Right Here.

 

I have a recurring dream where we live in a house and we suddenly realize there is another whole room that we didn't know was there. It's usually cute and just needs a little touch up. They say these dreams occur when we learn something new, or have a new awakening. Well, this is about an awakening of sorts. 

I am sitting here, in my back porch, which is enclosed in screens and windows and a little door outside, which is why I say in. And as I sit here, I've been working all day. And as I've been working, I've been literally lamenting the fact that I don't have a desk or a better place to sit, or a place to store things, or a place to do more. I am sitting on the couch with an old TV table from the attic in front of me and a little pencil holder and papers spread all around me. I lean forward to type and it's annoying. The cushions from the outside furniture are piled next to the windows and they are annoying too, haphazardly thrown about and piled. And I'm wondering when I can get my office upstairs back. Should I move the boys around again? Should I reclaim a desk in my bedroom? And why does everyone in this house have a desk except for me? And I'm working! And I need a desk to work! And so on and so on. And I begin to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. 

And then I look up. I look around. And sitting here on the floor next to me are a table, two desk chairs that were discarded by their previous owners, my kids, and a file cabinet I trash-picked back in April. And I'm lamenting a lack of a desk. I'm thirsting in water. I'm hungry in a pantry. What is it that blinds us? Stress? Overwhelm? Nostalgia? I don't know. Maybe I've been looking at Instagram too much and wishing I had the offices of the rich and famous. 

Yesterday a friend shared a poem by e.e. cummings that I had never heard before. thank you God for most this amazing. These are the last two lines...

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

It is so beautiful. And the whole poem is truly eye-opening. I love when poetry is a prayer. I am trying to keep my eyes open, but I could not see. All of the things I was missing are right in front of me. It's not even a metaphor - it's literally RIGHT. HERE. It was a pile of junk that I had to get rid of. And now even God laughs! He provided everything I needed. Maybe you are laughing too! Maybe you are like, How could you not see what was right in front of you? I don't know. So I have work to do. And it isn't much work. Unfold a table. Wiggle a chair and shelves around. Maybe spray-paint an old file cabinet. I'm thinking pink?

Even the poem was a gift. Something I needed to see and hear that was offered to me by a friend. We are so loved! We are so cared for! I hope you can open your eyes to what is around you. I hope you have a friend who is offering you a gift. I hope you have a poem that speaks to your soul. I have work to do. I will keep you posted with a picture of my new office once it is complete.

This friend and I were also sharing thoughts on becoming better people. I need to fix this and change that about myself. I have to eat better, workout better, pray better. I sometimes feel like an old junk pile that I have to clean out and fix up and get with it and be better. And guess what? It's not true. We are fine. Not like in the sense of "I'm fine, just fine." But really we are perfect. We are perfectly blind sometimes, we are perfectly stupid too. We are perfectly imperfect and we are just the way we need to be. 

Maybe there is more before me than I realize. I am already missing and lamenting that the kids will leave soon. In TWO MONTHS. Everything we have, everything we need is RIGHT. HERE.  

The Space Between

A crew mom from Charlie’s high school asked me for pictures from last year's end-of-year celebrations so that she can replicate some of the traditions we had. I was anxious to check through these emails so I could cross things off my growing list. But as I scrolled through old pictures, I got caught in a net of memories, people and places and smiles I’ll never forget, of Charlie’s days of high school rowing, which weren’t that long ago. Looking at his bright face through rowing, and prom and graduation, his seventh-grade awards ceremony, his third-grade class trip, then suddenly sitting in his college sweatshirt, not knowing yet what the future holds. How can this be? How can this moment have gotten here so fast? It still seems impossible to think that he is off to college. I just can’t help but see him as the little kid I relentlessly hugged without thinking, the little guy who ran around the yard chasing his older brothers and sister, the youngest and the easiest in so many ways. The pictures take me on a trip down memory lane, and really those are the pictures I hold in my heart: that little boy with chubby cheeks, a big smile and bright blue eyes. Now when we FaceTime, I have to pause and catch my heart up to the young man he is and the way he has grown since the last time we talked. I just have to look and wonder about who this handsome new guy is on my little screen. Can that be my Charlie? When we talk, we are always redefining the relationship and the parameters of what I should know and what I can't know. I ask too many questions. He told me that already. Don’t I remember? I have to tread lightly. When he gets home, I’ll go slowly. I’ll respond instead of investigating. Maybe he’ll let me take a few pictures.

For Annie though, this year is very different. College graduation. For all the writing I do about Letting Go and Leaving, and I’ve Got This, I don’t know one damn thing. I’m in denial. I. Can. Not. Believe. It. It is hard to quantify or qualify something you’ve never been through before. Even though Jay graduated and is off on his own, it’s different and it hits differently. How is it possible that my little girl is a college graduate? When they were off to college, it always felt to me that they were coming home eventually. Christmas, Spring Break, Summers. They would sleep in their beds again. They would eat the cereal again. They would do their laundry again. Now those days are limited. It still hasn’t sunk in fully. Each day brings me closer to the day they will actually leave.  Maybe when they leave the nest, it’s a bit like grief. I am going through the stages of leaving and going through the motions to learn to cope. One strategy: hope that they’ll come back. Back for Christmas. Back for summer vacation. Back Home. Soon though, they’ll have their own home, a new one away from us, away from Home.

