Learning: Back to school

My first real day home alone I spent a good 20 minutes just sitting on the couch staring into space.  It has been years since I have spent any time on my own since having the girls and I have completely forgotten what I love to do, how to be, when no one else is looking.  That is not to say that when i am with them there is a show, but I am aware of their gaze, of their need to see me and be seen by me.  The same goes for afternoons home with my husband.  I am aware of everyone's need to be adored, cared for, and giving it, adoration, is by now, second nature.  Perhaps I should not say "by now."  Whomever finds themselves in my circle will be loved and adored and cared for.  It is what I do.  It is as sincere as it is a defensive mechanism, so much a part of my survival that it is me, even if I wished it were not so. 


I got on the elliptical trainer for 45 minutes while I read an article in Vanity Fair.  I hadn't intended to work out for so long, but the article i was reading was rather long and interesting and there was no one to interrupt me to ask for something, plead for something, need for something.  I showered, did my French studies, ate an apple without sharing it or cutting off the skin.  I did miss Virginie.  She is a wonderful companion, chatty, intelligent, interesting, oh so funny.  Her liquid brown eyes veiled by a brush of gorgeous eyelashes that flutter when she blinks just draw me in.  We'd had fun since she'd started moving about and playing with me but lately I could see that she needed more stimulation, activities, conversations, and games that I could not offer.  She needed to be with her contemporaries and away from her fuddy old mom.  And her fuddy old mom needed to find a place for herself in the world again.


I am having a bit of an identity crisis.  Having seen artists much maligned during my young life, I have had a hard time admitting that my life's work, my true passions have been in the arts.  There was little respect for the arts and creative people unless they were in the big time, and then, Yay artists!  The dancers, painters, actors, voice actors with whom I have shared space know how I have thought, felt, and lived.  I was lead to believe that being an artist, choosing it or having the spirit choose you, was frivolous and careless and certainly impractical.  There is a selfishness to artmaking, however, that is hard to reconcile with being a full time mother.  For me, it has truly been one or the other and for the past few years, motherhood and mommying has taken over. 

In the quiet of the house, I am considering myself again, trying to give voice to the me that is not Mommy and Wife.  I am a little afraid, quite anxious.  Once my mind is allowed the freedom, I wonder how I will be able to juggle the two roles.  Sure that the unleashed beast will have to be tamed.  This morning, on the third day of school this week, Virginie screamed for me as I was leaving, something she had not yet done, and it threw me.  I immediately felt that I was pushing her too soon, too quickly, too much.  She'd said she loved school, the kids, the toys, the aunties.  But she did act out in swimming lessons yesterday as though she needed to control her situation, maybe punish me for leaving her at school days before.  Maybe she just needed a little more time with me this morning.  Maybe I don't have to be so hard on myself.

Today I will embrace the solitude of the morning.  Not just the quiet, but the possibilities.  I have always heard from women, mothers, grandmothers, aunties that I cannot lose myself in family life or years from now I will resent what I'd missed of myself.  I am working on it, struggling through.  It's like learning how to do simple tasks again with the aim of gaining independence and becoming not only a role model for the kids, but someone I could love too.

(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Now I lay me down to sleep

I like the time before the girls, well Lily, goes to sleep because we sit in the dark and whisper questions and ideas to each other, sharing details of the day's events and stories of when Mommy was little and hopes for our future.  Lily is tickled to pieces that I was once a little girl who was learning new things, fought with and loved my sister, Auntie Shayboo, and didn't listen to my mommy and daddy either.  Sometimes.  The time is so special and intimate.  I feel like I am laying groundwork for our relationship.  I have said, and do mean, that I hope she will talk to me about anything and not be too intimidated by my possible reaction or fear of judgment.  I'd wished and sometimes still wish for this sort of openness in communication with my own parents with whom I speak more generally and certainly not about matters that could shatter my heart. 


