A Good Death

 

Picture from the Juneau Empire files

 

 

For my grandfather, Bill Ray

 

 

These are the sounds after a quick death following a long life: The telephone rings are steady, but not constant. Arrangements are made swiftly, with no big decisions, discussions or surprises. Voices are calm. You hear a lot of sighs. Only a thin layer of shock drifts by, like a cirrus cloud.

 

My grandfather lived to be 91. We loved each other and said so in later years, but we didn’t speak often. He was strong-willed and difficult with those he loved the most. He was a storyteller and a lawmaker. A liquor hawker. A secret-keeper and a gold collector. He was a name caller. A fisherman and a painter and a writer.

He was a child of the universe who was here, and now isn’t.

A constellation of ancestors, long twists and turns of accident or fate. A mother’s eyes, a grandfather’s nose. The birth name, Will, that he grew into, but later changed.

My best memories of him are when he told stories. He sits at a table, one hand on his coffee mug. He is already laughing, his eyes shining with anticipation. “This is a good one,” he says. “Wait until you hear this one.”

It’s the one where his father’s dog, Whitey, fell out of the fishing boat, perilously close to the falls. “‘What’d you do, Dad?’ I asked him.”
‘I said, So long, Whitey!”

He shakes his head and chuckles, his laugh still sturdy among the laughs of his listeners.

I wish I had listened better, had a better memory. I wish I’d written the stories down instead of letting them sing by, all wisps and trails. I wonder where do all those stories go when we die? Do they live on, swirling and hanging in the air where he was? In the cells of his great grandchildren who he never met? In the pages he wrote?

 

“Reaaad boooook, Mama,” my daughter says, pattering over to me.

She hands me Goodnight Moon. Her eyes are big and blue, her cheeks full and smooth. I start reading, my eyes taking in the flat greens and tomato reds of the book. By the time I get to And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush, I am in tears.

All those goodnights. The words of the book, a childhood favorite, reach back through my mind, unlocking the little girl inside of me. The one whose grandpa was larger than life, full of laughs and stories. He was big and handsome. He slipped her sips of beer in the kitchen. Sent her postcards when he travelled. He appeared on the radio and TV, making jokes and laws.
 

These are the sounds after a good death: Quiet sobs. Voices on the phone, shaky, but not shattered. Patter of small feet, new tales unfolding. Goodnight stars, goodnight air. The rush of memories, of stories, rising and falling, lifting into the sky.

 

Superpowers

In a wildly generous move, my cousin offered me a free photo shoot with the photographer she works with. So this Wednesday, I met up with cousin Meghan and Kevin Ouelette, photographer and DJ at Amazing DJ Music, Sound and Photography.

Getting my picture taken is not my favorite thing. Despite the fact that I can air many of my vulnerabilities here, there is something about being photographed that makes me feel so very naked. Not in a good way.

I was that painfully shy kid growing up. I kept my lips pursed and my head down, slouched in a desk at the back of the classroom. I internalized most of my emotions. I thought I was fat and ugly and therefore unlovable, so I hid. The more I hid, the more I became convinced that I wasn’t worthy of being seen.

 Add to that a mysterious talent for closing my eyes at exactly the same time as the camera clicks.

 Fortunately, Kevin had a way of putting me at ease. After greeting me with a warm hug, he asked, “So tell me what you don’t like about yourself.”

 I thought for a moment, trying to figure out where to start. I began listing my physical flaws.

“I have a nose smile,” I confessed, referencing the little slash that blooms beneath my nose when I grin. “And sometimes in pictures I look a little cross-eyed.” I almost started in on my “strong” nose, and hadn’t even gotten to body parts below the neck, but Kevin was ready to get started.

“Okay,” he said. “Cool. Let’s go!”

As Kevin drove, we chatted about my writing so he could get a sense of what to capture in my photographs. I told him I wrote mostly about parenting and grief and spirit, and that— SPOILER ALERT!— I was working on launching a new website. Our conversation flowed easily, and I felt instantly comfortable.

What impressed me most was that Kevin operated purely on instinct. He drove around for awhile, then suddenly said, “I’m feeling like I want to park here and walk around.” So we did. Because he trusted his instinct, I did, too.

He asked me to sit on the front steps of a stranger’s house, which would normally leave me feeling anxious. But I didn’t feel anxious. It felt like we were on a fun little jaunt, instead. “Think about elephant bums,” he said, pointing his camera at me.

As if summoned by a camera-wielding wizard, a big, genuine smile spread across my face.

We continued that way, walking and chatting our way through a neighborhood of lovely old houses. We paused at various stoops, stairs and fences per Kevin’s hunches. I cheerfully envisioned the nether regions of pachyderms while Kevin snapped away. I wasn’t thinking of my nose smile at all.

