the shoe fits

I returned to work today after a good long hiatus. The college students went on spring break, and thus - amazingly - so did I. The two week break can seem almost excessive. I explain it apologetically when I run into a rarely-seen friend at Trader Joe's on a Thursday morning with Beatrice. Yes, yes, I know, it's so leisurely, so long, it's ridiculous.

But do you know, it took my lower back the entire first week to stop hurting? It takes a body a little while to catch on.

And not just a body! In the first couple of days of my break, I hosted Beatrice's second birthday celebration, baked bread and muffins, did countless crafts, pursued knitting, arranged play dates, read many books aloud, and planned our sabbatical year (more on this in another post, I think) with a little too much energy. Totally internet-sick. Three out of five school days that first week were snow days (oh, Maryland!) so I did all this with the kids, at home. I told myself I had a lot of pent-up domestic energies that simply had to be released - in a deluge - but sometimes I wondered if I was also having trouble downshifting. 

Not that I didn't enjoy myself! I did. The smell of baking bread is like a benevolent presence in the  kitchen, and one of life's great pleasures. I made quite a few loaves. Beatrice is a dear funny little creature and we spent a lot of open time together. I went to the gym nearly every day. The sabbatical plans began to take shape, and become exciting. 

One day, on the elliptical machine, I listened to Krista Tippett's interview with Brene Brown. I watched her TED talk years ago and found it terrific (and I am, irrationally, opposed to TED talks as a rule, so that's saying something). Though her name regularly comes up, I seemed to have decided to avoid further contact after that. She's a social worker, like me. I love social workers, right? Yes, I do! Except she's also an accomplished academic, a good speaker and writer, rather photogenic, researches topics that I find extremely interesting, is not much older than me, sells oodles of books, and has a mysterious accent mark over the second E of her name. I couldn't even figure out how to make an accented E while composing in Blogger. 

Maybe you heard the interview. Maybe you've read her books. If so, you might know her story - how in the course of her research about shame, she experienced a dramatic clarifying moment about herself. She had been listing the concerns and values of people who are driven by shame, and thus find less meaning, connection, and satisfaction in their lives: judgement, comparison, productivity, achievement. Without expecting to identify herself in the column of 'don't' words - the how-not-to-live words - she did. 

And that paragraph above, about how I avoided Brene Brown because she reminds me of what I have not accomplished? I didn't really know that, until I listened to the interview. Oh. Yes. I do sometimes measure myself in terms of external checkmarks. And no, it does not make me happy.

When you're home taking care of kids, you can't accumulate checkmarks that the world will admire. The work is internal, and interpersonal, and also, regularly, dreary. Sometimes thankless too. The laundry keeps piling up, the toddler melts into a wailing puddle when she can't have another piece of pie for lunch (it happened), a thousand tiny beads spill all over the kitchen floor, bouncing and shimmering under the stove and into every corner. What do you have to show for it? What will your TED talk be about? Your genius for baked oatmeal?

(That is only a halfway joke. I think I am becoming quite amazing with the medium).

But maybe that is partially what drives Facebook (and why it can really get a person down). If I knew about Pinterest I might have something to say about that too. Goodness. Maybe it's where this blog comes from. That stings a little to consider. I know I wanted to connect. And I know I still do. But maybe I also wanted to make this intimate parenting project into some external accomplishment, to ease the anxiety of not achieving in the ways I had grown up expecting to?

I have a very serious question for you: Does this blog ever make you feel bad?

Would you tell me if it did?

Did I bake and craft that first week with an eye towards productivity? Maybe it wasn't just about maintaining my breakneck pace, but finding a way to justify something so radical and anti-American as two weeks off work that I didn't even ask for. They were simply given to me. A break.

Last Thursday when nap time rolled around I had about ten things on my to-do list. But then Mike asked me if I wanted to spend some time with him. I confess it was hard to let go of my private agenda, but I did, and we sat huddled in the almost spring-like sunshine in the backyard and talked about hard things. Beatrice slept for a long time, and we spent it all together.

The rest of that day I stepped over toys instead of picking them up. I made a great dinner, because I wanted to. I spent some time learning about DBT, because I wanted to. I gave and received a lot of hugs. I definitely ignored the laundry. Spring break had finally worked its restorative magic in me.

funny thing

I found this picture in a box of old family photos a few days ago, and after staring at it for awhile, I put it in a frame. Then I nestled it on the mantle amongst the hodgepodge of family and friends.

There they are. There they were. Just how I imagine them, when I think about my parents and our family as it was when I was growing up. Funny thing #1: they were considerably younger in this photo than I am now.

