Plans In Pencil

When The Kid’s first school therapist decided to move on to another job at the end of our first year here, thereby wrecking my life (kidding…kind of), he wrote me a long and beautiful email detailing how much he valued his experience with TK and our family. Included in his words was a description of how TK works really hard to hold himself together at school, to the point that (the therapist believed) TK often falls apart upon leaving the school gates to head home. I think this was mentioned at least in part because the therapist had observed several of these falling-apart episodes, which had occurred when TK was being handed off to me, and he had also likely observed my frustration during the episodes. He was encouraging me by explaining TK.

He may well have been explaining me, as I too am a perpetrator of that first-world, time-honoured virtue of Holding It Together in the midst of life’s daily struggles, and my own personal ones. When I saw a counsellor here in Sydney during that first year, after my IKEA meltdown and during a depressive period, she told me (in the first of three total sessions because, reader, I ran away) that, for someone experiencing depression and anxiety, I looked to have it together–meaning, she explained, I was wearing makeup and my hair was under control and I wasn’t in a dressing gown (that’s what they call a bathrobe here).

I guess I should have shown up with head lice and rampant armpit hair and general stank? I don’t know, but the comment left me annoyed. Annoyed…and thoughtful. Especially when a legitimate friend told me she is often surprised when I describe myself as anxious because she doesn’t always see it.

I think that I put a fair amount of effort into appearing to be something I’m not.

This discovery is shocking to me, since I spent the first couple of decades of my life doing this on a grand scale: trying to be the “sweet girl” everyone seemed to think I should be; following the rules until they broke me and my quarter-life identity crisis sent me into a bad relationship and, then, New York, to escape. Old habits die hard. Maybe my efforts aren’t as epic now, but some days all they might consist of is putting makeup on a face whose natural state, in that moment, would be Tearful and Blotchy. Or slapping jokes and laughter on a social situation that I’d do better to exit completely. We all pretend, after all. You sort of have to in order to function in society. If I had, say, swept the legs of one teacher who actually deserved it, I’d be writing this from an allotted quarter-hour at a women’s prison desktop. We put on faces. We fake it. It’s what we do.

I’m just trying to figure out how much of it is necessary, and how much is bullshit that keeps us from real connecting.

Last week, I took Little Brother and his mate to their weekly sport camp and LB decided he’d rather sit with me, during my designated Thinking and Being By Myself Time, than participate. He began to perform “tricks” for me and demand my attention: “Mom, check this out!” on repeat. I felt the anger rise in me: I needed to not have to attend to anything. I needed space. And also? I needed for one of my kids not to have trouble entering a group and doing what the other kids do because the journey of that with TK has been both beautiful and also very hard. I needed to not go through an emotional crisis with LB because all my energy for that was reserved for TK. I needed him to hold it together, as he so typically does. I needed him to make life easy for me.

This is so unfair.

I felt myself wanting to withdraw from him, and ignore his “check it out”s, and shut down. And I felt gutted by self-hatred over it. I can’t allow one kid the room to fall apart and not give the other that same space. I can’t reserve all my empathy for only one of my children.

It’s easier, of course, to deal in ratios than uncertainties, in black and white than shades of grey. This is why parenting, why life, is so exhausting: despite my efforts to find a manual, it doesn’t work that way. What a crock.

I don’t have an easy child and a difficult child. At least, I can’t see it that way. I have two boys, each with huge hearts, who express themselves differently. And this is a gift that wears me down and breaks me apart. Especially in a week when one is sick and at home and I’m falling apart already because I have a 60k hike tomorrow and no space in the meantime to just breathe. There is, instead, LB asking me to play soccer and TK needing constant cuddles and me, cracking into pieces.

