Embracing Next

In the escape we get time. One foot in front of the other. Slow, meditative heel to guide the toe. Unsteady at first, because slow is foreign. Our bodies need to be reminded what it is to slow the pace of each step.

Take in the cool water that meets the blue sky. The seagulls cawing out to each other, discussing the days misadventures.

It is here we learn how to listen again. See again. Believe again.

In the slow walk up and down, not allowing the watch or the phone or the screens interrupt.

Just the hard pebbles melting with each foot, willing us to be patient.

Stop. Wait. Stay. Still.

There is enough time if you let it breathe.

The month of April was a full blown gray, drizzling canvas of gloom..at least in Minnesota. If you live in sunny Colorado or bright and cheerful Florida I imagine April offered you a different experience. But here in the Midwest many of us called foul.

No snow? No cold with sunshine? No glorious blizzards with inches and inches of snow to play on and with? Nope! This isn’t what we signed up for.

The first few days of May trickled in with a bit of sun, a bit of gray, and 60 mph hour wind. And then, the clouds parted, the thermometer rose 20 degrees and – boom – summer arrived!

I imagine there have been years when a real spring occurred. Where temperatures hovered around 50 and 60 while it rained at night and the buds on the trees evolved over weeks rather than days. I will hold onto that vision next year when March rolls around.

This was not that year.

This was a year where spring never came and summer arrived early.

I read an article the other day written by an economist who stated, after much research, parents can put aside their guilt because the only decision that matters is where we choose to live.

I breathed a sigh of relief but then…I stopped. I thought of everything I do in the raising of my boys. Everything my husband and I do. Really, none of it matters except that one decision?

Today we went to church. My oldest rested his head on my shoulder. He lifted the program up and sang along to the music while I joined him. My middle colored on the donation envelopes. Our youngest whispered to the middle when it was time to stand up in the service and the middle did – while still coloring in his lines.

The middle served me breakfast in bed that he made all himself. The oldest jumped on my bed and said he was ready to snuggle. The youngest offered me a trinket from his special bowl.

“I’m supposed to bistract you Mom,” he said.

I think of my own mother. And I think of her often, even though she’s been gone 25 years. The impression she left on me is still there, the empathy she showed others, the kindness.

I think of my dad. Vibrant as ever these days. Retirement is certainly not an opportunity for him to sit on his laurels. He has plans. He has life to live and grandchildren to visit. He is also still always there when I need a wise word or a listening ear.

My parents were involved. Loving. They were also imperfect. They learned and evolved.

On the one hand, it’s comforting to know these decisions we make and change later on don’t matter in the long run but on the other hand…I have to believe all this time and effort we take in the raising of these boys matters.

And when I think back on my parents I know it does matter. It is because of all sorts of decisions they made – not just on where they lived – that we are the people we are today.

We are better than we might have been.

My middle and I have covid.

Okay. Nope. Turns out we don’t.

But the tests we bought showed two lines. My heart started to race. All the places we’d just gone. All the people we’d seen. Sometimes masked, sometimes not. I thought of my middle’s teacher who is highly susceptible to illness.

I sent him to school!!

But we tested, and we tested, and I checked temperatures. When is a cold just a cold and when is a cold allergies? Or when is a cold the scary lock’Em down Covid?

This was a new test. One we hadn’t done before. I scrambled for the directions. Yelled to my husband to help me!

He raced in from the wings and fumbled with his phone as I flipped the directions.

“Put on a mask!” He said.

“It’s a new test,” I said, “I think you have to read it differently.”

Did I have symptoms? I didn’t feel sick. Maybe I was one of those asymptomatic people I worried has been walking around spreading Covid unbeknownst to them?

Am I a superspreader!!??

“Negative,” My husband said.

“Scuse me?”

“We’re supposed to scan it in and that’s how we found out if you’re positive or negative. Two lines just means the test works,” he said.

Not Covid. Not Covid this time.

I called my self-isolating middle child back down.

“Take off your mask,” I said, “not Covid.”

I looked at my husband, he looked at me.

“Guess we can get back out there,” I said.

Everyone, back to your places.

When I first moved to the twin cities I was 23. I’d just wrapped up my college years and decided the only way to make it as a writer was to move from my small town life to the big city.

