Category: Pondering Quietly

Some deep thoughts in the shallows of my mind, some shallow thoughts . . . somewhere else.

will and grit and persistence

I wrote this next thinking about a grieving friend at the beginning of the month.  These thoughts did not seem appropriate to send but I like them.  It is me writing to the me of three years ago.  It is the affirmation of that part of the struggle.  That part of the path.  And so —

Again, thinking of you.  Our season is finally changing — snow mounds shrinking and turning a uniform gray, people walking without huddled, squashed faces and birds singing with unbridled enthusiasm.  During the first years after David’s death, changes of season were are hard as holidays and family celebration days. I wrestled with the twin pulls of a past that I could not re-create and a future that looked awfully bleak.  The first fall I wanted to paste the leaves back onto the trees and paint them green.  I did not want David to miss the autumn.  The solace I found was in the center — putting rice into the cooker at the end of the day, running around the block holding on to the back of Julia’s bike as she learned to ride a two wheeler, reading about atypical development in children, walking the dog and shopping for food.  Searching for and then finding the quiet center.  This process of grieving is not passive.  True, some of it seems to require vast amounts of sleep that can be impossible to get.  So much requires will and grit and persistence.  It is work.

Even in the depths of despair there needs to be an ember of wanting some future that will not hurt so much.  To have any less is to lose the future to the past and not touch the present.

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fun

Julia got out of school at 10:45 and I was in a LEND workshop helping to facilitate for the day. One of our respite providers was able to stay with Julia until 2 and then dropped her off at Waisman. Julia hung out and on her iPad while I finished up my day.

It has been my habit to go home after a day like this and have a work night. Math, reading, cello, social studies and anything else that Julia needs to be working on. And a decent supper from scratch or the freezer. We do not take many days off.

And so, we took the rest of today off. We went to a 4:40 show of the Lego Movie and for the first time ever, I wished I was a 9 year old boy who was obsessed with Lego. The plot was nothing to speak of but it was fun and silly and had some really cool Lego effects — my favorite was the undulating Lego ocean. We had popcorn and stayed through the credits. When we got home, Julia dragged out her Legos and went to building — of course, what else? And I made some rice and scrambled eggs with rice. We watched another episode of Star Trek and Julia went to bed. I am looking for fun. Some undemanding, indulgent, un-useful fun.

It has been a long time since fun has been on the agenda. I don’t know if that is mainly because of the therapeutic life that we’ve led or grieving. Or some combination of the two. There is so much work to do but recently I remember weekend afternoon naps while Miazaki was on the tv, walks, just walks, toys all over the house and long conversations with a beer. I remember Julia laughing much more than she does now as a rule. And I can remember this without tears or depression or regret. I can hold the sadness and still wish I was a 9 year old boy. I realize that I’ve never had the discussion with anyone about balancing a therapeutic life with fun but perhaps I need to find someone to have that discussion with.

It is time for fun.

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miracles

I am in the midst of spring cleaning. It is a diversion. I would much rather be working on the garden but there is still some snow and where no snow, there is mud. And even if the mud dried enough to be tillable soil it is too cold to be kneeling in it.

So, I’ve decided to clean. I started on the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs because I usually start downstairs. Yesterday, I worked on the third bedroom, nominally designated Cheshire’s room, but she has never lived there. Her bedroom furniture lives there and some clothes. David took over that room when we moved in because there was not enough closet space in our room. Later he moved a desk for writing. Then a bookcase. When his medical paraphernalia out grew the bathroom medicine cabinet — by that time, I had long abandoned the medicine cabinet leaving only my tooth brush and paste behind — and the top of his dresser, the desk became mission control for pills and charts and monitoring equipment.

I had forgotten how much this was David’s room with Cheshire’s bed in it. All of David’s stuff has been long gone and the room stripped of everything but what belongs to Cheshire. I change the bedding when Cheshire or a guest comes and I lay out my clothes before travel on the bed, but the room could all but disappear and we would not miss it. There are lined and insulated shades on the windows to keep temperature stable when it is very cold or very hot. Yesterday, I spent more time in that room than I have ever spent.

As I moved furniture around to clean, I rearranged. It is a small room, so bed, dresser and vanity have a finite arrangement. When I put everything back against walls, it was probably the arrangement that I used when we first moved into the house. Something — dare I say Chi or spirit or something not of this world, perhaps something inside of me — was stirred up. It was as if there was something stored in this room, something that I could not let go of or something that was not ready to be released. I don’t usually have any emotional attachment to the act of cleaning. I only do it because something is dirty. I like a clean space but if someone else was to do it, I would feel no loss of process. As I cleaned yesterday, I gathered emotion. I was overcome with sadness. I felt an emptiness, a heaviness. I felt an anxiousness. If I could have, I would have opened windows although I don’t think that an open window would have dispelled the gloom. I did not remove myself from the sadness but it was dammed hard to be present to it.

Then, last night, I decided that the room needed to look like a guest room. It needed to be inviting, something that would not be so bad to do for Cheshire’s visits either. I wanted new bedding, the rearrangement of pictures and some retrieved from storage. It needed a rug, new shades and the vanity stool recovered. The room seemed to beg for a happy, bright green, something with stripes, flowers. Something of Mexico and the Caribbean. I began looking at rugs online and found a red rug for my living room. (My living room rug is old and worn, but I had not gotten to thinking about replacing it.) And I found some happy green rugs that would look good in the bedroom.

And then I had to stop myself and take a few very deep breaths. What was I doing? I was looking to bring color and movement and the visual joy into the house again. I don’t mean that I’ve lived with blinds drawn and grey drapes over furniture but everything, almost everything, had had a muted, soft, comforting feel. I have made it that way, left it that way until there was reason for change. There has been very little passionate Chi zipping around this house.

And now I am feeling that it should not be so. Let the shopping begin! Integration, change, healing. It happens when I least expect it. It happened cleaning. It recognized it by wanting to decorate, to shop — activities that I don’t associate with myself. It crept up on me when I I was not looking for it, when I was humming along with some tunes and windexing the mirror. All these happy, busy feelings which nicely coincide with the coming of spring — if and when that comes — may disappear tomorrow. May at the very least fade tomorrow. Still, I am grateful for yesterday and today. For the miracle effectuated by a spring cleaning.

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grieving

Grieving: the state of the journey.  I am writing short emails of support to someone whose partner has died.  I find I care deeply, wanting to ease pain, wanting to stand beside.  Not expecting anything back but enormously grateful that I have something to give.  I read his sparse words and I remember how much everything hurt for me.  I remember how deeply I was cared for Lisa and Marcia and Mary and Amy.  I remember their care as some soft, warm, weightless fabric wrapping around me and holding me tight.  I knew that it was there and I could lean into it.  They carried my weighty pain and listened and listened and listened.  Their insistence on care . . . I wonder if they were ever in contact with each other . . . was almost orchestral.  I had nothing to give back to them for such a long time.  Now I am full of gratitude that I am filled enough to give to someone, even if it is not one of them.

My friend wrote that he missed his partner, “as you do your beloved David.” I paused on an in breath for a moment when I read that.  Miss David?  No, I do not miss David.  I do not miss him in the way of those first days and weeks and months.  I remember missing when he was alive and due home after work although the visceral memory of that takes on the character of a photograph.  I remember what it may have felt like but I can’t quite feel it any more.  I remember those first awful weeks and months of such active missing that I could almost believe, irrationally but somehow not impossibly, that he would satisfy my intensity by appearing.  I remember when missing was the dominant emotion–sometimes the only emotion–I had.  I remember being broken anew each day because he did not return and I was moving further away from him.

And that is exactly what time has done.  He did not appear and the time that has passed has driven me further from the intensity of actively missing someone who will never return.  At some point, missing implies return, at least for me.  Perhaps others can hold onto it longer than I.  For me, the time and the work that I have done reclaiming my life has driven the searing pain of missing to the deepest part of me, so deep that it has become the fossil rock which serves as foundation to the present.  The missing has sunk into my soul and is the warp and woof of the fabric of my being and the weave is tight.  Perhaps this is integration and it comes with some peace.  It does not replace the joy of long-time love nor the possibility of anticipated return but it sits close by.

Being a support, I can I hope for a better friend — strange how I was his partner’s friend more than his.  We were couples friends and there were times we divided along gender lines.  Even when that was not the case, I kept in touch with his partner.  She was my friend. Now, if I am to have a friend, it must be him.  How odd. I feel like I am walking through a door into some new dawn of relationships.  I think of some of the women that I have gotten to know since David died.  Some were already widows or single after separation, two have had husbands die since I met them.  We meet in coffee shops to talk and death is never far from the conversation, sometimes not mentioned but there.

