growing older and growing up

When I was a kid, the very fact of time passing ensured that I would become a better me. I just had to bide my time. Everyone knew fourth graders were infinitely cooler than second graders; high schoolers far more sophisticated than middle schoolers. Seniors in college dropped the right names and flashed knowing looks - so to a freshman, all that seemed necessary was to keep on keeping on, and then one day one would also arrive in the land of cool. The very act of waking up again in the morning, one day older, made me one day smarter, one day more capable, one day more independent. How very reassuring! All you have to do is wait. You'll be able to do that when you're older, they told us. When you're older.

I remember the moment I realized that getting older was no longer the equivalent of getting cooler. It was during my senior year of college, waiting to go into a dance class. The accompanist was chatting with the teacher outside the studio and I could hear their conversation. They were both probably in their late 40s or early 50s. The teacher was a small, spare woman with copious amounts of salt and pepper wavy, frizzy hair that ended midway down her straight back and she was listening to the accompanist with her entire body, nodding with empathy and kindness as he talked about his troublesome mother and not knowing how to communicate with her about his current relationship. He looked lost as he spoke. He had a terribly sad face. I watched them, trying not to watch them, and I realized that I very well might be agonizing over my relationships and feeling lost and unsure of the right path to take thirty years hence. It doesn't change! It is always hard to be a person! We are mysteries to ourselves, and at least in adulthood, the simple fact of growing older does not provide much illumination.

I have long thought of the process of growing up as one of becoming more and more ourselves - more and more true to who we really are, more and more able to clear away the junk and express that person with honesty and love. Having the courage to let go of the fear, insecurity, and resentfulness that twists up and perverts our true selves - this seems a mark of maturity. Have we not all encountered people in our lives, especially older people, whose eyes shine with that light - a light of unencumbered being?

And here we are, at the end of a decade; the first that I have lived entirely as an adult. These ten years mark time in which it was up to me to keep growing and becoming; to cling less and trust more, and hopefully shine a little brighter for it. I couldn't rely on the older-as-better rule of childhood. These past ten years included extraordinary change and major life choices. Becoming a parent was surely the most earth-shaking and complete transition of them all.

What I am wondering today, on the cusp of a new decade, is how did becoming a parent impede or facilitate my shining forth? Becoming a parent sealed the deal and turned me forever into a real grown up. But how did becoming a parent impact my actual growing?

This is complicated, isn't it? Do we - especially the mothers among us - become more honestly, truly ourselves while caring intensively for others? It's not just the physical care we provide; it's the total shift in our centers of gravity. I used to worry about me. Now I worry about them. (Okay, I still worry about me - just not as much!)

A few months after Frances was born, I remember realizing with some surprise that I felt gratitude for the way this small person took all my worry and care. Much of my twenties were spent trying to figure out what to do with my life - what kind of work would be most meaningful, where to live, how to balance marriage, work, friendship, and family - and suddenly I was completely wrapped up in someone else's flourishing. I found it exhilarating. I found it to be a welcome respite from myself. I couldn't agonize over a decision for weeks - I didn't have the energy or inclination anymore. It was pretty nice.

Four and a half years later, I still appreciate the ability to focus on someone besides myself. But while I was paying attention to others, I haven't gone anywhere. Living with small children sure does make it easy to ignore problems of my own. Or rather, to put them off until they become so big they demand attention in a forceful way. Raising my children has been my work these past 20 months and there have been times when I wasn't sure who I was - or what I was good at, or good for. Immersed so completely, it can be hard to remember who I was before, what I thought about, talked about, offered to the world outside my kitchen. I am so rarely alone; it can be hard to hear my own voice.

Okay. So there is a challenge - the shaky confidence that undermines the expression of who I really am. But. There are many things my children have given me that I feel deep gratitude for. These gifts connect to the deep down me, and the deep down in all of us. That is why they are precious.

During endless hours spent with my children, I have rediscovered wonder and delight in the natural world, creative expression of all kinds, the joy of music, the beauty of language, a vivid sense of connection to the past and the future, renewed sensitivity to the world around me, the value of simplicity, the presence of the sacred in daily life. I get to play. I have become less able to tolerate dishonesty, violence, cruelty. I experience both rage and joy most days, and countless emotions in between. Who knew domestic life could be so intense?

Being a parent affords a glimpse of the world through a child's eyes. Some of the best parts of us are rooted in what is still childlike about us, and the reminder of this is a pleasure to receive. What's more, my children accept me and even delight in me, in my mistakes and messy hair and bad jokes. I suspect I don't fully appreciate the healing power of this radiating, simple love. As I search for meaningful work outside our bubble, I can only hope to carry my children's gifts with me, lending me courage to be who I am. And with grown ups, too.

things we love now

I've been wanting to share some of these odds and ends with all of you for some time, just some little things that have made our days sweeter - or at least tolerable - depending on how much sleep Gabriel has accrued in the past 24 hours. Oh yes, the sleep disorder has become family-wide, but Mike and I are putting a new plan in action, so perhaps things will improve. It always feels better to have a plan. Even if it doesn't work, or is ill-conceived, we're grabbing hold of the reins and that is reassuring.
But what am I talking about? This is to report on the happy, engaging, merry stuff of our days as we inch along towards December 25th. Perhaps you might take some inspiration from our list - or share with all of us some of your favorite things that have been filling your winter days.