“So how long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“About three years,” he said.

“Wow. And you have no traditional training?”

“None.”

I was stunned, having seen some of his gorgeous photos on Facebook.

Kevin shared that capturing the essence of people was his superpower. He grinned, as if thinking of elephant bums, while he expressed how amazing it was to produce images that helped people feel good about themselves. The way he said it was devoid of ego—he sounded almost surprised that he had discovered this ability. It made me feel happy—what a wonderful way to be able to make people feel good.

At one point, he was photographing me from my left side. “You do have a bit of a lazy eye,” he said.

Though I died a tiny bit inside, and briefly doubted his claim about making people feel good, he said it with kindness and objectivity, as if proclaiming that I had a strand of grass in my hair.

“You knew that, right?” he said, concerned that he had surprised me.

“Sort of.”

After about forty-five minutes of walking and shooting, we headed back to his studio. “You know that this whole time, you’ve only talked about your imperfections? Which aren’t really even imperfections—you just perceive them that way.”

 “Yeah, I do that,” I admitted.

 Back at the studio, Kevin scrolled through the images he’d taken, selecting favorites. We swiftly narrowed it down to our top four favorites, and then he began lightly editing them. “Turn this way,” he said. I did. “Do you have some carrot in your teeth?” he asked, an eyebrow lifted.

 “Oh, dear God.” I stared at his computer screen, where a big chunk of carrot was wedged between my back teeth. I watched as he digitally flossed my teeth.

“Hmm. Show me your other side,” he said, again referencing my teeth. I did. He started laughing.

“Maybe you can photoshop a little bunny into the pictures, going after all the carrots,” I suggested.

I silently made a vow that if I ever had my photo taken again, I would floss beforehand. Twice.

 
As Kevin worked on the photos, I sat there thinking about imperfection. About my Forest Whitaker eye and my carrot teeth and my nose smile. When I zoomed out and focused on the whole picture, the photos looked really, really good. So why was I focusing on the imperfections, which we all have?

“Which one is your favorite?” Kevin asked.

“That one,” I said. I liked the little orbs of light in the background.

 

 

“Really? That’s actually my least favorite. I think you look a little inhibited in that one,” he said. “This is my favorite. I feel like it really shows who you are.”

 

Later, my mom would declare that Kevin had “captured my essence,” in that photo.

 

Ever since I left the studio, I’ve been thinking about superpowers and imperfection.

It occurred to me afterwards that one of my superpowers is that people often feel really comfortable sharing personal things with me. I frequently hear, “I don’t usually share stuff like that with other people.” Just the other day, I was getting some bodywork done and the practitioner, who is highly professional, ended up sharing some very personal issues her family was facing. As I was leaving, I said, “I’m really sorry you’re going through that.”

She looked a little alarmed. “I don’t usually share stuff like that with my clients.”

“I know you don’t,” I said, with a gentle smile.

In retrospect, during my visit, I’d been vulnerable with her and had talked about my issues with anxiety. Though my focused attention on my own flaws causes me a lot of discomfort, I think that my ability to openly share those flaws might be related to my tendency to make other people feel comfortable. Because I am fairly at ease with removing my social masks, other people feel like they can go ahead and lower theirs a bit, too. It’s not unlike how I trusted Kevin’s instincts because I could tell that he did.

So much of my personal growth work is about accepting the whole deal. The grey area. The AND. The carrot teeth AND the photo that I love. The superpowers AND the vulnerabilities, both of which our world desperately needs. And seeing that sometimes, sometimes, they are actually one and the same.

What’s your superpower?

 

 

 

High Needs Mother

When my son was a baby, I wanted answers.

This new little red-faced infant wanted to nurse every twenty minutes. Max was up six times a night. The ‘quiet alert’ phase that we heard about—the one we imagined where our peaceful, silk-cheeked baby would silently gaze at us—was non-existent.

Long days dripped by in a haze of milk and tears—both of ours. Our pediatrician said that he didn’t have colic because he could be soothed by nursing. And Max didn’t save his sadness for just the witching hour—any hour of the day or night was fair game. In my attempts to ‘fix’ my son, I lugged him to osteopaths and homeopaths. I went on an elimination diet consisting of brown rice and carrots. I spent hours with him hooked to my breasts while I surfed the internet for solutions. For a way to make him happier. To make us both happier.

