Love in idleness
This week I have been more idle than for years and years. It has been odd — pain is incredibly debilitating in a way that I have never before appreciated. Just being in pain is tiring, exhausting. On the other hand, I feel as if other bits of me are more rested than they have been for a long while and I wonder if when the pain is finally over and done, whether I will spring from the ashes of this little space renewed and alight with energy and determination. It is a nice thought.
My family, nuclear and extended have been very kind and I am grateful to them for their love and helpfulness. I have been thinking (in a good way) about my dispensibility and how well (or not) life goes on even when I am asleep or drugged or just slow and pain-fogged. It is oddly reassuring to think that while certainly no one would be able to find the tape or the steamer basket, thinks would still get stuck together and carrots would still get cooked. Things don’t have to be done the way I do them in order to get done.
This resonates against something Krista commented a few posts back, about how mental illness does not discriminate between good parenting and poor. There are many things I really want to be in charge of, that I like to imagine that I have control over, that I seek to control. I want to believe that my children’s eventual happiness is something that I can somehow ensure, if I only try hard enough, do exactly the right things.
Thing is, I am only a small piece of their lives (an important small piece, but a piece nonetheless). While I want to pave their way, I cannot. What I can do is be their mother, with all the power and helplessness that implies. It helps me to think about these things in reverse, to imagine what it was I wanted or needed from my own mother. I did a lot of falling down (we all did) and I never wanted my mother to pick up the pieces. I wanted to pick them up myself. What I did want is her faith that I could, and a sense that she would love me no matter what hole I fell into. I didn’t want a woman who perceived too well her own helplessness in the face of what I chose to do with my life — I wanted a mother who would reinforce my own courage, my sense that nothing was beyond me.
This is much easier to say than to do. But I do need to practice. For Daniel in particular, I desire to smooth the rocks out of his way, because he falls so often and so hard, but really — he needs to fall, to get up and to look up and see me smiling at him, cheering him on, but most of all, believing in his strength, rather than in my own, to make his life good.
I do not blame my parents for my own uneven temperament. I do not expect that my children will blame me for theirs, but even if they do, I know that it was not exactly up to me, but rather to the diceroll of genes, the weather and what? The ineffable, mysterious alchemy of soul.
This week saw our first “bullying” episode with my kindergartener, and I found myself in total Mother-Bear mode, questioning whether I had enrolled her in the wrong school and wondering if I was destined to home school her.
After talking her through it all, though, I realized that she really was fine. She handled herself through her problem confidentlyl, with some support from me, a good friend, and the (very supportive) Mom of the so-called bully. As she said, she had a “good bad week.”
I have to continually remind myself that it is not the goal to engineer her life so it is without any problems. It is to help her learn how to resolve her problems or cope with the inevitable pain of life.
But my heart was being squeezed and my stomach was a rock all week.
Yet another, lovely, soul-searching thought provoking post.
You posted a while ago, a quote, which I’ll closely paraphrase as “The problem is not having problems; it’s not expecting to have any that’s the problem.”
Things will not be perfect, it’s learning to handle the situation with grace, and move on from it that’s important. I think your posts show you do this with grace and style (and wit). That’s a pretty good role model.
PS I so hope you are fully recovered soon.
I’m trying not to be bitterly envious of the fact that this was written under the influence of pain and/or pain meds. It’s entirely unfair that you’re able to be so brilliant while incapacitated.
I’ll second the Masked Mom.
You’ve said, more beautifully than I’ve been able to, exactly what it is I’ve been thinking in regards to my role with my own son who also falls often and hard.