Comfort & Joy

9.22.09
a
It is the first rain of the season. Midnight. And drops pelt the trees outside as a helicopter ruins the night calm and now, too, a fire truck's siren. I am awake, listening, when I hear a yell from my son's room and then "Mom!?" I listen again and hear footsteps, knowing it's not Noah who's asleep outside, but his dear friend Nathan who chose to avoid the wet smelly tent on this sleepover night. He calls out for his mother again as I grab a robe against my nakedness and go to find him. "Barbery?" he now calls, realizing where he is and my heart leaps for him. He's in the play room, looking skinny, and tiny and lost in the dark, his striped rugby shirt soft against his caramel colored skin. He just stands there as I go to investigate, his eyes still closed, his short hair rumpled. I rub his back and ask what's happened and he's quiet a moment, getting oriented now to this new awareness, a sleepover, his mother missing, but me here. I pat his head, rub his shoulders some more as I ask now if he needs a drink. He shakes his head, looking limp, this little power house who never stops talking and moving during the day. "Sometimes, I have bad dreams, " he says. "Yes, that happens. Do you want to tell me about it" "No," he replies a little calmer now as I lead him back to my son's bed. He shuffles as I hold his back, a kid whose parents I never see hug or caress or endear him. I help him crawl back into the sheets and pull the covers up over him, put Noah's funny neck pillow on his head, "for protection," I say. He lets me tuck him in, something unusual in that I always see him on top of the covers. I keep rubbing his back but he's already breathing deeply and my eyes well with tears at this gift, this opportunity to soothe another soul. A little boy is now asleep again, his night fear assuaged and my presence has made a small diference in the world.

I don't know why it makes me cry, this moment in time. There is so much I am unable to do to make the world a right place. I have loved people well, but seemingly not well enough for a few whom I have lost. I cannot take away my sister's pain, or my husband's cold or my daughter's hurt feelings or a friends confusion. I cannot fix my clients in their quest for better health and I cannot be all things to all people. I cannot hold someone who does not want to be held and that is one of life's biggest tragedies. To love and not be able to make whole.

Lady Di felt this was her role in life, to comfort. So did Mothere Theresa. So many of us in the world need to hand out tissues, offer hugs, listen to stories of pain and longing, be there on the other end of the line. We feel alive when we give in this way, when we see someone move from lost to found, from alone to heard. This means we are here.

Hanah and I sat with her on my lap tonight, sucking each other's thumbs like babies. We laughed and looked deeply into each other's eyes, nose to nose as we so often do, skin to skin. I sniff the top of her head and it smells like the back of my husband's neck and the circle feels complete. He is in her as am I and she is the best of us both.

I am so fortunate, that I could have this moment to soothe another. These connections make me feel I am truly here, when I can touch and be touched by another's humanity, be it loneliness or joy. A hug, a handshake, a kiss, a simple touch with a smile to say it's okay. In this midnight hour, it matters not whose mother comes to your side, as long as she comes. And stays a bit, long enough to bat away the empty night.

And All is Right with The World

9.14.07

The other day I passed K-mart and saw a woman breast-feeding proffering her white melon to her toddler as she sat on a huge appliance box. Her family was around her and it was as natural a scene as if she were offering a juice box. They were Hispanic and nearby was a fruit vendor selling the ubiquitous "cocteles" of mango, cucumber, jicama, watermelon and pineapple. For some reason this was comforting and put a smile on my face. The domesticity, the absolute lack of self consciousness, the normalcy in an other wise confusing world these days.

And just now, my thigh feels cooled from a leaky hose that errantly sprayed me while I cleaned the yard. A smell of chorinated water took me back many years to swimming in barge pools on the Seine, on hot summer days and how I loved the feeling of undreassing in the dark bathrooms, feeling goosebumps on my legs and that wonderful hot-cold contrast of air against skin.

These moments are small, yet grand. The ever blossoming Crepe myrtles in teh front yard. A bicycle ride to the park for dance class. Late sun glinting through tree branches as I enjoy a beer on the front porch. My son's spontaneous hugs and my daughter's big eyed love of life that greets each day with non-stop chatter. Eye contact with a client who "gets it." Pastel colored walls of a dream house that could be.

I wonder why hope and happiness comes when it comes. There's so much crap and bad news out there and when time is pressed, it's so easy to miss the marks of joy. I see many furrowed brows out there and when a cashier inquires kindly about my sniffles I wonder how did he learn to make connections, when someone else does not? Who teaches us and how do we learn when our parents have lead less than fully present lives? There are books. There is "The Secret". There are gurus and ashrams and pamphlets and meditation tapes. Catalogues filled with the most fashionable way to do yoga on a Hawaiian beach. And more and more "connection" filled lingo in our television shows, more soul searching themes as we baby boomers kick and scream into the night. Of course, there are many ways to walk through life, with or without embracing it all. And as many ways to live and love as there are furrows and smiles.

My grandmother was a soul filled with curiosity and a sneaky little sense of humor. One of her sons was a grouch. The other, my father, was a lovely soul whose presence was welcomed. He met you with a smile and a hug and made people feel welcome. How did he get that and my uncle not? And sadly, why did said mean spirited uncle outlive my gracious father by 20 years? Is there a joy gene that allows some of us to really see, and in seeing, have it all in this life?