I came across an article by Dr. Sears, a leading proponent of attachment parenting. In the article, Dr. Sears described ‘High Needs Babies.’ These intense babies tended to sleep poorly and required constant holding and attention. Max fit ten out of twelve of the criteria. The article suggested that it was possible that my son’s temperament was just who he was, who he was born to be. Not something to fix. I was a bit devastated by this theory; if I couldn’t fix it, the tears and sleepless nights would continue. We were already utilizing many of Dr. Sears’ suggestions for calming the ‘High Needs Baby’—co-sleeping was the only way for any of us to get any rest. I carried him in the Ergo so often that I felt like the straps were melding with my skin. I nursed on demand—and the demand was high.

The only thing that really helped was time. Ever so slowly, our nursing sessions stretched out. After about sixteen months, Max finally started piecing together four or six hour stretches of sleep.  

Max is four and a half now. He’s been weaned for a few years now, and he usually sleeps through the night. But he is still intense. When he’s happy, he’s down-to-the-toes effervescent. And when he’s not—which is often— he’s shrieking, writhing puddle on the ground miserable.

We have a daughter now, too. She smiles and laughs easily and often. Loud sounds don’t phase her, and she weaned with little effort. At 21-months, she still requires a lot of care. But her whole being vibrates with ease, with lightness. I sense that life is much easier for her than it is for my son.

Than it is for me.

You see, I’m a High Needs Mother.

Before my kids were born, I practiced extreme self-care. I went to yoga and dance classes. I attended twelve-step meetings and therapy. I took long walks and joined a Unitarian church. I signed up for retreats and workshops. I did all of this to help me simply feel normal, which has always seemed much easier for most people than it did for me. Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert. Maybe it’s because I struggle with anxiety and depression. Maybe it’s because I’m what Dr. Elaine Aron describes as a ‘Highly Sensitive Person.’ Or maybe I’m just in touch with myself, and aware that humans weren’t really designed to withstand the fast-paced, over-booked life that much of the western world thrives on.

My husband and I vowed that when we had children, I would keep up my rigorous program. We promised we would support each other in doing the things we loved and the things that kept us sane and happy.

And then my son arrived.

And I was the only one who could sooth him.

I fantasized that my husband could induce lactation so my nipples could get a break. I pumped milk during the three minutes a day that my son wasn’t nursing. After a few months, I went to a yoga class by myself. As I backed the car out of the driveway, I felt half giddy to be on my own, and half naked, because my constant companion wasn’t strapped into the empty car seat in the back.

At the class, I breathed. I tried to root my body on my yoga mat, to let the ground cradle me like I so often cradled my son. In between surrendering to gravity, my mind wondered how my son was. If he was screaming. If he would take the bottle. If he would nap. During the closing shavasana, I felt the sharp zing of my milk letting down. In those days, I rarely went an hour without nursing.

 

 

 

I kept attending yoga classes, though I’d often return home afterwards to a sobbing child and a frustrated husband. The classes were a small burst of freedom, but it wasn’t enough. I fantasized about the day Max would start kindergarten, the day’s hours stretching ahead, all mine. But kindergarten was still years away. Between working so hard to meet my son’s high needs, and my inability to take care of my own, I felt withered.

When my son was twenty months old, we discovered that my husband’s work would subsidize part-time child care. We enrolled Max two days a week in a nearby daycare. The guilt I felt was expansive. I had wanted children, badly. So why did I so need to be away from my son? And how dare I ask other people to care for him two days a week when I wasn’t going to be filling all of that time with paid work? When I might use some of it to go to a yoga class or do laundry or lug my laptop to a coffee shop and write?

My guilt was huge, but my need for a break was bigger. When I dropped my son off that first day, I came home, melted onto the couch and cried. When I finally peeled myself off the couch, I wrote Max a letter. In my home, alone, all I could hear was the hum of electricity. For the next several hours, my body was all mine. I felt guilty and blissful, free and lost.

With time, the guilt shrunk.

I hate that as a mother, I felt like I had to choose between caring for my child and caring for myself. Because really, I can choose both. I can teach my kids—by example, which is perhaps the most potent way of teaching—that they are worthy of listening to their own needs. To the quiet, still voice that might tell them they need a break. That they need to lie on a yoga mat and sink deep into their own body and breath. To wander through a cemetery, alone, slow enough to read the names on the gravestones. To sit down and write about how they’re feeling, or to surrender to sweet sleep for an hour.

Maybe you don’t need to hear this. Maybe you are a working mother who longs to be home with her kids but needs the paycheck. Or a stay-at-home mother dreading your child’s first day of kindergarten. Or a home schooling mom who finds that the daily tasks of child-rearing light you up from the inside out. I honor you. We are, like all humans, all mothers, the same but different.

