Tag: children growing up

Monday Got Me Good

“How alive your heart to feel such sorrow!” – from Catherine Newman’s bestselling book, Sandwich

So last month, I was out to lunch with two friends and our one friend gave each of us a different book that she had finished reading. She told us to read them and then to swap them. So the other day, my generous book-giving friend mentioned in a casual text to me that our other friend had finished her book. I hadn’t even started mine. So, in a frenzied mix of competiveness and a dutiful sense of consideration, I finished my book, front to back, all on Monday. That book was Sandwich by Catherine Newman, and it was essentially a heart-bearing, brutally honest account of a woman in the exact stage of life me and my friends are in – empty nest, menopause, having the people whom we love on both ends of our lives, slowly and methodically fading out of our lives, in different ways. Being in the “sandwich” stage of life, our adult children are moving out and on, and our elders are slowing, aging and sometimes even passing on. Newman mentioned something about us being at a “fulcrum” stage of our lives. Sandwich was a great, relatable read, mostly in how it touched on the big emotions and the almost feeling of disbelief, which this stage of our lives brings to the table. For me, the book was mainly a reflection of the poignancy of life and the beauty of love and living fully. Here is my favorite excerpt from the book:

“Here’s what foragers know: Most of what grows is neither delicious nor toxic. There’s a whole world between what we call the choice edibles- the hazelnuts and porcini and black raspberries- and say, the destroying angel mushrooms that will shut down all your organ systems after a single nibble. You can eat the grass, the lichen, and the inner bark of most trees, a thousand kinds of leaves. Not that you would, but you could. So much of privileged adulthood seems to take place here, in the space between the soaring highs and the killing disasters. It’s just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subtlety, its decency and dailiness.”

So after finishing the book, I felt a little more fragile than usual. My feelings were closer to the surface and at that moment, I remembered that I had to get six pictures of various stages of my middle son’s life to his future mother-in-law for their upcoming wedding shower. That entailed me and my husband opening up one of two enormous plastic tubs, with dusty lids, in the garage, full of photographs. Photos I haven’t viewed in years. Photos full of my children in baby clothes, and sports uniforms, and prom attire and cuddling with various pets. Photos full of vacations taken, birthdays celebrated, and sweet everyday moments which we were lucky enough to catch on camera, because something deep in us, wanting a sweet token of that simple moment for posterity. The box was full of pictures of people who are still in our lives at all different stages of their lives, and also of people who, for various reasons, are no longer in our lives. There were literally piles and piles of pictures of the life of our family, at every single stage of it. And so yeah, Monday got to me. Monday got me good.

Besides nostaglia, and meloncholy, and wishing that certain things had turned out differently, but also primarily feeling awe and gratefulness for how well most of those “raising the kids” years had gone, I also sensed myself feeling deep compassion for young mother me in all of those pictures. She was much prettier and thinner and obviously more engaged and earnest than I ever gave her credit for being. I was so damn tough on her a lot of the times. I wish I could reach back in time and offer her a glimpse of the grace I feel for her now. I guess the best thing I can do, is offer up that same grace to myself, now, in this meaningful stage of my life, so that when I am elderly and peering through the stacks (or reels) of photos and mementos, I can recognize myself as exactly who I am – a faithful forager, doing my best to enjoy and to savor my “just plain life, beautiful in its familiar subltety, its decency and dailiness.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

I’ve come to learn that being a mother means that you will regularly have a constant stream of difficult goodbyes, starting when your baby first leaves your womb. And from that excruciating, and yet exhilarating moment, the goodbyes just keep flowing, on and on and on. You say a goodbye, filled with light-sleeping trepidation, when your baby sleeps in the nursery for the first time. You kiss your baby a million times over, and you leave a list of reminders, dozens of pages long, when you leave your baby with a babysitter for the first time. You pry your baby off of your leg the first time you leave your baby at preschool, and then you pry your own fingers off of the door handle of the classroom, and you force yourself to go home. You bravely wave goodbye when your baby steps on to the bus to go to school for the first time. (Usually with sunglasses on, to hide your tears) You go through first dates, graduations, and you help your babies unpack for college, and new apartments, and new adventures, and then when you tell yourself that hopefully you have done everything in your power to help your babies be all set for this particular new adventure in their lives, you let go of your babies, and you say goodbye. Again and again and again. It’s a constant cycle of goodbyes, and the goodbyes never seem to get any easier. It could be that the goodbyes are so hard, because we mothers always carry the background fear that this particular goodbye could be the last goodbye to your baby, and that is about the worst thing any of us mothers can possibly fathom. And yet I know women who have gone through the final goodbyes with their babies, and they are here. And they are still filled with hope, and with life, and with brave, openhearted love to give. I think that there is nothing stronger in this world than a mother’s heart because it has to practice the wrenching process of saying goodbye, again, and again, and again, and yet it constantly replenishes itself with love to share, hope to shine, and strength for the future. A mom constantly extends her heart with a firm hug, a pat on the back, and a “you’ve got this, baby” confident goodbye. And then she turns around, she wipes her tears, and she excitedly anticipates the next “hello.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

30 Bags

There is this movement called the “30 Days of 30 Bags Challenge” where you get rid of thirty bags of stuff, in the spanse a month. I have been attempting this challenge, with admitted fits and starts, since the beginning of this year. Yesterday, I decided to make up for lost time. My daughter, who is our youngest child of four kids, is home from college for spring break, so I decided to take on the family board game cupboard, and the kids’ books cupboard, with her help and input.

