Plans In Pencil

• 

I’m so tired.

I regret all the times I said I was tired pre-quarantine. Just like, after having children, I regretted all the times I’d said I was tired before having them.

Because now, as then, I’m experiencing a new kind of tiredness. A new level of exhaustion. I’ve been left wondering if I’m iron-deficient, or have a serious illness. I struggle through runs that used to be…if not easy, then doable, feeling as though I’m wearing ankle weights. I can’t seem to get enough sleep, the alarm set pre-COVID giving way to lingering in bed and an anger over having to leave it. I feel breathless walking up stairs.

I am so tired.

And I’d be more worried, if 1) I had space for more worry; and 2) everyone around me weren’t saying the same thing. They’re so tired too, except for the Instagram overachievers who’ve gone public with all their PRs, but my “they” refers to the people around me, the ones who nod their heads slowly, The Husband commiserating over his own shitty runs; another daily presence commiserating over her own panic attacks and inability to switch from a 6 am wakeup to an even later one without feeling drained.

And who knows, maybe I do need more iron (talk to me about leafy greens right now at your own peril), but I definitely know this: there is a weight upon me that wasn’t there before; and maybe a weight that was there, but that I was distracted from feeling.

Homeschool (distance learning, whatever) starts back tomorrow. I want to punch something just writing that. I am angry about being my children’s teacher, their alternating slavedriver and saviour from it, pushing for completion one minute and throwing my arms up in an “F it all” pose the next (consistency can shove it right now). There is the weight of being a newly-minted, unqualified teacher of two grades and the awareness that comes with it of all they have to learn–to be taught–and the one–me–apparently responsible for that. It’s too much. It’s too heavy.

And then there are the weights that I was distracted from feeling; the awarenesses that didn’t register because I was moving too fast. There are no distractions now from my own chaotic mind, from my own anxiety and introspection. Life used to have a baseline of movement: daily walks, twice over, to the boys’ school, pilgrimages into the world, travels. Now stillness is life’s point of reference: we’re always either at, or headed, home. And home–stillness–for all its noise, is quieter.

Social media still exists, so plenty of us are still adept at evading ourselves and any self-awareness a lengthy interaction with our “selves” can bring. But I’m meeting the unavoidable-for-me beast head on: I am my own observer. I see myself wanting to use online retail therapy to feel better. I see myself noticing, more, how alcohol affects my sleep (and my runs, and my moods) and I have to figure out what to do about that. How food does the same.

I see how I have to be my own advocate, even while caring for others. How an introvert must claim space or go insane–or at least into a panic attack. How I have to send my regrets to some Zoom meetings because that is space I need for myself right now, at a time when we are all so surrounded by each other, in this house at least. How meditation–and by that I simply mean being in the present moment, without judgment, for more than five seconds–is essential. How prayer is oxygen. How humour is a life raft. How books for me, and iPads for the kids, have to happen. How saying NO to the voices that chant “Do more! Make this time count!” is not just self-care, but wisdom itself.

“Every man rushes elsewhere into the future because no man has arrived at himself,” wrote Michel de Montaigne, who is quoted in the book my friend gave me, which has been its own lifeline. And what’s funny and perfect about right now? WE HAVE NO FUTURE TO RUSH INTO! SO WE CAN EITHER RUN IN CIRCLES OR INTO OURSELVES. Sarah Wilson, the author of said book, says about de Montaigne: “He shared through his writing that freedom from the restlessness in our beings could only be achieved by actively resisting the pull outwards and into the future, and instead learning to ‘stay at home’.”

Ha. #stayathome.

On the way back from our daily trip to the beach this morning, the boys asked to hear “My Shot,” and as the familiar tune reached my ears, I thought for a second something was wrong, then realised that no, my phone hadn’t somehow slowed down the tempo. It was always at that speed. Everything feels slow right now, because I’m trying to speed it up. I am being called to stillness. To my family. To myself. And to the grace that waits there.

• 

Our house smells like farts, and I had another panic attack, at 1 am last night.

We made an offer on a house whose marble countertops and double-headed shower felt like a ship on its way to rescue us, the Carpathia en route to the Titanic, but that one–our third–didn’t work out either, so we’re left to rot in moist-carpet hell.

Also, The Husband gave our precious, beautiful boys some haircuts that have been compared (by me) as Dumb and Dumber meets concentration camp.

What I’m saying is that these conditions are not tense, or a strain, or simply tough. They’re warfare. This is not normal–none of it is. So to react normally would actually be…a bit insane? To not lose one’s shit over their oat milk being shared without their permission? To step on that damp(est) part of the carpet and not want to punch a hole in the wall? To hear the kids complain about their charmed lives (but not haircuts) and not want to send them on a one-way ticket to a third-world country? That would be insane. And I am seriously wary of anyone who is taking all of this well.