When I take good care of myself, I am more present for my babies. I can play air guitar with my son and orchestrate dance parties to Footloose. And when I don’t take care of myself, I’m a stringy, soggy, limp wash rag of a mother. Slowly, over the years, I have been able to add more and more self-care back into my life. To come back to myself and meet my own needs.

Over time, I learned that there was nothing wrong with my son. He just happens to be a lot like me.

Connections

image by Bas van de Wiel

For John Witham
 

I first set eyes on Portland on Valentine’s Day of 1998. I was 23. A friend and I were road tripping across America, and I wanted to see the city I’d read about in Stephen King novels.

We arrived in the evening, taking Congress Street to the east end and then looping back into downtown. The sidewalks were piled with snow, and the lights of restaurants and shops along the street glowed. Just a month earlier had been the famous ice storm, leaving power lines and branches laden with glistening ice. I don't remember noticing the paper hearts that peppered the city, the work of the famous Valentine's Day bandit. But as we walked the city that night, passing I felt like some warm, braided force was tugging at my feet through the packed snow, through the brick and cobblestone sidewalks and the earth buried below. I had left Alaska with a broken heart, and there was something about Portland that seeped into that empty part of me.

I met John when we parked my car in the lot he attended. He was warm and friendly, and he waved each time we retrieved my little red Subaru. When I told him the next day that Portland felt right to me and I might come back, he grinned.

**

My friend and I drove down to Florida, then to Mardi Gras, and then to Memphis, where we had tickets for a G Love concert. Lovesick, I thought of Portland the whole way. My friend caught an airplane back to Alaska. I headed north, then east.

**

John’s faced curved into a big smile when he saw me return to his parking lot. Over the weeks and months to come, he was a grounding force. I was 4000 miles away from Alaska and everyone I had ever loved.

John took me out to watch bluegrass at a pub between his parking lot and the Everett Hotel, where I was staying. Over cigarettes and drinks, we talked about his love of music and how I wanted to be a writer. The warm twang of the banjos and fiddles swirled around us. 

 
Another time at another bar, I watched him play. His stage name was the Hollerin’ Man, and I enjoyed his wholehearted bellow as he strummed his guitar. He played North to Alaska, dedicating it to me.
 

I sensed that John had a little crush on me, but he was twice my age and he never tried to cross the line of our friendship. He was kind and affable, but there was a sadness to him, too. A loneliness that didn’t seem to bother trying to hide. It spilled out into his voice when he sang. It scared me a little, because I recognized it as something I felt all too often. Something I see in so many creative, sensitive people, who often turn to addictions to try and dull that ache, that seeking. I could tell that John drank too much. He had a son who I don’t think he saw often, but when he talked about him, I could see the pride rise off of him like steam.

John helped me find a small apartment just steps away from my new job at Coffee By Design. The apartment was tiny, and I would crouch in the bath after work to scrub the coffee smell off of my skin. At night, through the wall by my bed, I often heard my neighbor having sex. Somehow that sound of connection through the paper-thin walls made me feel lonelier than ever. But I had a place to stay, and I was grateful to John for helping me.

As time passed, I made friends with co-workers who were closer to me in age, and I saw John less. When we did run into each other, he always had that big smile, and that sadness pooling just beneath.

I had been living in Portland for just under a year when my brother died. I went home to Alaska. I had a return airplane ticket, but I kept pushing the date further and further back.

For the next year, I lived with my parents again. I went to grief groups and wrote letters to my dead brother. I sat on the porch behind my brother’s rusting basketball hoop and smoked. I stared into the sky, looking for signs that he was still out there somewhere.

Sometimes I wondered about the life I’d left in Maine, and whether I’d find the strength to leave my parents again and return to what I’d started to build there.

**

In 2002, I returned to Portland.

Within the first weeks of being back, I was introduced to Scott. I got a job. I started recovery for my food issues. I bought a house. With surprisingly little effort, my life was being woven.

A few years later, I saw John. I had heard that he’d stopped drinking. We smiled at each other and he waved. He looked thin. I ducked away before we could catch up with each other. Maybe I was afraid of that sadness in him, and that it might still be lurking in me, too. Maybe I was tired or hungry. I regret that I didn’t go up to him and thank him. For his kindness, for helping me grow roots in Portland.

**

Recently, I found John occupying my thoughts. I hadn’t seen him in years, so I searched the internet to see if he was still local.

I found out John had died a few weeks before my son was born. While I was waiting, belly bursting, he was dying of liver disease. My son was born eleven years and one day after I’d met John.

I read about John’s life. I learned that after being diagnosed with liver disease, he’d received a transplant. The experience bled into his music. He’d gotten sober, written and sang about his second chance. Then his illness worsened.

