a walk of one's own

At the tender age of 21, I had lived in Brooklyn with Mike for nearly a year when I took my first car ride through the neighborhood. I can't remember whose car I was in, but the vision of the buildings lining Fourth Avenue racing past from behind car windows was completely arresting. I hardly recognized it from that strange perspective!

I prefer life on foot - the scale and intimacy are more my speed. The feel of the wind and sun on my face clears out the inner muck. Arriving at my destination becomes an accomplishment. It grieves me that we spend as much time in the car as we do in our Maryland lives. Every day I drive over the Eastport bridge to pick up Frances from school and I watch the joggers and dog-walkers and tourists with a terribly envious heart. Sitting in traffic, I begin to suffer unproductive fits of the-grass-is-always-greener. I must tell you, they are not pretty, those internal what-if and why-not monologues of mine.

But yesterday I set that aside. It was a rare day in that I was able to leave early to pick up Frances, and Gabriel was still at his day care. I parked at her school, left everything in the car, and I walked. Fast. By myself!

The blue water and open sky, the warm sun, and the elemental satisfaction of moving within them melted the stress of escalating sibling rivalry at home, unfinished Halloween costumes, work to do, dinner to scrounge.

Life with children involves a lot of compromise, sacrifice even. Accepting that and finding the joy within the ever-shifting confines of family life can be a challenge for me sometimes.

But yesterday, I took a walk, and that was good enough. The limitations of my life helped me to see it for what it was - a gift.

a slippery season

When I was a girl, I lived in hot and humid South Florida. I spent a considerable amount of time lolling on one of the swings in the backyard, or draped on the couch belly up with a book, or perfecting acrobatic tricks on the furniture. In my memory the climate somehow facilitated this drooling, staring-into-space kind of open time, but I suspect it's an essential part of childhood that - if given the opportunity - most all kids naturally gravitate towards.

In the midst of one of those happily bored, heavy-limbed childhood stretches, I started to think about the meaning of now. What the heck is now? How can it ever be now, when the moment you think it - or even utter the word aloud - the moment has passed, and you are in the future now, which wait, stop! is already sliding into another future now! Somebody please put on the brakes! I couldn't slow time down to take stock of what now is like. Hmm. If I couldn't describe now, did it even exist?

I conducted all sorts of little kid phenomenological experiments in the quest of discovering now. I was driven; finitude freaked me out. My reality experiments included playing with blinking, trying to feel what it is like to be mid-step with my airborne foot between takeoff and landing, and seeing how quickly I could say the word NOW. If I whispered the magic word fast enough, I might just catch the experience before it slipped away. Basically, I was absorbed in the kinds of oddball behaviors grown ups observe children doing with bewilderment. What the heck was that kid up to? Little did they know, like many a small person before me, I was working on some major philosophical problems!

Nowadays I don't sweat the impossible present moment too much. When I am able to be with my kids in a homemade time kind of way, I sometimes glimpse the eternal now (that whole love is greater than death thing) and it is profoundly reassuring. They give me more now - when I am soft and open enough to receive it - than I could ever capture with my own grubby hands as a kid.

But there is something about the fall. The brilliance, the red and gold of it, made more extraordinary by our anticipation of its rapid passing into the bareness of winter. I do succumb occasionally to that grasping childhood feeling. I want to stoop and collect all the beautiful leaves I see on the sidewalk. Quick, before they turn brown and crunch, unnoticed, under our feet! But of course they will turn brown on my kitchen table too.

And my kids get bigger, and the patch of silvery hair on the side of my bangs grows, and elderly neighbors die. Soft and open, that's what I said, right? Peaceful before relentless time? Sure, no problem.

Today has been a beautiful day, perhaps more beautiful because it is slowly sliding past me. In an open-handed way, I offer you some images that speak a little to what this moment has held.

Halloween prep: Frances' mummy pants are nearly finished. In a rare moment of indulgence, Gabriel and I sprinkled the messy stuff all over black fabric this morning from which I will make his Glitter Dog costume (his concept).

When I consider the evidence, I feel certain that Quadir is the First Crush. Frances brought the picture in today to give to her friend, and I found her arranging those blocks in the kitchen before school. They read Frances 5 Lovey Quadir - though she ran out of letters for his name and eventually made a U out of a sideways C and the I out of a 1. The letters are surrounded by animals, all of them apparently full of symbolic power. I swear she has never seen anything on a public bathroom door or tree trunk reading So-and-So Loves So-and-So, at least not that I know of. All I can do is marvel at all the ways she expresses her love for this kid.

