Letters 11 & 12: "I want them to wear superhero costumes."

Dear Victoria,

It was another whirlwind weekend. I write that to you as Sunday closes but I wonder, is there ever a weekend that isn't a whirlwind? What would a light breeze of weekend look like on my calendar, in our hours?

This is the pace of our life, a life we set with such intention, and if at times the execution requires both strategy and endurance, still it's with gratitude that I realize at the close of each night that this frenetic concatenation of five social lives at the behest of one home and two drivers is the alchemy of such happiness. Three kids in bed, each happy to have played and ice-creamed and visited and wild rumpused through the park, their sleep now the first stillness of their day, and well earned. Max and I, we each finished a novel this weekend, each spent some time in housework, in errands, and in conversation with friends, we had the quiet satisfactions of adulthood, and the parental satisfactions, included, of making our kids' day-sized dreams come true.

So all is well with my soul, as they say, and yet I'm not ready for bed. I'm stuck in thought.

I had just Eleni with me in the last portion of this afternoon. We had a date to meet her friend Annie, along with Annie's mom. Annie and Eleni went to preschool together, but as the big seven-year-olds that they are, those days feel distant. They're in different schools but love each other and we make the effort to provide for the continuation of their friendship.

Annie's an only child and her parents have separated and maintain their own homes. Annie shuffles back and forth. It hasn't been an easy year for Annie as she's had to reconcile this arrangement that she never expected or wanted, and I'm proud to say that my Eleni has been a steady friend through Annie's turmoil. I say lightheartedly but with a solid undercurrent of truth that there are so many of my own kids traipsing through my house at any moment that I never mind a friend or two or six to come over, as well, and Annie's always found a friendly haven amid my wild throng.

Annie's mother offered to pick up Eleni and drop her off; she offered twice, almost insistent: "I know what my to-do list looks like; I can't even imagine yours." But I made the time to go with them because I wanted to be there. To-dos get done and can stay to-be-done, but a mama-daughter double date is a special opportunity, not to be forsaken for laundry and grocery runs, even though we've run out of both the kids' vitamins and the fish's food.

We were sitting at the cafe table, the girls chatting and giggling in the secret language of old friends, and Annie's mom brought it up again. I asked about the new house. After she left Annie's dad she had moved into an apartment, but this fall she bought a little row house. She spoke in apologies: "I don't know why we haven't had you over yet. I don't know why I can't get the house together. I don't know why I can't get anything done. I just have one kid and I have whole weekends without her. I don't know how you do it."

There it is, Victoria: I don't know how you do it. You, my friend, you must receive this line, yes? And it's what has me thinking near midnight instead of crawling beneath the covers. I am a superwoman, yes, but no more so than you or my neighbor or the stranger walking down the street.

I think we all rise to the number of expectations upon us. I think there are days we fail or succeed by degrees, but we do however much needs to be done. We are not special, not for this. I have days of shortcomings and don't want on those days to crumble from anyone's pedestal. I just want us to believe in ourselves, so we can eliminate that nervous need to compare.

I said to Annie's mom, "whenever you're ready, we'd love to come visit." I've known Annie's mom for seven years, now, and I can't help her believe in herself. I can't stop her from drawing comparisons. All I can do is gently reject the validity of those comparisons - for her, for Annie and my Eleni, for myself. For all of us, you and my neighbor and the stranger walking down the street, I want to say "just be you, and call us when you're ready so we can be us in your company."

I love my family and all its wild ways but I understand that from the outside it might look impossibly much. And I wonder, sweet friend with the even larger family, tell me: how do you face the inevitable comparisons? How do you say to yourself and the women you care about, "you do your best and worst and I'll do mine and let's not feel the need to compare, let's just continue to meet around this cafe table and spill our hearts out to each other?"

How do you say, "see me for me, not for some virtue you've ascribed to me that I may not even deserve?" How do you say, "your wonder at me is misplaced, and makes me uncomfortable?"

How do you say, my sweet Victoria whose heart is filled with wisdom and these same experiences, "I'm just me and I want you to see me, not through the labels that reflect more about you than me, but just me?"

I hope you're well, friend, and I know I will find the perfect perspective in your response, which is why I await it so eagerly.

