radically precious you

Even though I myself have sought out all of the following influences, sometimes in life it feels as if a story is trying to reach you. Like a message is being broadcast, and your job is to listen and make sense of it. Over the past week or so, here are the forms the message has taken, the result being that I am very stirred up, cracked open:

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, read compulsively late at night all week and just finished at my kitchen table while a group of boys organize themselves for a game Gabriel invented in the next room

The prophetess Sonya Renee Taylor on We Can Do Hard Things, listened to on a drive to Philadelphia on Friday

Tracy Kidder's profile of Dr. Jim O'Connell in the NYT Sunday magazine, read in bits since last Sunday

A Man Called Otto, viewed big and tall in a movie theatre of all places yesterday

Going to church this morning with Beatrice, a Sunday service for Dr. King, a gathering of imperfect people imperfectly registering the pain of injustice and the yearning of coming closer to heroic people who have gone before us.

All of these things have left me a bit agitated, shaken. I have been thinking about our radical responsibility to one another, and the radical belonging and love that comes with taking up that responsibility. I've been thinking about how I shirk that responsibility and pretend like I don't know about it all the time, and how that shirking takes a toll. 

I remember telling Mike how, for better and worse, I had been transformed a few months into my first social work job at my old clinic. I could never not see people again. I'd heard too many stories, I'd sat with too many people that occupied corners and libraries and food pantry lines, the kind I once walked past in various cityscapes with just a shiver of discomfort that I would quickly shake off once something else occupied my attention. But now I saw those people everywhere. Did it change my behavior, no longer being able to pretend they weren't there? Not really. Though in those days, I could greet some of them by name. 

I am aware of the times I hold back friendliness and welcome, when I offer a more shuttered version of my face to a stranger or acquaintance. It's because I can sense their need, and I'm afraid of becoming responsible for them - except of course in a real sense I already am. I'm afraid of having to care for them, of having to make more space when my scanty available space already feels paper thin. 

My job offers me a way to lavish people who come into my life as strangers with attention and love, in a way that feels so very right, deep in my bones. Meeting another person's eyes and inviting their truest self to be with me like that. I welcome their vulnerability. But it's safe because there are boundaries around the relationship. My responsibility is limited. As many have reminded me over the years, a therapist is not supposed to take her clients home with her and feed them dinner and tuck them in at night.

And I'm not taking issue with that! I couldn't do my job without those boundaries, and I'm very attached to my job. Plus I have my own dear children to care for at night. But damn if all these stories and voices I've been letting in this week haven't been reminding me that everyone is someone's beloved precious child, just as precious as my own, and I love those three people so much it nearly breaks me on a regular basis. 

Do you see where I'm going? How do we live in this world that tells us it's fine to walk right past another person's pain, when we know in our guts it's really not? And how can we begin to live more aligned with our own radical preciousness, and every other person's radical preciousness, when it's genuinely hard to get everyone ready and out the door in the morning and remember the orthodontist appointment and the work emails and the friends to check in with and find time to walk to dog and there's laundry six loads deep in the basement? And also. I need a little time at night to be with myself in the dark in the tiny glowing circle of yellow cast by the clip-on book light, a novel balanced on my chest, my breath easy and slow. Otherwise I just couldn't do it all.  

I can read late, when the day's duties are done. But then I go and read a beautiful book about a hungry child. Geez. Are the day's duties ever really done? I mean, okay. Time is finite. Love is not. But how else do we express love, if not through gestures enacted within the bounds of time?

I felt like this in my teens and twenties. I think I'm supposed to have outgrown it by now. But since it appears I haven't - and I honestly do feel a little adolescent right now - I'm genuinely interested to know: how do you think about liberation, your infinite connection to others, the ever-present invitation to care? I don't really mean do you volunteer on Sunday afternoons or a write a check to Unicef. 

I mean: what is it like for you to be a precious hungry child in a world of precious hungry children? 

crybaby

Yesterday I joked to a friend at the playground after school that I hadn't checked Class Dojo in a week because I couldn't bear to. Not another bit of school-related app-facilitated information could make it through the sinister shine of my phone screen and into my brain. Thus, Beatrice didn't know to wear pajamas and bring a stuffy for the cozy fun last day before break and was dressed in her customary jeans and sweatshirt. 

Hahaha! She feels left out and it's because I couldn't make myself pay attention. Haha! 

Jokes are funniest when they are true. Uncomfortably so is best. I had arrived at the playground in the drippy cold weather pleased with my decision to take the day off so I could luxuriate in the after school experience. I'd make Bea happy, see friends, and get to feel like the kind of mom who can pick up. But alas, instead I was the kind of mom who doesn't keep up with school communications and whose daughter is annoyed at her because of it. 

