My favorite

Her little hand slips into mine. Her face, lit by the sun, turns up to me. "Mama?"

I smile back down at her, wondering what's on her mind. "Yes?" 

"You're my favorite mama ever." 

In an instant, a thousand emotions descend.

Joy. It arrives first, my heart bursting with beauty of this moment. The day is ordinary, but this little girl is not. She is born from a thousand heartaches, and she is here, with me, right now.  She is everything I hoped for, and she is so much more.

Nostalgia. I flash back to an earlier time I heard words such as these.  I am standing in my childhood home, another ordinary day.  My mom, as though it was an afterthought: "Did you know you're one of my favorite people?"

Grief. For all that my mom does not know. For the first steps, and the first words and the first days of school that she did not see. For the sudden knowledge that, if she was here, she would surely be saying to this beautiful girl of mine: "Did you know? Did you know that you are one of my favorite girls in the whole world?"  

Fear. Because what is given can be taken away. Because while the world holds indescribable beauty, it also carries incomprehensible pain. Because loss still simmers beneath all I do. I've already lost one of my favorite people. What if I lose another?

The fear pushes against me. It rises up and through and around. Suddenly, it's all I see.

So I search for love.  The only antidote to fear I've ever known.

I look into my daughter's face, her eyes radiating with joy. I smell her sweet skin, and kiss her perfect nose. I wrap her in my arms and whisper, "You're my favorite, too."

And the whole world is right again.

Say something, I'm giving up on you...

 

When I first heard this song, I cried.  So many of life’s losses, so perfectly captured in one heart-breaking song. 

As I read the comments on the song, one in particular stood out: “No no no,” it read.  “The old man in the video isn’t giving up on his wife.  You would never give up on someone you love.”

If only it were that simple.  It’s not, of course, and that’s the reason this song resonates so deeply.  Giving up on someone you love is exactly what it’s about. It’s about the impossibility of walking away from something you love with all your heart.  It’s about letting go, while frantically wishing you could hold on.  

I can clearly recall the very moment when I gave up on my mom. The cancer, never really gone, had returned in full force to ravage her body.  She was sick, so sick, in terrible pain, and lost in a haze of medication-induced confusion.  Her doctor wanted to know if we would authorize another round of chemo. Despite the sliver of hope the chemo would provide, we all knew what the decision had to be. Our answer was no.

I can still feel the impossibly complicated emotions flooding around me …. fear… despair….relief.   Relief that she would die.  In part, my relief was for her. She would be free again – free of pain and fear and all the restrictions of an earthbound life.  But in part, my relief was for me.  I, too, would be free … of hospitals and sickness and the terrible anxiety that came with watching my mom die while knowing I could not make her better.

And in that terrible moment of letting go, I desperately, wildly wanted her to stay. 

Say something, I’m giving up on you.

You're the one that I love...

And I'm saying good-bye.

Feeling Joy

A couple years ago, I posted about my method for finding joy. A lot has happened between then and now, but I haven't lost sight of this simple goal. And actually, I've gotten pretty good at finding joy, mainly because my life is chock full of a multitude of joys right now: two beautiful,  healthy children who I truly enjoy getting to know as people, a new job in which I thrive and grow and inspire others to do the same, a husband who is still my best friend, and true girlfriends who make me laugh until my side hurts.

When I posted about finding joy, I also mentioned feeling joy.  There are many things I (try to) do to keep perspective so that I can feel all the joy in my life: writing, walking, breathing, reading, and, lately, meditating.  Each of these helps me to find perspective, to slow down and remember to see the beauty that exists among the chaos and monotony of everyday life. 

Still, though, even after going through my joy list, I occasionally find myself lacking. There is something that runs beneath my life and pulls me back from fully leaning in. Something that nibbles at the edges of my joy, urging me to push it down, just a little, lest it be taken away from me.

It's sneaky, though. In fact, it's so subtle, that I didn't even really see it until recently, when I was reading Brene Brown's Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, and Lead.  Brene is part researcher and part storyteller; her research revolves around vulnerability, shame, and courage.  I first came across her work in her T.E.D. talk The Power of Vulnerability. It resonated deeply with me, as has my journey through her book.

In the book, Brene talks about how she will sometimes stand in front of her children, sleeping in their beds, and ponder how amazingly blessed she is. At which point she will immediately and vividly envision some terrible fate arriving at their doorstep, taking it all way.

And I thought: Holy crap. I do that.