There is also the pair of them telling me how much they love me, unbidden and unbribed. There is LB curling into me at bedtime, throwing his arm around me like I am his (I totally am). There is TK, surprising me by writing out all his spelling words while I go to my room for thirty seconds to put on my comfy pants, his sneaky and proud grin meeting me when I return. There will be the bottle of champagne meeting me at the finish line tomorrow, no matter what time it is. And there will be the hotel room to myself the next night, meeting me for sorely needed writing and recovery. There is also some guilt about that. There is everything, whether it shows up on my face or in my clothing or is just here for now, words that spill out because they have to, because there is just…so much. Too much to hold together, but so much that when it all does fall apart, the pieces manage to gather in a new, somehow better, way.

I was looking forward to a topic other than death this week, then I woke up this morning and got my news (read people.com) and found out about Luke Perry and y’all, I am JUST DONE. Little Brother’s preschool teacher is still gone, which feels like a shock every day to me (and LB, I suspect). Dylan McKay has left the building and by all accounts, his real-life persona was a wonderfully kind man, which is always the way it goes, isn’t it? (Take some of the crap ones, PLEASE!) And apparently it’s bat mating season and our neighbour’s tree is Ground Central for Bat F*cking, so we get to watch the world’s creepiest animal circle our house every night then screech and scream us to sleep.

I can’t. I just can’t.

I couldn’t, either, when I got off a boat the other day after seven hours of drinking, swimming, and dishing with friends. I couldn’t so much that The Husband had to come get me, The Kid and LB in tow, and as I carried LB inside I tripped up some marble steps and we both tumbled to the ground. Later, I was holding TK and falling onto the bed with him and we both hit our heads against the wall. “Mommy, you were pretty clumsy last night,” they told me the next day, as I envisioned an intervention filled with only non-Australian friends because they’re the ones who started all this socialising anyway, while battling guilt over how much wine is too much yet again and searching for grace in the grappling.

On the boat, I had the kind of epiphany that sounds brilliant in the moment, when the sun is shining and champagne is flowing: “I know why we like wine so much! It’s because it’s the one thing we don’t have to share with our kids!” I cheers-ed myself to that then thought later about the fantastic podcast I heard that falls into the first of the following categories that are officially My Listening Jams: psychology, celebrity interviews, parody, and nightmare-inducing true crime. The particular episode I had listened to on a masochistic hike was about affect regulation and dysregulation and IT SPOKE TO ME, as such things usually do, about the gray areas that we try to reduce to black and white in order to simplify lives that are meant to be nuanced and colourful. Which maybe sounds like an excuse to drink more champagne and maybe is, but I’m in the “working on it” phase and that’s gotta be okay for now.

I also thought later, post-boat and knee injury and head trauma, about what it means to have safe zones in my life: things that feel comforting or hallowed or just good either because they’re mine alone, or because they buffer me from the things I fear. Things I fear: bats, social anxiety, alienation, grief and sadness, loss. Things that feel safe: family (sometimes?), wine (sometimes?), grace (sometimes–it has a randy streak, after all).

We set about trying to make ourselves safe–trying to regulate life, ourselves–in a world that is anything but. Two men in their fifties that I either knew personally or televisionally are gone, and this is not safe. It does not make sense, or line up with reports from annual physicals. I try to buffer myself from awkwardness in social situations and often…overdo the titration, let’s say. I want to be my children’s refuge, their safe space, and I end up losing my temper, or…being clumsy.

I cannot do with more to-do lists or self-improvement or guilt spirals. What I can do with is friends who laugh and commiserate, children who forgive and have wonderfully short memories, and a husband who never stops showing up. A grace that never does either.

I read recently about a British mother’s invention called a “hug button” that she devised to help ease her child’s separation anxiety while he was at school. So every morning, I find myself drawing one on my hand and TK’s (and a backup one on our wrists; LB passed on both). The red sharpie’s dye seeps into my skin throughout the day, sweat from hikes and anxiety bleeding it deeper, and TK and I press these buttons to send each other love. And it helps. He’s not crying at drop-off any more.

There’s also the kid who requested that TK be his partner in robotics because TK is the calm one–a safe space. There’s the way LB arranges the faucet handles the way he knows TK likes them–a habit that was driving me crazy until I saw the safe space LB easily made for it. There is the way at the end of the day, when the four of us pile onto the couch together, the bats screaming outside and the wind and world buffeting at the windows, and the grief and anxiety haven’t left but the grace is bigger now, our limbs digging and pressing into each other, hug buttons active, safety an elusive mystery that, for now, feels real.