Much love,
Agnes

Agnes,

Have I ever told you how much I adore you for your unashamed honesty? Remember the day of our first meeting at your house, how you called (or was it texted?) when I was close and informed me that your air conditioner had broken? ... In July? I sat at an intersection waiting for the light to turn and couldn't help but laugh. I'd been perspiring already even with the cold air blasting from the vents in my van, wondering what you'd think of my outfit, of how I dealt with my baby, if you'd like me in person. And here you were informing me as only you can that your air was out but the get-together was still on, if I'd have it, and I'm so glad I did. The ease in your... you-ness was hinted at in that exchange, and the meeting only confirmed it. You are fantastically unique, wildly, enviously present in the moment. I admire your intellect, your aesthetic taste, and your parenting style. But most of all? I like how your company spurs me to embrace my me-ness without restraint.

And that brings me to the subject of your letter, for I am a chronic apologizer. I am forever offering apologies for the dust on my stairs, the strange smell coming from my untidy kitchen, and that my two-year-old is running around like a tiny, naked Amazonian in the dining room. Does this mean I subconsciously believe my life should resemble a mixture of a magazine photo spread and family sitcom? It does, I suppose. A handful of years ago I went through an awful season where I jogged around the house on Sunday mornings like a mad woman, barking at my husband and the kids to don freshly-ironed outfits and for goodness sake, not mess up their hair. I wanted to be sure we arrived at church looking put together, for all those friends who questioned how I could do it, as I kept bearing children. Pressed creases mean we're put together, right?

And now I flash to a few months ago, when we were home in the States temporarily awaiting the birth of our fifth child, and my third was insistent that he be allowed to wear a superhero costume to the store. Hugely pregnant, uncomfortable, and overwhelmingly aware that we were quite a sight without superhero costumes, I argued with him about it until we had a crisp, brief moment of silence and clarity: he looked into my eyes hopefully, his own glistening with pure sweetness and innocent heroics, and I thought: What the heck. Pull that costume on and just be you, kid.

My large family elicits all sorts of verbalized expectations from people we come into contact with: most of them unrequested, many from individuals we don't know personally. I've had the bad habit of tucking those expectations into an uncomfortable, too-small pocket of my psyche where they poke and annoy me, bubbling with the lie that I am not what I should be. It's a mode of being I work hard to keep my children from operating in, a tight skin of perception glossy with strain and devoid of authenticity. I want them to wear the superhero costumes.

And I want the people with expectations to know that those things they marvel at about my mode of being... well, thank you for that. But here is what I am most proud of: that moment when my kids are asleep and slightly sweating beneath a thick comforter, when I creep in, through the maze of their toy collection, and kiss their temples and whisper into their dreams that they are spectacular and I love them; that I made myself walk back up the stairs the other day and offer a 'Sorry' to my husband because I bit his head off for something completely irrational; that I set a crazy, wild goal for myself and it's all for me and it seems impossible, but I'm going for it anyway. These are the messy, unpressed, totally normal details of my days that I hold close to my heart as I drift off to sleep. I am not a robot checking items--one expectation after another--off a list. I'm a disaster, sometimes. But I'm trying to embrace humility throughout it all, to love without restraint, to reach-reach-reach because I believe I serve best and love best when I'm chasing something that draws me closer to God.

The best friends I've made in my womanhood have been those, like you, who can lay their messes and dreams and expectations for themselves and heaped upon them by others, out on the table between us. Without judgment we sift through it all, laughing and seething and weeping. We come away resolute in our us-ness. We say: No air? The party's still on. And we dance.

Twirling (and I know you are too),
Victoria

Letters 3 & 4: "I was a woman at slight remove from my ordinary identity"

Oh, Sybil,

I went out Saturday night. Leaving behind all the kids, who stood at the door and asked why I had to go, and my sweet husband, who patiently nudged them back inside away from February's bite, I left them. As always, it was exhilarating and felt a little daring: who is this single woman, lipstick and a purse so small it couldn't possibly hold crayons and matchbox cars and sandwich bags of cereal?

I came home to them, of course, but for four or five hours I was a woman at slight remove from my ordinary identity. 

I am shy in person. I always have been and can't imagine what it would be like to be freed of that cloak but, baby, I was born this way. The party I attended was a group of women I know online. A funny thing, the way we now build communities. Like you and me. What is this invisible world? And the truth is, I thrive in it. I can be gregarious at a keyboard. 