Like last night, when I was laying in bed after a wonderfully fulfilling day with my children. I was reflecting on how good life was when I had the sudden realization that, if I got cancer and died right now, my baby girl wouldn't even remember me.  It was such an awful, heart-breaking thought that I had to get out of bed and find something else to do. 

Most of the time, my fear doesn't show up in horrible visions of planes crashing or houses burning or cancer taking lives. It's not like I walk around in the midst of an major meltdown, fending off anxiety attacks left and right (I did when I was pregnant, but that's a whole different story). It's much more subtle than that.  It's more of a backing off, a stepping away, an invisible shield that rises between the life I'm building and my engagement in it.

Brene explains that this method of protection, which she calls "foreboding joy," exists among many of us. And she says it has a whole lot to with vulnerability.  To be lost in a moment of joy is to be vulnerable. Open. Soft. Unprotected. So we unconsciously try to beat life to the punch; we imagine the bad things that could happen as a way of protecting ourselves if they do.

In the end, of course, we can never prevent the bad things from happening.  Instead, we're only preventing ourselves from truly feeling the love that exists within each moment; from fully accessing the joy that is right there in front of us.

Brene's solution? Gratitude. In her book, she talks about how to use gratitude inside those moments when we are trying to access joy but find ourselves facing only fear and impulses to control.  As soon as she feels a "shudder of vulnerability," she uses it as a trigger to acknowledge her gratitude.  In that moment, she turns the fear around by fully acknowledging all for which she is grateful, right there, right then.

I tried this today at the park. It was a gorgeous day and my children, bellies full of ice cream and hearts full of love, were skipping ahead on the path in front of me.  Watching them, I was overcome with the beauty of it all. For a moment.  Then slight feelings of discomfort starting creeping in. I thought of the book. I thought of my life.  And I silently repeated to myself:

I am grateful.

I am grateful.

I am so, so grateful.

And I was.

A Safe Place To Fall

I tried something new at my daughter's gymnastics class this morning. Instead of joining her 3-year-old class on the floor, I stayed back to watch her from a distance.  In previous sessions, I had stayed by her side, guiding her through the motions and encouraging her along the way. This morning, though, felt different. She seemed more confident, more ready to conquer the class on her own. Off she ran, ponytail bouncing, to take on the world.

At one point during the morning, I stood watching her struggle on the balance beam. Even though the beam was no more than two feet off the floor, the fear on her face was clear.  Twice, she fell off, and twice she climbed back on. It took all I had to stay put. I wanted to run and rescue her, to save her from the angst of having to do it all on her own.

As I watched, I realized what an incredible gift it is for us, as parents, to let our children fall. To let them fail.  Because when we learn to tolerate failure, we also learn to push ourselves towards success.  And if we can't tolerate the thought of failure? If we are paralyzed by the fear of falling? Then we don't even climb up onto the beam. 

Then my little girl got stuck.  She reached the end of the beam, and she didn't know what to do. Her little face crumpled and she started to cry.  My mother bear instincts took over and I was at her side in a flash, pulling her into my arms and telling her that she was brave and strong and amazing for having gotten as far as she did. 

Those moments on the beam seemed to capture the careful balancing act that we all maneuver as parents.  The hardest part of parenting isn't the long hours or the laundry or the doctor's visits or the PTA meetings.  Not at all.  The most challenging part of parenting, at least for me, is the constant struggle between stepping up and stepping back; between pushing our children toward independence and giving them the support they need; between letting them fall, and catching them when they do.

There's more though. This dichtomy doesn't just shape my mothering.  It also forms the shadow that is the loss of my own mother. It exists at the very heart of what it's like to live without her here.

On many levels, my life without my mom is so much more than I thought it would be. Losing her was like getting shoved onto that balance beam and left there all alone.  At first, I didn't want to take a step. For a long time, I remained frozen in place. The hand that had always been on the small of my back, guiding me across the beam was suddenly gone. It was terrifying.

When I did take a step, though, what a marvelous step it was. I gained courage and trust in myself. I learned I could wobble, and not fall. I learned I could fall and get back up. Without a safety net, I thrived in ways I could never have imagined. I grew up.  I am who I am because my mother is not here.

But. There is still a little girl inside of me. One who sometimes gets stuck on the end of the beam.  Whose little face crumples and whose arms reach out to be gathered up and swept into that place of love and safety and all things good again. Except it's no longer there.

