Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Taking Space


At a party last weekend I was approached for “elderly wisdom” by a young friend, one of many mothers attending the fete that evening.   I had to laugh even though I admit I was flattered–I know a lot of young mothers (and fathers) who were once teenagers in my home, and I delight in having kept up with their lives these way many years! The conversation re-minded me of my own hectic days and nights managing children and home and dogs and jobs, blindly groping to survive.

Those years have taken on a pleasantly psychedelic aura now, looking back through the (beaded) curtain of the past: intense colors, deeply depressed purples and overwhelming wild yellows, swirls of ruby chaos and hanging on by the toenails, a roller coaster of what I now experience as all joy. I know that it was not, and I know that it took me two whole years to feel recovered from my teenagers once they left home, but boy oh boy it was worth the ride.  To use an old cliché, my family are the wind beneath my wings.

The deal is, nature has so vested us in loving our children that nothing is ever enough, no sacrifice assuages anxiety, no grand gesture erases the guilt of not being able to make everything all right for everyone all the time. I still am susceptible to this, as far removed as I now am, as much as I have perspective. These young women now in the fray, carrying the shields and wielding the weapons, they have no TIME for perspective. And yet, perspective is the necessary element, and it must be found in spite of the wars.

And so the wisdom that I pass on to them is not my own but what I learned to use, what Virginia Woolf called A Room of One’s Own. In a tumultuous household, if it is possible, by all means secure one for yourself. However, it is not the room but the space that is necessary, and that means that you must arrange to not be responsible, for all of them to leave you alone whenever you decide you need it. Leave a partner in charge and retreat to your bedroom, drop them at daycare or their grandparents’ and take yourself to lunch, arrange a weekly playdate to free yourself for a Saturday morning, ignore the laundry and retreat to your bedroom after their bedtime.

Know that regardless of daycare guilt and employment, overwhelmingly ubiquitous household chores, and frantic desire for couples time, these times do not qualify as space. You need times alone when you can think, write, muse, speculate, cry, listen to music, be creative, whatever it is that re-minds you of your own true Self. If you lose your Self, all is lost until you find it again, and you will be unhappy. You must have quiet to listen when pursuing the golden thread, the Golden Road to Devotion, the personal path–whatever you call your own true feelings. In my experience, there is no quicker way to forget than to get lost in the loving.

I took long baths with the door locked and wrote in my journal in the tub, regardless of my two-year-old banging on the door. She gave up after a few months. When they were both in school I set up an easel and an art space in the basement for while they were out. When they got more competent and could spend some time without supervision, I began taking vacations by myself, leaving Silver Fox in charge for four or five days at a time. Travel meant long hours to think or read, and it is amazingly supportive to bathe in the personal recognition of old friends. Unfailingly, I left home tripping over myself to get away, then returned in a few days as eager to see everyone as if I had been gone a month.

I am pretty sure if I had not rejuvenated like this, I would never have made it to the third stage in one piece. Yet here I am, dispensing elderly wisdom with a big cynical smile on my face for the shared experience of mothering.  My best advice? You go, girl.

1 comment: