Intrinsic

It is said the early years of our lives are the most formative.  Young children, even babies who can’t yet talk, are students of their parents’ every move, interpreting social cues, analyzing facial expressions, documenting how and who to be in this world.  As a young parent by the time this realization sunk in, the window to polish myself up and market only my best qualities to my children I thought might open was painted shut.  They were already knee deep in my relentless drive for perfectionism, incessant impatience, and knew my off-key singing voice. 

It’s also said that as we age, we have a keen desire to be known, and we worry we’ll pass with the very best parts of ourselves still locked inside.  The last page of the last essay in a marvelous collection called “Small Wonder” by Barbara Kingsolver delivers a potent message, “But still I suspect that the deepest of all human wishes, there on the floor of the soul underneath the scattered rugs of lust and thirst and hunger, is the tongue-and-groove desire to be understood.  And life is a slow trek along the path toward realizing how that wish will go unfulfilled.  Such is the course of all wisdom:  Others will see the front and the back, but inside is where we each live, in that home where only one heart will ever beat.”

It’s strange to think that our children can intuitively pick up on so much of who we are, yet we worry that they don’t really know us.  And what of the rest of the world?  Can others glean more of us than we actively share?  Or is it true that we are the only ones who can ever fully know ourselves?

My father has been telling me who he is since the day I set eyes on him.  Overtly, there were those things he intentionally taught as I was growing up.   He ran alongside me holding on to the seat as I wobbled on a bicycle (keep pedaling!).  When he cooked Sunday brunch, I learned how to scramble eggs (it’s all in the wrist).  He bravely rode shotgun offering indelible driving tips (don’t drive over what looks like an empty bag, you never know what might be inside).  We can point to the lessons of the mechanics of life as evidence our views have been shared, the box checked. 

But the lessons of the spirit, taught unwittingly, are arguably more precious and valuable as they allow us glimpses into another’s soul.  They help us validate the deepest desires we harbor and show us it’s safe to bring our gifts out into the world, that there will be a place for them.

My father showed me through his own practice of tinkering and creating that making things brings joy and a sense of pride to life.  I learned that there should be a little corner of the house, maybe a room even, that I can call my own.  The place I disappear to when inspiration hits me and I need to make a big idea real, and in that room I can store all the tools of my trade, preferably in recycled plastic biscotti containers or old shoe boxes carefully labeled in the draftsman’s hand of all capital letters. 

As my father’s daughter I am a collector of anything interesting I might repurpose in some future creative pursuit, and at the same time fully own the fact that I simply cannot throw out even the tiniest scrap of paper as the absence of its beauty is a loss to mourn.  This includes a spool of waxed cord bought at Lee Wards in the 1970’s, or the multi-colored coated electrical wire that came home from the office to be fashioned into bracelets.

I always knew my parents loved each other.   This was not knowledge amassed from proclamations, but rather it came through how they were with each other.   When I was a kid, she would run upstairs in the late afternoon, the click as the plastic blue compact open and shut, a kiss of lipstick and dab of rouge on her cheeks to greet him when he came home from work.   Nicknames for each other that no one else called them.  Him presenting her with a jeweler’s box on her birthday, its contents I was lucky enough to vet during a clandestine trip to the store. 

With my mother’s death, my father showed me how to work through grief and move forward.  I’m proud of my dad for building a new life for himself.   It would have been so easy to hang it up, to shut the outside world out and live in a recliner behind a flimsy accordion door from Menard’s.  In finding the strength to pick himself up and walk a new path, he showed me how it’s possible to have many meaningful and beautiful lives within one lifetime.

As humans we are dynamic and nuanced.  We have a blind affinity for some and can keep others at arm’s length.  Each person we encounter in life responds to different parts of us.  Like facets of a diamond sparkling in the light, what you see depends on where you’re standing.  Maybe it is the only heart that will ever beat inside us that knows us best, but I like to think in the collective, we are fully known.   

Expedition

Listening to the three of them talk at dinner about their kids it hits me hard that there is a generation between us. These ladies I work with are smart, ambitious women squarely in the driver’s seat of their careers while raising young children. And I mean really young children.  Children as young as my grandchildren. It makes a girl feel old and wise all at the same time.

While these women lead teams of people and make big decisions at work, its apparent from the dialogue that they don’t know what to do with their mothers.  This makes me want to listen extra hard. They talk about choosing names for their babies, and the criticism they received or anticipated they would need to live with, why they stayed away from some names they liked, how they settled for second choices, and the fallout from what they ultimately selected.