But, per usual, I’m wary of anyone who is making it all out to be one thing, good or bad, without nuance. Because even in this messy reality of life together, I’m seeing what just would never have been without it: mornings spent at the beach, digging and exploring. Movie nights, every night (fun fact: we alternate between TWO of them! JUST TWO!). Board-game sessions spent teaching Little Brother the drawbacks of not winning fair and square (he has yet to internalise this). Impromptu trampoline sessions the boys get to have with The Husband (another fun fact: I tried, at forty-two years of age, to jump on the trampoline! It did not go well! My knee was hit with a piercing pain and it felt like my rectum fell out!).

Still, the hardest part of it all may be…me. Julia-Louis Dreyfus, one of the only celebs allowed to talk right now, recently posted a photo of herself with the caption, “Look, I’m just gonna say it. I’m fucking sick of myself.”

GIRL, SAME. I am sick of what’s been revealed about me during this time: how I can turn even an unstructured day into a set of rules, as if we don’t get to the beach before 9 am everything will FALL APART. How my thoughts won’t ever slow down, EVEN WHILE I AM ASLEEP APPARENTLY. How my indulgence in “quaran-wine” is going to have to be dialled back a notch because it’s affecting my sleep and is officially an overindulgence. How I rely on order and cleanliness around our house to maintain a certain level of well-being and THAT IS JUST NOT POSSIBLE IN FARTLAND, IS IT??

But.

Occasionally, like at one in the morning the day before two “huge social outings” (The Kid’s speech therapy appointment and my trip to the salon, cue the angels’ chorus) on a stomach full of wine, I (re)learn the simple truth that I am not my own saviour. That the line I used to venerate from the poem “Invictus”–“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”–may be some inspirational shit, but as far as it goes with me it’s just shit because (1) I’m terrible with directions, and (2) I cannot save myself. From myself, or from anything else. Salvation must come from the outside.

Which is why strategies don’t work. They can help–drinking less can help, saying “no” to preserve my unwillingness to be violated can help, funny memes can help, comedian Twitter can help (to a limit), some structure can help, meditation can help. But none of it can save me. I need a lot more help than that.

I think that it might start with not pretending to be what I’m not. (Which is why I want to run and hide in a hole when I see other people doing it–it taps into something deep within me that it took a lot of therapy and a lot of money to deal with; I can’t take others’ on too; I’m already tired.) With not pretending that this time is something it’s not, or is just one thing. Because there is no dark corner of myself or of this pandemic where grace does not go with me. Wherever I go, there I am–and there I AM is–the kind of saving grace that isn’t afraid of messy moods or bad haircuts or family drama because it is more with us when we are ourselves, and honest about it, than it ever could be–than we’d ever allow it to be–in our pretending.

My anxiety is a form of sensitivity that characterises much of my life, but here’s the thing–though it may be a bitch at 1 am or the LEGO table, it is a sensitivity that opens me up to things I never would have noticed without it. It leaves me raw and vulnerable, and it is often there–sometimes, only there–where the real magic happens. Where I, far from the captain’s deck and more in the bowels of the ship, collapsed in a heap–I am held, am made, am brought by grace to a place I never could have gotten to on my own.

• 

I’ve been getting into jazz.

I never used to like it, the meandering melodies and changing rhythms, the unpredictability of it all. But lately, life–like jazz–has been all over the place. And so have I. And maybe I’ve needed music that reflects that. So, every day before dinner, I pour a glass of wine, cue up my jazz station, and sit outside with no aim other than to sit still and watch…and listen.

I’ve also been reading. And that’s been all over the place as well: Anna Karenina, in preparation for the ballet that got cancelled; The Crucifixion, because I’m fun at parties; and Ben Folds’ memoir, A Dream about Lightning Bugs. In that one, Folds mentions a quote attributed to one of my new icons, Miles Davis, in regards to screwing up: “Once is a mistake, twice is jazz.” This is prior to a brilliant chapter about finding your voice.

Stay with me.

Remember how The Kid didn’t talk until he was four? And how now, he never shuts up? Yeah, he’s found his voice. He wakes well before the sun with words aplenty, spilling out of him, questions and answers, and continues his talk throughout the day, providing monologues on natural disasters and weather patterns, narrating catastrophes that befall the city he’s created out of blocks. Lately, he’s engaged in a fun new activity, wherein he–when told something is going to happen that he doesn’t like, ie brushing teeth or eating a vegetable (though let’s be honest, not much of the latter has been happening lately, #survivalmode), he lays down the law, always opening with an exasperated “SO.”