So these ladies and I, we all collaborate on a common website. We communicate with each other online every day. We have a Google Groups and a Facebook group. We're all Facebook friends. In one sense, I know each of them very well. But it cannot be avoided that even though I've been with the group for more than three years, I'm one of the newest members. Many of them go back six or more years, and in the early days, they had many in-person gatherings. It's my shyness cloak distorting truth, maybe, but in their presence I always feel inhibited, the newbie, the one they don't know as well as they all know each other. 

I confess, Sybil, as much as I knew it would be a great evening, I also dreaded it. It's so hard for me to walk into a room like that. My heart beats fast and my senses heighten and I question every word out of my mouth just as it escapes in a potential burst of embarrassment. But I went. And should "going out for a ladies' night with friends" be considered an accomplishment? Well, yes, I think it should. 

Sunday morning found me exhausted. It's a toll, being sociable through my shy cloak, and with the last smudges of mascara scraping my cheeks I found myself bone-heavy tired. I didn't want to get up. But one child, two children, three soon found themselves in our bed, climbing on me, saying all at once "did you have fun?" and "what did you do?" and "where were you?" and "I'm HUG-REEN!" (that's how George says 'hungry;' he's almost three, my sweet baby with the endless appetite). 

And I was home in my element, being clambered over as if they were puppies and not children, and I felt comforted and lonely. This is my family and I was back with them, I in their arms and they entwined in mine. But at the same time, I was acutely aware that my Gal About Town status was as faded as my makeup. I was worn out by the challenge of socializing with women I admire so much that they intimidate me, but I was also exhilarated by the afterglow of my accomplishment. 

Is it a big deal or a little thing to have a fun night out? It's everything and nothing, a personal challenge I happened this time to manage well, a memory of a fun evening. It's life as me, life as mom, life as a woman who made the puzzle pieces click together without glue or force or luck. 

My children yammered on and around me and my sweet husband, downstairs, must have been brewing coffee. I smelled its restorative aroma rise up to me and I thought about this family, that night, this blended existence between personhood and parenthood. 

Not every conclusion ends in the emotion of accomplishment but this one was good. I lay there in bed, imagining corking that exact feeling to savor again at future moments of need. This feeling should come with a merit badge, I thought. And a nap.

So naturally I swung my legs off the edge of the bed and went downstairs to make oodles of breakfast.

Much love,

Agnes

Dear Agnes,

If it were possible to reach through my computer screen, I would give you a big high five and celebrate your successful night out! Daring to be brave and to step outside of your familiar is nothing short of heroic. Being outside of your comfort zone is often a wretched thing, but I am so proud of you for embracing it and for contributing to conversation at the risk of sounding foolish! (Though I find it hard to believe that anything you have to say would do anything less than contribute to the quality of conversation being had!).

You and I are in slightly different places right now, Agnes. You're a few years 'ahead' of me! You see, I just became a Mom a few months ago. This new title is so new to me, in fact, that my personal journal is scribbled with several entries that say something along the lines of, "When will I really feel like a Mother?" I find myself staring at Baby Girl, realizing that I am and will be to her what my own incredible mother is and has been to me. It's daunting. It's thrilling. It's terrifying. It's such a privilege! The moment I saw the "+" sign on the pregnancy test last March, I immediately and irrevocably adopted the title I have dreamt of for years: "Mother." In my eyes, I was 100% a Mom. However, now that she's here I've realized that it is also role that takes time to grow in to.

See, when I go out without Baby Girl (to class or the grocery store and such), for the most part I feel completely normal. It's still comfortable for me to be out and about without her. Now, don't get me wrong, I miss her when we're separated. Of course I do. Often times, I find myself looking at the people around me and thinking, "I'm a Mom! You can't see it on the outside, but 3 months ago my life and heart were radically changed. Right now you are seeing just one woman sitting in one bus seat but the truth is that my heart is not with me anymore. The cavity where it used to reside is empty and now it lives in this tiny little Lady that I call my daughter." It makes me look at the others around me and wonder about the mystery that comes with strangers. What secrets do they carry? What do the details of their lives look like? Anyway, I guess I'm sort of in this limbo stage where I feel fully me when I'm with her and fully me when I'm without her. Slowly, though, I can feel that the woman "without Baby Girl" is less and less who I am. It's good. It's new. It's a change that needs to happen and I'm embracing it as it comes.

