It is early Friday morning – well, early for the version of me that did not wake up before 6AM. It is between 7 and 8, and my daughter has fallen back asleep – much needed, as she has been sick all week. It is funny that this was the week that I was expecting to be quite productive. I had it all planned, right? So much work I’ve been wanting to get done, so many projects to feed and nourish. And so, of course, a persistent and intrusive virus came to daycare.
It is an interesting thing, watching myself battle it out. The excited toddler within me whining about wanting to do what I want to do! When is it my turn? And the martyred mother archetype I have to watch out for, sighing about how this is just the season and I must do what I must do, and she is more important than whatever project I am working on and how could I possibly complain about not having any free time while my daughter is coughing? The fun thing about that archetype is that she says all this while also resenting the world for not making it easier for me – after all, she is owed. And then there’s whatever primal animal part that occasionally finds existing within a body very troublesome and uncomfortable and wants to scream into a void and/or implode into one – just for a minute or two – so that no one can ask it anything about anything.
Outside it is raining and dark. The day does not yet feel like it has begun, and perhaps that is a small mercy from a random universe.
I am aware of a tendency to want to do everything all at once. I can be rajasic, in that way. I want it, I want to do it, I want to have it, I want to experience it, I want, I want, I want. Do not hold me back, do not tell me what to do, I want it.
There have been blessed moments of contentment – awe and wonder at so many things – as a result of going through something like brain surgery. I have listened to a favorite movement from a symphony and let tears fall. I have run through the trees and marveled at how exquisite it is to be able to see them. I have filled up my own car with gas and been struck giggling at how marvelous it is to have the autonomy to do such a mundane task that I was unable to do for over six months. I have listened to my daughter laugh and felt all the warmth and wonder it is likely possible to feel. I can know this beauty exists all around me all of the time. It is just sometimes hard to see it beyond my own opinions and wants.
And I don’t want to invalidate or exile any of what goes on within me. For one thing, it won’t make these parts actually go away, they’ll just try more clever strategies. For another, it seems to me that what they’re really demanding is to be seen truly and loved anyway. If I look at these upset and disappointed and wounded parts and offer love… tears come. It is vulnerable, what they are asking.
A few weeks ago, images of the brain surgery came to mind. Well, not the surgery itself – right before, as I was sitting in that little curtained off cubicle of sorts, needle in my arm and stickers on my head. How helpless I felt! How unfair it all seemed. It was not what I wanted. I wanted to weep and throw things, I wanted to disappear. Helpless, weak, trapped – meanings made in fear. And as I remembered, my husband was standing next to me, watching my face in the bathroom mirror. He slipped his arm around me and waited. He knows me well – he waits for me while I retreat.
And what brought me back was the thought, “I must be very strong to have made it through all that. I had to have been. I must be, still.” It was different. It was new. I told a friend about this moment, and she told me that it surprised her that strength was not obvious to me – that I have seemed strong all along. I perform it well. But this was different. It was not speaking of a feigned strength from anger or power. It spoke of a strength through something deeper.
This kind of strength – one of compassion and steadiness – still eludes me most of the time. I’ll find it for a moment, I’ll breathe out, and then something else comes around for me to react to. Start over. Again and again.
All the while, my daughter looks to me with eyes curious – what is it to exist here? What is it to love and be loved? Can there be nourishment in difficulty? And so I open my arms. I hold her to me and me to her.
It’s all temporary. It all changes. Reminding myself of this, gratitude returns. Here we are! On a rainy sick day, we are together. She rolls over in her sleep and the monitor hums along with the sound of rain and thunder and passing cars. It’s all right. One day, if I am very lucky, I will be in my seventies and thinking back on this exact phase – maybe even this exact moment – and I will smile to remember it.
It’s so temporary. It is enough.
Under and Through 