The Ebb and Flow

I hate
this wretched willow soul of mine,
patiently enduring, plaited or twisted
by other hands.

~ Karen Boyle

I’ve limped along this week with an acute awareness of my own fallibilities. I have felt vulnerable to these winds of change that have brought back the bitter cold and the sense that there is no turning back, that we’ll just have to run it out, and wait for the flip side of the cycle, for the return of summer sun, and the easy, loping pace through our days.

These days, my life often appears before me, spread out as a travelogue through time and space and prods me with queries, where are you now? how do you fit in?, and then, heavy with stipulation, find your place, it demands, wherever that may be, whether beneath the bellows of your underinflated lungs, or the soles of your calloused feet, find it, and lay claim, fill the hollows, and stay a while. I’d welcome a few incantations these days, some whirling, spiraling energy to infuse my spirit with the light that seems to have been snuffed by these revolving days and our place so far from the sun, a roving guide to take me by the hand and show me just where there might be space for me, a magical charm to right my wrongs, fix my mistakes.

This past Thursday night, Luke broke his left arm during a pick drill at basketball practice, a freak accident that left his arm looking a bit like Harry Potter’s, oddly bent and dangling, after Lockhart tried to fix it and oops! accidentally removed all his bones before heading to the hospital wing, where Madam Pomfrey made it right with the skelegro potion. It wasn’t until Friday noontime, after a sleepless night, and a morning spent at the doctor’s and the hospital for x-rays, when we found out that Luke, too, was in need of some skelegro potion or episkey charm to mend his fractured radius. He’ll be fine, but for now, is trying to keep his devastation in check and readjust his reality to include three to four weeks of recovery time before he can fully resume full contact basketball with the NMH JV.

Before Luke’s run in with Jimmy, the gentle, earnest 6’7” 15-year old from Beijing, he’d had his interview and tour at NMH, and I was reminded of my own first forays into the realm of self-marketing and carving out my own path and following my feet, when, as a thirteen year old, I quaked and stammered and tried desperately to shake off my own self-doubts before somehow putting together a brave face, full of the promise that someone, somewhere had seen in me. Despite my own recalcitrant objections to actually putting my best self forward, I managed to eek out a performance that seeded my reeling self-confidence with some sort of acceptance, the start of my own protective patronus shield that would grow in strength and stamina and serve me well over time. I saw strong measure of Luke’s own growth and maturity on Thursday, and I was proud of him, for taking risks and putting himself out there, for trusting his own brave face, despite his apprehension, his own doubts, the residual ache from this past difficult year. And yet, there was a sadness I felt, too, witnessing this passage of time, and a sense of loss and of leaving something behind, of moving forward into something new and different and strange, even, and of once again feeling unsure as to where exactly, if anywhere, I fit in.

And then, whoosh, the broken arm, the dashed hopes, the sudden tug back into a kind of mothering that I often think is in my past: the tender pampering that I myself have needed, craved, relied on so much this past year, a gentle scrub in the tub, careful help with getting dressed, and skirting the dangerous waters that lie somewhere beyond the balance of between doing too much and doing too little. And the regeneration of intimacy that swells and fells and fills the dark forests that have sometimes grown between us with light allows us to find our way back to each other, and we are reacquainted, he with the depth of my love, no matter how my heart may ache, or how I struggle to support him in his quest for independence, and I with his quiet determination as he, too, navigates through his own ceaseless, flowing currents of change and growth, and, as I tug on his socks, with just how big his feet have become.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
~Josh Billings

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. ~Joyce Maynard