The Nutcracker
Frances, Grandma Lala and I went to see the ballet last year. That was exciting, to be sure, but by the endless little solos of sugar plums and other dancing sweets in the second act Frances was downright limp with the effort of it all. "The is a VERY LONG ballet!" she would periodically remind me, in a 3 year old's stage whisper. This year we read E.T.A. Hoffman's original story instead, with pictures by Maurice Sendak. I'd never read it before. The three of us absolutely loved it. Even Gabriel would sit with us during long chapters because he was entranced by the illustrations of the Mouse King and Princess Pirlipat and all the other creatures therein. There is some odd business involving Blackamoors, and of course the fact that Marie marries herself off at the age of 7 is a little strange too. (Sorry for that spoiler!) But it's totally forgivable, because of the fantastical, loopy, engaging nature of both the story and the language.

Sufjan Stevens singing Christmas songs
This is very sweet and cheery stuff. It can transform our kitchen from a chaotic room in which my attention is divided too many times over for me to complete any one task successfully into a merry, sparkly place where people both small and big break out into spontaneous song and dance routines. I'm still burning cookies and forgetting my coffee in the microwave, where it is cooling for the second time this morning, but I'm doing it all with a genuine twinkle in my eye.

Mama singing Christmas songs
Good thing children are so forgiving. No one snickers when my voice cracks during Silent Night, no one protests when I can't remember the words for the second verse. This morning I rocked in Gabriel's room, snuggling with both tired children, who requested song after song after song. Frances sang a couple with me and that nearly made me cry. Then in the middle of The First Noel, or maybe Hark the Herald Angels Sing, my sensitive boy lifted his head from my shoulder and looked up at me with a quivering lower lip and a sheen of tears in his eyes. Oh, did you get sad Gabriel? He looked back at me and slowly nodded - a tiny bit - and one shining tear escaped from the corner of his right eye. We hugged more and Frances kissed his head and then I kept on singing. All this before 7:30 in the morning!

Ginger Tea
A little cold virus has been softly yet persistently knocking on my door for the last week or so. I think he finally gave up on the door and squeezed in through a crack yesterday, as evidenced by a sore throat, but I am not dismayed. I have ginger tea! Inspired by a recipe in a handed-down magazine, I have a little pot of water and ginger slices pre-pounded with a mortar and pestle (by small, eager hands) simmering on the stove most of the time. The tea is very strong and spicy. When mixed with a little lemon and honey, it makes my virus cower in fear. How satisfying!

Rainbow Quest
Some of you may have linked to Elizabeth Cotton and Pete Seeger on one of my recent posts. When we found that clip on youtube, I decided we needed to see and hear a bit more, and so we've been watching the Stanley Brothers and Doc Watson on Pete Seeger's early 60s folk show, Rainbow Quest. I know I have recently shared our video ban, but I'm no purist, and this is delightful to watch. I am aware that I may be making our kids even weirder ('What are Transformers ? Hey, let's pretend we have no teeth and play fiddle in an old time bluegrass band instead!!). Today I say: who cares! Join me, friends! Let us raise our children to wear lumpy wool sweaters and play the banjo!

...and Much Cheesier Musical Selections
We were the lucky recipients of a short DVD featuring the Music Together Band playing to an audience of bouncing, grinning, unabashedly enthusiastic music directors from all over the country at a program conference. Gabriel has been going to Music Together classes these past few months. To all you suspicious, even snide parents out there - and I know, I used to be one - it really is fun to share stuff like this with your kids. Frances's early years were spent listening to 60s pop music and favorite indie bands (of the de-sexualized, Belle and Sebastian type variety), with a little Bach thrown in. So this is a definite shift. Some of the MT songs push my tolerance level a little, but when I see my children dancing around, it doesn't bother me a bit.
I knew I had really gone over to the other side yesterday. Frances was home sick from school and we watched this DVD together. A bespectacled, bearded man who goes by the name Uncle Gerry was singing in a batik vest - you can see him now, belting out a song about body parts in Spanish - and I was singing louder and dancing harder than either of my kids. Oh, it was fun! I am shameless; I love to dance and sing!

Cookie Cutters
After making these gingerbread cookies and these delicious chocolate-salt shortbread cookies the cookie cutters have been out and about in our kitchen. And so I've succumbed and joined millions of mothers in cutting heart and star shaped sandwiches for my children. (Can we ever go back? I think not.) But since I am a frugal housewife, I insist that the shape be served with the remains. A lesson in negative space, perhaps?
Today I gave Frances her 'second breakfast' - a heart-shaped open-faced cream cheese sandwich, with two pieces of sandwich on either side of her heart. Frances exclaimed: it looks like it has wings! It looks like GOD!!
If some part of God is a heart-shaped piece of homemade lumpy whole wheat bread spread with cream cheese - well, that sounds alright to me.

scenes from the season, plus a little something for poppy

Santa and Rudolph, doing a practice run in the living room.