“SO. From now on we’re only going to do that once a day.” “SO. From now on, we’re not going to do that at all.” “SO. From now on I say what we do.” In his eight-year-old world, there is one way, and it’s his. And it would be funny, if it weren’t so annoying.

One way. One thing. I’m not a fan.

And in this time of quarantine, I’m being reminded why. We all want some predictability, a linear narrative that is defined by our own rules–control injected whenever possible–a narrative that ends right where we want it to. Discrete, definable patterns; reliable outcomes. We can’t control coronavirus, but we’ll be damned if we can’t control our personal narrative around it. Cue the social media blitz, photos and flowery memes.

A friend of mine, who has the audacity to always have an opinion (we’re alike in that way), went to a birthday party recently that–surprise–turned out to be a beach cleanup! The honouree enlisted everyone, once they arrived, to grab a provided bag and collect trash to fill it. How could anyone argue, as this was a good and selfless deed? Towards the end of the cleanup, the participants were enlisted again: for a group photo, to be shared on social media.

My friend said no. “But why?” she was questioned. “Come on, just take one photo!” they wheedled. And the kicker: “It’s for a good cause!”

She was having none of it. At the risk of being contrary and seen as difficult, but in seeking to preserve her sense of self, she reiterated her refusal. She didn’t want to be a pawn in this publicised good deed.

And there are so many people–the majority, I’d say–who would echo what her fellow trash collectors said: “Just do it! It’s only for a second! It’ll make everyone happy!” Which, I would argue, sounds a lot like the arguments heard prior to an assault.

I’ve been on the end of that form of compelling before–the social-pressure kind and the assault kind–and I’ve regrettably capitulated in both scenarios, donning a prop or participating in a photo-op or just doing whatever it was that would make someone else happy. Sometimes, this needs to be done. Sometimes, it’s a worthy sacrifice. (I am thinking, of course, of all the games of hide and seek I’ve played with my children, which manage to be both fun and tedious as hell. I am also talking about all the times I’ve had to wipe their asses.)

Sometimes, though, it’s manipulation and coercion. And oftentimes, lately, I’ve said no.

One of my favourite things about therapy has been finding out, as I sit on that couch, how often my reactions to situations are completely normal; it’s the situations themselves that are fucked up. And so often, those situations were engineered by someone with an agenda: a narrative to control. And so often, I was a pawn in that agenda.

Oh, trust me, I’m aware of how much of this I’ve perpetrated myself: narratives I determined to control, and people I’ve attempted to control in the process–in the process of trying to feel an iota of agency in the seeming absence of it. But lately, I’ve been finding my voice. And often, it is contained in one simple word: no.

NO to reducing this pandemic to one thing: one positive, or one negative, or one meme (although I’ll take the funny ones all day). NO to figuring out the meaning of it one month through and posting that meaning to social media in a pithy statement. NO to putting my chin up and being positive when doing so will not only be a lie compared to how depressed I’m feeling, but will threaten my mental health further. NO to interpretations of Easter that make it only a pastel parade of victory when we are so embedded in the “not yet” part of the story that we are in the middle of a global pandemic. NO to making it all just one thing when it’s so damn many of them.

In a thread recently, a friend wrote, “maybe all of our church holidays need to ache a little bit. We need to feel the tension of redeemed and waiting for all redemption.” At which point I applauded even as I realised what an unpopular, unsellable message this multifaceted, impossible-to-nail-down-with-one-label this kind of living is.

But it’s the only place where I come to life.

I have a friend–the kind who sticks closer than a brother–who, when I said to him via a video call the other day that “I guess I’m just a cynic,” shook his head. “You’re not a cynic,” he said. “There’s just no word yet for what you are.”

I know plenty of people who could think of a word. Contrary. Uncooperative. Unaccommodating. And those are the nice ones. But I’ve lived through the foolishness of trying to control my own narrative, and my life only really began when those efforts, and that narrative, fell apart to make way for the great mess of beauty that was waiting. So I’m not interested in being a bit player in someone else’s attempts.

Last weekend Andrea Bocelli exited the Duomo di Milano and sang “Amazing Grace,” repeating at the end the line, “I once was blind but now I see.” How about that! A blind man saying he can see? And there was a guy (I’m told he came back to life recently) who referred to himself as both peace and a sword. All over the place. Contradictions aplenty. Unpredictable and unwieldy and out of control. Like jazz.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice –

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations –

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

–Mary Oliver, “The Journey”

• 

I had a panic attack yesterday.

