Whose stories do I write now?

One morning last week I was driving Gabe and Nora to school, last minute, as usual (they'd said they'd walk, ok, whatever). But it was raining and, sure I would. These days, how could I not?

They were talking about all the upcoming events: Nora's jazz concert, the high school coffee house, who would go to what, and reminders from the drivers’ seat that if you decide on this plan over the other you are going to need to find a kind family or friend to bring you home. Etcetera, etcetera; the trappings of teenage-hood. Me, a solid parent of teens now.

I used to (and still do) observe these very people admiringly. They seemed so…cool. The teenagers themselves were interesting too I suppose - not for me to really know, a bewildered consumer of youth culture if anything. But I couldn't get enough of the parents. They'd go out to dinner whenever. They didn't know where their kids were exactly. I am that now, I thought, having somehow arrived without any thorough insights on how the journey took place. I just kept getting up and making them go to school. I just kept buying larger sneakers, and now I can’t tell, looking at them cluttering the mudroom floor, which shoes belong to which person.

Alongside this realization, I have been thinking about writing, too. About how their stories aren't really mine to tell anymore. It’s both a practical acknowledgment and (perhaps?) a big deal for someone like me, who has been writing their lives for so many years. Borrowing their experience for my own telling. And there are some stories I’ll keep telling anyway, forever - this is the earned privilege of being a mom I think - about how Gabe just got back from China, how the river cruise in Shanghai was his favorite day. And how Nora just ordered a bunch of prom dresses to try on.

But the rest is really their own, and I’ve realized over the past few weeks especially, as I sink into a new job and they go off on their own adventures, how much more calm I am when they are out and about. Like around town, sure, but also halfway across the world. It’s shocking but expected that what happens in life is - you get used to things.

Still, though, on mornings like that recent one when I have them trapped in the car for a few minutes, it’s hard to stop talking. You know, while I still have them. I have this compulsion to take those gifted moments of togetherness and try and impart all the wisdom I can. When what I know to be true - what the experts say - is that most teenagers (honestly most people) would prefer a quiet, steadfast role model type. There, mostly silent, to receive and not so much to give fast-paced coffee-fueled advice at 7:10 a.m.

I think when you see parents all obsessed, all abuzz about their children, it is, yes, sometimes, because of worry; because of fear that things will end up not the way you expected or wanted. And while I can understand that, I also think that for me, maybe for a lot of us, it has to do with being sure I provide all the lessons I can before they leave for that next thing that isn’t the confines of the family vehicle. Like that if I don't get in every bit of learned knowledge I have accrued in my own life, I won't ever get to tell them. 

Which is, of course, nonsense. When my children go places, I'm still here and we are still us. The parental relationship doesn't dissolve (just look at all the advice I've received from my own mother in recent years, and I left home, well, some time ago). And also, they'll figure some of it out on their own. You know what, they’ll figure most of it out. Because, as I like to tell them (god do I love to tell them!) the learning is so often in the doing. 

And so, finding myself here, I’m thinking about what I’ll tell you next, and I’m thinking about how to get better at letting the peaceful moments be. I’m thinking about how it’s a bit of a relief for children and parents to become just slightly irrelevant to each other, that this is the way it should be (like how it wasn’t cool when I tried to use “chopped” and how my kids love it when J and I go out for a drink, the house devoid of our ever-present parental energy).

It’s a challenging but peaceful endeavor, it feels like knowing you are doing the right thing. Me, so so talkative - my goodness! - trying to be a little bit more quiet.

A long winter and the art of quitting

It was a bit of a rough winter, and not only because of the snow - which was, it must be noted - excessive. Although it also meant days off, lazy mornings, dead-quiet walks around a blanketed neighborhood and one snowshoeing excursion.

It was rough for other reasons though, too hard-to-define, too-evasive-to-pin down, and not quite monumental enough overall to go into. Like: the kids were kind of fighting a lot. Like: I decided to apply for a new job (and did, in fact, just start a new job!) which was a positive development, but also emotional and a little scary. Like: I felt too entrenched in and also too removed from multiple aspects of my life. I got overly involved in my kids’ squabbles but didn’t write or read as much as I wanted. I don’t know if this makes sense, but the point is that it, and I, felt off.

The fall, in comparison, had been a whirlwind of excitement (college tours and soccer games, cross country meets and homecoming). It was one of the best seasons of parenting I’ve ever experienced. But it gave way to something much less “best.” What happened? I think, for one thing, an anticlimactic morass can follow a period of great expectation if you let it. My dad and I used to talk about this a lot. Like you are working and working for something and then you get it! Afterwards, you come down from all that swirling energy…and it can be challenging to summon much energy again at all.