They share with each other the “advice” they are receiving as they go about the daily business of caring for young lives. The ones who have long distance mothers who stay at their homes for weeks or months at a time are hit particularly hard, exposed to more judgement as there is no hiding what really goes on when you’re all behind the same closed doors. 

They don’t fault their mothers per se for having opinions or suggesting things be done a different way, but they are clearly exhausted from managing not-so-silent partnerships they never intended to enter into.

There are so many stories I could tell them. They are so early into their parenting journeys, at the stage where the primary energy exerted as a parent is the physical care taking. This is Day One in a cross-country car trip. Everyone is shiny and clean, excited for the adventure ahead. Just wait, I think, until the switch flips.  When the natives become restless for more than what the inside of the SUV can offer, when the kids do things for themselves, choose friends without parental approval.  When so much of their lives are lived outside of the car, that’s when the really hard, emotional work of being a mother starts, and if I’m being honest, never ends.

Instead, I tell them my philosophy. As the grandmother, I’m not driving, riding shotgun, nor relegated to the back seat.  I’m not even in the vehicle. I’m at a rest stop, the place where everyone gets out to stretch their legs and have some fun before getting back in the car and heading to the next place. I don’t read the map. I might provide some gas money here and there, get asked for directions occasionally or be consulted on a route. But mostly I come with snacks and a grateful heart. I feel lucky to be here. My own mother didn’t get the gift of being in this world with my kids during the bulk of the childrearing years.                                                 

I taught my kids how to read the map and how to drive. I strived to raise self-sufficient and resourceful individuals who seek out help when they are faced with decisions they feel they cannot make on their own. There were hard lessons in this approach, and we had some serious crashes along the way. I questioned my own sanity when I let the rope out a little too far and found myself reeling back in a bedraggled, hurt and angry soul. I recognize I may not always be the lifeline they call, but it doesn’t matter so much who they call, it matters that they know the importance of having people to call and the courage to pick up the phone.

What these ladies don’t realize yet is that in order to be the best mothers they can be, they need to set boundaries with their own mothers. It’s hard to explain to someone who loves you so fiercely that while she may have the perfect, safe and proven route mapped out for you, what you really want is to make your own.  And it’s hard as the mother of a mother (or a father) to accept that the map your grown child follows may look nothing like the map you’ve been charting for them since before they were born.

The ladies say they admire me for being able to bite my tongue, but I don’t consider this to be the case at all. I’m not trying to get in the car.  It was never going to be mine to drive.

Tendril

It’s June and I haven’t seen a flower yet. Last year’s photos have date-stamped three luscious raspberry-colored blooms on May 30.  I study the intricate web of vines on the trellis intently, spotting a rash of drooping buds. I trace the source to a dead branch, mourning all the lost beauty this late-stage miscarriage steals from my world.

In my quest to autopsy an inexplicable passing, I’m now analyzing the entire clematis network. The three, maybe four, distinct plants at the base are hopelessly knotted together at the top. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was diligently training the new growth to map across the width of the trellis for an even display? I begin to question whether the spectacular show of red, pink, and purple flowers I am eagerly anticipating will materialize. Maybe they are strangling each other due to my neglect?  

Early in the season I always think I can manage the canvas, winding tender strands in and out of the trellis face, ensuring they find a structure to hold onto, but they move with the speed of curious toddlers, off exploring the world around them if you look away for a second. A whispered reprimand echoes in my head: “If only I had stayed on top of it . . .”

The vines have surpassed the height of the trellis, winding around each other, flopping over on themselves, branches ready to shear from their own weight. He says they’re reaching for the sun.  The canopy of our seasoned maple tree shades the trellis now and the vines are searching for the light. I climb a step ladder, a spool of fishing line and a pair of pruning shears in my hand. My strategy is to separate the tangled vines, push them over the top of the trellis and anchor them with fishing line so they’ll continue to grow down the other side.

But the unwinding is not meant to be. These tiny shoots that appear so fragile sprout with a mighty coiling system cleaving them to their closest neighbors, whether that’s the rope on the bird house, the chain link of the pendant light swinging from the end of the trellis, or the vine next door.  

He suggests I cut back the straining vines before they break and I am faced with grieving more buds that will never bloom. This is probably the right answer, and at the same time it pains me, until I consider the stem in a vase of water and the possibility of an indoor show.   

I swear under my breadth in a resigned surrender; somewhat embarrassed to find myself in yet another situation I was certain I could control, the last one to realize it was never up to me in the first place. Like all of us, everything they need to thrive is already within them.  We just need to let them find their way, and sit back and marvel at the beauty and wonder they bring to the world.

