Ruminations on Being a Parent

Twenty-five years ago I stood on the rocky coast of Maine, lost in the rhythm of waves crashing along the shoreline and contemplating the imminent birth of my first child.

I could not have imagined that this day would arrive in the blink of a cosmic eye.

My pregnancy had been filled with thrilling, scary, idealistic anticipation; the awe of being in love with the child unfolding within my body; the fantasy of fulfilling my dream of motherhood; the satisfaction of believing that all of my experience to date had helped to prepare me to be a “good mother”.

There is nothing more magical than giving birth to a first child. Those first nights gazing into your newborn's very soul, feeling that you are the only ones on the planet while the rest of your world slumbers and the constellations circle the night sky.

Having children gave me an opportunity to reconstruct my own childhood experience; to learn forgiveness and humility as I realized and learned to live with the imperfections in my parents and in myself; the priceless gift of once again seeing the world through the eyes of a child; the opportunity to experience that sweet innocence minus the judgment, distorted perceptions and cynicism that are the inevitable by-products of growing up.

As the years have passed, every moment has been a whole rainbow of feelings; the immensity of the task of being a parent playing itself out day after day after day, with all of its joy and fear and protectiveness and inadequacy and guilt and triumph and frustration and satisfaction and doubt and resentment and pride and enormous indescribable Love.

In being a mother, I have found myself constantly defining and redefining who I am, and who I hope to be, as an individual, a life partner, a parent; persevering through tough times that, had I not had my children to consider, may have turned out very differently.

Parenthood has forced me to come to terms with my own fears and shortcomings; to open myself up to the reality that I am not my children, and they are not me; to learn the arts of negotiation and compromise and letting go.

The miracle continues to blossom forth every day before my very eyes- that tiny bundle of wonder and joy and utter vulnerability evolving into the kind, sensitive, confident, funny, smart, talented men that my children have come to be a quarter of a century later.

Motherhood has enriched my life and taught me in ways that I couldn't have imagined, and I am so very grateful for the experience. My sons are, without doubt, my greatest teachers. RDW (2-24-11)

My Perfect Day

I stumble through my days in a perpetual state of discombobulation and oblivion, sifting through my thoughts for my current intention, wading through chaos for the object I seek. I long for clarity. Repeatedly, it occurs to me that my mind is a reflection of the clutter that smothers me at home and at work. Approaching my day is like walking through a sand storm. 

I try to convince myself and others that my approach enhances my life through the flexibility it offers. By winging it through my days, I remain open to the flashes of inspiration that occur so suddenly, and fleetingly. Still, how much more fulfilling my life could be if my mind were not a swarm of gnats, filled with distraction that so interferes with the perfectibility of my days. Ah... to create a perfect day would require more hours than we are given. Would that I had the wherewithal to construct my days just so...

Part II: Laying in Wait

Bed rest. Weeks of confinement and being sequestered in my bedroom with admonitions to stay put, the only exception being to use the bathroom. 

It is a mixed blessing really- an opportunity to send long hand written letters to everyone in my address book. It is a chance to read and sleep, be waited upon, and to complete needlework and quilt projects (the Michael Hague Christmas stocking I’ve been stitching for Henry since he was 8 months old; the rainbow Trip Around the World quilts for Henry’s and Phillip’s beds).


The precise therapy that every frazzled young mother yearns for- and it totally sucks. 

Part I: Letting Go

Living in a small town and lacking the anonymity I desire, I send my friend Rita for the pregnancy test. Damn. The instructions clearly state to wait until morning’s first pee. A long restless night filled with dread ensues.

Okay. Why do they have to make these damn packages so hard to get open? Hold the tip in urine stream, wait three minutes: one bar not pregnant, two bars pregnant. Shit, it’s only been about thirty seconds but I decide to peek anyway.

Oh God no, please no, it said it would take three minutes. Wait a minute. The directions say to hold the tip down and I was holding it up. It must be wrong…

But I am pregnant. Again.

      
I walk through my life in a daze. When I look in the mirror, I see a pale and despondent woman with dark circles and greasy hair looking back. My body moves about like a sack of wet sand. I have all I can do managing the two little children I have. How will I ever deal with further compounding the situation? My desperation sweeps me away as I long to flee from this life.

Gearing Up for Sobriety

She's an alcoholic. This is dreadfully humiliating since she once professed to be a substance abuse counselor. She'd gone into the field with the intent of fixing her alcoholically dysfunctional family of origin, curing her mother and brother of their alcoholism, looking for the answers and tools necessary to get her own unstable psyche on track.

The Old Man and the Little Girl

As I understand it, her mother's father died a painful death of esophageal cancer when she was two. Being a sensitive child, she felt for his pain and tried to soothe him with the white blanket which brought her so much comfort, patting him gently and singing softly as she covered his lap. Of course, she was too young to understand about death, and was bewildered by his absence when he passed on to the next world.

       

Her eldest sister, eight years older than she, doted on her, relieving her mother by taking her little sister in the stroller for a walk about the neighborhood. Occasionally they made the expedition to the center of town where she released the little girl to run about the common and watch the trains arrive and depart from the elevated station across the street. On one such adventure the sweet little blond spied an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife, sitting on a park bench, and mistook him for her beloved grandfather. Climbing into his lap, she threw her arms joyfully around his neck.

      

In the days that followed, the little girl and her sister would often see him on their jaunts downtown and they grew to become friends. Finally, one day at church, the girls' parents met the grandfatherly soul they had heard so much about, and from that day forward he joined the family for Sunday dinner and the afternoon. When it was time for the children to go to bed, he would say goodbye and go back to his lonely existence until the following week.

