Delights & Shadows

This morning I gathered with a few friends to pray a Rosary, as we do from time to time after pilgrimaging together to Medugorje this past Fall.

One of them told us that a woman in our community lost her young-adult son with special needs.

We settled into her couches, morning sun cascading into the room.

She continued, telling us that her childhood friend lost her 11 year-old daughter.

We dedicated our Rosary to them - to these mothers whose hearts are hot and swollen.

One bead at a time. Well-worn words. I imagined love traveling from my heart to theirs.

Later, I ran into a woman who told me her best friend was at the edge of death. Cancer (of course?).

She began to cry and I imagined reaching into her chest and breaking off a piece of her pain and putting it in my pocket.

I was remembering summers when the kids were little, and we were together all the time. The summer togetherness of those years swallowed me, like a giant whale, and I sat happily in its belly. And now, it’s summer, again.

My son is out on his electric scooter. Every day he takes off, meets up with friends, rides around our town. I check his phone location from time to time. They pop into Five Below and stop at parks to play whiffle ball. Right now they’re at McDonald’s, 13 and free. It’s summer, again.

My daughter is in our pool with a friend. Yesterday she told me she gave up gossiping, which her peers do incessantly, because in the moment it feels good, but afterwards it feels gross. I check on them from time to time and catch snippets of their conversations. They are talking about sports and birthday presents and camp. It’s summer, again.

Later we will go to our favorite Mexican spot for dinner, with my husband, and I will relish the togetherness, because part of me is keeping time - the mother of young children part. Afterwards we will watch Survivor together, without worrying about staying up late. Because it’s summer, again.

These days, I am reflecting and accepting and approaching change. It is melancholy work, which I’m doing because I want to be free. I’m thinking about this as the afternoon sun shifts in the trees behind our house, and the gap between aloneness and togetherness closes as my son makes his way home and my daughter says goodbye to her friend - their faces bright with sun and smiles.

Last Friday night my husband was en route home from a work trip and our daughter was at a party and our son was at a high school football game. The kids are only 10 and 12, so being out with friends on a weekend night was an anomaly, but I sat in my office sipping wine and paying bills and absorbing the preview of what’s to come - the predictable, developmentally-appropriate shift from family to peers. We’re at the very beginning, just hints. 

Right now the kids are watching the World Series with my husband and I’m in the next room, writing this. My daughter came in a few minutes ago, sat next to me, rested her head on my shoulder and threw her leg over mine. 

We are in the in-between, toggling between tween text chains and long morning hugs. Between playing board games and talking about crushes. Telling us everything and keeping things to themselves. 

On the couch with my daughter, with her leg over mine, I wrapped my arms around her and listened intently as she told me jokes she’d found online. 

What does a bird need when it’s sick? Tweetment.  

I felt the weight of her against me, smelled her shampoo. I willed time to stop. Fruitless. But at least she lingered. 

Last night I found a piece of paper in D’s backpack. He’d drawn a line down the middle and labeled the left column “good,” the right one “bad” and then drawn a box at the bottom and labeled it “so-so.”

He’d written names of several classmates under “good,” none under “bad” and one name in the “so-so” box. 

When we talk before bed, his favorite topic is social dynamics. It has been since he started preschool when he was 3. Part of this is that he’s a quiet, sweet kid who’s attracted to big personalities, and many times those big personalities take advantage of his unassertiveness. One year it was grabbing his t-shirt at recess, so he’d come home with stretched out collars. Another year it was boys refusing to let him play soccer at recess. Then some boys in after-school basketball skipped him in line at the water fountain every day. Stuff like that.

When I’m in the trenches of his bed, listening to these stories, I feel pissed off, like why are these little punks messing with my kid? 

But when I look at it from above, I see that these are kids working out how to be. Kids with strong personalities figuring out how to be kind. Kids with quiet personalities figuring out how to assert themselves. 

D’s little chart reflects him working out the nuances of social dynamics. You figure out who’s tricky, and who your allies are. 

I feel wobbly on Tumblr. I guess picking up an old habit always feels that way at first.

How are you, old friends? I’m about to search you all and see if you’re still blogging.

I’m sitting in my house in Miami. The kids are 7 and 5 now, and the latter one’s been home since Monday with a low-grade fever. She has no other symptoms, so it’s maddening in a why-are-you-home-from-school-with-so-much-energy, you-should-at-least-be-tired-on-the-couch way.

I’m working these days, so she’s been watching too much TV while I get. stuff. done.

I want to blog again. Meet me here tomorrow? 

Now I’m gonna stalk you all. 

Gosh, it’s been so long. What can I tell you? I can tell you that I’m telling stories on Instagram. If you PM me we can connect there. 

I can tell you that we’ve been living in an Airbnb on South Beach since August, and we’re about to move again. This time we will move to a house my husband’s advertising agency owns. It’s a big house, much bigger than any house I’ve ever lived in. It’s two houses joined together with a hallway between, and it feels labyrinthine and hence, impossibly exciting for the kids. Agency folk will be working there, and during Art Basel two artists from Argentina will be living there, too. Ah, what it is. I am grateful for everything, all the time.

Our team will finish our house in January, I think. Every day I go there and walk through the rooms-to-be. 

I am writing. I write an essay and revise it fifty times and send it to my father for feedback. Then I email him and say, Wait! I’m working on another draft. Hold off. Stand by. I revise fifty more times. Some days I feel like I’m drudging through a swamp and none of the words feel right. Other days I cut entire paragraphs and paste them at the bottom, then find other places to insert them where they beautifully belong. Those days I understand how writing is a long, long process involving many days that feel useless but are, in fact, nurturing the coming-together of the “final” words. (Quotations = the terrible feeling that all writers have to revise their work, even after it’s published.) 

My kids are just kids, learning and doing gymnastics, baseball, ballet, robotics. I shuttle them here and there, and make friends in the process. Forever I’ve had people tell me that they think I’m reserved until they know me, and man I tell you I really feel that I’ve come out of my shell--that I’m much more outside of myself and immediately friendly than I used to be--but no. Just this past week I went out with a couple of moms from the kids’ school, and they told me that very thing--that they thought I was all inside of myself, until after many weeks I crept out. We can’t get away from what we really are, can we? 

Ah, I have so much more to say, I think, but it’s late and I’m tired.   

But tonight, while my kids played quietly (?) in the other room, I watched Michelle Obama’s speech. Wow. What an intelligent, poised woman. Her mother-speak had me at hello, and I’m with her.

I have reservations about Hillary. I wonder who she’s in bed with, metaphorically speaking. But I’ll always be a democrat, and watching that speech I was so utterly proud to be so.