Isn’t that cute? That it wasn’t the bustle of New York or a move across the world that gave me my first full-on attack, but a few minutes of darting back and forth between The Kid, on his iPad doing a zoom session with his speech therapist, and Little Brother, doing LEGO at the kitchen table. Pulled one second toward TK to cast him a stern glance for not following his therapist’s instructions; pulled the next second by LB’s urges to help him find a piece, pulled apart within minutes by the greater fragmentation caused by this extraordinary time: my own identity overshadowed by the new ones I’ve had to assume, these roles of full-time third-grade teacher, full-time kindergarten teacher, full-time IT support for both classes as class parent.

So I fell apart. My throat constricted–my own personal hallmark of overwhelming anxiety, happens all the time–then the tightening moved to my chest, and within seconds I was struggling to breathe, wondering why my heart hurt so much, feeling like I was going to die. Right there among the LEGO. Like some kind of half-assed domestic martyr.

I put the kids on their iPads and told The Husband that I was going for a walk. I traveled around the block, and when I got home I received a text from a friend: had I read this book? Because she just had, and could loan it to me. I responded with something like, “I JUST GOT BACK FROM WALKING AROUND THE BLOCK TO FEND OFF A PANIC ATTACK SO YES THAT WOULD BE GREAT WHEN CAN YOU BRING IT.” Within minutes, the book was on my doorstep.

You can call that whatever you want to, but I call it grace.

Later, I put the boys in front of a movie (yes, there is a theme here and screens exist for a reason; USE THEM) and sat outside with a glass of wine and my phone, which was playing jazz. The time changed last weekend–it’s autumn here now–and, at nearly six, the sun was setting. I looked up at the backlit clouds and just stared. Their beauty leaves me with no other conclusion than that they have a Maker, though I’m not a fan of a lot of his other work right now, but then again I’m not at a high enough pay grade to receive all the current inter-office memos. So I just stared, and waited, and as the darkness grew around me, I cried.

I cried for things I haven’t fully grieved yet and likely never fully will: our church back in America, where our pastor, I had been told, just forwarded to everyone an article I wrote recently, attaching the message that he was still mad we’d left. I grieved for him and his wife, dear friends–the best, really–and for all the other people we’d left behind there, for the easy fellowship and deep vulnerability we’d experienced with them.

I cried for the grief my kids are experiencing but are unable to articulate, the loss of contact with teachers and friends, the spikes of boredom that are actually good for them but painful for all of us, for the fact they have to spend so much time out of their formative years navigating a global pandemic.

I cried for the suffering we’re all experiencing, for how damn hard this is, for what it’s doing to our hearts and minds that we’ll be dealing with for the rest of our lives (PEOPLE, GET A THERAPIST. IT COULD SAVE YOU.).

I cried for TH, who, when he married me, thought he was getting the “good” kind of crazy, the fun kind, but instead, these days, more often finds himself with the kind who is sitting outside curled into a nonfunctioning ball with tears running down her face, muttering something about takeout on the way because she just can’t.

I cried for my kids again, that they’re going to have memories of me sitting outside crying in a nonfunctional ball instead of sitting beside them watching a movie.

I cried. A lot. And then, somehow, I got up.

I ate the shit out of a cheeseburger and fries that someone else made. I finished my wine. I took a shower and got in bed.

I know that for those of you in the Northern hemisphere, the changing light–longer days of springtime–are a welcome arrival, maybe a symbol of hope. At least that’s how I’d spin it if I were up there where you are. For my part (and spinning), I’m finding relief in the shortened days, the earlier arrival of darkness that accompanies our hunkering down. Night is a gift right now, a rest from the forced “rest” of these days.

I’m finding relief in books showing up–both for me and our kids–on our doorstep. In chance meetings on the running trail with other mums I know, makeup-free and newly vulnerable about how hard this is. For unexpected, unscheduled talks about real shit for once. I’m finding relief in access to moments in my friends’ lives that I didn’t have before, in the kids playing Roblox with their friends over Zoom as their parents talk and live in the background, these parents of their friends who are my friends, these windows into their lives because of this shifting perspective, this season of change.

I’m finding relief in this worldwide newfound sense of collectivism, of taking care of others, not because I have the ability to take care of others beyond my four walls right now, but because I need to be taken care of, and people are doing that remotely and well. One set of footprints in the sand and all that.

I’m finding relief in really feeling my grief, in making space for my kids to feel theirs when they think, at bedtime, that they’re crying over Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban but they’re not, and I know that, and they can too.

I’m finding relief that, as the light and seasons and times shift and new pain is being exposed, that new mercies are too, and that unlike my own sanity and strength, these mercies never run out, never expire. I call that grace.

And so it was, that on the first day of homeschooling, I woke up with diarrhea.

(The Australians and British include an O in the word, which is apt, and which I will therefore be doing from now on.)