Tonight, Lily did just that with a sudden outburst and a flurry of tears.  It started with a question about how old she would be when Virginie was almost 4 1/2 years old as Lily is now.  I told her she'd be 7.  She then asked. "How old will I be when she is 7?" and I told her 9 1/2, almost 10.  There was silence.  She said, "I am getting older and older than Virginie every time," and I told her she would always be older than her little sister.  Again silence and then, "I don't want to be older because I don't want to die!"  Tears welled up in her eyes and she bawled and wailed in terror over the prospect.  I was stunned and shattered.  How could I tell her that we were all going to die?  That none of us really wanted to, but that it was inevitable.  I sat, holding Virginie in my arms while she nursed, and bent over to hold Lily close.  She was shaking with fear, her tears dampening my shoulder and Virginie's hair.  I stroked her face.  Kissed her cheeks.  And struggled for the words. 


When I was eight years old, I spent the better part of that year sleeping with the light on and still needing to creep into the bed of my younger sister for comfort as an incredible fear of death and dying overtook me every night.  Every night.  I can still remember the sudden panic.  The realization that at some point, there would be no me.  And I had just come around to connecting to the me that was me.  I could feel the sensation, in that half sleep where we dream and where we go when we are under anesthetic or totally blotto from drinking too much, where you kind of remember and also don't remember at all.  I thought that that must be what death felt like.  A long semi-conscious sleep where you could kind of hear and keep up with the things going on around you, but also just drift into another dimension.  Of course at that time I could not articulate that but I could feel the sensation.  That scared me just as much as knowing that I, along with everyone I knew, would one day pass, cross over, no longer be of this earth.


With Lily sitting before me, clearly in crisis, I wanted to offer her some sort of comfort, but did not want to talk down to her or diminish the seriousness of her concern.  Fighting back tears of my own, I held her and said nothing at first.  I wanted to feel that moment, be there, truly connected so that I would not say some BS and leave her feeling dismissed.  Lily, I told her, I know that it is a scary thing to think about dying.  It does scare Mommy too.  I hope we all get to live a very long beautiful life, one where we can meet all kinds of people, try new things, travel, see things we never thought we'd see.  Things that are breathtaking and inspiring.  Mommy likes to think about the things that make a good life. 

I suppose I could have offered up the perfect Heaven scenario but, to be honest, it never offered me much comfort, only presenting me with the other realization that everyone else was going to die too and maybe even before me, causing me to miss them terribly and convulse at the loss.  I could not bear to bring up meeting her loved ones there when we are all here right now.  She would be completely uninterested in angels and fairies and princesses if Virginie, her Papa, and I were not going with her and truthfully, I don't think she'd really care for that alternative.  She wanted to hear that she could live forever.  That I could somehow tell her that it would be.  She is four years old and a spiritual discourse and discussion of the infinite universes was not going to help her as she lay there in tears.
"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."  It all started with this.  Meant to provide comfort and put me at ease in that I was loved and tended to by God, it actually had me in a state of terror that I just might "die before I wake."  And while Lily and Virginie will probably not ever say this night time prayer, (we say a modified version of it without the dying in one's sleep part) I know there will be more questions, tougher questions, as they get older and life gets more complicated.  I know that even when I am not sure of the answers, when I am pained by the events, disasters, heartbreaks that this thing called life can offer, when I ache with them in loss and celebrate with them in pure joy, when even I am near to tears or they are streaming down my face, I want them to wipe their tears on my shoulder, to wet my hair to dry them.  If all I can give them in the dark hours is me, I hope it is of some comfort. 

I imagine that when we die there is the silence, much like the quiet right before that tiny baby entering the world screams his or her face off, taking that first breath.  On our side, we know that our faces and our hands and our hearts are open to receive the little one and welcome him, care for him, prepare him.  I guess we won't know until our moment comes whose arms are reaching out to guide us, help us on "the other side."  But here, on earth, in this life time?  For my girls, it will be me. 

I kissed Lily and held her until she fell asleep which was almost immediately.  Sitting in the relative silence of the girls' bedroom, holding Virginie's hand, I realized that I have been sweating the small stuff for too long.  Life is just not about middle managing myself, my husband, my children.  I stopped, even if just for a second, to love them, just love them and nothing else.  Rather than shatter, my heart swelled like a deep breath. (c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.