I dream of the day when our family looks more like yours. When Baby Girl is the oldest of three, and they come rushing in to greet me in the morning and children I haven't met yet make my heart explode by saying things like "HUG GREEN." Until then, I'll continue to embrace each day as it comes.

It's always lovely to hear from you, Agnes. I hope that since your night out on the town, you've been able to find a healthy balance between personhood and parenthood. I hope that you're being brave with your days - even the 'ordinary' ones - and that you're feeling that same feeling of contentment with the start of each morning!

Most Affectionately,

Sybil

Letters 1 & 2: "I was simply in the atmosphere, weightless and free..."

Magdalene,

The other night I took the kids to a McDonald's for dinner.  I know the nutrition is cringe-worthy at best, but we have a small pile of gift cards from Christmas, and the cold weather lately has made us more hermitic than I like.  Meaning: We're all driving each other nuts, even after exhausting all the craft supplies on hand and hours of imaginative play in the snow. 

So off we went.  We slipped and slided across the icy parking lot, urged on by the smell of french fries.  We shuffled carefully with our loaded tray into the playplace, where we were greeted by other harried-looking parents, gleeful children, and the strange, misplaced smell of chlorine.  In total keeping with their personalities, my oldest, Armand, inhaled his meal and asked--mid-swallow with his last bite--if he could go play.  My almost-two-year-old, Eliza, having taken perhaps four and a half nibbles, also declared herself to be done.  The baby was waking in his seat and I was only halfway through my own hamburger, so I relented, burbling reminders about removing shoes and staying together.

Of course these reminders quickly dissipated amid the onset of pretend adventures.  The shoes were shucked quickly into the colorful cubbies provided, but it wasn't long before the 6-year-old had ditched the 2-year-old.  This wasn't for lack of caring: his much longer legs ferrying him to the top of the structure within seconds, he'd yell down to his sister to huuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrry.  She, however, is not a lady to be rushed, and soon enough I was juggling the baby and my remaining quarter of hamburger, swaying by our coat-laden table and using my super-mom vision to track my girl as she made her way through the plastic and nylon Mc-jungle.

Inevitably she encountered a spot she could not maneuver by herself, impressive, tiny abdominal muscles aside.  A trio of girls, maybe 8-10 years old, reached to help her instantly, exchanging grins with my tiny lass.  They told her how cute she was and asked if she needed any more help, and instead of being moved by the sudden comradery these big girls were showing, I was embarrassed that my other child (the older one) had failed to help his sister.  I called to him where he was whirling down a slide: "Armand!  Come help your sister!" 

Even as I said the words, I wondered why I felt so urgently that it needed to be him rather than the strangers--the girls--assisting Eliza.  I'd thrown a wrench in their cooperation, as Armand scrambled to get to where the girls, big and little, had bottle-necked at a point where Eliza was struggling again.  The big girls looked at me innocently, questioningly.  I felt embarrassed for my scrutiny of them, as if we were adult women competing for a promotion or awkwardly vying for the last elliptical at the gym.  These were kids.  They were willing to help my daughter without prompt or reward.  And I was prickly-protective because I didn't/don't want to need help.  From anyone.  Even kids.

"It's okay, Armand.  Eliza's made some friends," I said.  I smiled reassuringly at all the girls, and they smiled back, and returned to their play. 

I sank into my chair, holding the baby to my chest, and put myself on a mental time-out to interrogate my inner brain and heart for reasons.  Why, why, Self, is this your instinct, to slap away an outstretched hand, to hold in higher admiration a set jaw rather than a warm smile?  I remember a time when I hugged freely and without restraint, and perhaps it sounds silly, but I freeze up a bit now when people outside my immediate family try to embrace me.  Even when it's from good friends, I catch myself when I slip close to the divide between vulnerability and independence.  This is probably all indicative of a much larger Something going on with me, but I know in other ways I'm not alone, because (ironically) I can think of friends I've counseled to accept help, accept assistance, accept invitations to branch out beyond the walls of their home and share life-- burdens, joys and all. 