Anyway, this is a common theme for me in recent years, and by that I mean getting diarrhoea before important events. I’m not much of a public speaker except in recent years when I have been both as a Mockingbird contributor and as an advocate for my son to his classes, and half of the last four talks I’ve given at the Mockingbird New York conference were preceded–and engulfed–by stomach viruses that began the night before. Including the first talk I ever gave. So that means twice now I’ve either sat or stood onstage clenching my ass cheeks and praying for dear life not to shit my pants, all while delivering a thirty-minute speech.

The silver lining is that I didn’t need that Xanax I brought, because I had no room for self-consciousness.

So on the eve of the first day of homeschooling last week, I woke up in the middle of the night praying that the rumble in my stomach was due to an inexplicably spicy bowl of chicken soup I’d eaten earlier in the day. Reader, it was not. I hotfooted it to the toilet several times that night, and until about 2 the next afternoon. I spent half the morning in bed while The Husband kept the boys busy upstairs, then I painfully stepped into the shower and threw my body up the stairs to the kids. The school didn’t have their Google classrooms set up yet, so I honestly can’t tell you what we did or how I survived to the end of the day. All I can tell you is that we got takeaway that night and I ate fries because I (literally) stopped giving a shit, and that this was–as it has always proven to be–a weird-ass gift.

I seem to need to keep being reminded that things go better when I start with acknowledging my own helplessness. I had a list ready to go of activities to do with the kids at home; websites and YouTube videos and virtual museums; and I may as well have used it as toilet paper because a fat lot of good it did me from my bed, lying as I did with chills and aches. Whenever grace, in the form of illness or whatever, makes me take my eyes off myself and just stop doing, magical things seem to happen. It reminds me of when my therapist told me about his and his wife’s third and final child and how she turned out so well because they parented her the least.

Quitting is so underrated.

That’s why we’ve been good at it for the past week of homeschooling. Our school mascot could be a shrugging woman, because that is what I am. Our school motto could be “Homeschool is Flexible” because that’s what I’ve repeated to the boys, telling them (in an echo of a couple of their teachers, thank God) that we don’t have to do everything and that if we don’t do everything, everything will still be okay. This has led to more moments discussing fractions over sandwiches and maths over cupcakes; teaching moments that are natural rather than forced, organic instead of rigid.

Which has led to me being more present in the moment instead of in my planner. Which has led to me seeing more.

Seeing that The Kid’s therapist, whom we would have never met were it not for grace’s crazy-ass gifts, still comes over daily and knows how he learns so that now I get to know that firsthand and quickly, instead of muddling through weeks to find out that he actually can spell the words he’s trying to get me to spell for him.

Seeing (smelling) the dinners that neighbours are cooking each night: the curries and the garlic and the other scents that waft between houses up to our deck enveloping me in the moment with the knowledge that we are all, somehow, doing life together even more than before.

Seeing (hearing) TK wake up beside me in the morning and tell me in his sleepy haze, “This is the best time.” Seeing (hearing) Little Brother pad into the room in the middle of the night, climb in bed beside me, fall back asleep, then start giggling at a funny dream.

This is magic, all of it. And it wouldn’t have happened any other way. I start with my own helplessness and then see it all around me, the help that I didn’t earn but that arrives as gift. As grace.

I’m writing this on a Monday because I have no idea whether my kids will be at school or home tomorrow. This kind of uncertainty and indecision could be my undoing, would be, if I weren’t held by something bigger than myself.

It’s like this: we’re standing at the edge of a cliff and we don’t know what awaits us on the other side. We don’t even know what is waiting for us one foot/metre ahead, visual schedules be damned, because we have never done or been through anything like it before. And despite all the posturing on social media, the judgments over how other people are handling quarantine or whether they’re socially distancing enough, the ad nauseam articles posted to make it look as though we have our finger on the pulse of Pandemic 101, none of us have the vaguest grasp of the situation. None of us have any control. Whether we have the virus or not. Whether we have a backlog of toilet paper or not. Whether we wash our hands or not. (Please do, you nasty freak.)

Maybe, in a way, I’ll fare better than some (hahaha nope) because I had to come to terms long ago with the fact that I’m not in control. It was revealed to me in grad school, in relationships, in New York City, on examination tables, in preterm labour, in diagnoses. They say that people make plans and God laughs. Well so do I. But I keep making them anyway, because this is how I stay sane. Even as I know that these plans could be broken at any moment.

Now all we have are broken plans and cleared calendars. There are no illusions to create to distract from the fact that we can’t manipulate this outcome or direct a conclusion. We are utterly helpless.