I thought about how thin and tenuous the strands of our lives can feel, the way one person can appear and our entire course changes. I don’t know if I would’ve stayed in Portland without John’s friendliness and help. If I hadn’t stayed in Portland, my whole life would be different. My children, if I had them, would have different faces. Maybe I would be in Seattle or Alaska or Spain. Sometimes it feels like our lives are like bumper cars, colliding and shifting course, a fragile fate.

I wish I could sit with John over a warm cup of coffee. We would catch up and talk about music and writing. We would talk about our sons. I would say: Thank you for your kindness. For your smile. You changed my life. My good, good life. Thank you.

** 

“I’m taller than J.D., right Mom?” Max asked me this morning. Everything for him is a competition right now. I find it unnerving.

“Yes, you are. Some people are taller than others, some are smaller. People come in all different sizes and shapes,” I told him.

“But not shapes, Mom!” I paused and tried to squint through his four-year-old perspective. ‘Shapes’ to him means triangles and hexagons, not pear-shaped or muscular, top heavy or petite.

“Okay. But people are all different. But we’re also the same.” He looked at me. “I’m going to go play some music now.”

I said, “Okay.”

I want to tell him that we, like most everything, are made of the ancient dust of exploded stars. That our DNA is 99.9% the same. That the electric energy of the human heart extends several feet past where our skin stops. That we are all born lonely, and too many of us do crazy things to try and fight it. That the people running our country and the person in the little yellow car who just cut me off are different but the same. That the music he just ran off to play might be inherited from his uncle or his grandfather, who both died years before Max was born. That I had a friend named John who loved music, too. That our connections are like spider webs, sometimes invisible, sometimes glimmering. That sometimes we meet people who pivot us in different directions, for better or for worse, and we are forever changed. 



Is there someone who appeared like an angel at a turning point in your life?

Circles: What I want my son to know about death

 

Last winter when a friend was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, friends were asked to send mail. I sat down with Max at the dining room table with a few blank sheets of paper and a pile of crayons.

 
“Do you want to make a drawing for our friend? He’s not feeling well,” I asked Max.

“Sure!” he said. He grabbed a crayon and made a few wide circles on the paper. “Circles help you feel better,” he said.

**
“I don’t want to die,” Max said to me yesterday as I buckled the straps on his car seat. He wore his camouflage costume from last Halloween, his face serious under the floppy green and brown hat.

“I know, Maxie. Nobody wants to die,” I said in a soft voice.

“I’m never, ever going to die,” he said.

  I could think of nothing to say, so I kissed his nose and closed the door as gently as I could.

 **

At our friend’s ceremony on Sunday, people told stories about him. I hadn’t known him very well, and I soaked in the stories. I heard of his generosity, how much he adored his wife, and his lifelong fascination with turtles.

After the stories, the few hundred of us, dressed in bright colors per his wife’s request, stood in a field of grass in a huge circle. We rubbed our hands together while thinking of our friend’s energy. The friction of our palms created heat, and we raised our hands towards the empty sky to send him on his way.

**

 “I’m never ever going to die, right?” Max asked the other day. I was parking the car so we could go to the playground.

 

“Let’s just go have fun,” Scott said. I looked at Scott. “He’s four years old. He doesn’t need to know that we all die,” he said. I nodded my head. We headed towards the brightly colored playground.

**

When my brother died when I was 24, I spent a lot of time sitting in rooms with other grieving people. I heard about their husbands, mothers and children who had died. We sat in circles and told each other’s stories. The details and relationships were different, but the emotions were the same. “I feel like I’m going crazy,” someone would say. I stared at the candle in the middle of the room and I listened and nodded.

Sometimes I shared. I talked about how scared I was that more people I loved would die. I talked about how much I worried about my parents. How I couldn’t relate to my friends anymore because they were worrying about things young people worried about, like dating and college and cool shoes. Meanwhile I just sat on my parents’ porch in the dark. I blew smoke towards the stars and looked into all that air, hoping for a sign.

**

An early memory. I am four or five. I am standing in my backyard blowing bubbles. I lift my face up to watch them float, round and iridescent. The edges of the bubbles shimmer pink and blue as they rise and pop. And there is something about the colors and the empty sky that makes me think of my mom’s friend Gail who died. Something about all that shimmer and sky. And I thought that Gail was there somehow in those bubbles, in the slippery colors, lifting and disappearing. I was grateful for the crunch of the small pebbles beneath my feet to steady me.

 

 

 

**

“Is he dead now?” Max asked the other night when I came home from the ceremony for our friend. We laid in Max’s bed, the jewel-toned glow of Christmas lights on his wall illuminating his skin.

“Yes, he is,” I said.

“So, he’s down?” he said.

