It had been many years since I heard Stan Rogers singing Northwest Passage, but this week I've heard it twice on road trips, on the playlist my daughter assembled from suggestions from varied passengers.
The mournful heart-swelling harmonies make even a drive through the staid farmlands of Ohio feel like a voyage into the unknown. And indeed, I have been making a voyage into the unknown -- not simply sending children off, which I have done before, but in feeling vulnerable without fighting it off.
When my oldest went to school two years ago, I tried to tamp down any show of worry or weakness. This time I haven't been as successful -- or, if you like, I've been more successful at letting down my guard. Friday morning after Mass, after one daughter drove away and before I took the the the other one, I found myself bawling in public (something I'd wager I have not done since infancy) on the shoulder of a friend who also sent a daughter off to school this week. Friday evening, as I watched the car-weary little boys tear around the playground, a nearby troop of Brownies played tag, long ponytails swinging past slender arms. And I remembered sisters with ponytails playing chase together, and had to breathe measured breaths to stave off disaster.
If this is how I handle myself when something essentially good happens, how will I ever survive something bad?
And then today I was busy, picking up loose ends of business neglected during the college prep and wrestling moody younger siblings back into ordinary family life. Darwin is gone until Sunday, but we can't wait until then to start getting back to normal. I threw away several things I'd been waiting for the big girls to clear away. I took four children to the grocery store. I kept the little boys in line at Mass. I made dinner and watched a movie and made the beds and put children in them and was talked at, and at the end of it all I felt tired. Not choked, not yearning, but good honest go-to-bed tired.
And tomorrow will be busy too, but with normal chaos of picking up a Mass I wasn't scheduled for, and holding auditions for our next show. Not every day can sustain Northwest Passage-levels of melancholy. Thank God for that.
2 comments:
Hey, friend! Lurker here. I laughed out loud for the first time in a long time at this: "If this is how I handle myself when something essentially good happens, how will I ever survive something bad?"
As someone who has survived some fairly nasty stuff in my time, I rejoice at reading about a life so rich, so suffused with love and joy and meaning that even a small and, as you put it, essentially good disruption is felt deeply. I know from experience that the worst sorrows are the ones unshared and even scorned by others, and that mourning is the side of the coin we pick up when we choose to love.
Perhaps there is some kind of mental arithmetic you are doing where the people who are hurting worse than you-- who have a "right" to mourn-- are saying something along the lines of "What's wrong with you? Buck up already!" But most of them are saying something much closer to, "Stinks to be here, but it's wonderful to have you along."
We are about the same age. When I was a teenager, I imagined/hoped that my life path would be similar to yours. But whether I was extra quirky or unlucky or for some other reason, I never found my Darwin, and I've ended up spending my adult life doing my best to treat every child, every one of whom was not actually mine, as kindly and strictly and lovingly as though they were my own. My involvement with the children of family and friends has been somewhat time-intensive, and I don't have a particularly impressive career. It is easy, sometimes, to think of myself as a failure. But three different times in the last six months or so, I've had friends say to me incredulously, "But you know you're not, right?"
So I started thinking about what they might be talking about. I even asked the last friend, and she talked about "specialized empathy," which made me a little mad at first. It's not just the loss of hopes I grieve for; it's a friend who was killed just over a decade ago, and being pretty close to utterly alone when my dad died, and the constant awful grind of poverty and I suppose that's probably enough complaining.
All I'm saying is, I have had some genuine mourning over genuinely bad stuff, and I hope this isn't evil of me, but I've become a bit of a connoisseur of grief narratives-- I kind of eat them up. Real grief, expressed clearly and without railing, is healing to read about. And that's what I've seen expressed here several times, and it's one of the things I come back for.
I remember around the time my dad died, I was listening to some podcast where a guy mentioned in passing about how his father's death affected his creative work, and it was so real to what I was experiencing, and I had this horrified realization-- so obvious, but so awful when you face it-- that everyone goes through this. I mean, unless a parent has a kid die, which is definitely worse.
Anyway, all I'm saying is, welcome to the club, we don't set the bar high for entry, we don't compare and say my wound is worse than yours so you don't get any sympathy. Once you are well and truly in-- and let me be clear, the entrance fee is so dear that I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy-- you know that there is no such thing as comparing, because compared to Christ we all lose anyway. There is only trying to bind up each other's wounds.
I am deeply grateful that there still exists in this increasingly coldhearted world a mother who is so invested in her children that even an essentially good parting costs her dear, causes her to break down in public, compels her to admit that she mourns more than she thinks is seemly. Hide when you must, but if you can, look the scornful ones in the eye and let them know that you know that grief comes of letting yourself be vulnerable enough to love, which is one of the bravest acts in the world.
Over and out. Back to lurking. :)
S.A. Cox,
Thank you. I'm very moved by your kindness.
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