At about the halfway point on my running route, on a path between two beaches along the water, are multiple signs that read, “Warning: Freak Waves May Break on Path.” And every time I see them, I think, I am every part of this metaphor.
Indeed, freak waves do break on that path, and the other day I alternated between dodging and embracing them as they sprayed upward toward my feet in the summer heat. Other people on the path giggled and dodged as well; it was a bonding experience akin to the time I ran through Central Park in a blizzard: “Doesn’t this feel crazy and a bit unsafe and fun? And aren’t we lucky to be the ones doing it?”
We’ve felt lucky the last few days, soaking up the end of summer break on the beach with ice cream cones and beside pools at backyard barbecues and sitting on the deck while the kids peacefully assemble LEGO over the table inside and just being at home. Relearning that word as it applies to our lives: being in America with extended family, being here with our core unit, moving about our world as we know it, the familiarity of our surroundings wrapping us in settledness.
But school started today, and with it come big feelings like they do every year, but this year we’ve not been away from each other in weeks, not out of each other’s sight for longer than an hour at a time, and our being jerked (by our own choices) from winter to summer, north to south, break to school, has its own emotional whiplash. Both boys walked away from us in tears this morning, and I feel the invisible string that we talk about, that connects us, stretching tighter even as I revel in solitude but for Kevin the Dog at my feet.
Freak waves may break on the path.
And maybe, freak waves will break so often on the path that they become part of it, their spray spotting the far reaches of concrete and completely darkening others, seasons where the path itself never dries for the frequency of them. Seasons where we breathe prayers of thanks for the railing as we grit our teeth–which can end up looking weirdly like smiling, sometimes–and wonder if we’ll stay planted where we are, or if we’ll land somewhere new, and where.
Sometimes the freak waves are the story, not its interruptions.
The boys know that nothing is off-limits for discussion among us, especially feelings. I’ve found that a surrender to limitations in conversation is a surrender to limitations in relationships, and while these boundaries must sometimes be set, they leave pockmarks, empty spaces that must be dodged and manoeuvered around, and relationships that include dodging and dancing…well, that sounds a lot like performing to me.
So home, I guess, is where we don’t have to do that, among people we don’t have to do it with. “A big piece of self-acceptance depends on refusing to tell easy stories that are forged from shame,” Heather Havrilesky writes, and I am working on this: on living, and telling, not the easy story that I already know the ending to, the one that there’s a ready-made meme for, but the one whose ending remains to be seen; the one where freak waves may break on the path and create a mess, but that path–those stories–are populated by people who know how lucky they are to be there. To be living in the mess, in the confusion, in the questions, in the off-limits conversations. “This will feel unsafe,” Havrilesky continues as I nod my head. It will. It does. Also? It feels utterly real.
The path where I don’t have to fold myself into a shape that takes up less space or is more agreeable to the most people. Where words are chosen based not on fear, but kindness. (Still working on this. All of it, actually.) The path where, on the way to school, we talk about the big feelings until we find that the Encanto soundtrack is queued up and “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” (a song where, the boys hastened to point out, they do nothing but talk about Bruno) is up next, and now it’s time to sing.