The Elasticity of Love

When I called my mother last week she sounded so relieved. I had interrupted the gauze-like melancholia that had begun to weigh her down. She spoke about gratitude, how lucky she is, and yet there lurked a lingering despair about growing old. What she can't do anymore, what she sees in the mirror, how she doesn't sleep well.

A year ago I lived a couple miles away from my mother. Like many seniors, she lives alone. She used to reside in a 55+ community where she organized football pools, bridge games, and an assortment of social gatherings. She hated watching the ambulances pull up to the door. She hated hearing about another friend heading out on their final ride to the hospital. The community kept raising the rent and her fixed income wasn't changing - and so she moved. My sister and husband, with a deep and loving generosity, invested in a single level, ground floor condo nearby - and that's now where my mom resides. Her bridge partners come over on Tuesdays and she joins her lady friends at the local Ixtapa restaurant for happy hour.

I am not trying to condense all the facets of my mother into the above paragraph - god, no. I'm pulling out small moments and noticing how they've painted a picture in my own mind - what I've ignored, what I have not been able to deny. Perhaps by moving farther away, my time with her has become more intentional. Perhaps I've witnessed for myself how hard it can be to confront an aging body and mind. I see within her the deep well of grief; how hard it is to be the last woman standing and witness for the passing of too many loved ones. I see her desire to be held and loved, to tend and nurture. I see the fierce independence, the intelligence, and the frustration with a ever-changing technical world that won't let her feel competent.

Thinking about my mother is juxtaposed with changing dynamics in my own life. Where once I was the one who married and moved away, now my son and his wife have done so as well. This is the first holiday season that he won't be here for at least some small part of our family gathering. As happy as I am for him and the choices that he's made for his life, I still miss him. The traditions and rituals that are indelibly written in my heart this time of year are only special in relationship to those I spend time with - my family and loved ones. So I feel his absence acutely with the full understanding that THIS is the future. This is the empty nest. Where he is for the holidays is not about how much he loves me - its about the fact that his heart has expanded and loves others. I love his extended family too. No, its not a lack of love or care - it simply is a reality of adult children doing exactly what you want them to do: find love, be happy, and live a wholehearted life.


How many times did I, as a young married woman, head to another part of the state for a holiday? I moved - and took two beloved grandchildren with me. And during all of those choices - while I knew that my folks were going to miss me and mine - my husband and I made choices for our immediate family, not our extended family and certainly not taking into account what our parents wanted. My attention was focused on my marriage, the well being of my children, health insurance, good schools, careers. Exactly what I would want my own children to put first before my desires.

It's sitting here on the other side of those life decisions with my kids that brings home to me how poignant those moments were for my parents. I can empathize now in a way that I never let myself then. I had to steel myself against their anguish when we left California for the job in Washington. I didn't have time for the long phone conversations or shared vacations of my younger self. I had to make choices that didn't take their emotional happiness into account.

And I'm ambivalent about that. I kind of wish I had been better able to see and listen - even when I wouldn't change the choices that I made. I wish that my knee jerk reaction to hearing how my parents were sad or missed me - hadn't been a defensive guilt that I had let them down. I used to think that my mother was the master of all martyrs and knew just what to say to make me feel guilty. I think she often just told me how she felt and I immediately felt she was telling me that I was intentionally hurting her. I didn't know how to hear her feelings of disappointment and simply acknowledge them without taking responsibility for those feelings. I didn't know how to hold the tension between what I chose as wife and mother with being a daughter, sister, and sometimes a friend.

It is a tension. A thread that pulls us all together into a large extended family. In-laws, children, marriages, grandparents, partners. Add in careers, friends, health, new life, death, illness, geographic locations. Sometimes that thread has no elasticity. I think our culture - especially as a woman of my generation - has taught me that I must be the one to manage all those tensions all the time. Guilt, remorse, saying "I should have, could have, ought to have" - make the familial ties tender and raw.