I paused. “I guess so, Maxie.”

“So, his bones are out?”

Another pause. “Well, when people die, they don’t need their bones anymore.”

“Oh,” he said. He smiled at me. “Mama, can you please tell me about when me and Daddy and Papa went to the Red Claws game?”

“Sure,” I said.

I huddled close and told him what I knew.

 

**

Maxie, I believe in telling the truth about death. I know that with these big questions, I am supposed to let you take the lead. I am supposed to give simple answers, and not tell more than you ask for. But when you say, “I’m never, ever going to die, right?” I am stumped. I know all too well that there are no guarantees, that parents lose their children without notice, that the universe doesn’t play fair.

I could say, “I think you are going to live for a very, very long time.”

I won’t tell you that even the thought of you and Violet dying as very, very old people with gnarled limbs and misty eyes and terrible, loose skin makes me hold my breath. That every night, I ask that you two outlive Daddy and I. I ask for you to be safe and healthy and happy, and I picture you both encircled in warm, amber-toned protective light.

That whenever I spot a penny on a sidewalk, I pick it up and think of my brother. I smile and put the cool, round coin in my pocket. That I always find pennies at just the right time.

That for the decade before you were born, I wrote about and talked about and worked around death. I believed that most of what we need to know about life can be found when we sidle up to death. But when I had you and Violet, I got scared and superstitious and quiet about death. That I am still scared and superstitious, but the other day when all those people lifted their hands to the sky, I started to remember what I've been trying to forget.

That someone at the ceremony for our friend talked about telling her children about death and what happens. She said that she believes when we die, we burst off and merge with the hearts and minds of the people who love us. Whatever else happens, I know that much is true. When I heard that, it reminded me of those bubbles popping, and how somehow, those glittering colors and light must go somewhere.

But Maxie, maybe you already know all of this. After all, you told me, “Circles help you feel better.” You were right. 

 

 How do you talk about death with your children?

Photo Credits: Mosaic: Michael & Christa Richert

Bubbles: Przemyslaw 'env1ro' Szczepanski

Best of Attentions

“They each come with their own sack of love,” my mom always said. “Having Violet won’t take away love from Max or Scott,” she promised, knowing I was nervous about the transition of becoming a mother of two. 

Loving another child was one of the few things I wasn’t terribly worried about. I knew that love multiplies, that it is infinite and abundant. I knew my love for my new daughter would grow at a pace similar to her physical growth—quickly at first, like how a newborn doubles in weight within months, then pooling and deepening with time.

Unfortunately, attention is not so expansive.

One of the hardest parts of going from being a mother of one to a mother of two has been having my attention constantly divided. Sometimes I get halfway through the day and realize I haven’t stopped and really seen my children as individuals. Instead, they morph into a two-headed creature that shouts demands and fights and poops and whose driving motive is to keep me from being able to finish reading a two paragraph email.

Once, not long after Violet was born, I was at a play area with both kids. My brain was trying so hard to adjust to suddenly having two small people to guard. I looked around, spotted Max playing nearby, and then thought frantically, Where is the other one? The “other one” was sleeping in my arms.  

For almost three years, it was just my son and I. He got the best and worst of me, but he got all of me. I remember lying next to him one morning when I was swollen with my daughter. Tears slid down my cheeks as I thought about how different Max’s life was about to become. Would becoming a big brother break our sensitive, strong-willed boy? At the time, Max had a habit of rubbing my forehead with his thumb when he was nervous or tired. It was sweet, (and also slightly painful since we failed to clip his nails on a regular basis), and as I felt the pad of his thumb pressing between my eyebrows, I looked at him and tried to imagine how he had travelled from the shriveled infant he once was to this toddler-boy.  

Fast forward 18 months. This week, Max’s preschool was closed for two days, while Violet’s daycare was open. For the last few weeks, four-year-old Max asked repeatedly, “Is it Mommy and Max day yet?” “Soon, sweetie,” I promised. In the scramble of caring for the children, making sure my husband and I each get a sliver of time for ourselves individually and time as a couple, we rarely remember to take one-on-one time with the kids.

As it turns out, we got an extra Mommy and Max day this week. On Wednesday, Max came home sick from school in the late morning. He laid on the couch, feverish and vacant-eyed. I laid next to him reading while Thomas and His Friends streamed on the computer. He woke up every so often to vomit hot fruit chunks all over the couch. It was a long, quiet, stinky day.

The next morning, on our first official Mommy and Max day, he hurled a little bit of fluid into the bathtub and then asked for toast and milk, which I reluctantly gave him. As he pranced around the living room, it become clear that he was better, and I was not. Blurry headed and nauseous, I somehow managed to drive him to the BounceZone, where he played for five minutes and then announced, “I don’t like this.” Fortunately, I was able to drop him off with my parents for the afternoon so I could get a little sleep.