The Sis called me lucky recently, in a conversation volleyed over an internet app, since we live across the world from each other (unlucky) but are able to communication instantly this way (lucky). Her description related to one aspect of my life thus far: celebrity spotting.

I know what you’re thinking: that’s some substantial shit. Enough to build an identity on! And you’re right, at least inasmuch that I’ve tried to build an identity on my knowledge of celebrity gossip (fuelled by a religious practice in my 20s and…maybe past that, sitting in the bookstore every weekend reading tabloids for free) and on being in the right place at the right time. Which is why I loved living in New York, the site of celebs living their “real lives” right where we could brush past them. I have a friend who would claim to see Tom Cruise’s brother or Katie Holmes’s cousin in each face we passed, but I on the other hand…I could spot the real deal a mile away. The Carters and Paltrow/Martins on the Upper East Side, Mandy Moore at Pastis…I should’ve kept a list. Apparently, Conan O’Brien is in Sydney right now and The Sis suggested I go find him. In that form of FOMO that sticks around long after the party is over, that part of me that still wants to be recognised for recognising led me to Ticketmaster to try to get into his show tomorrow night (spoiler alert: sold out).

I don’t have as much time (or energy) to stalk celebrities these days. I have two divas in my own home (three, if you count The Husband when he asks me if I would mind taking his dry-cleaning) who require full-time attention. And lucky isn’t a word I use much anymore, since blessed has taken its place. I am, of course, referring to the sarcastic version of that word with the hashtag in front, as #blessed is the name of a group chat of which I am a member as well as being a term my friends and I describe our lives when another kid has shit his pants or we forget to send cupcakes to school for a birthday. It’s all-encompassing, this word, in both sincerity and irony.

But lucky still pops up, like a way of hedging bets to keep from putting too fine a point on any situation, or of involving the divine in matters. Earnestness in relation to blessed, after all, implies the involvement of a Blesser and not everyone is on board with that. Which I get. But still…it’s the only way for me to survive.

Little Brother’s favourite teacher, and the director of his preschool, died last week (unlucky). The email relating the news was a punch to the gut, rendering me breathless there in my closet while the kids played in the next room and I felt a growing sense of dread over telling them. This man, who jokes with me about that carafe that looks like rosé in the school fridge, who calls LB “Groover” and tells him “toodle poodle” at the end of the day, who settles him when I’m dropping him off in the morning with a book on the sofa…he cannot be gone, but he is. Via an aneurism that leaves his wife a widow and his children fatherless and my sons with so many questions. Somehow, unlucky doesn’t sum it up. Doesn’t begin to capture the pain and loss so many are feeling right now.

The other day, on the way into school, The Kid asked me why not everyone has a therapist. I geared up emotionally, which for me looks like silent prayers and anxiety, and then he continued: “Are they just not lucky?” The breath left me, as always, at the beautiful way he sees his world.

And at the way LB said to me yesterday, “You know why I tell jokes, Mommy? To make you laugh.” This little performer, already so aware of others’ reactions, so different from his brother, and I get both of them: the thoughtful empath and the hilarious ham, each still so much more than that. Lucky.

But it’s not enough, this term. Was I lucky to have gotten to LB’s school last week in time to share one last joke with his teacher, or to arrive there that afternoon in time to witness a dance party in his classroom? Were we just lucky to have known him at all? Is TK lucky to have friends who, like this morning, bring him watches from their collections as gifts because they know he loves them? Am I lucky to smell salt water every day?

Are we unlucky to have to grieve a too-soon passing? Unlucky that I stepped on a sea urchin this weekend after a post-party dive into the ocean? Is TK unlucky to need a bit of extra help at times, or to face potential misunderstanding? Are we unlucky to be so far from friends and family across the world?