But that's changing now that I'm on the other side of raising my kids - and watching them head off into their adult lives. It's changing as I listen to my mom talk about her day. She takes me on a journey into the twilight - the wisdom, the pain, the astonished frustration of aging in today's world. I want to be there for her on that path. I also want to share with my own children how much I miss them - and walk them through to the knowing that they having nothing to feel guilty for - that love and caring for each other, missing each other - is never a bad thing.  I miss my son right now because I have such happy memories of all our wonderful times together. That's a delightful, precious truth.

Just as my mother and father missed me. I was a delightful, precious child to them too.

Being a bright light in someone else's life can feel like a burden - but what if I accept it and simply let it be a gift of love? If I can do that, maybe I can show my own kids how its done - so they never feel that love is an unwieldy burden or an uncomfortable responsibility.

Love stretches, it holds - even when it brings tears or loneliness or grief. Even when there is laughter and joy.

You are a bright light in someone else's heart. Let that settle in.

The Empty Nest Fills Back Up

The empty nest fills back up pretty quick.
College summer break for one daughter. Moving from the east coast to Portland for the other daughter. Two adult children - young women - back in the house.

While the older daughter - she who left for Portland today - had hoped to be here for only a month. She was here for over two months.

I can't claim to understand how difficult it has been to be back in this house after years gone or what it is like to come back to this particular home after a year at college. What I know about that is from a completely different era.

It is simply what needed to happen.

But I can certainly feel a huge sense of relief waving my oldest daughter back out into her adulting world. Maybe we were just a rest stop on her highway - a wonderful sojourn back in the heart of her family - but wow she was ready to get out of here.

How do we love so deeply, appreciate each other so fully - and revel in our independence when we escape the Family orbit? I ask that question not only for children - but for parents as well.

Sometimes its hard for me to realize that Andy and I are actually that orbit for our kids. This house is the black hole of regression where no one forgets what you did when you were fifteen or how you can push that one button that will send your brother (or sister) over the edge. And then there is us, as the parental unit - the looks we give, the tone of voice, the worry. We can't help it. When children regress, its hard not to join in. When parents treat us like we are children, we balk but enjoy the home cooking.

I don't have the stamina for parenting anymore. Call it menopause, aging, impatience - I'm not all that willing these days to be referee, short order cook, or dictator. Its hard not to put those hats on when two adult children are here long enough to lose their 'guest' status (that shiny, I'm so happy to see you phase) and start to roost. Two more adult women in the house is nothing to be taken lightly. Powerful sisterhood or a powder keg. Sometimes both at the same time.

And nothing lasts forever. The new apartment is rented, a new job starts, the college will soon open its doors...

My older daughter - who's been desperately waiting to head out, gave me a big hug this morning as she got ready to leave. She whispered a soft thank-you in my ear. I held her close, not wanting to release her... from my orbit. Damn, I thought, she was here long enough for me to get used to her being around. I kissed her cheek, told her I love her - and let go. Again. There was a bemused look on her face - too many thoughts, feelings, experiences to voice - and so she just leaned in and kissed my cheek, letting that say all that needed to be said.

I waved her off, that little car of hers loaded to the top as she heads down to the job and roommates that she's found. Off she goes again, ready to conquer the world.

The youngest has another month and then gets to head back to her friends in Walla Walla. I'll hug her close too on that day we drop her off. I'll probably get a little teary eyed, kiss her on the cheeks and tell her how much I love her. And let go. Again.

My kids, loving and tending them, is the orbit that is so hard for me to escape. And these complicated, amazing, quirky adults, who also happening to be my children, are living their lives full steam ahead. I feel loved and appreciated. I'm happy to clean out the guest room.

Parenting may be a role, but being a mother isn't. It just is. Love without strings. Faith and hope in all the wonderful goodness that will fill their lives - and letting go. Again and again.

A very long conversation

Every now and then, one of us makes a reservation, we dress up a little and head out for an evening to spend some time-out-of-time together. You might call this a date night - and I have too - but somehow 'date' night changes to something richer the longer I've been married.