I took a picture of the picture with my phone, and I put it on Facebook. I wanted to show my mom and my sister, yes, but also - I wanted to show everyone. Just look at them, would you, all of you? Aren't they marvelous? Can't you just hear them and smell them and feel the joke someone is about to crack?

I went to an all-day training yesterday on trauma and attachment. The presenters used videos of actual sessions with couples and families to illustrate the principles of their approach to healing from trauma and the disruptions in attachment that can follow. They advocate an experiential approach, and it was incredibly emotional to watch clients, especially children, open up to pain in order to begin to trust and love their family members. I couldn't help crying as I watched parents hold and caress their children (in both cases, the children had been adopted and experienced early trauma) for the very first time.

I think every therapist in that room felt stirred, and surely all of us were thinking not only of our clients, but of our parents, our spouses, our children.

I was aware of an underlying sense of bittersweet gratitude. I could not help thinking of my parents. I was not an easy kid, and surely they made mistakes. But they were always there. I never doubted their loving presence for a single second, even in the midst of the nastiest tantrums and the worst adolescent behavior. Their unconditional love carried me through a lot, and it still does. When I find the inner strength to resist the lure of a superficial yet heated fight with Frances, while staying put, while exercising patience and love, I know my dad's steadying hand is on my shoulder. (I won't get into the fears about my own parenting - all the times patience fails me and I yell or stomp off - that the training stirred up as well.)

After I put that photo on Facebook, I thought to tag my mom; all her people should see how marvelous she and my dad were on that chilly day, too, right? (Marvelous upon marvelous: she knit the sweater.) After I tagged her, the little white box framed my dad's face, and the "type any name" prompt appeared below. Huh.

It happened so unexpectedly, this other funny thing. I saw his face. Facebook invited me to tag him.

Wait. Dad. ...Are you on Facebook?

As in: have you been here all this time? If I type in your name will you appear? Have you been busy liking and commenting and I just never thought to look for you before now?

Oh, my friends. Such disorientation. I found my footing again, just a fraction of a second later. But does death ever fully lose its absurdity? Would we even want it to? It's too strange to make sense of.

The nice part was that even after I found equilibrium again, I felt closer. Maybe I told him about what happened, about my momentary confusion and hope, and I could almost see and hear him, smiling at me (the smile in the picture!) and sighing:

Babe, I've been dead for almost nineteen years. I'm not on Facebook.

I sure do like that picture you put up, though.

almost two

Almost two for Beatrice means a lot of things. Almost two is alive with imaginary play, and replete with insistence about fashion, games, toys, food - basically, everything - basically, a lot of insistence. It is characterized by a panache for expressing her feelings all the way, all the time, and a powerful desire to connect, to show, to tell a story.

Also, almost two is shot through with an intractable dislike for hats and mittens. Sadly, it is February.

It was about nine degrees yesterday, with a bitter wind. Frances is spending the week with my mom. Beatrice and Gabriel both have colds and passed much of the weekend lying low with play dough and books and games. By around 4 o'clock on Sunday afternoon they really, really wanted to go outside and play. Marisa from next door was over and she and Gabriel quickly put on coats and hats and boots and ran out the door. Beatrice - napless, red-cheeked, slow-moving - whined her way into a snowsuit and boots. I held out a hat.

No hat.

You have to wear a hat today, and mittens, because it's so very cold.

I don't wanna wear a hat, Mama. I don't. NO HAT. 

I tried cajoling. I tried distraction. She burst into tears. I tried the pointless dead end (but hope springs eternal!) You Can Choose route: would you like the blue or the purple hat? She threw herself on me, sobbing. I tried reminding her of all the fun she would have playing with Gabriel and Marisa, once she put her hat and mittens on. She looked at me, snot streaming down her face, resumed crying, and fell on the floor in agony.

Gabriel opened the sliding glass door to ask if I would toss him a fresh pair of dry mittens. Beatrice ran across the room to him, sobbing: Gabriel, Gabriel! I - don't - (sob, sob) - want - to - (cough) - wear - a - (sob) hat! Gabriel! 

I sat on the floor, defeated, listening to her tell him how awful it was. She didn't want to wear a hat, see. Mama was making her, Gabriel, it was so terrible, this insanity was breaking her - she was a shell of a girl.

I heard him get down on his knees and hug her and say: you don't have to wear a hat, Beatrice! It's okay!

As they say in Baltimore, bless his heart. But seriously. She has to wear a hat.