“That was only part of a Mommy and Max day,” he told me later that night. He said it straight-faced, and intense guilt hurtled at my foggy head.

By Friday, though I still wasn’t feeling like myself, I rallied. We went to an indoor play place. We came home and had some friends over for a play date. We went bowling. As I watched Max hurl the small ball down the wood lanes, my heart felt heavy and sentimental. I felt like I was just seeing my boy for the first time in 18 months, since my daughter was born. He was inches taller, his once round face thinned out. He could talk and climb and bowl. How is my baby old enough to bowl?

 

 

It would be a big, fat lie to say that parenting has come easily to me. I need a lot of time to myself, and I get short-tempered and impatient and cray cray when I don’t get it. I have been through post-partum depression twice. I frequently find myself bored and agitated. When I hear those older ladies, the ones who are always in the grocery store, telling me, “Enjoy it! It goes by so fast,” I tense up. Are you freaking kidding me? I think. This day has already been three years long. I know rationally that the older women are right. I also know they suffer mild amnesia about the reality of raising small children. Just like the terrible clench of labor contractions, the memory of the raging tantrums and constant demands of these years with young children will soften in my mind. They will sweeten.

Yesterday, I didn’t just know this, I felt it. All day long, I watched my boy’s sweet, thinned out face. I hugged him until he pushed me away like an embarrassed teenager. I rubbed his forehead with my thumb. At bedtime, when he asked me to snuggle with him, even though I was exhausted and a little bit sick and we’d spent the entire day together with no nap, I gladly crawled into bed with him, inhaling the dry bark smell of his hair. We pressed our faces so close together that we blurred.

After the kids were finally both asleep, I looked at pictures of Max. I went from new pictures to the oldest ones, a reverse time lapse. There he was last week, going down the slide with his sister on his lap. Last fall, at the Cumberland Fair on his first ride, holding on tight and grinning. Last summer, about to demolish a plate of mango at his cousin’s house, the roundness of babyhood still clinging to his arms and face. In his old car seat, pudgy-cheeked with long bangs. In his high chair with clots of sweet potatoes smeared across his face. In the Ergo. In his lamb swing. In a swaddle. In my arms at the hospital, swollen-faced and impossibly small.  

It took slowing down and some extra attention for me to really absorb the velocity of time. I know that tomorrow I will be impatient again. I will hear myself sigh and mutter curse words under my breath in the kitchen. But I will also try and remember how quickly it all goes, the hard times and the sweet ones. I will try and pay more attention.

If you have more than one child, how do you give attention to each?

Chatterbox

I can barely remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I just flashed back to a ferry trip I took 11 years ago. For three days, I rode the ferry from my hometown of Juneau, Alaska to Bellingham, Washington.

The slow, quiet rocking gave me time to process a major transition. One of my closest friends had just died unexpectedly. I had finally, after eight years, graduated with my BA, and I was preparing to leave the west coast for Maine. For the second time. For three days I slept in a sweet, tiny cabin with windows looking out to the silver grey sea. I wrote in my journal. I stared at the waves, trying to conjure up an image of what the next part of my life would be like.

 

Partway through, I was eating alone in the ferry cafeteria. At the next booth over, a woman sat with her very chatty young son. “Why does that woman only have one leg?” the boy asked his mother. I knew who he was referring to; I had seen the passenger on the boat with just one leg.
“Well, I’m not sure why,” his mother said.
“But how does she walk? Does she hop?” I spied the young boy grabbing a French fry. “The lady with one leg goes hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop,” he sang, to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus.”
I silently dipped a curly fry into a pale plastic container of tartar sauce. The mother tried to explain why sometimes people only have one leg. I couldn’t believe she was letting him dramatically reenact this woman’s handicap with greasy ferry fries.


Today, my four-year-old son has been talking since he woke up at 5:30 this morning. My husband needed to work this morning, so except for a blissful break at my gym, which boasts free child care, my ears have been steadily assaulted all morning.

We picked my husband up and the four of us headed out to lunch, where the verbal parade continued. The part that most frustrates me is that the majority of what my son says makes no sense. “If you’re doing what you can do, you might think there’s two people.” Oh, okay. Right.

As I tried to enjoy my sweet potato wedges and veggie sandwich, Max’s one way conversation took a new turn.

