I realised recently that I haven’t had much to complain about of late. This is alarming, as I have always been adept at negativity, and beyond that, deep dives into what’s wrong with everything/one around me. Am I out of touch with reality? Is a wrecking ball headed straight my way, some horrible news about to decimate my entire existence once I’ve been lulled into this relative contentment? (Come to think of it, I did get that “atypical cell” report in my last cervical exam that will have to be followed up next year; maybe I should be obsessing over that…)
No bottoms have fallen out recently, though, at least not personal ones–there has been the whole “watching-democracy-die-from-a-distance” dumpster fire that is America right now (yes, I am #obsessed with the January 6th hearings). So either a nuclear winter of some sort is on my doorstep, or I’ve just gotten used to the typical ups and downs of our existence (allowing for a meltdown every now and then over having to make dinner again): lunches made, psychologists seen, homework done, school camping trips planned, sibling fighting matches refereed, class excursions chaperoned.
Boring.
Last week, I rode the bus with Little Brother and his year two mates out to a national park, where we were all educated on the Aboriginal history of the area (this was after one of the kids on the bus hurled and the rest started dry heaving at the smell, #goodtimes). We hiked around the bush and to a lookout to view some tens-of-thousands-of-years-old carvings. The guide pulled out a spray bottle of water as he pointed out the carvings, which I couldn’t see until he used that water to fill in the depressions in the rock and they darkened before our eyes.
On our hike back to the bus, during which one of the teachers flipped down a set of steps (okay, maybe things are rougher out there than I’m giving credit for), I thought about the latest book I’ve bought, Susan Cain’s Bittersweet with its subtitle of “How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole” (I like to buy books when I’ve already got about a half-dozen I’m waiting to read so that I can stack them up and see how many it takes before the tower falls, then I wonder why The Kid has this same trait).
I feel, because of therapy, and faith, and a lot of ruminations on the importance of grief, that Susan may end up telling me some things I already know (and I also know enough to know that I’m likely wrong about how much I think I know). But I have lived on that knife-edge line between sorrow and joy, watched how often they mingle together and become One Thing, the tears and laughter at times indistinguishable, one not what it is without the existence of the other. One not existing without the other.
I dreamed the other night of a parent going through a hard time with their kid. And the message that seeped through my sleeping brain, the thing that has been passed down to me and that I can now pass on to others, is that truly facing life–facing the pain and letting the tears soak through–is a harder way to live. And it cuts deep. Also?–(and I truly cannot believe that grace is ministering to me even in my dreams, though why shouldn’t I?)–I remember the way the dream ended, with my certainty, expressed to this parent friend, that there is no joy like the joys that come after, and through, deep sorrow.
Those who experience much and feel much live much.
The boys and I headed to school the other day, a day of learning showcases and school reports sent home, and each of these things, and each of my kids, brings its own echoes of my (much-mentioned-in-therapy) stuff–achievement-as-identity, anyone? How about some approval-as-worth?–and the very specific ways my children face the world with their own strengths and challenges. Watching them navigate a world that both will see and appreciate them, and won’t, a world in which there is much exploring to be done before they find their place (and even then, it can move), and all of it is just so much, when one takes the time to feel it.
But the rainbows. They keep showing up, and on this morning, one arched through the air before us and remained there as we parked and entered the school. It remained while one boy went to play basketball and the other went to play soccer. They’d each come home both bruised and built up by their days and so would I, but for the moment there were the six yet infinite colours, this recurring promise of grace that only shows up in that perfect mixture of sun and rain.