Somehow, eventually, I got the hat and mittens on. We went outside. By the time we'd walked around the side of the house Beatrice had pulled her mittens off. I chose to ignore this. Maybe seven minutes later her hands were red and chapped, and she was crying from the bitter cold. Marisa decided it was a good time to go home, and Gabriel also burst into tears, because he had waited so long for me to come out and now I wasn't even going to play with him. Because of Beatrice. Again!

So that happened.

But then tonight, after Beatrice's bath, she was snuggly and funny and singing songs. She wanted to read George and Martha with Gabriel. She always wants to read George and Martha, as do I, as does Gabriel, as does Frances, when she is home. (It is, possibly, one of the very best books: endlessly delightful, wise, poignant, and irresistible to all three children. Beatles songs are the only other thing we've found that can do that.)

Our agendas were blessedly harmonious. George and Martha are so funny. Do you know the one about Martha opening George's secret box that she has been asked not to open, only to discover it is filled with Mexican jumping beans? And how a yellow one gave her quite a chase?

*

We just love that story. And we just love Beatrice, in all her glorious contradiction and passion and hilarity. Life with her is definitely not easy. In fact, she can drive me completely bonkers. But ah, Beatrice, don't change! Almost two is precious, it is wondrous, and it is just exactly right.


*Frances, are you reading this? Do you see how Beatrice is using your Valentine? We have discovered a new life for iron bead works of art! She presses it onto play dough and makes very satisfying heart-shaped impressions covered in even little bumps.

practice

It's been awhile, hasn't it? And so many potential posts have come and gone in the interim since I last wrote! This past week especially, my mind has been replete with wonderings, my heart full to the brim of feelings. Every morning I seem to wake with a vivid dream still lingering, usually illuminating something that's been bubbling just beneath the surface.

I dreamt I accidentally slept on my couch at work, and woke up in the still-dark very early morning incredibly confused, wondering if I should go home. I didn't. Another night I dreamt I went to see a movie with a friend and as it began, there was footage of me as a child, looking awkward and chubby and behaving badly. I was moritfied.

And so on and so forth! 

I've been thinking about God - how maybe I am very afraid of God, and how becoming a parent seriously ups the ante with that whole (potential) relationship. I'm profoundly grateful, and I have a very rooted experience of how miraculous my children's existence (and by extension, my own) is. But then - they might suffer. Or die. More accurately: they will suffer, they will die. Like me. And so I think I am afraid to know God better, because I am afraid of what He might or might not disclose to me about that situation: the miraculous, so-beautiful-it-hurts blessing of this life - that much more miraculous because of my family - and the fact that it ends. I'm afraid to get any closer. It's a barely tolerable reality from where I stand, which part of me must think is a Safe Distance, because why else would I be out here on the periphery? But it in fact offers no protection. No protection, and no spiritual depth! As Beatrice often says, with great relish, what the heck?

I'm just not feeling brave enough right to edge much closer right now.

So I am being content with what God discloses to me in the faces of others. Which is quite a lot.

I've been thinking about feminism. I've been thinking about my friends, and about friendship. I've been thinking about my work, and what a privilege it is to walk so intimately with others.  Only recently has it become clear to me that what I do is potentially transformative. I've been so skeptical of psychotherapy for so long, it's kind of amazing to stand back and realize I go to work every day confident that what I do matters. (For my clients, and for me). After all the doubt and meandering of years past, the persistent, relentless what should I do? knocking about in the background, it's almost eerie to realize that the old unsettled urgency is no longer there. Maybe I'm just old. That must be part of it. But I also recognize that I am able to give of myself in a way that feels real and meaningful and call it a job and get paid to do it. Geez.

Not that I don't worry that I'm messing up. Not that I don't miss Beatrice during the day terribly, and feel guilty for all the school day things I miss. Not that I don't occasionally itch for more.

But do you know, even though it seems that caring deeply about one's children and deeply about one's work can create impossible conflicts, I think sometimes, on a really good day, the two worlds inform one another beautifully. Beatrice in particular lives so fully present in each moment. She sings and grins and shouts her way through drawing a picture or stirring oatmeal. She brings enviable focus to every new activity and social encounter. When I can settle down and share that focus with her, even for a few moments, it's a kind of practicing.

Practicing, listening, attending. It might make me a better therapist. It might even embolden me to inch a tiny bit closer to God.

Okay, okay, that's getting a bit lofty, I know. The truth is that inching closer to Beatrice, feeling her warm soft arms around my neck and the intensity of her gaze, needs no greater end. Those moments over colored pencils are uniquely, perfectly complete.