Annie sent me a song the other day called, “Thought You Should Know.” Ugh. If you haven’t listened to it, grab tissues. “Those prayers you thought you wasted on me must’ve finally made their way on through…”  It’s by Morgan Wallen. I can’t believe she’s sending me this stuff! If she only knew how many, many, many prayers were said for her, all through her life. She should be my little girl again! I know that’s not true but that’s what my heart wants. Or at least part of my heart. Logically, I know we can’t go back, but just a glimpse of that little girl brings me such joy. It's the pictures in my mind that pull me back... Her toothless grin, her singing karaoke, her riding a horse, her holding her baby brother, her going to prom, her driving to school, her teaching a class. And a glimpse of the young woman she is brings me joy too. And of course, all she has yet to be! It doesn’t make sense at all, but that’s what it is. It’s like being in the fun house, with mirrors all around and you don’t know which image to look at. You can’t tell where to go, and yet you have glimpses of where you’ve been and teases of visions of where you can’t get to. No wonder it’s so hard.

I’ve been reading a lot about Liminal Space in Richard Rohr’s writing. The space between. The threshold. The doorway. We are all in this wide doorway to the next steps. How do we hold on to what is in the past, with all the love that conjures for us? How do we soak up the present and make each moment count? How do we let go enough to make room for the more love that’s coming? It feels impossible. 

The heart may have 4 ventricles, but I think there are 3 when it comes to our kids. The heart that belongs to when they were little, the heart that belongs to this moment, and the heart that is filled with dreams and hopes for them and their future. Every beat is for them: Longing for the past, love for the now, hope for what is to come. The past sucks us, willingly, back in time. We remember and we smile. Then the present, where we try to treasure and savor every moment. And the future, when and where will it take them? Suzanne Stabile of The Enneagram Journey says that Maturity is holding a place for all three, present, past, and future, and being willing to stand in that liminal space. Sounds good. As much as there's a part of me that doesn't want my children to grow up, I don't want to grow up either, not if maturity means I can't go back in time.

In our decorations for her graduation, we put up pictures of Annie’s life on the living room mantel, all the way back to when she was born. Even in that way, we bring the past with us. These baby pictures sit next to her diploma, her present, and next to that, gifts for her new apartment. So we are holding space for all three moments in time, past, present, and future. I wish our hearts could hold all three as easily. I wish our minds could too. Wherever you are in your seasons of children, I hope you are finding a way to hold all three. 

Angels

 When my kids were small, I would watch things happen and think, "Thank God there is a guardian angel watching over them." They would just miss the corner of the table as they fell off the couch. The glass would fall just inches from their face. The baseball would just miss their head as they went for a catch. Once I came home to see police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks in front of our house. A woman had driven her car up on our front lawn and had just missed where the kids had been playing with my husband a few moments before. Guardian Angels. Then there were times when it wasn't a miss, but a hit: the broken bones, the cuts, and scrapes, the poison ivy that sent us to the emergency room. (Yes, it was that bad.) But there were angels in the ER too. 

I thought that guardian angels were part of everyone's childhood. We used to say a prayer in elementary school, "Guardian Angel, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide." A child's fairy tale, a nursery rhyme. Even though I believed in her, this guardian angel, I thought I would outgrow her like the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. It seemed that one day when I grew up, my guardian angel wouldn't be so necessary. I would just be more careful. I would be an adult. I would avoid trouble. I would understand physics in a way that would prevent me from getting in the way of tables, and doorjambs, and glasses, and flying baseballs. I don't quite know why, but it seemed like a child's prayer. 

I expected the same for my children. Once they were adults, they wouldn't need guardian angels. They would be more balanced, more graceful, more coordinated than their very uncoordinated mother. More easily able to avoid trouble. For some reason, I wasn't expecting to be praying for my adult children's guardian angels to Please take action! the way that I do now. When they leave the house, I pray. When they are overnight at a friend's, I pray. When they are traveling by plane, I pray. When they are driving, I pray. When they are in their rooms all day, I pray. When they are studying and tired, I pray. When they are anxious or worried. When they won't hug me back. When I think they aren't taking care of themselves, I pray. When they are partying. I hope those guardian angels are standing by their side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. When they are making decisions that I can't interfere with. When they are working hard and when they are not working hard, I hope and pray. I also pray for them to send little moments of joy to my kids. To lift them up. To brighten their days. To lighten their loads. 

As I look back now, I know that Guardian Angels have saved me as an adult plenty of times in the same ways - from making poor decisions, doing stupid stuff, and getting in car accidents. And they aren't only around to prevent the catastrophes. Once in my 20s, I was driving to a teaching interview on the Garden State Parkway in a competitive school district, almost in a full-blown panic attack. When I slowed down to pay the toll, the toll taker asked me how my day was going. I told him where I was going and he wished me luck. He told me I would do great! Maybe it sounds silly, but he was a guardian angel. My nerves were calmed, my focus restored, my confidence lifted. Guardian Angel. I got the job too!

I believe my grandmother sent me an angel when I was shopping for my wedding dress. My grandmother had throat cancer when I was young and used a voice amplifier to speak, making her voice sound deep and robotic and a little fuzzy. While I was trying on a wedding dress, I stepped out of the fitting room in a white dress. A woman approached me, and speaking with a voice amplifier, told me how beautiful I looked. I immediately thought of my grandmother who had died when I was in 8th grade. I thanked her and told her that I did really love the dress. When we went to purchase the dress, my mother and I mentioned this woman to the salesgirl. She said there hadn't been anyone else in the store. Guardian Angel. One I will always carry with me. Thankfully my mother had seen her too.

I believe I have walked with angels during the hardest and the best days of my life. They have always been there for me. I know they will be there for my children too, even when they are all grown up. I wish you, and your children, no matter how old they are, guardian angels too. Sometimes we have to look carefully for them, pray carefully for them, but they are around. We need all the help we can get...