There’s no danger that I’ll stop using the hashtag version anytime soon, but I’m attempting to remember the sincere version, the one whispered as thanks in prayers over small heads, the one that acknowledges the faithfulness of someone outside myself even when I’d like to complain to management (him) about his techniques. This reality of being blessed, in the midst of loss and gain, of presence and absence, of ease and hardship, it is what connects and redefines the gulf between lucky and unlucky, what includes them both within its vast umbrella and makes them all, somehow, the same: grace.

Last night, as we were lying in their room and they were definitely not going to sleep–yet–the boys were asking me questions. All the questions. About school, zombies, our family. They like to ask about what happened prior to when they came along–calling it “Before Us”–and it goes something like this:

“Remember when it was just you and Daddy?”
“And then it was me?”
“And then it was just three of you because it wasn’t me yet?”
“And then Will came and there were four?”

“Yes,” I’ll say. “And then we were complete.”

Last night, Little Brother finished the story: “I like complete.”

I do too. I like it so much that I want to gather all the pieces of our story and make them symmetrical, matching, and done. I want to wrap it all up in a bow (or a tidy blog post) and have the ending all but written based on the parts before. I’m good at epilogues.

The annoying part is that our story is yet to be completely written, at least in chapters we can see, because we’re not the ones writing it. For example, last night as I traced my hand along The Kid’s lengthening leg trying to get him to nod off, I had a sudden image of sweaty armpits and puberty and it made me nearly hyperventilate. No, we still have story left, lots of it, God willing.

But there are themes we can count on, elements that tend to reappear and repeat.

The Husband just returned from a twelve-day trip to America, and it reminded me of his triplet of sojourns to Australia before we moved here, fact-finding and work missions. Those were the days when TK was five and LB was two. There were fewer questions about zombies, but everything else felt more difficult: unproductive toilet training, shorter winter days with longer darkness, fewer walking-distance friends to share it with. I would jump at every bump in the night.

This time, it’s summer and both boys have full school days, plus some: sport and school readiness on off days for LB, tennis on weekends for TK, swimming lessons for both. More ways to communicate beyond crying (for all of us). Friends nearby whose pools and company provide refuge. A house built like a fortress that allows us all to fall headfirst into the depths of sleep, along with earplugs to supplement.

It was easier, is what I’m saying. Not just because our surroundings have changed, but also because we have more experience–with life, with our story, with each other. We’re more of a team. We’re more us.

LB is more him, which means an innate awareness of his role as comedian of the family, his jokes–mispronounced words, toilet humour, pratfalls on the couch–accompanied by sideways glances to make sure we’re watching his perpetual show. TK as the older, more serious brother, the budding engineer who examines and questions everything, who gets a gleam in his eye when I tell him about how his teacher praised his coding skills.

There is more repetition in the responses of those around us as they continue to know us: laughter at LB’s antics, looks of empathy paired with “Are you okay?” as they see me navigating TK’s typical beginning-of-the-year anxiety and clinging to me, an anxiety I know all too well from my own childhood story. There are the studying looks his teachers give him giving way to enjoyment of his individuality, of his curiosity and kindness and gentleness.

Deja vu all over again.

And there is the familiar return of TH, the taxi delivering him safely to our driveway as the boys run out to greet him and I breathe a sigh of relief both because the workload has now lessened but also because you never truly know the ending of the story until it’s over, and ours is not. We’re complete once again, the four of us, our story continuing, incomplete as its pages keep being written yet complete in the hands of the one doing the writing.

You got more than you gave/
And I wanted what I got
When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game
But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game…

This was not how I had pictured my Saturday morning.

The room around me was dark but for laser lights puncturing the black, bouncing around me on all sides. Music blasted from unseen speakers. Children darted about, including one of mine. He alternately stuck to my side and shot out himself, out of my line of vision then back into it again. We were walled in but surrounded by faces we knew, trapped but free.

It was…fun.