       

As the years passed, he became the young girl's special friend, and she the grandchild that he would never have. They saw each other several times a week as she grew old enough to venture downtown on her own, and he continued to join the family on Sundays. After dinner the old man and the little child would walk hand in hand downtown. They would go to Brigham's ice cream parlor where he would enjoy a vanilla shake as he watched her eat her ice cream, and then lovingly clean up the sticky mess before resuming their walk. They visited the other shops in town, picking up candies and trinkets along the way.

      

As time passed, the man joined her family for holidays and other special events as well. To her delight she discovered that he was able to reliably predict the weather a week in advance. He was an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, and drew her interest to follow the televised games on Sunday afternoons . When she was in fourth grade, she was assigned a research paper on the state's capitol. Given that he had grown up in Boston, he dictated the whole thing, incorporating his life experience of the city, relieving her of the research that had been the intention of the assignment.

      

In the summer he sent the girl letters and postcards through General Delivery in the town closest to the family's current vacation spot. Upon their return, he would greet her with his favorite song, Hello Dolly. Once, upon returning from a two week camping trip, the family was devastated learn of their elderly friend's admission to the hospital. The girl accompanied her mother to the hospital for visiting hours, but broken-hearted, she remained in the lobby due to the age restrictions placed on visitors. After he became well enough to return home, he occasionally stopped by the house to pick his young friend up for one of the church suppers being held in the area, for that was often where he found his evening meal. Then one day he took the girl, her three sisters, and their caregiver, to the St. Patrick's Day parade in Boston, and it was with great alarm that the older woman reported that their friend was a danger behind the wheel.

       

As she grew older the girl became aware of the fact that she had him wrapped right around her little finger. All she had to do was gaze longingly at an object that drew her fancy and the following week it became hers: the beautiful orange and white gold fish, the adorable pink Easter bunny, the Kodak Instamatic camera in the drugstore. For her eleventh birthday, he presented her with a beautiful garnet ring.

As they each became older, he well into his eighties and she approaching puberty, their relationship began to change. Their Sunday afternoon walk became a game of hide and seek, the girl running ahead, hiding in a doorway or alley, heart thumping in suspense as he approached, peering into nooks and crannies along the block. It was terrifying.

      

He came to require a nap in the afternoon and sulked if the budding young woman wanted to spend time with girls her own age. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, she lay on her bed while he napped on her sister's bed in the room they shared. As soon as his breathing deepened she would sneak away to her friend's house and guiltily, fearfully stay away until it was time for supper, coming home to find him watching TV or reading the paper, clearly upset by her abandonment. As it came time for him to leave, rather than accepting a kiss on the cheek as he had always done, he wanted a kiss on the lips. “Oh, that was just a peck,” he would chide as she brushed his lips with her own, and in her confusion and disgust, she felt obligated accommodate him. As he left he would place into her hand three Cadbury Chocolate bars.

       

One afternoon, because her friends were going to the movies and she was required to stay at home to “entertain her guest”, filled with resentment, she reluctantly walked with him deep into the cemetery as they had done on occasion over the years. They sat on a park bench and he pulled her to him, kissing her wetly on the lips as she attempted to pull away. She was deeply humiliated when a couple walking by looked on intently, and even more so when the cruiser pulled up, the officer telling them to get into the car, he was taking them home.

      

The next day, the child was sent to spend several weeks with friends in another state. Upon the girl's return home, her mother informed her that their friend would no longer be spending Sundays with them, as she had forbidden him to see her daughters. She was at once relieved, angry with her mother for having hurt his feelings, and deeply ashamed that she had somehow caused each of these people whom she loved dearly further humiliation.

      

As the weeks and months passed, the girl became intensely fearful of running into the man on the street during one of her trips to the center of town. When she did catch sight of him, she turned to flee in terror, dizzy, her eyesight dimming as she felt the blood rush out of her head, heart pounding in her throat.

       

That fall, she was admitted to the local hospital for exploratory surgery, resulting in an appendectomy. While recovering from the operation, she looked up to see the white haired man in his damp wool coat looming in the doorway, a large armful of pink gladiolas in sharp contrast to his black coat. He started to sing Hello Dolly, as he had so many times before. Despite the familiar panic sensation, she had the wherewithal to ask him to go to the coffee shop to get a strawberry frappe, and then pretended to be asleep when he came back. The next morning before dawn, the flowers having been placed in a glass vase on the counter across the room, inexplicably crashed to the floor, shattering the vase and ruining the flowers.

       

The following spring, he attended a concert in which she was a choral and orchestral participant. With a frightful gasp, she looked up to see him sitting in the second row. She left the stage for the bathroom, refusing to come out until the auditorium had been cleared. Slipping out the side door she peered around the corner of the building to see him waiting out front, the familiar panic seizing her as she rushed to hide in the back seat of family car.

       

That was the last time she saw him, for after that she rarely left her own neighborhood.

      

Eight years later, the girl having moved with her family to another state, was walking up the hill to the post office, when a sob caught her throat and she burst into tears for no reason. The next day she received a call from the man's cousin informing her of his death at the precise moment she had broken down the previous day. He died a peaceful death: looking at family pictures, they began to slip out of his hand onto the floor, and he was gone. He had left one third of his estate to her, his cousin explained in bewilderment.

She attended his funeral with her older brother and sister. The officiating minister, who had not known the man, said that his favorite song had been God Bless America. But the girl knew better.   - RDW 6-19-07