If you are like me and that statement makes you short of breath in a way that leads you to ask for a COVID-19 test, then consider there’s also this: the possibility that even though much of what is going on is clearly fucked, there are other things that are, strangely, maybe more like they should be than they ever have been before. You know all those assholes who used the hashtag #timeslowdown on the reg in their social media captions? Well, they got their wish. Time has a way of grinding nearly to a halt when all the days are the same, bleeding together so that there’s no such thing as a “weekend” anymore. But up until now, my kids’ kindergarten and third grade years were flying by as they always do. Now I feel like I’m watching them grow live, in real time, rather than in retrospect: their hair is getting longer (and will not be cut anytime soon), their limbs as well, and I’m around for all of it, not just at the end of a school day when somehow they’ve gotten older in six hours without my witnessing it.

There’s the invitation we received to spend Sunday morning “watching” church at our pastor’s house while the kids played Hide and Seek, and what The Husband said afterward: “I think that’s actually what church is supposed to be like?”

There’s the morning I just spent researching websites and activities for teaching kids at home, because I am nothing if not great at generating ideas (and shit at executing them, #prayforme), and imagining both the toll it will all take on my mental health and the moments we’ll create that they’ll remember forever (hopefully not capped off by mommy riding in the back of a padded truck off to her new home).

There’s the new dance that TH and I do around and with each other now that he’s working from home, the one that both builds my anxiety and chips away at it: cups left out, guttural sighs released, resentments stockpiled; impromptu conversations, watching Netflix together again for the first time since the kids were born, sitting outside talking about whether we can afford to buy anything other than a cardboard box to live in here.

There are the conversations with the kids that I never could have imagined having when they were babies, talks about pandemics and instability (“Is the world descending into chaos?” The Kid asked me on the way to school this morning, and I laughed and crapped my pants a bit), markers of their growing awareness and our tell-the-truth policy with them (about everything but Santa Claus).

We have been robbed, for now, of a clear vision for the future. We’ve been robbed of every moment except the present one. And maybe that’s how it should be? Maybe that’s a gift that’s been given to us (along with all the gifs, har har) that will help me to be here, now. That will help me not to interpret every moment, but inhabit each of them.

I’ve been meaning to do that anyway.

It was pain
Sunny days and rain
I knew you’d feel the same things

The Kid and I have a little dance we do every morning.

Before the sun rises, he wakes up with rustling limbs and yawns and stretches that turn into requests for the iPad and long monologues (all of this while The Husband and Little Brother sleep in the next room because every night, TK sneaks into ours and he and TH swap places because if they didn’t, LB would awaken at 3 am with shouts of “Daddy? DADDY!” much like the Etrade baby). And I dig in next to his warmth for a few minutes before I get out of bed and slide into my workout clothes. The dance begins.

“No! Stay! Just for today,” he says.

“You know I’d rather be here with you,” I tell him.

“So stay!”

I’ve stayed before. But mostly, I go, trudging upstairs and outside, into the darkness and onto the running path, even as I feel pulled like the blanket TK and LB play tug o’ war with daily. I stood in the scalding shower this morning after one of those runs, wondering how it’s possible for my body to run one minute and want to collapse the next, why I’m always tired even when I’m moving, and I think this is it: there’s not a moment in the life of a mother when she doesn’t feel pulled in at least two directions, if not more. And this, this is exhausting.

Also exhausting are the morning (and afternoon…and evening) fights the boys get into over things like “he looked at me” or “he laughed at me” or “he got a bigger cookie.” They echo the fights that The Sis and I had growing up, which leads me to believe they are primal and unavoidable, and maybe that’s why they grate at me so powerfully, why they make me want to scream–I’ve been in one or another of these fights my whole life. They lead to moments of regret after school drop-offs, rehashing the morning in my head and wondering where I could have been more patient and kind. Wondering if “you two are going to drive me crazy” is an honest admission or a ticket to their future therapy.

But then there are the moments that wash all that away: TK calling me “sweetheart Mommy;” or when they ask me what the best part of my day was and I tell them it was when I picked them up and they were so happy to see me and LB says, “We’ll always be happy to see you.” They’re young enough to think that’s true, and I’m delusional enough to try to make it so.

And even when they’re not pushing and pulling me, when they’re in bed asleep or off at school and it’s just me, I’m pushed and pulled by my own shit, by the inner waves set off by anxiety: paranoia about friend groups, questions about whether that cough was part of a seasonal cold or something grimmer; whether I’m being available enough to TH in our marriage; the guilt of parenting that comes with not being patient or teaching or making the most of every damn moment. These waves send me out to sea and back to shore again; one day I’m flat and the world is grey and the next I’m bopping around and it’s in colour.

It strikes me that having anxiety and/or depression is much like being immunosuppressed: a big part of the problem is that the body has a hard time recognising them as foreign invaders. Because when it does–when my mind finally notices the difference between them and reality–I can breathe, and the sea is once again blue.