I actually don't remember a lot about dating - those rituals of learning more about a potential partner. I've done most of my dating after I got married. They have been fleeting moments savored before returning to diapers, homework, and dirty dishes. Dates have been an hour or two where someone else cooks while we just sit and look at each other across the table. I could remember what it meant to look pretty, he could figure out where those dress shoes were hiding. We rarely went to a movie or an event that took time away from our ability to remember who we were before we were J's mom or dad; his wife, my husband. Sometimes we talked about kids, family and work. More often the conversation flowed into our hopes and dreams. It was a breath of fresh air, a moment to hold the vision and, yes, remember what brought us together so many years before.

Saturday night, we headed out to a great little Italian restaurant in Seattle and settled in with a carafe of wine with appetizers.

"Tell me about yourself - what's your name again? - I know I'm taking you home with me but I'd like to know a little more about you before I do."

Yes, that's what I said to my husband of 28+ years. Because we had been bantering he didn't look too startled - but still my basic question caught him off guard. "Who are you, what's important to you?"

I smiled into my wine as he sat and stared at me - not in frustration as you might imagine - but simply trying to figure out how does one even begin to answer that question.

What this man doesn't seem to realize is that he is extremely good at getting me to talk about myself. Whether its been the minutiae of a day spent home with sick children, or office politics or the latest family drama - he listens. What he is even better at is not talking about himself. He can share stories about others and, sure, he reveals himself in those stories - but he doesn't talk about the goodness in his heart, the skills, the successes that are so much a part of his life. I tell him he's brilliant and he looks baffled and then says that he's simply been lucky.

Right.

I don't know why it happened the way it did, perhaps because the conversation started in a playful pretend sort of way but as we sipped and ate our way through a few courses, the conversation delved into his dreams, his way of looking at the world and how he sees himself there. Listening, I was touched so deeply by this amazing man. Of course I'm not going to share what he talked about but I fell in love again with the person he is, not who I blindly assume him to be.

We do that, you know. Its not often in the loving chaos that is raising a family, working full-time, dealing with the world as it comes at you - it's not often that you look across the table and see a life partner with fresh eyes. We are lulled with assumptions, by our understanding, by all the little things that we take for granted.

What if I was meeting you for the first time?

I looked across the table and felt like the luckiest woman on the planet.

Occasionally he would get incredibly uncomfortable having what he considered such a one-sided conversation but I was so interested in what he was saying, just listening, asking another question - that I gently refused to let him start asking me matching questions. I realized something rather profound even as I said it to him - "I know that this conversation feels unbalanced to you, like it needs to be fair in some odd tit-for-tat way. Can you let that go? Just for a little while? This is a lifetime conversation between you and I - and these last couple of hours have been wonderful getting to know you - right now, in this time and place."

A Lifetime conversation.  A conversation that lives between the two of us that we pick up at odd times - building on other things we have said, experiences we have had. Sometimes I talk non stop for hours - I should remind him of a particular drive up from Las Vegas to Seattle.  Sometimes, when I have all my wits about me, I get him to talk about his living of life for a time as well. He's sneaky, the master at deflecting the conversation spotlight off of himself.

There is no balance sheet for this.

I recognize myself in this - I have often struggled with the notion of taking up space or the notion that there is only so much time (at dinner, in a meeting, for a debate) and we must have equanimity or else it isn't 'fair.' Somewhere over the last decade that has mellowed. What hasn't mellowed is my interest and love and curiosity for this man I married almost thirty years ago. He isn't the same boy I met when I was seventeen. Like me, he's a person who keeps growing, learning and deciding who he wants to be in the world. I'm not going to know him without making the space for him to share who he is with me.

And of course, as we walked hand in hand back to our car, he asked me, "so who are you, Jennifer?"

I just smiled rather smugly, "I'm a woman of mystery. But I'm still taking you home with me."