These are relationships not based on death but where death is one of the things we have in common.  Like bad mothers or children in the same grade or gardening.  We have what we have in common to talk about as common as talk about nasturtiums and hollyhocks and signing up for summer camp.  When I reflect, it seems like this is a natural progression but I didn’t know I was getting to it so quickly.  I bumped into someone at the Honda Dealership where I was getting an oil change.  We did the MBSR class together last spring.  She had just returned from a bicycling vacation in the Philippines with her husband.  We talked of meditation and group sits and vacationing.  We don’t have death in common.  The topic did not sit between us.  I do look on her with a touch of envy.  I will never be where she is again.  I know too much.

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boxes

Last night, during a 45 minute sit, the idea that I have lived all my life in boxes that were like the shell-homes of sea creatures who scavenge used shells came to mind. None of the shells fit particularly well, some were awful fits, but I have been so long with these make-do definitions of myself that I no longer remember what it is to be comfortable, to be real. I don’t really know who I am. I cannot define myself and I am baffled to explain how others see me. I could have said this, realized this years ago but I would have then blamed my parents, my mother specifically for trying to force me into roles that I was not made to play and for never supporting those roles which were intrinsic to me. Perhaps that is true for the earliest boxes but I need to claim responsibility for many, many of the ill-shaped definitions of myself. I have inhabited shells of so many sizes and shapes when I could have designed my own. I have not defined myself in my own terms for so long that I have no idea where to start.

I am both eager and scared to leave my ill-fitting boxes behind.

Julia will be fit in no existing box. We are studying for her social studies test tomorrow. The topics are the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Amendments, Manifest Destiny, acquiring the west, wars with Mexico, treaties with Britain and the Trail of Tears. She has memorized the answers to about 40 multiple choice questions. I am not sure how much she understands. Then again, what did I understand about unreasonable search and seizure and due process in fifth grade? She is compliant about the work of memorization that we’ve been doing all weekend and again today. If she was a typical child, I would not question the importance of the learning. I would figure, I did figure with Cheshire, that she would understand in time and the fifth grade test was a training ground for when her understanding would mature and she was able to respond to questions from understanding and not memorization. So, should I be questioning this with Julia? I do.

Sitting at IDS during Julia’s therapy time. Another child, a girl at least as old as Julia, perhaps a bit older, comes out to see her mom. She is teary. She hates group. She does not want to participate with the other kids. There is one kids she particularly dislikes (she doesn’t say who). Her mother calms her down and eventually she goes to talk to the people at the front desk. She has returned to calm and she can explain her unhappiness to her therapist.

I compare this girl’s behavior to Julia’s and wonder if Julia has the awareness to do what the girl did. I don’t think so. Not now at least.

We are working on math word problems. I feel like I’ve been here before. We worked on the easiest word problems before she had all of her facts. Now she has her facts but figuring out what operation to use for a problem is still challenging. We work slowly through each one. Ex.: J has 6 bracelets. B has 4 bracelets. They put them together in a bag. How many bracelets are in the bag. We draw it out. We use little cubes. Deciding on addition is far from automatic. Still, she does know that 6 + 4 = 10. If we can get to an operation, she can do it.

I worry. That I see a limit. I worried that she would never count. Never add. I might learn from that.

I would like to rid myself of worry, of constantly casting into the future. I cannot see any use for it. Especially with Julia.

Especially with me.

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kindness

Last week, in the freezing cold, the eight other kids at the school bus stop stood back to let Julia get on the bus first in order to avoid having her sit with them.  I wanted to do something . . . no, I don’t expect to change THE world or even OUR little corner, but I’d like us to be part of the solution. And so, I put this piece in this week’s school newsletter:

What did you do that was kind today?

Imagine that every parent in our Franklin Randall community asked their child this question at the end of the school day or at the supper table or before they turned out their child’s bedroom light.

What did you do that was kind today?

Our schools do all they can to teach and encourage kindness and to discourage bullying.  My daughter’s teachers at Franklin and Randall have gone far beyond their job descriptions to instill the ideals of inclusion and open heartedness among their students.  And I have often pondered what more can parents do?  How can I reinforce the character building that she is learning at school?

What did you do that was kind today?

This morning I observed once again that the kids on the school bus went to great lengths to avoid sitting with my daughter.

My daughter is one of those kids who will always be picked on and excluded.  Someone will be mean to her perhaps every day for the rest of her life, and she is not the only one.  My heart hurts for her and it also hurts for all the others.  I can’t stop other kids from excluding, segregating and being mean.  As a parent, I’ve felt powerless in the face of mean girls and cool boys.