I felt that heart-tug again submitting college applications with Frances (why haven't I done more to help?), and watching Gabriel get a ride that I could have given him a half-hour later but not at that moment. I feel it all the time, even though I know that I am doing the best I can and my Oura ring reminds me that I average between 0 and 4 minutes of 'restorative time' daily - meaning I never stop. And I don't like that! I desperately want regular down time, for reading and writing and watching TV and staring at the ceiling and cooking up plans and ideas. I am not proud of being stretched thin. In fact I hate it. 

But even more, I hate that my kids only have me. I don't want them to be made aware of their status as children of a single parent, which translates as having 100% less parental and adult support than they came into this world with and could reasonably expect to continue enjoying for the foreseeable future. They arrived as children possessed of two adults who loved them more than anything and would coordinate to accompany them through preschool tantrums, difficult homework, athletic events, class parties, college visits - two adults that would coordinate in such a way that they wouldn't have to be achingly aware of the sacrifices involved in being that kind of parent, an involved and engaged parent who shows up on time, knows where the game is, can give other kids rides and contribute to the bake sale. 

I know Mike is dead. And I know I am half of the adult force I once was. Yet I can't quite accept that reality for my three children. That stubborn refusal means I feel terrible, just terrible, whenever those brute facts break through everyday life.

Friends will reassure me that even with a co-parent they too drop balls, and can't always make it to events, and generally struggle to balance work and kids. And their husbands are useless anyway! They never remember dentist appointments! Uh huh. Yeah, totally. And I want to spit at them. And cry. Like a three year old who is told her fear is irrational. There's nothing to be afraid of honey! My mistakes and limitations feel like evidence of my children's loss-in-action; theirs do not.

This is our fifth Christmas without Mike, and I feel the pressure as much as ever. If I don't make a proper Christmas for my kids, their half-orphaned status will push against the day from the inside out and threaten to topple all the chocolate and presents and the whole damn tree festooned with ornaments from other times. As if it weren't bad enough to have Papa's stocking hanging below the stairs, empty on Christmas morning. (Though it seems worse not to hang it at all alongside the rest of our stockings). I don't want this holiday to be a shred harder than it naturally is. I want them to feel loved and cared for, to feel joy without the pinch of absence. 

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches this method of self-compassion: when we find pain inside, we can hold it tenderly, imagining it to be a crying baby. There is no need to argue with a crying baby, or to scold or reason or shake a finger at her tear-streaked face. All you can do is hold her gently in her inconsolability, waiting for the distress to peter out within the safe container of your warm arms, and the quiet, fatigue-laced peace to come. 

On the fourth day of the mindfulness retreat I went on last fall, in my growing and unexpected comfort with meditation, I noticed some nasty thoughts come up there on my round cushion. You aren't really meditating, Meagan. You aren't doing any of this, you're pretending to do it, you're pretending this is meaningful. You're not even on this retreat. You are so full of shit. 

Oh man. I felt an immediate, familiar sinking, a heaviness, a recognition. It's so true. I am totally full of shit. I can't believe it. How could I have proceeded this far without remembering my own glaring fraudulence? 

But then, with nowhere else to go, I sank even lower, past the thoughts to a deeper recognition. Wait. Hang on just a minute. These fears are just more crying babies inside! And they need me. 

So I stroked their hot red cheeks, and and held them in my arms. I nursed them, an imagining that brings the same deep embodied calm from the many years I spent nursing the crying babies who live outside of my body. Eventually they settled, and fell sweetly asleep. 

That day I learned in my bones that there is no pain that can't be transformed by love. 

And now, over a year later, when I am a little bit more grounded than usual, I remember that. I do believe treating the pain - the smallness, resentment, grief, and fear I feel for my children (and by extension myself) as they grow up in a community of friends who mostly enjoy two involved, imperfect parents - as the nursery full of crying babies that it is is the only way forward. The only way that promises healing. 

To pick them up, whisper shh, shh, shh in their tiny delicate ears, tolerate their heaviness in my arms. This is so much harder than crying to my boyfriend how impossible this all feels sometimes, or attacking housework with aggressive desperation, or waking up far too early to get things done so I feel some sense of control. I imagine I'll always do those things sometimes. But this season, I want to remember to occasionally pause all the maneuvering, the pursuit of an illusory dream of greater efficiency, the strained effort to be two parents when I am only one. It is advent, after all. I am trying to pause, invite tenderness, and wait.  

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.