Dragon Slaying

As I sit down to write, my mind settles on the muscles in my back and shoulders I don’t have names for. They’re pinched, tight, acidic. These are the muscles that allow my arms to wrap around my toddler in the night as we co-sleep. To wrangle my four-year-old against his cinderblock will into a diaper change I’m convinced is best for him, no matter what he has to say about it. And lately, to grip the shaking shoulders of my six-year-old who runs throughout the house in the middle of the night in a mind-world I cannot enter, terrorized by demons I cannot see.

Stop! I command. With my mind, I banish them. I bring him to bed with me, and squeeze his muscles with mine for as long as it takes to both lull him out of his night terror and into sleep. It could be ten minutes, it could be an hour. But my muscles won’t relax until his do. I apply relentless comfort to reassure his existence and kill his phantoms’—a quest that brings new meaning to the old phrase, “bedtime battles.”

Our bedroom is equal parts bloody Colosseum and mother hen haven. But it is my aching muscles that make this room anything at all. Don’t worry, child. I take this pain gladly. I will slay your dragons with my last breath.

And during daylight hours, I will train you with chores and fortify you with fairy tales and grow you with a garden, because someday, before I am ready, you must be. And I will be forced to watch you outside these eyes, hold you without these arms, and whisper, voiceless—screaming for you through the halls of heaven.

A body is a vessel. No more. And no, no less.

Bouncing back

One night in April my six-year-old asked if he could work on lego robotics.  I looked at the dinner table, covered in leftover Easter candy, rocks from the backyard, and last night's dishes.  "When this end of the table is completely clean, you may," I said, and handed him a package of baby wipes.

"Can you help me clean?" he asked.

"No, I'm cooking dinner.  You'll need to do it if you want room to work on legos."

He made quick work of the task in the typical, whistle-while-you-work manner he seemed to be born with.  "Mom, it's all clean, see?"

I retrieved the lego set from a nearby top shelf, and handed it to him.  He set to work.

After a few minutes of quiet, he asked, "Mom, how do you meditate?"

He'd mentioned meditation several times over the last few days, usually modeling the stereotypical lotus pose and humming with his eyes closed.

I asked him, "Well, first we need to know what meditation is.  Does meditation mean sitting in a funny position with your eyes closed?"

"No," he said," it's giving yourself new thoughts."

We've all been working hard at giving ourselves new thoughts lately.  My oldest child and I find ourselves gripped in the chokehold of anxiety more frequently and viciously than the rest of the family, and I've been trying to share some coping skills.  The six-year-old has been listening.  While he is a cheerful, carefree child by nature, he's getting older and is more aware of dangers, both real and imaginary.  He has also been plagued by night terrors for the past year, that seem to come and go in waves.  He spends the first few hours of sleep in his bed, but I find him nestled in our bed more mornings than not.

"That's right," I said.  "Your mind is kind of like this table.  It can get full and messy.  Meditating is clearing off your mind, then putting a new thought you want to have on it."

"How do you do it?  I have a thought I don't want.  It's a scary dream."  His normally turned-up mouth frowned and quivered.

"Well, it takes practice.  Would you like to do some meditating lessons with me so you can learn how?"

"Yes.  How about right now?  Well, after I finish building."

So that night, as my oldest worked on origami and my youngest two enjoyed some bonus Pixar time, my six-year-old and I went into his bedroom.

"First, you need to find a cozy, quiet spot you can relax in.  It can be a bed or a chair."

"Or a couch," he offered.

"Yes.  And you can meditate anywhere, anytime.  You just have to find the softest, quietest place available to you."

I asked him to close his eyes and take four breaths, filling up his lungs as full as they would go, and emptying them completely.  Then I guided him through tensing and relaxing all his muscles, starting from his toes and working up to his head.

He giggled and peeked a few times, asking the occasional question.  Then he said, "I still have my scary thought."

"We're not done yet.  This first part was just to relax.  Now we're going to learn what to do with our thoughts."