Our first snowy evening in Annapolis.

Mucking about in the Christmas tree farm mud.

Endless kitchen crafting...

I had no hope of keeping the ornaments on the tree; just in the tree's vicinity.

another dispatch from the greenhouse

I've got another tale for you from life with my little hothouse flowers. I mean, ahem, orchids.

I just read an article in December's Atlantic about the 'orchid' hypothesis - a shift in how researchers are conceptualizing the gene-environment interplay and the way it determines mental health outcomes. Usually we hear about vulnerability; if someone has a certain gene associated with depression, for example, and finds herself in an unstable, less-than-nurturing environment, she is more likely to become depressed than someone without the gene. So, if you have one of those bad genes, do your best to avoid trauma, loss, poverty, etc - because bad genes + bad environment spells mental illness! I think the silver lining here was supposed to be that you can carry a bad gene and have good parents and do just fine, that is, you can avoid the suffering of poor mental health. Our genes don't tell the whole story about us.

The orchid way of thinking about this is that those bad genes are not actually bad at all. Instead we might call them sensitivity genes. The author of the piece, David Dobbs, often uses the word plasticity. Turns out a child with these extra sensitive genes may do extra-poorly in a bad environment, but the same child will do extra-well in a good environment. Apparently Swedes like to talk about dandelion children (resilient, grow anywhere, hardy) and orchid children (can easily wilt, but are extraordinary and beautiful with good care). High risk, high reward. Dobbs places this within evolutionary thinking -- there are good reasons to have both dandelions and orchids in any society, and perhaps we select for orchids because of the high potential inherent in them that can benefit the entire social group.

So, on first read, I thought: well, yeah. Haven't you all heard me talk of the double-edged swords that are my children? How the things that drive me most nuts about them are the things that make them most incredible? Joking about my hothouse flowers, then swooning about their insights or art? We already know this about people. The sensitive types are the ones we want to be our closest friends; they are our kindred spirits. Not that we are all orchids. Perhaps someday we'll all be testing our genetic makeup and then we can reconvene with some hard data in hand, determining once and for all our flower camps - but who needs it? I didn't need Dobbs to report on the varied ways our behavioral genes can express themselves to know that my intimates are both resilient and responsive along a shifting continuum...

But in the end, this research trend strikes me as positive, for our broader conversation about health and for my own thinking. I have worried about my children, burdened as they are with considerable mental health problems in their family history. The deck seemed stacked against them in this regard. I had never thought of their genetic inheritance as a cause of potentially spectacular blooms.

Of course there also seems a risk here of heading back into misogynist traditions of blaming moms for everything; my 35 year old unemployed son who listens to records in our basement all day could have been a GENIUS if not for my failures as a parent! He had the genetic marker for greatness, and this evil mommy turned him into a depressive!

But that is so glass-half-empty of me. Let us instead join Dobbs in considering those risky orchid genes as springboards. Possibilities! Incredible potentialities! And so, dear reader, I will conclude with the promised story from sensitive kid central, aka our house:

As I am drying Frances off after her bath, she asks me what animals we should pretend to be tonight. Sea turtles, I suggest. She likes sea turtles, and so do I. So there is a lot of Mama Sea Turtle! Help me brush my turtle teeth! sort of talk as we get ready for bed, light and silly. We do our story and prayer and song all snuggled up in her bed and then Mike kisses Frances and now it is my turn to wrap things up. Frances is lying on my chest, curled up. Just as I am about to resettle her and turn off her light, she pushes up on my chest and says:
Mama. Pause button. Sea turtle mamas lay their eggs and then go back into the water without the babies?
Yes.
But how long does it take the babies to hatch?
Awhile, I'm not sure.
More than a day?
Yes.
And the babies hatch all by themselves?
Yes, then they flop into the water and grow up on their own.
(Frances's eyes are filmed with tears at this point, and even wider than usual).
But if I was your baby turtle and swam into the water and swam right past you would you even know it was me, your little baby? Do mama turtles know their own babies?
(My eyes are wet and this point and I am trying to laugh rather than cry and so say something like -
Well I would know you anywhere silly turtle girl!!
(but really I am crying with the awfulness of it too)
Mama, that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about real turtle mamas and babies. They wouldn't know, would they? They would be alone!

You're getting the picture. She is hovering about 2 feet above my face during all this, those outrageous brown eyes sparkling with tears and the lower lip is close to it's full-blown tragedy tremble. She is demanding we confront the horror together. If I weren't such a goddamn orchid myself I could have led her into something fun and jokey before we were at this point, staring at each other, trying to be brave and contain all the feelings of the moment (our own and each others'). I settled her down somehow though, with lots of hugs and reassurances that I would love her and know her forever, and finally said goodnight.

In the morning, Frances slowly came down the stairs, waving her arms at her sides, sort of puffing her cheeks out and shlumpfing her feet across the kitchen floor all the way to where I sat with early bird Gabriel.  She did not say a word, but I knew it was my baby turtle, come out of her egg. How did she know where I would be, here in this vast ocean? I held out my arms and told her: I'm your turtle mama, and I am so, so happy to finally see you, my darling little one.