Birthday parties have, over the years, been some of the sources of my deepest identity crises, but these days they are more the sites of a decent time. And this one, on a grey Saturday morning amid the tourists and trappings of the city, was turning out better than I’d imagined. The Kid and I had dropped off Little Brother at a friend’s house and picked up that same friend’s brother, who came along with us. I managed to find a car park without coupling it to a nervous breakdown. We had entered the party on time. So far, so good. TK broke off from the group, wanting to check out the arcade games. We did, then I pulled him back for our first reality check/group activity: laser tag.

We listened to the instructions and the kids divided into teams. I went into the darkened room with him and the rest of them, passing on a vest of my own because I am a Dignified Adult (patent pending), and I figured I’d need to helicopter-parent TK without being encumbered by bulky outerwear. The game began.

A few minutes later it was done and we filed outside the room to check the scoreboard. No points on the board for us, but while I struggled not to hyperventilate due to sensory overload, TK grinned. The organisers suggested another round. A couple of the parents opted for vests this time. I hesitated…then grabbed one of my own. I chose to be on TK’s team.

Some of the kids saw me put on a vest and cheered, as did TK. I think it may be one of my favourite life moments.

For the next fifteen minutes, we all darted together. I shot and was shot at, by kids and other parents. People look different in the dark, when lit up only by lasers. When they’re having fun. When they’re…playing. TK and I stuck together and ventured apart. We were both in the game, on each other’s side.

This time, we got points on the board.

I had to pull TK away early, before arcade time, to get to his first tennis lesson. I expected a meltdown but didn’t get one. We got to the court and for thirty minutes, he smiled. He played, and I watched from my own spot on the sidelines.

Earlier in the week, I took LB and his friend to a school readiness program and for two hours, I hiked. I covered ground I never had before, pushed aside branches and gasped once at a snake that slithered away. I happened upon beaches that are only reachable by trail and gazed upon views you don’t see from the car.

There are some spots that can only be reached by the more arduous journey. But then…what a vista.

TK’s annual fight against school is weakening already this year. On Mondays, I pick him up early for speech therapy, and this week I crept in silently. These are the forays that you only “get” to make if you’re facing something out of the typical: a dentist appointment, a challenge, a diagnosis. There have been times when I wished I could be the parent who showed up at three o’clock every day along with all the others; the parent who dropped and ran at every party; the parent whose kid’s road didn’t have bumps in it to navigate.

But on Saturday, I played laser tag. And on Monday, I surprised my kid and was met with a grin that lit up the room just after I saw him bent over his work at the jelly bean table, his wrist working harder than the others because it was born a bit weaker, and it wasn’t about having to do anything. It was–it is becoming–about getting to.

I’m writing this at our outdoor table while the boys, deprived of their devices all day, focus on iPads inside. It is a moment’s peace in between the moments of…life. Of waving to The Husband this morning from the driveway, the three of us in varying stages of anxiety (me: high; The Kid: mild; Little Brother: nonexistent), as he hopped into a hybrid Uber that fascinated TK and worried me. The car taking him to the airport for a nearly two-week trip back to America, a trip spent seeing family and friends but mostly working. And working on our future, at that. No pressure or anything.

I’m in between LB’s first day of school successfully completed and TK’s starting tomorrow. One precipice gently dismounted and another yet to come. After last year’s teacher debacle we must have been exhausted–well, by that and by the holiday we took afterward, #firstworldproblems–and we spent much of the summer not in the constant playdate mode I envisioned but more in hibernation, social events peppered in but more moments spent watching movies, sitting on the couch, and just staying home. I’m ready for that to change…and not.

I’ve found my expectations (definition: future disappointments) to be two-sided: on the one hand, that of the kids’ schools, they’re high. LB is at the same spot, in the same class, with the same teachers and the same best school friend. I’m a fan of same, even if it isn’t the card that’s been dealt most often. For his part, TK stands to gain a better teacher experience this year along with his same therapists at the same school.

On the other hand, we start the year without TH in his rightful place–with us–and my expectations for sanity are…LOW. Gone will be the early-morning hikes with my trek team, or the post-dinner zone-out while he rumbles with the boys. I’ll have the fleeting hours each week while the kids are at school to myself, with their own non-summer kind of worry mixed in, and no partner alongside me for support (ie, hearing my complaints).