But I can teach my daughter about kindness.  I can teach her how to create the world that will include, nourish and cherish all people. I want to build on what she is learning at school.  I want her to help bring an inclusive, loving community into existence.

And so, I will begin asking her every day when we sit down to talk about her school day, “What did you do that was kind today?”  I will ask her if she saw anyone who needed kindness, and I will suggest how she might be kind tomorrow.  Further, I will intentionally model kind behavior and I will talk about that behavior with her.

Will you join me?

What did you do that was kind today?

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Again

Written 10 January 2014

In double digits and the year is not quite as new as it was last week.  Our construct of time is a strange entity.  Even though I tell myself that dating is arbitrary and days are all the same, I cannot let go of the sparkle of a new year.  I feel the chance to begin again when everyone else is beginning again.

Today is the first day of my online course with MindfulSchools.org.  It came online at noon and I have not had time to sit down and read through orientation, let alone the first lesson.  I am such a geek!

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Pleasing

I had my engagement ring that was a moonstone in a gold band setting reset.  I loved the ring but my knuckles are bigger than they were 30 years ago and the ring no longer fit on any finger, unless pinkies count but this was not a pinky ring.  So, I found someone to redo it last month and she did a very nice job.  I picked it up on Wednesday and started wearing it.

And no one said anything.

Well, I haven’t seen that many people in the last two days and I am wearing gloves a lot of the time and I can probably come up with more reasons no one noticed but the main reason that no one noticed is that there is no one who is committed to noticing — what I do, what I wear, and how I feel.  This is a time of learning to do for myself and only myself.

It is true that on occasion Julia notices a little bit — a red sweater that she hasn’t noticed before, perfume — but generally I am unremarkable to her.  I could make the same supper for her almost every day and as long as I switched out jasmine rice and noodles once in a while, she’d never notice.  This is not much different from her typically developing peers but a typically developing kid might notice out of politeness if nothing else.  This is a social skill that Julia is very far from understanding.

I guess . . . no, it’s true.  I have been seeking approval and recognition forever!  I don’t mean that I’ve never done anything for myself, of course, I have, but never completely.  Everything was in some way in hopes of pleasing.

Where it came from is easy — mother.  I had a mother I could never please.  I knew that very early but I kept on trying.  However, the more I tried, or rather, when I tired hard, whatever I was trying at was very far from anything that she would ever approve of.  For a child yearning for approval, we were a mismatched pair.  There were very few “good jobs” or high fives in our house. I brought my well-learned lesson to friends and lovers.  I imposed it on David — I don’t think that pleasing him was his idea.  It was very hard on my when he did not like/approve/enjoy because of something I did or some idea I had.

I could go on about this but the present lesson that I am learning is to please myself.  Is this finding myself?  It is very hard.  Having no one to please has left a huge hole in the reason I wake up in the morning — why write, why clean, why cook, why accomplish.  Slowly, very slowly, I feel a turning.  The house is comfortable . . . for me.  This redone ring . . pleases me.  Travel that we do, clothes I buy, the big ginger cat that lies on my lap is for me.  I wonder if I will come to enjoy this pleasing.  If I can just enjoy what I do, how will I change?

Strange new world.

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Grief

Cheshire called a little while ago to let me know that the mother of a dear friend died.  Yesterday, I think but am not sure.  This was someone who lived very far away but we liked each other the first time we met and have been in some kind of touch, mostly sporadic emails, over the years.  I went to her daughter’s wedding two weeks after David died because we had planned to go.  It was a wonderful decision because the family folded us into them and gave to us without asking for any return.  I always expected that one day . . . one day we might spend more time together, might do a road trip together, do a theater week in New York or London.  It is not regret that I feel — perhaps some for not seizing time that we might have spent together — but loss of possibility.

And I feel such sadness for the family.  I remember those days and I so wish I could spare everyone that I care about the pain of such loss.  That sounds so trite, so pat and easy.  Life can hurt so much and there is no getting away from it.

I wanted to send a quick condolence email to her daughter and dipped back into the file of emails that were sent to me three years ago.  My eyes sting, I remember both the pain and the love that was extended to me.  How very lucky I was to be wrapped in love and support as I stumbled from day to day.  I was held up by angels in the guise of friends.

I am too far away to offer any real help and support but I send up wishes and prayers that these friends will have friends who will do as was done for me.

My sadness is deep.  Not near what they are feeling right now.  Not near at all.

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