I was kind of winging it at this point, but came up with some imagery that seemed to work.  With our eyes closed, I told him to imagine that his mind was a basket.  He visualized it and customized it to his liking.  Then I told him his basket was to hold his thoughts, that it belonged to him, and he was the only one who could decide what thoughts could stay in his basket.  He is allowed to let any thought in his basket, and he can decide to take it out at any time.

He looked in his basket and saw a thought.

"What does it look like?" I asked.

"It's red and blue."

"What is it made of?"

"Air."

"How does it make you feel?"

"Bad, scared, and sad."

I told him that this thought didn't live in his basket; it was just visiting.  He scooped it up easily, blew on it, and watched it float away, over hills and rivers and mountains, out of sight, back to where it came from.  He said goodbye to the thought, and it said goodbye to him.

I asked him to look in his basket again.  He saw seven thoughts.  They were good.  We looked closely and saw an arcade he likes to go to with his dad and brother, playtime with his best friends, building with his Snap Circuits, and special reading time with mom.  We picked them up, held them, offered to share them.

Then I said, "These thoughts can stay as long as you want.  They will protect your basket.  You can hold them, take care of them, help them grow bigger.  Now I'm going to tell you about something else that protects your basket."

I told him to imagine a bubble around his basket.  This bubble is his to control.  He took a paintbrush and a bucket of strength and painted it, making sure not to miss any spots.  Thoughts that approach have to get his permission to penetrate the bubble.  If they don't, they simply bounce off and float up past the clouds, back to where they live, where they're not good or bad.  Just thoughts made of air.

I counted backwards from five to one, when he opened his eyes and smiled.  He then frowned again and said, "I want to practice it again."

"We'll practice it every day," I told him.

"Twice a day," he said.

"Okay."

It's been three months, but he hasn’t needed to practice it after that first week—at least not with me.  Most concepts click with him immediately, and he doesn't seem to struggle to implement them.  The gap between what he does and what he wants to do is virtually nonexistent.  (Mine is a mile wide.  He lives in the present, I in the past.  I'm learning from him.)

I've been thinking a lot about what he needs from me.  The low-maintenance child.  He's extroverted, fueled by play and people in a way I do not understand.  He's resilient, and when he finds himself in deep water, he simply bobs back up like a beachball.  He doesn't have raging anxiety.  He doesn't have special needs.  He doesn't throw toddler tantrums.  He's not a newborn who needs constant attention.  He seems to grow just fine wherever he's planted.  I'm unnerved by how simple it is to be his mother.  I know he needs me, but not in the way or with the intensity that my other children seem to.

So I show him tools and put them in his hands.  I give him time, space, ideas, and community, and let him run free.  With these, he goes far and doesn't look back.  And I watch, and marvel.

I miss him.  But he makes sure he's where he needs to be, and that's out in the world, not clinging to my leg.  He knows where I am.  And he comes back at the end of the day ready for the bedtime snuggles only I can provide, and the sweet dreams he creates for himself.

Mothers on the wall

I have three limited edition Caitlin Connolly art prints on the wall in my guest room.  They are entitled: “Mother Earth,” “Mother of All Living,” and “Mother Protecting.”   On early mornings like this one, I steal downstairs, turn down the covers, make myself at home in this room meant for others, and gaze at these mothers.

The common thread between them is the depiction of strong women doing the hard, vital work of life-giving.

They look at once raw and refined, centered and vulnerable.  Desperate and sure.

They’re all taking risks and making tough calls.

If that doesn’t define motherhood, I don’t know what does. 

When my first baby was little more than a year old, he stood up in the bathtub (against my warning) and slipped.  As he fell, his chin struck the side of the porcelain tub and split.

Without hesitation, I lifted him from the tub, wet a clean washcloth and tried to apply pressure to the wound.  He pushed me away, blood dripping onto the tile floor.  I put him to my breast, hoping the pressure from his face against me as I nursed him would be enough to stop the bleeding.

It was a swift, instinctive solution, and it worked.  After a couple of minutes the bleeding subsided, and he fell asleep.  But I didn’t like the look of the flap of skin and flesh I saw.   I knew he’d never let me bandage it.  Would it start bleeding again any moment?  How much blood is too much blood?

It was borderline. 