We ended packing up at least 5-6 big bags of stuff. We donated these bags to our local community library. Despite over the years of my pertinent insisting that our kids look in the cupboard for a required reading book, before ordering it on Amazon, it turned out that we had four copies of The Scarlet Letter and five copies of Othello. Hmmm. Someone must have “lost” their copy of Othello. Still, the library was pleased with the donation of “good” books, and my helpful daughter got the prize of a delicious slice of coconut cream pie, which the library was offering up, in celebration of Pi Day (3/14), yesterday.

Cleaning out cupboards is ordinarily an exciting, satisfactory feeling and overall, yesterday was indeed purifying and cleansing, but this cleansing happened with a big ol’ dollop of Bittersweet soap. Invariably, among the books and games were old notebooks with my children’s handwriting, and a whole shelf worth of yearbooks (which still remain here at home.) The above picture is one which I found in one of my own notebooks, that it appears my daughter had “swiped” (she had written a confession in it – “This is my mom’s notebook.”) My daughter had drawn the picture above in the notebook, which was a self-portrait of when she was a little girl in a quirky T-shirt, that had been one of her all-time favorites. The t-shirt had an alligator on it, and the words, “Careful, I bite.” My daughter wasn’t actually a biter, but we both got a kick out of that shirt, and in some weird way, I thought that it made my precious little girl, safer from would-be predators. (My eldest son was the only biter of our four children, and he only once bit another child, other than his siblings. Unfortunately that one time, the victim happened to be the preacher’s kid at Vacation Bible School. My son’s explanation, while rolling his eyes in exasperation of having to explain himself, again and again: “I already told you, I was pretending to be a lion!”)

So yesterday, after completing the chore and getting caught up on the bag challenge, I sighed a sigh of happiness, satisfaction, and also a little heartache for an era of my life, which has now passed on. I tossed out my old notebook, after tearing out one important page of a cute little girl’s doodle. That page is now posted on my blog, and it also has a special spot of its own, on the side of our refrigerator. This picture won’t be in any of my “30 bags” any time soon. We have room.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Heart-Ached Flavored Gelato

Later today, I will board an airplane and I will head back to my own well-established, mature, and sometimes even a tad staid, “adult life.” I will be leaving our middle son at the starting gate of his own adult life. He will be living right in the heart of a major city, on the 27th floor of a skyscraper. This is something that I have never done in my life. My children are usually pretty adventurous and independent. They know themselves really well. This makes me swell with happiness and pride and even with some relief.

My husband didn’t sleep well in our hotel room last night. I slept like a log. I tend to process a lot of my feelings during an event, and even before a major rite of passage. I am good at anticipating how I will feel, and then marinating in my feelings, soaking in all of the feelings, – the good, the bad and the ugly. I think about my feelings. I talk about my feelings. I write about my feelings. I watch movies that relate to my feelings. I know, and I name each of my emotions, intimately and easily. I release my feelings openly and freely. It is how I better understand myself and my life.

On the other hand, my husband has more of a delayed reaction to even noticing that change is happening, but then I think that it “hits” him suddenly, and with force. I sense that all of his mixed feelings (pride, nostalgia, excitement, melancholy, his own sense of age and mortality, curiosity, loss, hope) are all hitting him now with a direct blunt force. He doesn’t admit that to me. My husband blames his restlessness and lower energy and inability to sleep deeply, on the gelato which we had for dessert last night.

I wish that I could chalk up all of my emotions that I am experiencing right now, to gelato. “Oh, this unleashing of yet another one of my most precious children, fully and freely into the pastures of the wild, wild world, without me trotting alongside, is almost complete. Why is it that my stomach is churning, my mind is buzzing, my eyes are all blurry, and my heart is aching? Oh, silly me! It must be the Dulce de Leche gelato that I ate last night. “Gelato” can be really, really hard and difficult to digest. It takes time.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

That Was Fast

Today is my youngest son’s 18th birthday.  Out of my four children, I only have one baby who isn’t technically an adult.  I have three “adult children.”  I remember for years when older women would comment on my kids’ cuteness, I would politely ask them if they had children and they would say something like, “Yes . . . well I mean, they’re all grown up now.”  When you are in that younger mom stage of life, you never imagine that you’ll be that older mom stammering out an awkward answer to the question, “Do you have kids?”  Yet, now, I am that awkward older woman with four, mostly grown children.

I have even more compassion for that older mother now.  That older mother has seen a lot. She’s been through a lot of joys and sorrows, and hopes and fears.  She’s had experiences that she never imagined having,  raising those kids to adulthood.  She’s filled with pride, joy, amazement, relief, nostalgia and wonder.  She’s filled with hope, awe, curiosity and questions of what to do next. She thought that maybe when the kids were older, she wouldn’t feel so vulnerable, but she now has come to the wisdom that her heart is walking around on multiple sets of legs, and those legs are walking farther away, going on Life’s wild adventures, leaving her heart even more exposed than maybe it has ever been before.  

So now, when a sweet, beautiful, frazzled young mother politely asks me if I have children, I say, “Yes, I have four mostly grown-up children. And they are wonderful.  Enjoy and savor your babies.  They are your most amazing, miraculous co-creation with Life.”