she had been narrating their lives for so long
that she…
Finish this sentence?
she had been narrating their lives for so long
that she…
Category: Mid-Life Mama
Round Two
Thirteen is… training-wheels adolescence. Fourteen is hardcore, biker adolescence.
~Anne Lamott
(photo: Kelly Salasin)
Parenting a teenager is a lot like New England Weather… Everything is going along nicely… the sky is clear, the birds are singing, the world is right-side up, and then BANG! A storm rolls in. Thunder. Lightning.
Suddenly you’re without power.
Maybe all your connections are zapped.
“Where did that come from!” someone says.
And you say something like: “Polar Vortex.”
Or in our case, “FOURTEEN!”
We’ve arrived. Just yesterday. And as if on cue, the thunder rolled in, the lightning struck, and I was ready to quit. Give up. Move out.
MOTHERHOOD SUCKS.
It took all the maturity and self-restraint cultivated over the past 50 years not to put the power back in my hands. To let my heart lie there, trampled upon, without striking back.
And it took all the self-compassion cultivated since becoming someone’s mother, to walk away, to lick my own wounds, without taking any of it too personally.
There is a scene from a favorite movie of mine: Spanglish. With Adam Sandler. Do you know it? Remember what he says when he finds out that his wife has betrayed him? Something about hearing the universe crack…
My universe, as a mother, cracked twice this week. Once with each of my offspring. And I have to admit that I could barely summon much affection for either of them afterward.
Maybe they deserve it. Maybe I’m being melodramatic. Maybe THIS is parenthood. Or maybe this crack is an opportunity for something new.
I’m on the lookout for what that is. For how it will shape me. And reshape our lives together.
But right now?
I want to move out…
Beloved
She felt motherhood slipping away, like an ice cap, slowly melting over time, and then suddenly breaking apart, drifting further and further…
Alone, at a children’s book museum, she released silent tears, as she read Knuffle Bunny Free to herself.
She had read the first in this series: Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale to her youngest when he was just a boy. Then there was Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity ; and finally: Knuffle Bunny Free: An Unexpected Diversion–where the beloved Knuffle Bunny is lost yet again, and not grieved so much, as released.
Just this week her youngest son found his own lovey–a penguin–lost amidst the covers of his bed. He guessed he had been there for weeks. Without noticing. Without crying for help. Without the imperative of finding his Pengie.
Her older son was off to college and his kitty, Slimmy, once a treasured companion, now sat on a bookshelf, beside cologne and cds, in a vacant room.
Her own puppy, Mine, was similarly stowed, without the daily attention its weathered body received all those years ago.
And then she wondered, what becomes of Beloveds like these, when WE ourselves are gone?
The Empty Nest Diary 