Revolution

I remember the days of change-rolling.  Before the financial institutions had electronic counters, we picked up heavy-weight paper sleeves sized for quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, filled them to the top and carefully folded the extra paper over the last coin to seal the tube.  We returned the coins to the bank in exchange for paper money.  The idea that change picked up here and there, carelessly discarded by people who felt they could do without, could be swapped for the rare and coveted dollar bill was a bit magical.  As a kid this was a boon, as a young adult it was a survival tactic.

Money was tight in the early years out on my own, and I was stubborn. From the moment I declared I was moving out to live in a seedy apartment complex I would later learn was a hotbed for drug dealers, I was going to make it, no matter what, without help from my parents.  At first, I played the float game with checks, mailing at the last possible second before the bill was due.  When married life and kids brought severe credit card debt, we upped our game, jumping on the carousel of minimum payments, with calliope music taunting and curse words for the carny who had long left his post and forgotten to stop the ride,   Just when we thought we were at our wits end, one of us would get a good commission or bonus check, the tax refund would sail in or grandma would send a Thanksgiving card with a few bucks for pumpkin pie. 

Thankfully, after fifteen years or so, the scales eventually came into balance. My salary slowly ticked up over time, I made life changes that transformed spending habits, got a loan to pay off debt, and put myself on a path that prioritizes security over status. But those early years were impossibly hard, and I’ve never forgotten them.  There were many sleepless nights, hysterical sobbing when the checkbook was literally at zero, the questioning of my own capabilities to be an adult and manage money.  There were so many times I wanted to admit I couldn’t do it, so many times I wanted to ask for help.

I see the slow rolling boil with my kids. Sometimes it’s about to spill over, and I want to rush in to turn down the heat before there is a mess on the stove. I think I know what’s going through their heads, that they are wrestling with asking for help, but at the same time not sure they want to let that cat out of the bag. Veiled comments hang in the air between us. I’m not sure I want the cat out of the bag either.

I think about what stopped me from asking for help.  Pride, for sure, but also the fact that I believed deep down the choices I was making about what and how to spend money and live my life would be brought into question. I wasn’t even sure I liked my choices at the time; I certainly wasn’t ready to defend what I thought would be judged.  I didn’t want anyone else to know the business of a life I was still trying to decide how to run. I needed my bad choices to fly under the radar until I could make better ones.  I kept it all under wraps and in the process became resourceful and resilient.  In my silent suffering I found my mettle. I cemented my self-worth. I proved to myself I belonged on this planet as an adult capable and deserving of being trusted to care for the humans I was blessed to have under my watch.  When I had a plan to clean up my act that I was confident I could defend and execute, that was the moment I asked for help.

Is my past behavior a predictor of future behaviors of my kids?  Probably not.  There isn’t any guarantee my kids are thinking exactly as I did, but I do know they watched my every move while they were growing up.  They know my methods and my ways.

And so I try not to jump in and turn down the flame when the pot looks like it’s about to boil over.  I remind myself it’s not my kitchen anymore.  They are writing the recipe for their lives with ingredients I wouldn’t necessarily choose for myself.  Some dishes will taste fantastic, others will go straight into the garbage.

They’ll do this generation’s version of change-rolling. They will have sleepless nights and do some occasional sobbing. They will question themselves. It will not be easy, and they will learn and grow. They will figure it out and ask for help when they are ready, when they can confidently defend their choices, and have a solid plan they know they can execute.

Undertow

Is it possible to miss something before you even leave it?  This question pops into my head as I’m waiting for our coffee to be poured and crafted, staring into the searing turquoise waters of the Caribbean roaring into the shore.  Nothing makes me happier than time at the water’s edge. The sea represents unmatched beauty, the full range of life’s emotions from a quiet lapping to thrashing fury.  It can be soothing safety and a risky adventure all in one.  It’s your best companion on the walk beside you and solace when you need to be alone. 

Our idyllic vacation is nearing its end. I’m turbid with ambiguity knowing that more time has passed than is left. While the beauty and excitement I’ve eagerly anticipated for months is still in my face, I hear home beckoning with its soft coo of routine and security and the confidence of “you’ve got this.” I want to go back and at the same time I want to stay. 

It hasn’t helped that Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” found its way into my travel bag. I didn’t realize what this book was about when I packed it, I just knew I wanted to read her work. Almost four hours on the plane was plenty of time to be sucked into the vortex of her self-study on grief after the sudden death of her husband and constant companion of nearly 40 years.