And I know that none of this would be so hard, or painful, or wonderful, or would even exist, if it weren’t for the fact that I am connected: to sanity, to people, to this world around us, full as it is of rain and sun and grey and colours, just like the overcast skies that clouded our walk to school yesterday before we ran into friends who pointed up at the rainbow arching above us.

When The Kid hears something he doesn’t like–which is often these days, given the existence of toothbrushing and vegetables and getting dressed–he pronounces “DELETE!” and pairs it with a point at the person who was speaking. “DELETE! DELETE!”

It’s so cute to be deleted while trying to parent.

This verbal backspace option doesn’t work, unless the point is trying to get us to laugh, but I have to appreciate the thought behind it, given that I, too, would like to erase the parts of life I don’t like: Australian real estate purchasing…pandemics and the uncertainty they create…mildew.

It’s the season of Lent, also known as the season of virtue signaling, and while I’m not taking it as an opportunity to start a new diet or publicly post my social media cleanse intentions, I do like the idea of looking around at my life and taking stock of what could use downsizing, and what I could make more space for. Delete and add.

Under threat of filling my days and face with screens once the boys were both at school, I decided to do less of that, which means I’ve been reading more (insert curtsey). It also means I’ve had more time to…think. Which I always felt short of, that time to just sit and be and let my mind wander. It’s sort of a necessity when it comes to writing, but I’d been filling it with graphics and lights and Instagram, and it was making me feel literally ill: screen hangovers were characterising my days. It was gross.

So I feel I’ve been noticing more, which is actually pretty life-giving. I took Little Brother to the occupational therapist last week for an evaluation based on the recommendation of his kindy teacher and her concern over his pencil grip. My initial internal reaction at that observation was “DELETE” since we have dealt with a little thing called global dyspraxia before and an imperfect grip ain’t got NOTHING on that, but I dutifully booked the appointment because I am quite aware of the possibility of giving short shrift to LB when he’s humming along without a tilted head, etc.

He was…more excited about it than I was. And in that excitement I saw something both heartbreaking–he wanted to get some solo time in the spotlight finally; and beautiful–he wants to be like his big brother, swinging from trapezes and such.

He’s such a pleaser. But I have to remember that he’s not me, that he may not be headed to therapy for it just yet. Right now, it propels him to tables and whiteboards and into a cross-legged position, toward writing and reading and drawing and learning. I watched him, in that space we’d made for him for an hour on a Wednesday morning: I watched his effort and his attention and his commitment and his seriousness and his humour. I watched his full self in that hour, and what a gift to have been forced into making unexpected space for all that beauty.

I sat there watching him, and in the silence, a voice whispered into my heart: he just wants to feel special. So I made room for that. I still am.

And we’re making room for a new chapter for TK, as his Friday therapist has moved on and he’s inching–but mostly leaping–toward independence. Without even yelling DELETE.

I read a few words the other day about better things, things that belong to bigger things, and it makes me think about how much of grace is making space for those better things. Or having it made for us. Being forced into it, and choosing it, and sitting in silence and tension and uncertainty to wait for those things to show up. Inhabiting these moments that feel empty until they are gloriously, painfully, full.

“Maybe you should stop…just stop trying. It’s exhausting.”

• 

They say that if you want to develop a new habit, you should start saying things to yourself about it. So I’ve been repeating mantras like, “I am a person who wakes before sunrise to exercise.” “I am a person who does one open-water swim a week.” (Also, hopefully: “I am a person who does not get eaten by sharks.”)

But life, and grace, have chosen some identities already for me, identities I’d never planned and certainly didn’t repeat mantras for. “I am the one in the waiting room waiting to hear how her son’s spinal surgery went.” “I am a resident of Australia.” “I am the mother of one child who learns differently and one who learns typically.” “I am the woman standing at the shore watching her that kid surf with a foundation for kids on the spectrum.”

These identities barrelled into my life uninvited. Had I been given the choice (okay, with Australia we technically were given the choice, but it didn’t feel like it when all signs were practically yanking us onto the plane), who knows what I would have said? I do, actually. I would have said, “I am the person who takes the easiest road. I will take the path of least resistance, thanks.”

Oh, what I would have missed.

Everything. I would have missed everything.

On Sunday, we skipped church. No, actually, we had church–in a different location. We went to Manly Beach for the second year in a row and joined up with Surfers Healing, a foundation that takes kids on the spectrum out with professional surfers for a ride (or three) on the waves. This year was a bit different.

This year, The Kid was not afraid or hesitant at all. After checking to make sure that he’d get another medal this time around, he shrugged into his life vest and grabbed the hands of his newest surfing buddies and headed to sea. After the final ride of three, he trudged back to us, dripping and covered in sand. “That second one was gnarly! I totally wiped out!”

Yes, he said that.

