. How young Mike is, how young our kids are, how much they still need from us, how hard it must all be at this particular developmental moment for our family. Caring for those kids in the midst of facing this relentless disease! As if our burdens were not heavy enough.
But like the Gypsy Mama, whose life is so tough that she owns but a single tattered damp handkerchief, lately I've come to realize that traveling a damn treacherous road with my kids is the opposite of a burden. They're my protection, my stability. If I had to I'd kidnap them off a ferris wheel to keep them around, I would. Loving them anchors me to the green muddy earth.
When things are hard and scary with Mike's health, as they are right now, my mind wants to fly off into a thousand nightmares, images of widowhood from the mundane to the sweeping - everything from the mild worry of how will I do the taxes all by myself? to the grief-soaked panic of how will I bear anything all by myself? - and it's hard to let those thoughts come and go without grasping at them, shaking them by the shoulders, being mad at them, feeling frightened by them.
I think about the past too, the opportunities I missed. I wallow in my own helplessness. I worry about my gray hair and my flaccid triceps. I worry the children eat too much ice cream.
I worry that I'm not strong enough to meet this moment as I should.
Maybe we all know that terrible doubt. My children save me from being dragged under by it, because they require and invite my presence in this moment. They look me in the eye and ask for help untangling a Slinky, or to listen while they tell a story about camp today, or ask if I'll play Frisbee, or if I'll read Madeline and the Gypsies again. Or ask if they can walk to Splits and Giggles to get ice cream. Again.
A summer's day with them can feel like a slew of requests, which sometimes makes me crazy (especially when the requests come in simultaneously) but I think the requests themselves are secondary. The particular glass of milk isn't the point. Asking me for stuff is a form of relating that facilitates connection and presence. It also makes us all feel like things are gonna be okay. Cancer be damned: they're still my beloved, mildly overindulged kids, and I'm still their responsive, capable, harried mom. I simply can't absent my body, worrying about insurance, when I'm handing out ice cream cones and urging Beatrice to lick the back of hers before it drips all over her thigh.
Without the kids I'd be a wreck. There'd be little to stop me from living inside my phone, drinking like a fish, holing up in a cave. Without the kids I'd never have the courage to ask for and to receive help, and I'd have a lot less motivation to take care of myself. With the kids, I can't flee this terror. I have to live it.
And with the kids, I can be goofy, expressive, playful, angry, sad, worried. Exhausting as parenting is, it's also restorative for that reason. I can sing in the car, jump off a swing, dance in the kitchen, quote George and Martha, stretch my legs out all over them on the couch, make up silly rhymes and songs, all without a hint of self-consciousness. That's what family (and others whom we unconditionally love, our friend family) is so good for. Being yourself; being at home. My big kids are old enough to find all this embarrassing, and they adore teasing me about being insufferably cheesy, but that's fine. I know they like me to be who I am. And they know I like them to be who they are. Who they are becoming.
Yesterday, Beatrice was upset with me because I said no to something - I can't even remember what now - and she was following me around, whining about it. We were waiting for one of the older kids to come down to go somewhere. I was finding Beatrice very, very irritating. I suddenly flopped down on the yellow chair and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I began scrolling through my Facebook wall, ignoring her.
Mama! Why are you looking at your phone? I'm trying to talk to you!
....well, Beatrice (eyes still glued to screen) ... I think your whining was driving me so crazy, I just wanted some distraction from it. I couldn't stand listening to you complaining like that anymore so I took out my phone.
But Mama, she said, tears audibly rising up in her throat. Mama.
I looked up and saw her blue eyes, framed in dark lashes, looking at me so intently.
Mama, that makes me feel sad when you say that. I feel so sad right now!
Oh. Oh oh oh. There's nothing like an I statement coming from an earnest four year old to melt this mama's heart. I put away the phone and hoisted her into my lap and felt her warm heavy limbs sink into me. I stroked her tangly hair. We didn't speak until Gabriel came down a few minutes later.
It was, hands down, a much preferable coping strategy to wearing out my thumb scrolling through my healthy friends' vacation photos. Thanks, kiddo.