Don't get me wrong.  I have many people in my life who love me. I am lucky that way.  I have an ever-present source of support and encouragement from the people who believe in me.  I am not without.

Still, there will always be an ache for that which I have lost. In all that comes with losing a mother, the most profound is this: There is no longer a safe place to fall.

"You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott

The Hard Part

I resigned from my job this past week.

I know this is a small thing in the grand scheme of life.  Especially today, in the wake of the news of another mass shooting, I am all the more aware that resigning from my job, especially when I know that I have another great one to go to, isn't a tragedy. It's a blessing. I know it's not big news to the world, and I know, soon enough, it won't even be big news to me. But for today? To me? It's huge.

It's not that I'm not excited for my future. I am. I will be moving out of a pediatric speech-therapist position, into a teaching position at our local university. I'm not just happy about this, I'm giddy. I've always loved all things academic.  Last year, when my son started school, I practically drooled  with anticipation as we walked the aisles of Target, gathering the requisite supplies for the start of his new year.  Walking into libraries makes me feel like I've arrived home. I love to read, and to learn, and to teach and to grow.  What's more, I love helping others do the same. Moving out of my current job into this new one....it's like a long lost piece of myself is clicking back into place.

So yes, I'm excited about my future, for the part of the story that is yet to come. That's the part of the story where I get to find out who I am. But this part of the story? This is the part where I have to say goodbye.  This is the part where I let people down. 

I'll be saying goodbye to families.  Families who I have loved, and mentored, and laughed and cried with. Families who have trusted me with their children, who have looked to me to guide them as they have fought the uphill battle to make their children better. Families who need me. And now I will have to look them in the face and tell them I am leaving; that I will no longer be a part of their child's story. 

I'll be saying goodbye to colleagues.  Colleagues who were not just colleagues, but who were family. Colleagues who cried with me when I lost my mom, who stood in my living room to welcome home my baby boy, and who showered me with joy when they found out I was expecting my baby girl. They are a huge part of my story and it is hard to let them go.

And, I'll be saying goodbye to what I thought might be. Leaving my job requires me to let go of the dreams I had for the program that I poured my heart and soul into over the past twelve years of my life.  As much as a piece of me is falling into place as I move into my new job, I am also leaving behind the pieces of me I have woven into the programs and people and families that I have loved.

So off I go, to leave.

The good part is coming, for sure.

But this?  This is the hard part.

Just Another Day In Paradise

My Mother’s Day wasn’t perfect. The weekend brought rain and snot. At one point, I found myself huddled in a car with a crying, snotty Baby Girl and a crying, cold Joseph, watching the soccer game that Joseph was supposed to be playing in (I kind of deserved this, since I had completely underestimated how cold it was—it is NOT supposed to be 35 degrees in May—and had forgotten to bring gloves or a hat for Joseph). I didn’t get to sleep in on Mother’s Day, as I’ve learned that me sleeping in only leads to a grumpy husband who didn’t get enough sleep, and then no-one is happy. So I got up with the kids, bright and early. I didn’t get the tulips I wanted, even though I sent my husband an e-mail that said, “FYI, I like tulips.” Apparently the message was too subtle. I changed my outfit twice before going to church and still had massive amounts of snot on my shirt when we arrived. We ate out at restaurant for lunch, but between a squirmy baby who had missed her nap and a hyper 5 year old who literally *jumped* out of his chair four times, I didn’t get to eat my food until it was cold. There was laundry to be done, a house to be cleaned, and dinner to be made. And nobody else volunteered to take over those duties.

So, my Mother’s Day wasn’t perfect. But I chose to love it anyway.

I chose to love it because I know full well that there are too many women who ache to be mothers and are struggling on their journey to get there. Woman who will spend Mother’s day trying desperately to forget that the one thing they want—to have a baby to snuggle and kiss and rock to sleep at night—seems to be only a distant dream that will never become a reality. Women who have lost babies who were part of them, if only for the briefest moment in time. I know this because I was one of those women. And so I chose to love the snot and the tears and the laundry and the chaos because they are part and parcel of this amazing gift called motherhood.

I chose to love it because my son has another mother, his Ethiopian first mother, who didn’t get to see him jump off of chairs today. As grateful as I am for the joy that this amazing little boy brings into my life and as much as it physically takes my breath away when I think about the prospect of not having him here, I will never forget that my joy comes at the expense of another mother’s loss. I wish I could reach out to his first mother to tell her that Joseph is safe, and he is happy, and he is loved. Oh, how he is loved. But I can’t. And so I chose to love the day and this boy and all his energy to honor the sacrifice his birthmother made. And I chose to love the day because I am heartbreakingly aware of how, with just the smallest twist of fate, I would not have had the chance to hug this little boy and watch him jump off chairs, and see him grow up before my eyes.