I also think, following the Occam’s razor principle, that certain periods of parenting are difficult due to the most obvious things: your children’s ages, including everyone just about being teenagers (or at least acting like them, am I right fellow sixth grade parents?); that the winter is always harder, which is both understandable and ok; that big life shifts like one-fifth of your five-person family preparing to leave for college (meaning the remaining four - who have never, in this combination, been just four before!- will have to learn to navigate this new, uncertain dynamic) and leaving the comfort of a a known-entity job for the uncertainty of a new one, doesn’t exactly calm it all down.

Despite all that or more likely because of it, I had some good, thoughtful moments this winter, including one snowy afternoon when I took Aidy across the street to the lawn of our neighborhood pool club where she wanted to sled on the small hill in the back. I waded through yet untouched drifts, clumsily forging a path to the edge of this particular scene, watching her march to the top, slide to the bottom and repeat the action again and again, just us and all the silence. Aidy, at 11 is, yes, knocking at the door of teenagehood, but still, often (so thankfully) a little kid like this: snowpants, the reckless pursuit of fun.

And speaking of my dad, I thought about him when I was standing there watching her. I think because I was acting as an invisible observer, which is how I sometimes imagine him now. I was just far away enough (tired from climbing through so many snow piles, resting before attempting more) that it wasn’t worth yelling to try and communicate, tell her that her last run down the hill looked particularly thrilling. I could only watch.

The thing that’s good about having a parent who has died - maybe not good, that sounds crazy, but which, several years out, I really appreciate, and have told a few people as much - is that I can summon him whenever needed, like a guardian angel. You can’t do that with a living person, and I did it then, standing knee deep, watching Aidy sled. You’re here I thought, in the falling flakes, in the universe, however it works. That’s one way you can take beautiful comfort in someone who has passed on from this life and is now, if you believe in this sort of general spiritualism anyway, everywhere.

I decided to go closer and surprised Aidy - who immediately asked if I was ok - by dropping down into onto my back like I was going to make a snow angel. But instead just lying there, quietly, while the snow drifted down and touched my face.

I looked over a few minutes later and Aidy had stopped her sledding and was doing the same. On her back, half on her sled, half off, lifting her gloved hands to catch snowflakes, or try or to bat them away like a cat. She was absolutely quiet, incredibly still, like children so frequently are not. The world stops like this so rarely. These days, at least.

When I ran the New York City Marathon in 2016, my father wrote me an email that I absolutely loved. Very him, and the complete opposite of the many (much appreciated), “You’ve got this!”-type communications I’d been receiving all weekend. Respect for spelling and grammar abandoned, as usual. The subject line read: “Mom and I have told dozens of folk we are goi g to NY cuz our daughter is in the marathon.”

The body of the email, short yet to the point:

“We are so proud of you!
But remember, if you feel even s little tired
   Stop!
Dad”

Even a little tired, he said. To someone about to run her first marathon. All his anxiety about his daughter - a full grownup with three children, but still - running so many miles for no apparent reason, wrapped up in one concise message: you don’t have to finish. It’s fine, perhaps even preferable, to give up.

I think about this email all the time, especially in the can-do, get-through-it-ness that befalls our more challenging periods. Because it is comforting to think about how we can quit things, walk out, even right in the middle of them. You can lay down. You can say, “I’ve changed my mind.” I think about this at times like the one this winter has been. Wondering: Is this how it goes? The exquisite waiting followed by the satisfaction of knowing followed by the plateau? Accented by - and I know we chose living here and I do love experiencing all four seasons - dirty snow piles?

And then, you know! You don’t! We don’t. Most of the time. But my father - who was busy and accomplished, who was social and adventurous - was so good at giving that permission, good at abiding by it in non-detrimental ways. He left a party whenever he felt (“even a little!”) tired, the promise of his bed and a good TV show the reward.

So often I find that the permission alone is enough to deflate all that expectation, a joyous reminder that YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANY OF THIS! That this is voluntary for the most part. That, and this is perhaps the magic, you don’t have to, but you get to.

Now that the snow has melted and life, and the season itself, feels like it’s turned a corner, I find myself amped in ways that are probably kind of annoying. Dictating potential weekend plans to my family like a cruise ship operator…“Spring is coming, you guys!” The momentum will pick up, different than the fall - soccer and graduation and summer plans - in ways that could feel like too much, and will certainly be emotional. But I’ll call my dad in for his unique brand of pep talk whenever necessary. If you get even a little bit tired. You know the drill.