Stacking intensity in the form of a little too much community organizing (fabulous, important and interesting as it is) alongside too much hanging-around time for the kids (illness for one of them, three-day weekend for all, a fourth day off for two of them) last week was, well, an exercise in mama feeling like she was about to pull her hair out, frankly.
Sometimes, it’s like that, though: a poor mash-up of frantic versus idle, or the biggest loss occurring on the most gorgeous day. A moment like that I’ll never ever forget (and don’t want to, even though it’s hard one) is our driving off from Saint Vincent’s Hospital early on a February afternoon after an interminable stretch of hours awaiting discharge with teeny-tiny Saskia in the bucket car seat and passing her mama standing in the cold waiting for her ride—her father and brother’s girlfriend were getting the car from the garage—and smoking a cigarette. We felt like robbers at that moment, not parents. We felt giddy and like we never wanted to let Saskia out of our sight. We felt keenly aware that our joy was entirely entwined with another person’s grief. We felt overwhelmed by how much complexity the world held.
After two days in the hospital, we knew that despite there being no adequate word to describe how difficult the moment of letting go—the entire process, really—was, the choice was—for the mama who gave birth to her—the one she felt compelled to make. Wanted to make would be stretching it. She did feel resolute about the decision, as much as anyone could with hormones and exhaustion and the pull of such a helpless creature.
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Sometimes, say on a morning like this when that precious baby-turned-gorgeous-and-feisty toddler manages for reasons unknown to wake at five and so heads downstairs before dawn with her mama (during that mama’s work time), that reminder that raising children—and actually, life, which does tend to get lifey for us all, kids in our household or not—is all about embracing those juxtapositions and that inconvenience and the poor mash-ups.
Sometimes, I leave a crying or whining kid to get to my important other next thing and sometimes I wind up late for the important other next thing or even skip it altogether. Saturday, I wound up late to a big meeting, just by seven minutes mind you, because the eight year-old needed me to walk him across Elm Street to his friend’s house and we needed a fast Plan B for Saskia (turned out it was going to Arella’s house for half an hour before the soccer game ended) and the twelve year-old from a few blocks away stopped by in the midst of this Plan B soccer game coinciding with meeting conundrum and neither wanted to borrow a sweatshirt nor walk home in the chilly wind, so I dropped him off on the way to my meeting. Each little assist—and they were little—was easy and felt worth the additional two-and-a-third minutes apiece, if that.
Last night, the clinging toddler came to rehearsal—for the terrific Mixed Relief, a staged reading about the WPA and women writers taking place at the majestic Academy of Music Theatre on Thursday, with me in it (mini-gulp)—and kind of kept sort of, semi-quiet and flashed her cute and twirled a bit on the stage and made friends with an old friend of mine, who happens to be our State Representative. It was one of those moments, as Saturday was, when the village took on the children—and was better for it. For the final rehearsal, I have the babysitter lined up (this time, it’s rehearsal that conflicts with soccer game).
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Meantime, by the fourth day off last week, the eight year-old was totally bored and the friends he wanted to play with were busy so he did some serious hanging around being bored. During the early morning wave of boredom, he built a ramp with books for a random tiny car found in the kitchen. And I was reminded that boredom does indeed serve a critical purpose: it allows room for inspiration and innovation.