She speaks of all the moments she dismissed, innocently distracted by the busy routine of daily life. She punished herself for not listening more intently, for not taking conversations more seriously, for brushing off the whispered foreshadowing that only hindsight can scream. 

I can be an intense vacationer. I count the days as they tick by. I know what I came for and I want as much of it as I can possibly pack in. I don’t like to rest. I don’t like the business of being inside when my business here is outside. I know I’m only in this place for a limited time, that I need to absorb as much of the magic my temporary surroundings have to offer, in this case sea and sand and sunshine, before they are not accessible to me anymore. I’m compelled to steep in my vacation circus, walking the tightrope of too much and not enough. 

He and I have been talking about dependence, the unspoken turning point in our relationship when we both realized he had me, that he is, hands down, the person I most want to spend my time with.  And it took the ache of absence for me to see it. I remember the moment vividly. He had been talking in what I considered to be veiled terms about leaving our visit with friends a night ahead of me.  I dismissed the comments as they were couched in the guise of allowing me more time on my own and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. When he kissed me goodbye in front of everyone and walked out the door I was devastated. “What do you mean,” I wanted to scream.  “You can’t leave without me.” But instead I kept the peace. Would it send my friends the wrong message about my feelings for them if I objected?  What would it say about this independent woman’s dependence on her man?  

It was a long night alone in a strange bed when it dawned on me: I was already in deep and I wouldn’t be floating to the surface again. 

Always the scout, Didion now prods me to look ahead into an imagined future, one where he abruptly leaves me, this time against his will, in the care of loving friends who don’t have a prayer of consoling me. Will I sit in a dark room again wondering why I didn’t take him seriously when he tried to warn me?

And so I’m cursing Joan Didion a little, for so blatantly planting in my head the seeds of consequence of a true and meaningful love. When we love someone to the depths of emotional dependence, we have no choice but to suffer unimaginable grief when that person is gone.

Love is such a brutal and beautiful surrender.  We think we know exactly where we are in its waters.  We won’t swim out too far, we’re stronger than its current, we can always make it back to shore. We believe we can walk that tightrope of just enough to feel romantically happy, yet not so much to be hurt measurably and irrevocably if it all suddenly disappears.  

Maybe we don’t miss something before we leave it, maybe it’s more about anticipating how we’ll feel when it’s gone and trying to ward off grief.  The impulse is to go overboard, to try to pay rapt attention, to not waste a minute, to savor every moment, but we’ll fail miserably.  The best we can do is strive to be attuned and recognize that when we’re in this deep there is no escaping grief. That’s not how love works. 

Abide

I only cry when I see them together. I’m fine when I am with one or the other separately. It sneaks up on me, a sweet and achy homesickness for a time we can never live in again. Something about the way they are with each other brings me back to the way they were as kids, when we called the house with the purple front door home. I was very deliberate when they were growing up to do everything in my power to make sure that love took hold between the two of them, carefully pouring the cement in hopes of an unbreakable bond.

I’m so grateful, and sometimes amazed, we made it through the hard times. When I think back on my parenting, I wish I had loved on them more. I wish I had more clearly demonstrated my intention to be a shelter, a place where mistakes were accepted, where rescues were generously dispatched, where imperfections were celebrated. Instead, I was too worried about whether they were unknowingly slamming the door on bright futures, blemishing their permanent records with indelible marks, and if I’m being completely honest, lamenting what the latest drama would say about me.

I got in my own way a lot; one time too many when they were hurting in plain sight and I couldn’t see them because I was hurting too much myself, or couldn’t face my own limitations, couldn’t muster the courage to ask for help. And for those times they desperately and effectively hid their hurts; I wish my superpower had been x-ray vision. I wonder if I made a big enough deal in the moments of joy.

They are two very different people. I made a point of showing them that early and often, explaining how they fit together, how the strengths of one complimented the other. I’ll never forget the time at the kitchen table when I was worrying about my oldest, and my youngest said, “Mom. This is how he is.  He’ll figure it out. He always does.”  The faith he had in his brother was unyielding.  I wished I’d had that faith myself. In that moment I understood that they know each other in ways I will never know them.

Mostly what I want is the promise they will have each other when they no longer have me. I want them to remember who and how we were together and be able to talk about it with someone who can laugh at the inside jokes, who can tell the story of “that one time when . . .”, the person who can recall the names of the random people in the photographs, the one who can repeat by heart the burnished phrases that made us who we are.

But I can’t control what happens when I’m gone. I can’t even control what happens now, while I’m here.  We each own our relationships and choose to stay connected and hone them, or not.