What is community to our generation?  ... When grandparents live in homes for the elderly rather than upstairs, and even on Facebook, we can choose whom of our 'friends' to hide (Who shall see my pictures?  My posts?  When I'm online?)  There are so many shades to this aspect of our social culture; I take no firm stand, just yet, on my feelings about it.  This I'll confess to: I often feel more at ease Googling for answers than searching for them in conversation with those I call friends.  Sometimes I'd rather piece conclusions together from articles and posts than hash them out in person.  And I don't think I like that about myself. 

-Victoria

Victoria-

 

I've been reading a book lately that's made me think of you on more than one occasion, and your McDonald's incident brings it to mind once more.  It's The Paris Wife: an imagined account of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, and her life with him as an expatriot.  Granted, the expatriotism is about all your respective lives seem to have in common.  Well, other than this: Hemingway's wife was fearless. 

 

I DID say fearless!  That's you, dear Victoria.  Hadley was, at first, quite cowed by the ultra-enigmatic black-hole-ish-ness of Ernest, and tried to be just what he wanted her to be: flexible and strong all at once, but never needy or dependent upon him.  But in the middle of following him around Europe, trying to be his model wife/muse, she found a core of strength.  Or maybe the core simply grew, like an alpine violet that bursts up through the last crust of damp snow in springtime.  In any case, the strength was there to see her through some ugly, trying times.  Now, I'm not implying that you're having ugly times, but my goodness are they trying times.  And you are brave when you come up against them.  So I say (quite supportively, I promise), don't worry too much about this feeling of Something going on.  You've told us all a hundred times to grant ourselves some grace, and I'll spit those beautiful words right back at you: may you recognize the grace.  Which, by the way, you did, when you saw your stepping-in for what it was -- unnecessary -- and backed off. 

 

As far as this generation knowing about community, it will take people like you (and maybe me, if I could be so brave) pushing up and out of the layer of snow again and again to show our loved ones that there is sunlight up here!  Up in the stratosphere of interactions and awkward hugs and shared life!  It's so bright that it hurts your eyes at first, but it's vital.  

 

I've been trying to soak up my own bits of sunshing in this middle-winter stagnation.  Of course, today it feels like springtime down here, which is doing my pre-February anxiety no good.  I dread that month.  It is unending, is it not?  I'm worried that all of this beautiful warm air means we're in for a nasty spell of frozen weather (which would only be natural), so my knickers are in a twist before these horrid 28 days have even commenced. 

 

Earlier, I took the baby out to the swingset.  I had no choice, really, as he was fairly beating down the door with desperate fists.  If he had known the words for OUTSIDE NOW, STINGY WOMAN! I feel certain that he would have yelled them at me over and over.  In his mind, I'm sure he did.  So we went, and he was promptly lulled into semi-consciousness by the swaying of the bucket-swing.  I could have been an invisible, pushing hand, for all the attention he payed me while he flew through the air.  He's taken a drug, I thought.  A powerful, seratonin-like drug that is only produced by being weightless and powerless and completely free.   

 

Do you know, I can't remember the last time I went swinging?  When the girls were younger, probably, I sat with them on my lap while we pumped our legs in rhythm.  But by myself...I just don't remember.  So this morning, I sat on the open swing next to my oblivious boy, and I flew.  I leaned back as horizontally as I could manage, and pointed my toes to the sky.  Above me, the clouds were thick and gray, dark with withheld rain.  The tree branches were black and jagged, damp with humidity.  For a minute, the birds stopped singing and the wind picked up and I closed my eyes and inhaled on an upswing and lost the world completely.  I was sure my hair was about to drag the ground, but there was just no ground there.  I was sure the swingset was about to groan and creak in protest of my ambitious height, but there was no protest.  I was simply in the atmosphere, weightless and free --

 

I loosened my grip and jumped from the very top of my arc.

 

And I swear, as soon as my feet hit terra firma, the birds started singing again.  The highway moaned in the distance.  The wind slowed.  A single raindrop landed on my cheek.  The baby looked at me, startled, like he was wondering where on earth I'd just flown in from. 

 

Maybe my prescription for you, Victoria, will be to go swinging.  Propel yourself higher and higher, close your eyes, and jump off when you feel like you could burst from the opposing gravitational forces.  It's wildly freeing, in the way that no google search or forced acquaintance will be, and you can do it in any country in the world.  You don't need to be friends with it, you just need to trust yourself.  And your fearlessness.

 

Love,

Magdalene