The big city had excitement, energy, and a fresh perspective I’d never fully experienced before.

A year later I walked the streets of St. Paul certain of many things. That my friendship with my best friend from childhood and now ex-roommate had combusted. That depression is real and exhausting. That the 9th level of Marshall Fields is a black hole. And that I had to leave, I couldn’t afford the big city on all I cobbled together while trying to write professionally.

But I was also certain, someday, I would return.

Not because I loved it so much (though I did), or because I had a plan of action not yet implemented (I absolutely did not).

I just knew, somewhere unseen, I was connected to these cities.

I worked and lived in Door County next, Green Bay after that, and Bellingham, MN after that. I made it to Appleton, WI before the wheels started churning back to the Twin Cities.

When my boyfriend at the time was offered a job in St. Paul and he asked what I thought I nodded.

Yes, this was right, this is where he – and I – were heading.

A year later I got a teaching position in a suburb of the cities (after it came down to that position and a position near Appleton) and I nodded yet again.

Yes. It made sense. The Twin Cities hadn’t let go of. There was a long cord attached. I could go and do and move but eventually it would pull me back. It wasn’t done with me yet.

I’ve lived here at least 11 years now – 12 if you include the year I tried after college.

But who I was then isn’t quite who I am now.

Now I live. I write. And I trust that unseen cord that knows best when it’s time for me to return, stay, and, eventually, cut free.

Just like when my boys were babies I park along the side of the road and linger. Except there aren’t any car naps happening. It’s just me attempting to do something, go somewhere, accomplish something.

But I can’t.

Each place I drive to I stop and wait. Park. Let the van run just as I used to do.

Where am I going? What am I doing? Why can’t I do something.

I try to list of what might be going on. Hormones? Sick kid at home (again). Gray days (again). Is this depression sneaking it’s way through my days?

Stuck.

I wish I could explain. I wish I could understand. I wish I could find something that would wipe me clear of this feeling but instead I remain – stuck.

This morning an energy of fury coursed through me. There was no value or reason for it. Yes, we were late. Yes, it was gray again. Yes, my middle complained of being too sick to move (but later moved just fine). Yes, yes. But fury? That felt a bit extreme.

I took deep breathes and let them out slowly. Later I took a long hot shower and allowed all the steam and heat to wrap itself around me for longer than I needed.

The fury remains. It adjusts itself, clears it’s throat, but remains.

So I wait for the cloud to lift. In my car. On the side of the road. Wishing there were children napping behind me. At least then there would be some validation to my entrapment.

When my husband travels sometimes I get a boy who decides to take his place. The other night it was my oldest. Often it is my oldest.

He likes to chat only when it is so late I am tired and irritable and all I want is to watch a show or read a book.

The other night I got smart. I put them all to bed before 8pm and my oldest started the chat. I was so proud of myself and found I could linger with little worry or stress at the time and all I had yet to do before my bedtime.

The kitchen to clean. Backpacks rearranged. Checking off the chores of the boys. Did they pick up the railroad tracks? Empty the silverware?

I could just listen and enjoy.

Then he said, “wait, what time is it?”

And I told him 8:15.

“Really?” He said, “seems much later than that.”

Because for him all the thoughtful, reflective conversations happen after hours.

Later that night he crawled into bed next to me and said he needed more. Of course he needed more.

I told my husband I would talk with him the following day. I kept my light on low and eventually my oldest fell asleep.

I know I will have lots of time for tv and cleaning and chore checks later. But this is what he will remember most.

I love thunderstorms. There is strange attachment to the thunder and the lights striking across the sky. Almost always, a calm settles over me when I see the outward angst of storm clouds.

I am someone who thinks a lot. I reflect. I daydream. I get wrapped up in thoughts that sometimes start spinning.

Life as of late has been especially tumultuous. Nothing horrible, all of it surrounded by joy and gratitude. But there is that underlying panic. I can’t see it. I can’t put my finger on it. But it is there.

Covid is returning? Will so and so lose her cool on me? How are my boys? Are the boys okay? Was that a cough? Where is my husband, safe or stuck at the airport for the night?

The other day I fell asleep instead of going into yet another spin cycle. I was too exhausted to give my mind the energy it needed to run.

