driving and smiling

Do you remember the feeling of driving at night in the summer, preferably on a highway with the windows down, your hair blowing around your face, the air soft and warm, the radio magically supplying you with one perfect song after another? You might have been 16, or 19, and the person next to you was a boyfriend or girlfriend, or better yet your best friend in the world. You were wild and free, suffused with a tingly happiness, and surely the kindred spirit next to you felt the same. The perfection of that night was motion, being on the way, sliding effortlessly through time and space. Arriving somewhere would have ruined it.

I've arrived here in adulthood. I am in a very definite spot in time and space: 34 years old, on this couch in this house in this town, just a few miles from the Chesapeake Bay, saddled with all sorts of responsibilities the very thought of which would have afflicted my teenage self with a queasiness worse then any case of carsickness.

the comforts of home

Gabriel and I came down with a new cold this rainy, chill morning. Mike volunteered to take Frances to school and so the two of us did something rather unusual. We spent the entire morning at home. The boy is napping now, still pajama-clad, probably dreaming of baseball.

This is what we did:

*colored a cardboard box and pretended it was a basketball hoop, a robot head, and a pirate ship

*sewed together (I added hair to Frances's Gary-the-Monster Halloween costume; Gabriel made grand 3 inch long stitches on some fabric in an embroidery hoop)

*read lots of lots of stories and poems

*ate two lunches, the first at 9:30 am

*talked with Gramma on the phone

*went for a walk in the rain to deliver granola to a friend and jump in puddles

*read lots and lots more stories and poems

Restorative in body and spirit! I'm not sure why it takes a virus to help me sign on to a morning with my dear boy free from work, errands, social dates, gym-going, and general goal-oriented behavior. Goals, I think, are sometimes overrated.

Do you have a sniffle too? Take a sick day! It's a tried and true curative for whatever may ail you, and what's more (as I discovered today), it can serve as a reminder that all sorts of unexpected good and quiet things can happen when we stop trying to make things happen.

you and me and everyone else

As Gabriel (also known as G-Force) and I left a sweet Halloween party with friends from his school this morning, he suddenly looked down at the paper bag festooned with an orange construction paper pumpkin clutched in his hand and said, "Mama! We don't have one for Didi!"

I told him that since his big sister didn't come to this party, she doesn't get a party favor. This one was just for Gabriel. His eyes narrowed in thought as he opened the bag and contemplated its contents: mini chocolate bars, Halloween-themed stickers, plastic spider rings ... in short, treasure. Standing there on the sidewalk peering into the little bag, he became more and more concerned, until the dark clouds lifted from his face all at once and he looked up at me, exclaiming "I know!! I can share the candy with Didi when we get her after school!"

Problem solved. Gabriel finds it very hard to enjoy anything special until he is reassured that every member of his family will be able to enjoy it with him, especially his big sister (this is definitely not always the case with other children). It's akin to how babies who are new to holding and munching food will take a few bites, notice that you are tragically lacking something to gnaw, then grin and offer you their mushy, decimated teething biscuit. It just doesn't taste as good when you eat it by yourself.

Now I know this flies in the face of so much toddler (and adult!) behavior, but counterexamples to the abundant moments of greed and grubbiness that threaten to dominate our vision of what children are like strike me as important to notice. It feels better to enjoy blessings in community. Kids know it, and we do too.

A dear friend asked me recently why I persist in thinking my eventual return to full time social work must directly involve the lives of vulnerable people. Why not do something more creative, more supported, less likely to lead to burn out? Is it some bizarre pathology, am I just a guilt-ridden caregiver? That kind of thing might come into play, but I heard myself say instead that my fate was tied up with the fate of everyone in my community, especially the poor. My well-being is tied to the well-being of people I don't know, people I might never know. I cannot conceive of my flourishing as an independent process.

It's not that I'm particularly good. It's just that when I've worked with poor people, I have understood my life as connected and meaningful. Not that it isn't now. Taking care of babies and young children is living in a state of uber-connection! But it's an inward-looking time, and as my children grow older and more independent, I find myself looking outward direction more often, wondering about all the people in this town that I drive by on the way to school and Whole Foods and Halloween parties.  

The question for me these days is how I want to be a social worker again: doctoral program or grassroots advocacy? Figuring out the path ahead (which I may not actually set foot upon for a very long time) is also about recalibrating the shifting balance in my life of inward and outward, family and community, giving and receiving. (Throw in the mix that fact that I am also trying and failing to quiet irrational dreams of a third baby in the midst of all this reflection on what is important for me to do as a social worker. Conflicting desires, my friends! I suffer a comically persistent case of conflicting desires.)

When we picked up Frances, there was a small farmers market operating in the parking lot. She discovered there was a big jar of candy on offer, and darted between grown ups to fetch two purple boxes of Nerds, one for her and one for her brother. Then Gabriel passed her his bag of treats from the morning. It was a fine, happy rainy afternoon. We begin with our families, and that is as it should be. But when is it time to reach out beyond this safe and loving place, and risk offering our treasures to a stranger?

what a poem can do

Driving with Gabriel to pick up Frances from school today, I listened to poet Marie Howe on Fresh Air. As we pulled into the parking lot, she read a poem called "What the Living Do," which she wrote as a letter to her brother John who had died from AIDS-related complications years before. Here it is:

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.

And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.
-from What the Living Do: Poems 

It is incredible to me how a particular collection of words spoken in a particular voice can change everything. We sat in the car and listened to her finish the poem, then I turned the key and the car was quiet. I sat in the stillness and warmth, and turned to look back at Gabriel, who I had woken from a nap only minutes earlier. He looked back at me. "That was a nice poem," I said, trying to acknowledge the beauty without succumbing to the emotion I felt in my tightening throat. 

(I remember you. By now we all have a you to remember, I think.)

He nodded his assent. I got out of the car into the day that had turned windy and cold, opened the back door,  unbuckled his car seat, and lifted him out. I don't get to carry my big three-and-a-half year old as much as I'd like, but today, still warm from sleep, Gabriel remained heavy in my arms. His head fit just so on my shoulder and his legs wrapped around me, fitting along the slight indentation above my hips.

As I walked, I pulled his sweatshirt hood up to cover his exposed neck and protect it from the cold. His body, shielding me from the wind, was perfect in its completeness and in that moment my body participated in that perfection because of the way we fitted together seamlessly. Most of the time, I want more and more and then more of it--but not then.

The warmth and weight of him all around me, amidst the first fall day that hinted at winter's rawness, and right there in the middle of so many yelling children and smiling teachers and chatting parents I was gripped by a cherishing so deep. For me, and for the me that is me-and-them. When Frances emerged from her classroom I wanted to run to her.

She ran to me instead.