Category: Fragile Life

Posted in Fragile Life, Milestone Moments

The Running Away Thing

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

Do kids even runaway from home anymore?

I don’t mean the kind of running away where the police get involved, but the kind where you get fed up for being taken for granted, you pack your little suitcase, and you head out into the world (or at least into your immediate neighborhood), leaving your family behind–forever (aka. until dark.)

Did anyone else do that besides me? Because my kids never have. They’ve never even threatened it.

Maybe running away from home was only trendy in the seventies, like streaking. I did that too. Maybe my kids lives are too healthy and they don’t need outlets like packing their suitcases and running down the streets naked.

What if they never leave? I hear that’s trendy now.

My son recently came of age to obtain his driver’s permit—and he hasn’t shown any interest.  He begged to drive plenty of times before he could get his permit, but now that he could be driving, he hasn’t said a word.

15 is a ridiculously young age to be manning an automobile, if you ask this mom; but still, I don’t understand his adolescent passivity with freedom at stake.

Maybe growing up is scarier these days.

He does want a phone of course, and he claims that he’s the last teen on earth without one. He wanted to buy one for himself on his birthday, but in the face of his apathy around transportation, I said, “Get your permit first, then we’ll talk about phones.” (Stalling is one of my top parenting tactics.)

With phones and computers and i pods and the internet, kids may never leave home again–especially in “our parts” where there’s no place to go.  The closest mall is over an hour away.  And who needs movie theaters and arcades when you can do all that on your own, without spending a dime.

But what happened to running away? I remember threatening it all the time.  Maybe I got the idea from TV.  Childhood was definitely defined by television in the seventies.

But unlike the characters on the tube, my parents never came looking for me.  In fact, they didn’t seem to notice or care that I had gone.  I waited there, under the evergreens in front of my elementary school, digging my heels in, ready to sleep there under the stars–until my parents pulled up and insisted I come home.  I imagined tears (theirs.)

But they never came.  So once night fell, I rolled up my sleeping bag and returned home.  Embarrassed.  Discouraged.  Disappointed in my lack of nerve.  Feeling even less loved than I had when I left.

My father came into the bedroom, and flipped on the switch, to light up my humility,   “What happened?” he asked, as he stepped up to my top bunk.  “I thought you were running away.”

“I was,” I said. “But I ran out of food and I forgot to bring money.”

“Here’s a dollar,” he said, slipping it from his pocket.  I let it flap there between us.

“Well, Robin wants to runaway with me,” I explained about my younger sister, “So that won’t be enough.”

“I can give her money too,” he countered.

“I think we’ll runaway tomorrow because it’s too cold and dark out now and we’re already in bed,”  I said, grasping at any shreds of autonomy I had left.

I suppose he kissed me and tucked me in before turning off the lights; but it would have been nice if he had said, “I’m so glad you came back.  Never do that again.  I love you too much. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

But THAT only happened on television, and ours wasn’t that kind of relationship. My father was never one to show all of  his cards.  A handful of years later, when I was steeped in adolescence, he called my bluff again, saying “One of us is going to move out of this house before you’re 18, and it ain’t going to be me.”

In fact it was him, however, because my parents got divorced.  So in a way, I won. But really, we all lost.  Nobody wins when a family plays poker with their hearts.

Maybe that’s why my kids don’t run away. I care about their feelings and I let it show.  Sure, I want to be in charge, and I occasionally flaunt my position of power, but mostly I want us to get along–and they seem to want that too.

from "Ethel's Keepsake" circa 1888 - archive.org

My sister Robin begged me to come along the day she found me in our room packing my suitcase.  She promised to listen to me and she packed her own bags fast.  When we ran into the kids in the neighborhood, I acted annoyed that my little sister had tagged along, but actually it was a relief.

Until she told about the underwear.

The boys asked us what we had packed and so I told them.  “Everything.  We’re running away, I told you.”

“You even packed underwear?” they giggled.

“Yes, we did pack our underwear,” my sister offered innocently, before I could cover her mouth.

The boys were laughing and talking about my underwear as they pedaled out of the cul de sac and I scolded my confused little sister.

Later, we shared a pear under the evergreen before deciding to head back home.

“Let’s runaway again tomorrow,” I suggested as we both dozed off in our own beds.

“Okay,” she whispered, from the bottom bunk.

But we never did.

Kelly Salasin

Petra Thurlova / Machovka







Posted in Fragile Life, Insight, Mid-Life Mama, Milestone Moments, Sexuality, Teens

Cool Mom (NOT!)

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

While I generally do not wear my heart on my sleeve, I’m definitely not the “cool” mom that I thought I would be.

My own mother ran “cool.”  I only saw her flinch–twice.  The second time was when I went back to college after Christmas break.   She stood there on the lawn with my young sisters in each hand.  I think she might have been crying.  Maybe it wasn’t about me.  Maybe she wanted to leave too.