When I woke up I wondered briefly, depression?

The storm keeps rolling through. There will be many tonight. But I can see them, hear them, feel them as the drops grow colder and the spring changes on us again.

I will sleep well tonight because, for once, the storm is external. And I am not watching it alone.

This morning, as my oldest hopped out of the van he yelled, “love you Mom!” So all the cars in the car line might hear.

He already said he loved me when we parked. I had said it to him. And yet, there is something in the leaving action that sometimes propels people like him, people like me, to yell it.

It’s important for us who get wrapped up in all the various emotions to make sure the one thing that is heard above the clanging of anger, tears, anxiety, frustration, and fierceness that love is there.

“I love you too!” I said again.

As I pulled away, tears crept into the corners of my eyes.

The day before, my oldest was so mad he slammed his hands into my beautiful new desk. He slammed them so hard I thought there might be tiny divots where his knuckles met the wood. He slammed them so hard I worried his hands would word for hours.

“I am SO angry,” He said.

I’d told him he needed to work on his March project. The project that was due in…March. After all, we were already through week one of April.

He’d been diligent all week but the first draft he’d enjoyed tweaking, adding to, and indulging in the story of, was now long. And part two was rewriting the story after edits from the editor in our family (who is not me).

He broke a pencil. He stormed around the room.

I felt like storming around the room too.

Why can’t you just sit down and write it so we can move on!! Why must you get so wrapped up in your feelings instead of just doing the thing!?

I worked to ignore the nasty voice in my head that wanted to yell and scream and kick and shout, “I just cleaned up puke! I don’t want to have to do this too. I just don’t!”

There really can’t be two people trapped in their emotions in a small room together. Especially because one of them chose this; I chose to become a parent. I wanted to raise children who confidently work through emotions like these.

And once upon a time I was very good at working through my emotions. Once upon a time I also lived alone.

I became the person he needed me to be.

“Let’s work through this, buddy, and get to the other side.”

It took time. I left the office. I returned. His anger worked to break me but the calmest part of me saw a child who clearly didn’t want to be angry.

I took deep breaths. I tried this. I tried the other thing. How long would this go on?

“I just can’t focus!” He said, “it’s too hard.”

I pulled the first draft away from him and sat in the peach chair of my office. I started to read the words he wrote aloud and when I paused I said, “write.”

He pressed his pencil into the paper, his fist gripping so hard I feared he would break that one too. Instead, he wrote.

We continued on like that, back and forth. I read, paused while he wrote, then I read more.

“This is working,” he said finally.

The tension was less. The pencil could breathe.

When all the world heard my son shout, “I love you Mom,” he didn’t mean for anyone else to hear it.

He wanted to make sure I heard it.

But just as my mother came back to me over and over again after I spit words at her and just as my father came back to me after I fought a similar battle my oldest did with me. I will always return to them with open arms and a love that is unyielding.

And, I think, it might have been him reminding himself. It hurts to be angry, to be sad, to be frustrated. Giving love doesn’t hurt, it replenishes our souls.

I am loved. I love.

He leaped from stair to stair up to the school doors as if on air. The cloud of knowing, despite it all, there is love.

I am a rebel.

Whenever someone would tell me what to do I could feel myself closing up inside. A slow shut down of drapes, then a screen, a brick, ten more bricks.

Nope. Not. Doing. It.

Being a rebel mother, then, is cringeworthy when it comes to telling my kids what to do.

First I started with please and followed with okay? To soften the telling.

A parenting mentor of mine laughed when she saw me politely ask my first toddler to put on his coat. Please? Okay?

“This is a child,” she said, “children don’t understand the manners of adults. They only understand yes or no. Do or don’t do.”

I worked on it.

“Put on your coat….”

Dropping the please and okay took everything in my body.

“Wash your hands.”

I kept it simple for me and for them. But, it made a difference. There minds only had so much time and energy for my words. When I got to the point they could get to hanging their coats on the hooks or later carrying their plates to the sink after meals.

I can do this! I thought.

Then I saw my oldest when I started saying, “do your homework.”

His demeanor shifted. The drapes came down, then the screens, and finally bricks.

He is my child, after all.

How do you raise a rebel?

One screen at a time…