So I am a person whose child is a surfer. He’s also in the band at school, playing the baritone, or as he refers to it, his “sweet, sweet beauty.” I am a band mom.

I’m a Little Brother mom–which somehow means I’m a person whose kid is the first one to stand up and volunteer, who is a ham, who is super-social and talkative and loves attention. Who is the owner of a huge heart.

How did that happen?

I think about all the effort I spent, in a former life, to become a certain kind of person–all the thought I put into creating children who were certain kinds of people–and how none of it turned out how I planned. How fucking glorious that is.

After the surf–once TK had, indeed, received his medal (I told him that, since now he has two, he can share one with his brother–he passed on that)–we went with our group across the street to a restaurant for lunch. And when I say group I mean not just the four of us. I mean, because of a “lucky” turn of events, not only TK’s Aussie therapist and her fiancé, but his Atlanta therapist and her wife–who happened to be in the country, in the city, on this beach, this of all weekends.

Our group sat at a table, friends on one side and family on the other, though it’s hard to tell the difference between those two groups these days. And as we ate, and talked, and just were, I thought about all the choices I never made that put me–us–right where we belong, without even trying. Just by being. Because grace, unlike karma, doesn’t honour choices or reward efforts, it gives gifts. It puts us where we were meant to be: at home.

• 

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways

My independence seems to vanish in the haze

But every now and then I feel so insecure

I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before

I go by Steph now.

People have always called me that–family and good friends mostly, and preferably upon invitation. But now it’s what I answer to generally; it’s how I sign emails and receive them and what I’ve heard a couple of times yelled out of a car (which is The.Best.). When I hear the extra four letters of my first name, I give a start, like I’m getting into trouble.

Australians are fantastic at shortening things, like words, and names, and loss of lives due to guns.

But something has lengthened here, and it’s my time on my own, now that both boys are in school. And for every, “How will you fill the time, Steph?” question that I get, I want to point to the mounting pile of laundry, the opportunities to volunteer at the school, the unopened books that have waited years to be read, the books that have waited years to be written, the projects and the beaches and life and I want to respond, “What time?”

As a woman, and especially a mother, I find it easiest to be powered by guilt, particularly when endorphins and caffeine are scarce. And the first few days of the boys’ school year, I considered giving in to that guilt–through eight years of mothering, it has been so faithful! Then The Husband took my car–the one I dinged up in the car park–to the repair shop, and something shifted.

Primarily, it was the roof to his used convertible, purchased a few months after we moved here. As emblems of mid-life crises go, it’s a pretty harmless one, but one used almost entirely by him–I’ve never much liked messing up my hair or being so vulnerable to the elements and…other people. But during my week of obtaining convertible custody, I embraced its features, and I dropped that top down. And it was glorious.

The boys loved it. (Well, The Kid did. Little Brother had to be talked/bribed into it.) We tooled around town–or to the playground and back, at least–with the wind caressing our faces, taking selfies and generally looking like assholes and loving it. I dropped that bitch back on a ride to the cinema. By myself. On a weekday. I smelled the salt water as I cruised beside the beach. And I told guilt to kindly f— off.

Because here’s the thing: for eight years (longer, actually, if you count pregnancy–and honey I DO), I have voluntarily rented out space in my body, in my mind, in my heart, for two beings who consume me. Their existence has altered said body, its neurochemical balance, its hormonal stability, its metabolism, its follicular quality. I have given myself in service of their growth and well-being. I’ve been poked and prodded, had my organs and nethers splayed across two operating tables, had weekly progesterone shots in my ass for one for nine months after preterm labour and premature birth with the other. I’ve had mastitis and a yeast infection in my tits. I have a scar across my abdomen. I can’t sleep through the night without peeing multiple times. Actually, I can’t sleep through the night, period. The list of what women endure for their children is not just long; it’s endless.

Do I regret any of it? Absolutely not. I treasure them so much it hurts. I would give my life in a second for either of them. They are my life.

But that sure as hell doesn’t mean I have to pretend like none of that stuff ever happened.

So yeah, I’m on a bit of a break, I guess, if that’s what you want to call this period, this new era in which I’m riding with the top down and getting back in touch with who the Me is apart from them; in which I’m making space to breathe and think about not just what is next, but what is now; in which I’m sitting beside LB on the bench at school as he crushes reading, and meeting with TK’s therapist and teacher about his soaring independence and the waning need for a school shadow. I am quite literally enjoying the fruits of my labour and the gifts of grace on our behalf.

I wish it for every woman who has come out on the other side of those tender (for them, and us) first years with her kids and wondered, Who am I again? I wish for time for us all to remember how to play, how to imagine, how to invent, how to be. And, after all that, how to see them running out of their classrooms and into arms that have even more space now.