I chose to love it because, all over the world, there are mothers who can’t feed their children or keep them warm or keep them sheltered from the rain. On my Mother’s Day, I got to give my children food without thinking twice about how I would make this happen. I got to clothe them, and when they were cold, we got to snuggle in a car, protected from the rain. And when they were sick, I got to wipe their noses with a clean cloth and give them medicine to ease their pain and tuck them into warm beds. I got to give them warm bathes and clean clothes. I got to keep them safe. So I chose to love the day because I know how extraordinarily lucky I am to be able to give those gifts to my children and how many mothers would do anything to be able to do these simple things for theirs.

I chose to love the day anyway because behind the joys of motherhood, there is a sadness that always lingers in the shadows. I miss my mom. I miss her smile and oh, how I miss her voice. Her voice, the one that had the ability to make me feel safe and warm and loved all over. I miss that feeling, the one of complete and utter unconditional love that only a mom can evoke. I miss her profoundly and deeply and achingly. And yet the grief is bittersweet. The bitterness is obvious. The sweetness is the clarity that such a loss brings about the brevity of life. That clarity shapes my days. I chose to love the day because I truly understand, down to my very core, that these moments with my children are excruciatingly, breathtakingly brief.

I chose to love my Mother’s Day. Though it wasn't perfect, it was full of moments that were oh-so-sweet. I woke up to Joseph spontaneously shouting, “Happy Mothers’ Day!” with no one to remind him to do so (remember, my husband was still sleeping). My baby girl woke up and smiled at me with her two new teeth peeking out. My husband presented me with a Dairy Queen cake which I had also requested (okay, so truth be told, my e-mail actually read: “FYI I like tulips and Dairy Queen cake.” He just went for the cake part instead of the tulips part). I felt my mom’s presence in church. At dinner that night, Joseph insisted I get the first piece of cake and crawled over into my lap to give me a kiss. I got to hug my children and watch them play and to put them to bed with full bellies, clean pajamas, and warm blankets. My day wasn’t perfect. But it was more than I deserved. And it was more than enough.

Last One Standing: The Daycare Incident

It was one of those moments that would make any mother's heart stop. I'd just arrived at Baby Girl's daycare, excited to see her beautiful smile after a long day apart. Her teachers greeted me at the door to her room, looked down to watch Baby Girl toddle toward me as she always does, looked at me in confusion when they didn't see this happen, and then looked at each other. And then one of them uttered the words that I never, ever want to hear again: "Where's Baby Girl?"

As it so often does in moments like this, time slowed to a crawl and actions began to unfold in slow motion. I watched the teachers as they checked the coat nook, followed their line of gaze to the picture window that overlooked the toddler playground, felt their horror as it dawned on them that they had left her out there, alone. Then we all snapped into action, rushing out to the playground. And there she was, my sweet baby girl, standing next to the toddler slide where she had been playing contentedly. Unfazed by all the drama, she saw me, smiled, and toddled over to me with her arms stretched up to meet mine. I picked her up, and held her. For the longest time. I just held her.

She had been lost for fewer than thirty seconds. But it was thirty seconds in which I felt the most vulnerable I have ever felt as a mother. The terror I felt in those thirty seconds was the helpless kind where you suddenly understand, down to your very soul, that your whole world can be irrevocably snatched from you in an instant. Kind of like when you are in a near-miss car accident and suddenly you realize how vulnerable you are all the time, speeding along at sixty miles per hour, mere inches away from the other drivers who hold your life in their hands.

After I gathered her up and left, I called the director to let her know what had happened. Then I drove home and did the next logical thing:I posted my situation to Facebook and asked for advice. I say this partly in jest, but there is a a bit of truth here as well: my Facebook friends have gotten me out of many a prickly situation. Like the time I came home to a bird in my house, panicked because I had no idea how to remove said bird from my house, posted to Facebook, and was gently reminded that maybe I should open a window. Oh.

So I posted to Facebook. Basked in the communal sense of outrage. Read the varying suggestions about my next steps. Waited for the horrible, scared feeling to subside a bit (wine helped), and then sat back to ponder the situation.