This might just be why I cry when I see them together:  Tears of sadness that I can’t broker this brotherhood for them. Tears of hope that it will continue to flourish when I’m no longer able to bear witness.  Tears of joy that love may just have taken hold,   

Incendiary

Rolling up the blinds this morning, I’m not surprised to be greeted by a fresh blanket of snow covering the driveway. It seems as soon as the snowblower strips this metaphorical bed, Mother Nature is standing right behind, folding hospital corners and smoothing over its crisp whiteness. 

When there is literally no where to go, it’s easy to justify yet another snow day, this one to be used for making art.  I’ve ventured into watercolors on a larger scale. Fueled by a Call for Artists for an upcoming local show, I’m moving from the 4”X6” thumbnail paintings I’ve been learning on to 9”X12”, in all honesty, to justify the $30 entry fee (non-refundable whether my work is selected or not). Scaling up is more challenging than I thought, and I’m on my third version. Taking a page from Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolor book, it’s liberating to be able to call these iterations studies, with the same name alongside a unique number.  I feel like a real artist.

"Incendiary IV", 2021 Watercolor

My painting depicts a wildfire; the initial studies created in response to an assignment from my virtual watercolor class last fall.  We were asked to interpret a poem filled with descriptors about color. I chose instead to bring to life excerpts from an interview with California firefighters:  “The flames are enormous now, bright yellow blooms amid pink-and-purple smoke.”  “The skeletons of trees, whole forests, are clearly visible.”

I’m drawn to this theme for so many reasons.  From a purely artistic viewpoint, it’s the opportunity to use bold, bright colors and allow the pooling water to swirl them into new shades.  It’s a direct message about the consequences to our environment, increasingly stiff penalties levied on the complicity short-sightedness for personal gain is driving.And it’s also representative of our turbid times, the pervasiveness of heated debate, and the inability to tamp down the flames.  

This winter's excruciating pain stems, in part, from a lack of connection.  Trapped inside, it’s hard not to resort to our television sets and the 24X7 “news” that seems filled with nothing but sensationalized divisive drama. It’s analogous to lighting a match under ourselves and wondering why everything is burning. I personally struggle striking the right balance between being aware of current events and smothered by the negativity.  I’ve had to learn how to take my own temperature and pull myself from the stifling heat of the oven of myopic rhetoric.

What really saddens me is how the divisiveness is infiltrating our personal lives.  We’re no longer watching a faraway fire destroy someone else’s house.  Our own homes are burning as our relationships become less than:  Either because we are aware friends and loved ones hold an opposing position and shy away from them in order to keep the peace, or we choose to sever relationships completely, heavy smoke rendering it impossible for us to see everything we know and love about that individual.

The idea that we are our own worst enemies, having created our own messes, was recently put in front of me.  It took me back immediately to healing from my divorce, and what a turning point it was for me to realize that wedding vows bind us together to manage whatever life deals us from outside the union; we are not meant to endlessly endure pain deliberately inflicted from within the union. The world hadn’t handed us unmanageable problems, in fact we had it pretty good.  All our wounds were self-inflicted and we were too naive, too proud, too hurt to summon the vulnerability it would have taken to move past them.  We started our own fires innocently enough, stoked them unintentionally and were surprised to watch them rage bigger than we were.   

  

Water is the antidote to fire. Cold the opposite of heat.  Winter a time of hibernation, inward focus.  Can we use this forced isolation to look at ourselves and ask what part we play?  Where are we lighting matches, wielding bellows or pouring gasoline?  How much water would it take to put out our personal fires?  Just like a watercolor painting, this work takes patience, especially at a larger scale. And just like this winter’s snowfall, it can seem like we’re making progress toward brighter days, only to be dumped on again. 

Getting to the finished work of art requires a steady build of layers that need to dry to some degree in between.  It’s the delicate dance of controlled chaos. Thinking we can predict the exact outcome and rushing to the finish we see in our mind’s eye destroys the painting. Human beings striving to understand each other need the discipline and desire to sit in thoughtful dialogue, ask probing questions, alternately layering on viewpoints, absorbing what the other has said.  What gets me about watercolor every time is that the painting doesn't look like much throughout most of the process.  It’s not until the final moments that it really comes to life, and always, always in the most surprising ways. 

What if we discarded everything we think we know about each other, and instead were willing to embark on a journey of discovery together?  Can our relationships be the blanket of fresh snow cover that finally douses the fire, the phoenix that rises anew from these smoldering ashes?