I took my daugther to teh doctor with me the other day, missing a sitter and figuring she would be interested, given her desire to be a vet. I told her to think of me as just a really big dog. But once we got the room she seemed a little worried, so I explained what would be done and she chose to stay, reading her book and perhaps listening. Afterwards, I asked her how she was and she said okay, but I could tell there was more on her mind. I explained that as we get older, things change in our bodies and that sometimes we have to check them out and make sure they're okay and I told her I was okay. She seemed relieved and said, "well, okay because you have to be around during high school so I can get mad at you." I laughed and hugged her and asked her to always speak up if she was worried. I promised I was going to be around a long time to bug her.

Later, I wondered if she was thinking, with this jet speed brain of hers, of my mother dying at 58, just 8 years older than myself. Hanah'll be 16 when I'm at that age and I have often wondered if I will outlive my mum. I've got a few increased risk factors these days for an earlier death than the 99 I'm projected to reach given my health habits and family history. But you never know.

So, maybe these moments are just reminders to keep open to every joy that presents itself. WHen skin feels good to touch, when a hug feels in order, when a gelato beckons or a walk around the neighborhood, this is happiness. And in happiness comes hope for more, faith in that breastfeeding mother and her child and all who come and go around her. Hope for things that feel good and the many someones with whom to to share it all. Our children, our families, our loved ones, our neighbors, our co-workers, ourselves. That's when all's right with the world. When the door is open to let it all in.

The Other Side

9.7.07

I looked up from folding some laundry last night while my son played Guitar Hero and his friend sang Leonard Skynrd's "Free Bird" alongside, and saw that my kitchen was off kilter. It seemed to be slanting and the doorway was on a slight diagonal. I wasn't drunk, nor had my glasses slipped, and we were not in the midst of an earthquake. The whole thing just seemed askew. Yet perfectly normal.

I think it's the normal that threw me there for a moment. The hum and buzz of family life weaves around me lately, catching me around the middle like a weaver trapping a moth with her shuttle cock, passing her threads under and over, colors mixing in a pre-planned pattern, around a flitting fluff of grey. I recently saw a weaver in action in Mexico and she spoke about her art as she wove without a thought, it seemed. She showed me a brochure for some incredible tapestry exhibits that used materials like recycled metal and broad swathes of fabric instead of the traditional yarns we imagine. One piece was huge, 20 feet high, a golden crush that resembled a discarded gum wrapper. I was struck by its incongruity, soaring above a floor somewhere, when it looked like it should be shining in the sun, some snake's shed skin. But then, it seemed as normal as a painting on a wall and I smiled.

The kids are back in school, their packbacks filled with new supplies, their pants a bit too short after a summer's growth spurt. Hanah's skin is tawny brown, my Hungarian roots showing through her derma-layer. Noah's hair has lightened and streaked from his latest effort to grow an "emo", the latest hairstyle amongst his skateboard heros, long bangs flapping like curtains across his eyes. The daily rhythm, up at dawn, of packing lunches and shooing out the door has replaced the summer's sleep-ins as the planet gently turns away from the sun and the light shifts. Our fall is summer here with record heat waves and hot dry air, but my inner calendar is set to autumn and the shifts of a life centered around the children's daily march forward. Hanah, all of 8 yet turning 9 shortly, asked the other day what colleg would be best for her and I laughed. "Wait, you're only in 4th grade, let's slow down a bit, okay?"

Perhaps it's their accelerating maturity, or my crossing the half-way mark or their ever so slight pullings away that tipped the domestic picture yesterday. Judith Warner wrote a book about this insane life we mothers lead, trying to do, be and have it all in the 21st century. We fill up our plates at the smorgasbjord of life and one day it's all too much, or just enough and we can or must put the plate down and pause, lest we drop it and ruin all.

I have a quote on my wall from Joseph Campbell "We must be willing to give up the life we had planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us." What is a plan, but a dream well constructed? Does this mean that we give up dreams so that we can truly be in the life we are actually living? What if one has been asleep in one dream and then awoke to another, one that now calls with urgency? Is that truly the life now waiting for us or was it the life orginally planned? When my kitchen teetered last night, I thought, how did I end up here with all this domesticity woven around my ankles when my plan had been to trot through and save the world? Have I grown up, given up, gotten small? This family is part of the dream I had, yet it also included something bigger. And it continues to beckon beyond the kitchen door, the front yard with its spitbug infestation, the streets of LA with their endless billboard enticements.

Yet this morning the house has righted itself, or I have found my sea legs again in the quiet of dawn's introspective light? And the buzz will soon begin again as kids arise and schedules unfold. This raising of children, to do it well with attention and care, seems a most important task as so many of us end up miserable, endlessly wanting and filling our leaky psychic buckets with food, drink, drugs, the myriad offerings of our market economy. I have some time left to do this job well, yet cannot ignore the other side of motherhood waiting to embrace and assess me. When their energy leaves the house, I must have my own so that this shifting doorway does not crumble.

That, then, is the dream, the life planned, to keep building foundations under those castles in the sand. The Mexican day of the dead celebrates the "other side". We seem to fear it. But daily we die a bit, and yet, wake again to keep living. And so we must. And so we do. And that is the dream. To live. The shuttle cock continues to weave, and we can always change to a different thread with which to create our tapestries.