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.
Wonderful!
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