The last flower picking foray. Gabriel loves to use his scissors and so we hacked at marigolds and the pineapple sage's red flowering tops.

We made bread dough too, an activity that used to appeal on a basic baking level to Gabriel. Now that we use the stand mixer, which he associates with heavy machinery, it is a whole new kind of thrill. He stands on a chair and flips the button into locked position, and then makes insane throaty noises along with the machine. He becomes one with the motor.

Does it matter? All these little details? Tomorrow might be different. Frances and Quadir might fight, and Gabriel might not be interested in making bread. Perhaps blogging is like my hands reaching backward to touch all the little nows, one sliding into the next, that fill our days. I cannot resist brushing over them with my fingertips, like lightly running a bouncing stick along a picket fence. I loved you then, and then, and then. Tap tap tap. It's a gesture that seeks to honor the fleeting moment, and then - inhale, exhale! - let it go. 

good clean fun

Which is what all of you deserve after all the bathroom talk in my last post. That was a bit much, wasn't it? All that sweet wondering about blurry boundaries with our children, while simultaneously I was doing some seriously aggressive boundary blurring with you, dear reader. Dragging you into a story that took place on the toilet...!

 

I'm sorry about that. And now...getting back to the good clean fun. Yes, we had some of that today! Frances was in heaven at Clark Elioak Farm, which is where the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes from Annapolis Elementary School took their first field trip of the year. She was elated that the small group I was assigned to chaperone included her beloved friend Quadir and good pal Ali. I was thrilled to finally log some time with all the children and adults I hear so much about. Her brother loved playing with all the big kids. And the day was just beautiful.

Gabriel told me that he wasn't scared of the emu. The goats, on the other hand, had him hiding his face in my sweater.

Frances and Gabriel initiated Ring Around the Rosie, and as they sang, more and more kids came rushing over to join in. It was too much! More kids were waiting to get into the circle when I took this photo, but then we had to break it up in order to visit the donkeys.

Jamari, to my left: Is that a chicken?? That is weird. That's really a chicken...? Man. I like chickens!

Serious hayriding.

While we were in the field picking pumpkins, I showed little Giovanni how pumpkins grow. Even as we were wandering the "pumpkin patch," I realized that most of the kids still had no idea where these stunning vegetables come from, since they were pre-cut and convincingly placed around the vines, most of which were long dead and brown. He was genuinely interested, so we hunted blossoms, pumpkins that were still attached to vines, and even investigated the innards of a smashed pumpkin.

A handful of kids came over to join us. They were so curious, so ready to learn! It was such a pleasure to watch them reverently pass around seeds and touch the yellow pollen on the inside of a blossom. Breathtaking is not too strong a word for the spectacle of such natural learners, immediately engaged and deeply curious about the world and how it works.

Later I realized I didn't see any teachers or assistants initiate anything like this with the kids. They were too busy counting heads. But I also suspect they are not in the habit of working with children's natural curiosity and interest - how could they when there are so many worksheets to complete, so many scheduled activities to squeeze in? Tests loom! It was disappointing to confront the fact that a day spent at a "farm" involved very little ecological exploration with the children.

You've already heard me talk about the lack of imagination I perceive when it comes to learning at Frances' school. It's a bummer, for sure. But you guys. Listen. Today, I saw how happy Frances is. Her best pals are a little boy who lives in the projects and had never been to school before the first day of kindergarten, and a little boy whose parents are immigrants from Brazil and Egypt (who met here, at the local community college). How would she ever know she loved those two, if not for Annapolis Elementary School?

I'm still working out what it is about "diversity" that makes it all worthwhile. That word is shorthand for so much and is sometimes used in ways I'm not comfortable with. Am I saying diversity trumps learning? Goodness me, I don't think so. I do think that Frances' daily encounter with children who are very different from her is proving to be excellent for her developmentally - for the whole Frances she is becoming. If we consider education holistically, I might say that diversity can aid learning. A lot. Frances is slowly but surely learning to be herself, and those little boys are giving her immeasurable help along the way. 

intimacy (in which i defend being a hugger)

It is late morning, a quiet cloudy day. I am in my bathroom, and I can hear Gabriel making truck sounds downstairs. I am doing a rather Papa-like thing: reading bits of the New Yorker while sitting on the toilet.

Suddenly I hear Gabriel calling on his way up the stairs to find me. Mama!! Mama, are you in your bathroom??

Yes!

Did you shut the dark? (Which means did I shut the door to the large closet in our bedroom, the one he has to walk by to get to the bathroom, the one that oozes scary darkness when the door is left ajar).

Yes!

After hearing that, he barrels into my bathroom and throws his arms around the top half of me, sending the magazine flying.

Mama, I had to find you so I could put my arms around you and love you!!

I hug him, hard. He slips behind the gauzy white curtain and laughs big belly laughs as he reaches through the fabric to touch my face. I can touch your nose! I can touch your lips! He stretches the fabric across his face, smashes his nose flat. Ha ha!

I should remind you, I am still sitting on the toilet at this point.

Oh, the joys of intimacy! What new mother, during those misty midnight nursing sessions when she and her baby are the only two people awake in the world, would imagine the ways boundaries continue to blur as her baby grows up?

Of course, there are also the unexpected ways the fuzzy boundaries suddenly become more distinct. Last night during Frances' bath she announced she had to pee. I dried off her lower half and then threw the towel over my head, to give her some privacy. It didn't work. I can't go, Mama. Still wearing my blue terry cloth burka, I fumbled for the doorknob and waited in the hall. When she had summoned me back in, Frances explained that putting a towel on my head is definitely not giving her privacy. You see, you have to be alone to have privacy.

I've been thinking a lot about the fluctuating boundaries between us, and about the necessity of touch as we define and re-define how rigid those boundaries need be. Gabriel had to find me in the bathroom so he could love me - that is, hug me. He almost always says I love you when he initiates a hug. For him, touching is loving. The inner feeling and the outer sensation are one.

We begin in a state of near constant touch with our children. I remember an achy, itchy feeling in my arms if I'd been away from my babies for too long (then, it was an hour - now I get it after a day). The touching is without conscious thought, instinctive; at least it felt that way to me. Brushing my cheek along Frances' tiny smooth cheek, I imagine she felt both the safety of my presence and the extraordinary surprise of having a cheek herself. The sensation of being so near, yet separate.

It is all rather paradoxical; the holding, the nursing, the nearness lends itself to a sense of being utterly continuous with one's baby. And yet, through this near-merging physical way in the world, the baby learns that she has a body. An experience of where she begins and ends, a wholeness and completeness all within the bounds of her own body. Being awash in togetherness forms the foundation of our capacity to be alone.

As children grow and become more separate, they return as needed for the reassuring reminder of togetherness. I suppose the object relations idea is that the original togetherness is internalized eventually. Thus I don't need to drive the two hours home to my mother for some snuggle time whenever being me feels rough and panicky (that said, it wouldn't hurt - snuggling with my mom does make me feel stronger, more capable of dealing with myself, and I'd do it every day if I could).

How I love to watch this back and forth - this ever-shifting together and separate - in my own children! Gabriel was fine on his own this morning, until he wasn't, and then he needed to love me a little to feel comfortable in his own skin again. I marvel that he knows this, that he came to find me, that once he had some together time (albeit in the bathroom) he was ready to head off and play some more.

It is not always smooth sailing. Lately Gabriel is experimenting with aggression and violence (instead of affection) to figure out his boundaries and mark his separateness. I surely prefer him wrapping himself around my leg to whacking me with a lime green rhythm stick while I make dinner. And I do not always keep pace with my children; I hug a little too long, or I neglect to initiate a much-needed hug. I throw a towel over my head instead of doing the decent thing and leaving the room.

My dad was a toucher. He liked holding hands and full-body smashing hugs. It was embarrassing when I was 12 and in public places where other 12 year olds might be, but for the most part I loved how he was so like a large, affectionate puppy. Once Edith told me that I hug just like my dad. I almost fell over. That idea struck me with an accompanying wave of emotion...like him? I do, really? To receive a hug from my dad was to feel loved, completely. Just like receiving a hug from Gabriel. I like to think of some long loving reach, a cool hand on the back of the neck, connecting him to his grandpa.

With every tickle, every snuggle over a book, we give the gift of being a body in the world, with all the accompanying sensations and pleasures that brings. At least I hope we do! I hope the thousands of hugs communicate to my children that they have a whole body, one that is integrated into a whole, irreducibly unique and loveable self, one that will do just fine when - someday - mama hugs are farther than a flight of stairs away. 

(I cannot resist ending with this picture from the days after Gabriel's birth. Touching between these two is a lot more complicated nowadays, but somehow just as essential, as they push and pull and figure out their relationship.)