We do have a hell of a security system, though. So there’s that.

On the flight back from our holiday, I watched Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. My expectations were low–any film with an exclamation point in the title already feels too chipper for me on a good day, and especially on a flight that was delayed three hours. But I found myself grinning like an idiot through the whole thing, including the credits, and feeling like I had pulled something off, had stumbled upon a big secret. I think this is how it often works–low expectations leave space for surprise. I’m sure life would be handled best with this idea in mind, but it’s impossible not to think ahead, not to form opinions of how things should, and might, be.

Yesterday TH took the boys to a movie and I wandered around the mall, shopping and thinking about the talk I’m meant to give at a conference in April. I dutifully listened to my most inspirational songs and watched some riveting videos and pecked away at my phone as a few ideas scuttled through my brain. None of it felt particularly right. Last night, I went to the bathroom and glanced at TH’s deodorant can, and that’s when inspiration hit. I can’t explain it and I don’t know that I want to be able to. It’s equal parts nonsense and amazing, this life.

So between the alone hours and the chicken nugget/wine and cheese dinners that will mark our coming days, I’ll try not to expect much while secretly expecting the world, because that’s how it goes anyway. I’ll expect to lose my mind a little while also expecting TH to be returned to us safely. I’ll worry about the boys at school while expecting their days to be historically wonderful. I’ll wake up with four legs in my face and I’ll get the grey dyed out of my hair and I’ll operate partner-less yet not alone, expecting grace to show up in deodorant cans and friends, in kid jokes and solitude, in everything if I’ll just look.

It’s the only thing for which my expectations can never be too high. I mean, what else would show up, just as I’m finishing this, as Little Brother with his pants down to his knees, saying, “How’s it going out here, man?”

You can’t experience grace until you’ve experienced yourself. –Paul Zahl

I have swum in a couple of oceans now, as well as a gulf and a few seas. I have lived on an island, in several states, and a couple of continents across two hemispheres. If finding myself were the goal, I have certainly been located by now. But it isn’t geographical wandering that has led to that discovery.

I have found myself, have learned myself, have known myself in the counselor’s chair, in the space between my children’s yelling and my exasperation, in the moments of deciding whether to pour another drink, in between the moves and the events. It’s the in between that is really everything.

I said yes to an invitation to join a team on a sixty-kilometre hike across Sydney in two months’ time, and my body is catching up with this decision and all it entails: early-morning alarms, chafed skin, blistered feet, aching muscles. And also: new friendships, unexpected strength, beach sunrises. I feel every step even as they all become a blur once the endpoint is reached, which is really just another starting line for the next outing.

The pain is intense and the views are incredible. This, I think, is life.

I don’t think I’d want to know the person I would have become if I’d gotten what I wanted, if I’d had the easy road: people who made excuses for me as easily as I made them for myself; parents who hired me a PR team rather than making me own my mistakes; marriage in my early twenties; a stationary existence. The flat path. Because it’s in the re-stationing, in the grappling that I have become and am becoming. Not the broad strokes or simple black and white, but the day-to-day: the blisters on feet and heart that come from messing up, from hangovers, from being forgiven, from coming up short and finding the enough elsewhere.

From learning how to breathe in a new way.

When The Husband and I visited before our move here, we drove by a car wash with a cafe attached. I could imagine the boys there: The Kid watching the cars move through their line, Little Brother beside him. Last weekend we sat in that spot, two years in, this car wash one of many landmarks now as familiar to them, to us, as any back where we were. These are the moments when knowing occurs: the moments between dirty and clean, which is to say, all of them.

On our most recent training hike we met in the dark and finished in the light. In those moments between dark and light, we walked and climbed and covered ground, and somehow this thing called sunrise, which is even assigned a definitive time down to the minute each day, it occurred while all that was happening. As if the sun isn’t always there shining, and we, the travelers, aren’t the ones moving, being brought closer to the light.