I wiped his blood from my chest and called my mom.  “How do you know if your baby needs stitches?” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I can tell you what my experience was taking your sister to get stitches when she was little.” 

She concluded, “If it’s under his chin, people won't notice the scar.”

She couldn’t, and didn’t, tell me what I should do.  Hearing her story both frightened and reassured me, and I suppose it did influence my decision somewhat.  But the call was mine, not hers.  I was the mother now.

The irony here is that as a daughter, I still believe mothers always know what to do.  But as a mother it rarely feels that way.

I’ve often reflected on that early parenting moment and the room it made inside me for instinct and doubt to coexist.  As steward over four children now, many decisions fall to me that affect both the present moment and the future.  Their future.  But the choice is mine.  And there’s no perfect answer.  

So I do it anyway.  And I do it afraid. 

Mothering is one tough call after another.  In all the time spent second-guessing (and I’ve spent a lot  of time second-guessing over my decade of parenthood), my instincts have always been right.

Or at least right enough.

So, like the mothers on the wall, I will set my intention, trust my instinct, and jump.

Lessons my dad has taught me

Work first, play later.

Do your duty.

Return and report. 

When you’re overwhelmed, go to the mountains.

Do 40% of what you’re trying to do.

If you can’t say no, say, “Not yet.”

Endure well.

When you’re hurting, you can choose to hunch over and moan or stand up straight and move on.

There are ten different ways to look at a problem.

Give offers freely, and advice when solicited. 

Listen well. 

Ask questions. 

Get the whole story. 

Patience.

Most things don’t really matter.

2 am is 2 late.

Generosity.

Get your face in there.

Grace.

Question your assumptions.

Wait. 

Weird is good.

Be well, do good work, keep in touch. 

A dirty Jeep is a happy Jeep. 

Go figure it out. 

...

Just as influential as these lessons are the methods he used to teach me:

1. He spoke softly.

2. He corrected me privately. 

3. He taught briefly.

4. He taught by repetition.

5. He taught by example. 

... 

I would do well to stick to these techniques.  I guess I’ll go figure it out.

Feel

I’ve thought about writing this for months.  I hit a wall almost instantly, every time.  I banish it from my mind, but it keeps coming back.

I need to put words to this. 

What’s stopping me? 

Perhaps it’s not knowing which parts of this story are mine to tell, and which ought to be left to my son to tell someday, in the manner of his choosing. 

There are some loaded words swirling around us, and I don’t know how much power to give them.  They’re words I’ve been afraid to say out loud.  Words that jar me to see in print. 

Labels. 

Labels applied to other people and their children—never to me and mine. 

What does a label do?  How long will it stick?  And who has the right to apply it?  

It feels like drawing a box around my child—something I’ve never wanted to do.  Will it protect him or imprison him?  Will he feel freed or cornered?  The water is murky here.

Experts have flung some words our way.  They’ve changed the way I see my son.  If I tell them to others, they’ll see him differently too. 

But they already do.  So maybe it will help more than hurt.  But I expect there will be some of both.

The chalk is in my hand.  What will I draw for him?  A box?  A word?  A dream?  A path? 

He’s little now.  He cannot read.  But he has ears and eyes.  One little hashtag could connect me with other women who find themselves in this strange land.  I want to help them the only way I know how, which is to say, “I know.  Me too.”   We women are a fountain of strength for each other.  But my little boy...how will seeing that hashtag coupled with his image make him feel five, ten, twenty years from now?

I never knew a mother could feel so helpless until I was that mother.  A mother who wondered how she didn’t know what her child was saying, what he needed, who he was underneath his screams and fists and slamming doors and hurling rocks.

Where are you?

Trapped, your whole life inside your very own skin—skin you cannot feel unless you scratch until there’s blood.

We mothers want our babies’ blood to stay inside, where it belongs. 

But we all need some way to feel.  You need edges how I need softness.  You walk the line I stay away from.  You need impact the way I need solitude.

You seem safest on a rocky cliff.

You need touch like I need words. 

It’s how we know we’re alive. 

So I will fight for you, my son.  Until my last breath.  I will help you to be free, to feel right, to feel home.  I don’t care where it is or what it’s called.  We will find that place together.