When Letting Go, Create a new Vision

He says to me, "We need to talk tonight. I've been thinking about Jessara."
I'm slow to respond, stunned actually because I realize that he's been giving a lot of thought to something that I wasn't thinking about. Oh boy, I've got to prepare myself; I want to put off what I think is coming and ask if we can talk about it after dinner.

Sure.

As we clean up the dinner dishes, he brings it up again and I realize that I had completely forgotten about his request to talk - I'd put it out of my mind completely. I'm slightly amused at my brain's protective capacity.

The conversation unfolds.

He's been thinking about all the things we've talked about the last few months (our youngest heading off to college next fall, how we want to restructure our lives, the things we've talked about doing) and Jessara, our boat of eight years, is an 'anchor' around our financial health. Up to this point in our lives, that's been okay. We've had such grand adventures on her as a family that the costs were always worth it. We aren't using her very much anymore and she does what every boat does - she sits in the water and breaks.


Jessara off of Spencer's Spit, Lopez Island, WA

He looked up how much it would be to charter a boat - a lot less than it costs to keep one. He continues to give solid, reasonable reasons why it is a good idea for us to sell her now.

As he talks, I feel myself pulling Jessara in closer and closer to my heart.

No! Don't ask me to give her up quite yet. I don't care what I said six months ago about not going to Alaska - don't make this a logical, rational decision! So what if I'm the one who pinned you down to talk about the possibility of selling her next year...

I'm the one that cracked this conversation open in the first place and there I stood, holding on tighter than I ever had. It was like the hug you give someone that you love when you don't know if you'll see them again. It's tight and bittersweet, longer with a reluctant release. But the release has to come. You have to let go. I couldn't disagree with any of his reasons, I understood, and yet...it hurt. This man I'm married to then did something quite amazing. With an off hand comment that brought back another conversation that I had forgotten, he says, "I took a look at some of those little teardrop trailers online."

I've been forgetting a lot of things, obviously.

The death hold I had on Jessara eased off a little bit. If I was a dog, my ears would have perked forward. It was a baited hook with a different vision. The beauty of it was that he was letting me know, for the first time, the ways in which he was beginning to envision our empty nest. This wasn't me poking and prodding the poor guy - he was poking me back and pointing out that without a boat, we could pursue new adventures in new ways. He was embracing tangible possibilities - and had been - but on his own time scale. This was news to me because only a few months ago he had told me that he needed the next year to just think about change. All the possibilities that I kept talking about were raising his anxiety. We made a pact to keep everything in the 'contemplation' stage until 2015. Which was why I was surprised by what I was hearing. I was also moved.

I realized that we process life's questions in different ways which includes different time frames. He needed to have the time to think about life in the empty nest from his own perspective which tends to include things like budgets, 401k's, savings and costs. Not just those things, but they show up more in his thinking than mine.  I can't begin to tell him how much I appreciate this in our relationship. He's a programmer - logic is the language he loves. And yet he is married to me, a woman who had to drop Logic as a class because I hated it. Ack - all those rules drove me crazy.

One of the many choices - More about Serro Scotty Trailers

So there we were. Making a major decision to change the way we live by selling our boat.

I cried a few tears of sadness - because letting go needs to honored - and then sat quietly for a long moment before I looked up, a gleam in my eye and asked -

"Do you know how many National Parks there are in this country?"

He just sighed - and smiled.



A little bit about Jessara can be found at Jessara's Voyage

Conversations about New Beginnings

It was about twenty six years ago that I signed on for a particular job that has defined my life in ways I never expected.


young parents who had no idea
what was about to happen to their lives
 

Job Description: The care and support of three children. Sometimes known as raising a family. No prior experience necessary. On the job training provided whether you like it or not. Hours: 24/7.  Possibility for advancement – only if you count potty training and ability to drive a car at 16 as liberating moments.

Luckily, I didn’t have to do this alone but I have been the primary caregiver for three precocious children who are now becoming three amazing adults. With my youngest now sifting through college brochures and getting ready to turn eighteen this fall an odd thought occurred to me: In about eighteen months, I’m going to be retiring from this raising a family gig – whether I like it or not. Active parenting will be shifting into a very different role where it is no longer my job to protect, guide and provide 24/7 support and triage.