My own son just finished his freshman year–at high school.  All along, I’ve enjoyed witnessing his growth–even those terrible twos–and even the turbulent tweens (most of the time.)

Modersohn (visipix.com)

As an added bonus to each new stage of his development is my gain of greater independence. (That’s a good thing for a mom who needs lots of time for thinking her own thoughts.)

But even an independence-loving mom like myself isn’t immune to the pangs of separation. Even if my brain says that it’s a beautiful thing to watch my son grow up, my body has its own interpretation–and my body apparently doesn’t know how to play it “cool.”

Boecklin/detail/visipix.com)

Like the other night when I witnessed my 15 year old move in toward a girl for the first time.

She was seated on a chair, and he sat down on the arm beside her–and then, (and this part was in slow motion) I watched him tilt his shoulder toward hers so that their bodies brushed as his arm dropped alongside her back.

This physical expression of affection blossomed from innocent days of swimming and tennis and talking (and in between, Facebooking.)  It was a nice thing.  It was sweet.  It was good.

Then why did my spine recoil?  Why did my face contort? Why did my breath catch?  And why did I so transparently shudder, turning away to steady myself, that I caught the attention of her uncle who observed my whole internal drama which was meant to be private?

Schiele (visipix.com)

Not “cool.”  Not cool at all.

And now I understand:

The mind, in its linear fashion, can appreciate change–but the body is timeless inside.

That 15 year old young man is still the baby that grew within, and the infant who suckled at my breast, and the boy who held my hand and beamed up at my eyes–promising to live with me forever.

This folding of time makes me dizzy.

Dizzy and transparent.

And that’s so not cool.

Kelly Salasin

Posted in Fragile Life, Insight, New Mother

My Homebirth–at the hospital

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)
Beardsley (visipix.com)

I never dreamed of a homebirth, never even imagined it or knew it was something that people chose to do. I had been brought up in a medical family–with three generations of allopathic physicians, and I assumed births took place as they should–in the hospital. This is where my mother gave birth to each of her nine children, and where she enjoyed the few days break from keeping house and caring for a newborn (not to mention siblings.)

By the time I got around to wanting a child, I was the same age my mother was as a parent of four. Having grown up in this large family, “blessed” as the eldest, I was in no rush to become a parent. I had my share of diaper changing and late night feedings by age of fourteen, and I had few illusions about the institution of motherhood; and loads of skepticism; that is until I was denied entry into this vocation.

Up until that time, I had viewed motherhood as some necessary evil, some hurdle I had to cross in order to pass into proper adulthood. Thus, I took it for granted that motherhood would be there waiting in the wings, whenever I was ready to succumb.

I was somewhere in my mid-twenties, unmarried, when it hit me. BABY HUNGER. All of the sudden, I HAD to have a baby. It didn’t matter that we were still renting and that my boyfriend had just gone back to school. The urge came on so strong and so unreasonably that I had to restrain myself from thoughts of swiping one.

As the primary breadwinner, it was completely impractical for me to get pregnant until my partner had his degree so instead I read everything I could on pregnancy and motherhood and being READY.

During that time we planned a wedding and fantasized about relocating to the mountains and living in a log home.

At 28, I couldn’t wait any longer so I convinced my husband to “start trying” before he graduated–since babies took nine months to be born anyway.

A year later, we still weren’t pregnant–and when we finally did conceive, I miscarried at the end of the first trimester. I hadn’t known that that was a possibility either.

Suddenly plans and jobs and certainty made less sense to me. We left our home at the shore and moved to the mountains of Vermont where we conceived–right away–only to miscarry again at 6 weeks.

When we were emotionally prepared to try a third time, we knew we needed something different–and that’s how we found Mary. Mary was a Naturopathic physician and a midwife–but mostly she was smart and caring and attentive.

Although she only attended homebirths, Mary agreed to work with us into the second trimester when she would turn us safely over to an MD. By that time however, we had fallen in love with her–and couldn’t imagine anyone else delivering our long-awaited baby–even if that meant we had to have a homebirth.

This third pregnancy was just as tricky as the previous ones–with a month of bleeding in the first trimester, early contractions in the second, and a challenging delivery in the third.

My son’s labor began at home on a rainy Tuesday morning–two weeks earlier than expected. It started with a sharp kick and the breaking of waters, followed by minute-long contractions, five-minutes apart. By the time the midwife arrived, I had already dilated 8 centimeters.

It was then that Mary discovered that the baby was breech–so she made arrangements for us to be transported over the mountain to the nearest hospital.

When I was rolled into the Emergency Room, the staff couldn’t believe that I was in labor–let alone in transition. With Mary at my side, I was calm and present and clear despite the mounting anxiety.

After some negotiations, they permitted Mary and my husband to accompany me into the operating room where my exquisitely planned homebirth was transformed into an emergency c-section.

The doctor on call had to yank my son out of the birth canal–along with all of my preconceived notions about how motherhood and I would become one.