To be fair, the rest of the children in the daycare room had just come in from outside. They were still taking their coats off. Baby Girl had only been alone for a minute and there's every possibility that the teachers would have realized she wasn't there in the next minute. In some respects, it was an issue of very bad timing: what are the chances that a parent would walk into the room at the exact moment a teacher had lost track of a child for a second? But there was also the haunting possibility that they wouldn't have realized their mistake, that she could have hurt herself, or been taken, or worse. And there was the simple, stark fact that a 14 month old should never be left on the playground alone. It should just never happen. Something went very wrong with a process that should have been in place to protect her.

There was a part of me that wanted to quit my job right then and there. To wrap her in my arms and hold her for the rest of her life. To protect her like a mother should. This anxiety I was feeling was not unknown to me; I had been in this place before. With all the losses that piled up prior to the arrival of my children, my life was a bundle of anxiety for a long time. My early days parenting Joseph were spent battling my overly active imagination that turned the smallest incident into something to be feared on a grand level. My pregnancy with Baby Girl was marked by the omnipresent feeling that something was going to go wrong (and not just in the normal "pregnancy is a bit anxiety-provoking' kind of way; more in the "I just woke my husband up at 2 am for the third night in a row, sobbing hysterically because I am convinced that I am going to die of the Swine Flu" kind of way). It's only recently that I've been able to trust in life again; to believe that I could sink into all this goodness and enjoy it without constantly worrying about the various ways it could be taken away from me.

So yes, there was a large part of me that wanted to pull her out of daycare completely. To take care of her myself and keep bad things from happening. But beyond the obvious financial and emotional ramifications of such a drastic choice, there was another a major problem with that logic: I'm not perfect either. Oh, I like to think I am. I like to believe that as long as my children are in my care, they are magically protected from harm. But in my heart of hearts, I know that this illusion of control is just that: an illusion. I'll be honest and admit that there have been many times when I've messed up and my children have gotten hurt or at least nearly so. I've bumped their heads on doorways, been too careless with my driving while they are the car, watched helplessly as they've fallen off ladders. And then there was the little incident that involved me bumping an axe off the wall of my garage and watching it miss my sweet baby boy's head by a fraction of an inch. Yeah, I'm not perfect. I can't protect my children from all harm, no matter how hard I try. None of us can.

If pulling her out of daycare wasn't an option, the next solution would be to switch daycares, immediately. This was a thought I entertained more thoroughly. It was a common suggestion to my dilemma on Facebook and I'm guessing it's the thing that most parents would recommend given the situation at hand. It's highly logical move. But. Baby Girl was happy at her daycare. Switching daycares with a 14 month old is not an endeavor to be taken lightly. She'd have to start the process of acclimating to a new environment and new teachers all over. This in and of itself is not reason enough to preclude a switch, but it's certainly a tally in the column of staying. Further, this daycare came with high recommendations from many people of varying backgrounds. In the world of daycares, it was one of the best. If something like this could happen there, it could happen anywhere. Switching daycares might feel good, but there would still be no guarantees that my daughter would be safe. The raw, hard truth is that anything can happen, anytime and anyplace. Life is fragile. There are no guarantees.

So I didn't switch daycares immediately. Instead, I talked to the director and the teachers and watched carefully for defensiveness in their responses. There was none. There was only contrition. And I questioned their processes. They had already recognized their error and had taken steps to fix it.

After all the talking, I chose to believe that it was a one time, fluke mistake that did not speak to the quality of the daycare as a whole. One of my Facebook friends commented that this was a compassionate response. To a degree, this is true. I do find it relatively easy to put myself in other people's shoes and I do seem to have an innate understanding that we are all flawed humans doing the best we can in a messy world (see above axe incident for proof of my own flawed humanity). But I think that it was more than a compassionate response: it was probably, in large part, a self protective response. I have to believe that it was a fluke mistake. Because if I start believing the inverse, if I return to imagining all the scenarios in which I could lose my children, if I spend all my time trying to do everything I can to protect them from any possible harm, I will not only go a little bit crazy, but I will lose the opportunity to live and enjoy the life that is right in front of me.

Don't get me wrong: I can be a mama bear when I need to be. My antenna is up, and if there is any further hint of misstep, there will be no third chances. But I don't think this is going to happen. My motherly instincts tell me that I can trust again. And in the end, motherly instincts are really all we have to go on. Now I just have to pray that mine are right.

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
—Elizabeth Stone