I could say quite a lot about women and roles and what I’ve learned along the way about the choices that I made – but that’s in the past now. I look at these kids of mine and think they are pretty damn cool. I think they’ve done most of that for themselves – with a little help from the parenting pit crew. The courage and strength I see in them humbles me and I ask myself – is that courage living within me as well?

Andy and I had a chance to talk this past weekend as we wandered around Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. I told him how I love the San Juan Islands and felt more at home in Friday Harbor than I did in our current community. And then I even went a step further and told him that I may want to live up there on a more permanent basis – after our youngest is off to college.

He asked me why – in a very thoughtful and receptive way which gave me the space to answer in kind. I was able to share with him my love of the ocean and land that makes up the ecology of the islands. I grew up on the beach and the ocean makes me happy. I told him how I liked the fact that there isn’t a Costco, Wal-Mart or Home Depot around the block nor is there a Starbucks, McDonald’s or Applebees on the corner. Even the market is independently owned. In the winter the town is quiet; many shops are closed from January through March. In the summer, the farmer’s market brings in produce from all the local islands. It is fun watching the farmers pull up to the docks and unload bucket after bucket of freshly cut flowers. I feel the simplicity of contentment.

It was a good conversation.

I’m noticing how I am questioning all sorts of values and ways that I live my life. At some point, it won’t matter what school district we live in or if we have enough space for three kids, a dog and, on average, two cats. After all these years of being anchored to live in a particular area, I’ve got to be honest, I’m looking forward to considering what is important to me as Andy and I adjust to living as a couple.

Maybe it’s a pipe dream – I don’t know yet. What I do know is that these conversations that we are having as a couple are very important. We need to speak about what our expectations are – the stories in our head about what life without kids running around underfoot means. We are having conversations about our values and beliefs, sharing what dreams are calling us into the future and what fears we have as well.  This is just the beginning of a dialogue that will be years in the making.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.- Douglas Adams

Walk With Me

I wish you could have come with me on this walk. Stepping on to the trail, swallowed up by the forest of pine, cedar, fern and moss, the road traffic disappears. We would have shared our wonder at the blanket of brittle fire-hued leaves covering the path.  I stopped and smiled – and wished you were with me.

Because it truly was a magical morning in the watershed. The forest floor, tucked within the folds of the hills, was still filled with the deep shadows of morning while the tree canopies glowed with sun-kissed warmth. The trail turns, dips and climbs. Around the corner it reveals a deep ravine where the ferns and moss are dense, impenetrable. I think of my children when they were little and how if I had them with me we would wonder if that was the doorway to fairyland. Perhaps we would shudder slightly, trying to see into the darkness to what lay beyond. We would share a smile, enjoying our fanciful flight into imagination and slip our hands together as we continued to wander.

The youngest child sits in her high school class right now. I remember her little hand in mine while I walk on. Three little hands of three little children that always tugged at my own.

Over the uneven ground, my steps rarely falter. Walking in the woods is all about peripheral vision and keeping the knees soft. If you were here, I would point up the bank of ferns towards the huge, illuminated yellow leaves of the young maple standing out against the dense, dark green backdrop.

You and I, we would probably hold hands for a moment and release and later, again, brush our fingers together. We would notice how low the water is and talk about the coming of winter, the rain and whether or not the long-term forecast predicts snow.

There is one place on the trail - our voices would have grown quiet as we listen. The chirping surrounds me as the birds noisily greet the day. The sun, now bright and streaming through the trees, makes it hard to see what kind of small bird is making such a racket. I don’t care, I’m just enjoying their chatter – it stills my own internal voices. 

And in that moment, it doesn’t matter what work comes with the day. Everything is simple – my appreciation is enough. A warm breeze tickles my nose, a soft goodbye from summer.

My steps are slower as I make my way back towards the sounds of traffic and barking dogs – where everything feels so very complex.