“Does everybody have rolls in their neck?” he asked. I followed his gaze past my toddler daughter, who had managed to cram most of a piece of toast into her mouth. My eyes stopped at an older woman at a nearby table. I instantly knew he was referring to the saggy hammock of skin beneath her chin.
“Does everybody have them?” he asked again.
“No, not everybody does,” I whispered.
“But that lady does!” he said, pointing.
“Maxie, if she heard you say that, it might hurt her feelings,” my husband, Scott, explained. “Oh,” Max said. “I didn’t know women could eat those,” he said, pointing to my veggie sandwich.
“Huh,” I said. “Maxie, women can eat anything men can.”
“Oh. I KNOW. But I’m saying, I didn’t know WOMEN could eat that.”
“Okay…” I trailed off, hoping he would, too.
“That man is smalllll,” Max announced.
“Shhh,” my husband said.
“But why? That is a small man!”
“Shhh. Eat your rice.”
For half a second, the rice effectively blocked any words from departing Max’s mouth.

Then, a young woman entered the restaurant, assisting an older woman who walked with a cane.
“Why is she helping her? Why does that lady have a sad face? Why is that lady so small! But look, right now her face is sad!”
“I don’t think she has a sad face,” Scott said.
“But she just did! She just did have a sad face!” I glanced at the woman, who had the taut, frozen frown of a stroke victim. We briefly, quietly, attempted to explain that the younger woman was helping her walk, because sometimes people need help.
“Eat your rice.”

 I see the scene I witnessed all those years ago on the ferry differently now. The mother had been locked up on a boat with her little curious chatterbox for 48 hours straight. She had probably been fielding questions about whales and French fries and captains and barnacles and ladies with one leg for most of that time. She probably wanted to poke her eyes out but she knew if she did, her son would ask her why she didn’t have any eyes and what could he put in the holes where her eyes used to be and maybe he would try to make a French fry eyehole sculpture.

I love that my son is curious, as was my cafeteria mate on the ferry all those years ago. Max is beginning to notice peoples’ differences. That some of us are old or have different shades of skin. Some of us have neck wattles and are short. I love that he is trying to understand this beautiful, aching world. I just wish he would take a breath once in awhile. Wish I could, for just a few hours, float on a ferry in the mostly quiet in-between.

I have a weaner

This week marked the end of an era for me. A long era. As of May, I had officially been either pregnant, nursing or both for five years. Five years is a long to be a host body.

Don't get me wrong. I am proud and grateful. Giving birth and feeding my babies has transformed the way I see my body. It has allowed me to shift from a place of criticism to a place of respect, if not awe, at what my body has done. But five years is a long time.

As I watched my little Violet sleep in her crib last night, without having been nursed to sleep, I felt bittersweet. She is my lovebug, my sassy, sweet seventeen-month old. She is my surprise in every sense of the word. I always thought I would have a mini-me, a dark haired brooding little poet girl. Instead, she has creamy pale skin, a dash of reddish hair and a quick laugh. She is pure light, with a bit of sass for good measure. And we are done nursing.

It happened almost by accident.

Over the past several months, I slowly dropped nursing sessions, offering solid food or water instead of mama milk. She never complained. My son was literally attached to my boobs for the first year of his life; he nursed constantly. Every twenty or thirty minutes. When I began to drop nursing sessions with him, he would turn red-faced and angry. "Milt! Milllltttt!" he demanded. I nursed him until he was just over two years old. When we were finally, finally done, I immediately found out I was pregnant with my daughter.

So before long, with no drama, my daughter and I were only nursing at bedtime. I sang her a song each night, then quietly asked the universe to protect her and Max. I watched her eyes open and close, open and close, as my warm arms and milk cradled and fed her.

Last Sunday night, we spent Mother's Day on Peaks Island. After a day of playing with their cousins and gorging on cantelope, my kiddos both passed out in the car at 5:30 in the evening and transferred to their beds without waking up. It made for a strange, blissfully quiet night. And Violet didn't nurse.

Monday night at Vi's bedtime, I tried just holding her with some music on instead of nursing. Just to see what would happen; I expected protest. She let out a whimper or two when I sang the song I've always sang while giving her milk. But it may just be that without the distraction of nursing, she realized I have a dreadful singing voice. Then she plopped her head down on my shoulder, and as I shifted my weight back and forth, back and forth with the music, she fell asleep.

Tuesday night I had writing group, so Scott put her to bed as he always does on Tuesdays. No nursing.

Wednesday night went just like Monday night.

And so we are done, just like that. I thought maybe I should nurse her one last time, just so I could really pay attention. So I could watch her body relax against mine, taking it all in.

But life is not usually like that. We don't usually know when its the last time we are experiencing something. So instead the memories of both my kids nursing will run together in my mind, a blur of warmth and connection and sometimes, annoyance at having to share so much of myself for so long.