adaptation

We are in the playroom once more.  And just like yesterday, the Little Ones are pulling at baskets with dress up clothes littered around their feet.  I tie a cloak around someone’s neck, help another into a tiger costume.  But where yesterday there was magic, today is only tears.  The cloak is too long and the Middlest keeps tripping on it.  The velcro is scratching and uncomfortable.  Frustration bubbles up, and the disappointment is written on their faces.  Mine, too.  What went wrong?  The same props, the same bodies, the same imaginations.  But today, it just isn’t adding up right.  Try as we may, we are unable to recreate the joy of yesterday.

Somedays it comes easy, the glimpse of heaven, the party full of ordinary and breathtaking all at once.    The brilliance is there to be recognized.  It is easily grasped.  The feet are infused with a beat, and the whole body flows in coordinated movement.  I’m not talking about anything  glamorous, but just the small moments that seem big.  The moments when I seem to be watching myself from above, transcendent from the daily moments of living.  Yesterday in the playroom, it came easy.  There was a snowstorm, and a tiger chase, and something to do with back packs and elephants.  Oh, and smiles, theirs and mine.

I know what they are after, today in that same playroom, with those same costumes.  They are trying to do it over again, have that same feeling.  It seems like it should be that easy, right?  But just because we found our way through the back of the wardrobe into a new world yesterday doesn’t mean that it’s won’t be full of old coats with a finite end tomorrow.

Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones says this: “When we live in a place for too long, we grow dull.  We don’t notice what is around us.”  I think that this is what happens in our magic moments, too.  That’s when those moments that were breathtaking return to just being ordinary.

In physiology there this concept called adaptation.  This is  ”the decrease in the response of sensory receptor-organs, as those of vision, touch, temperature, olfaction, audition, and pain, to changed, constantly applied, environmental conditions.”  In other words, our bodies get used to things, and we can’t sense them anymore.  Did you know that your eye makes teeny tiny movements constantly, even when you are staring at just one thing?  This makes it so that your eyes can still see things, because without those movements your eye would just get used to whatever image it is taking in.  That is adaptation.  The same thing happens when you get used to a smell, even one that was pungent and strong just moments before.  Your nose has dulled to the sharpness; it is now familiar.  I can recall a funny incident in which a friend of mine just dropped a glass of orange juice from her hand as she was watching TV.  She had been holding it so long without moving, she just forgot it was there!  Her hand couldn’t feel the glass any more.

I think that this concept of adaptation plays out in other areas of my life, too.  Too much of any thing becomes ordinary and I grow dull to the beauty.  Sometimes I need to get a different view.  It’s nice to have old favorites, but even those can wear thin and become ordinary.  I stop noticing what is around me.  It can be frustrating trying to recreate the fun of a memory.  Maybe we’re better letting a memory be just that.  Last week instead of wanting to play in the splash pool all afternoon, the Eldest pulled out his bike instead.  Still beautiful in it’s simplicity, we created different kinds of breathtaking moments.  We’ll return to the pool.  We’ll have wild adventures in the playroom with costumes and fantastical story lines.  But with the different view that we’ll get on this side of things, we’ll begin noticing the magic again.  We’ll awake from the dullness, and again say “yes” to the party.

rocking

The ball of my foot pushes the rocker back, and the chair makes a soft creak as it falls forward again in rhythm.  This chant is familiar and comfortable.  My eyes flutter open and then close gently with the rocking motion, weary babe suckling, heavy in my arms.  There is a soft breeze on his cheeks, same as mine, from the ceiling fan, and the evening light that slants through the spaces in the blinds sways over his body. We mark time in this place, countless times a day, but it is also the constant paradox of small lives that in this space time also stops.  I faintly hear the bigger Little Ones in the family room, cheering one happy moment, and just as quickly erupting into shrieking squabble.  Their story is not mine for just this minute, and I leave them to do what siblings do.  The drone of their play is mere harmony for this, rocking and nursing with the Littlest of all.  I fill his tiny belly, nourish his being, and receive my blessing.  His small fingers wrap playfully around the fabric of my shirt, rubbing and twisting until they no longer do. Rest comes.

The fabled calm at the end of the day seems so beyond reach in the marching orders of bedtime: to the bathroom! clothes in the hamper! brush those teeth!  There is little reserve left, and Little Ones don’t quickly listen; I am too quick with harsh tone.  This gray time between emptying and refilling are confusing at best.  Sometimes a drink of water is just a drink of water.  But we make room in the bed for one more body, squeeze in tight for a story.  Together we lift up our day, finding redemption in the retelling and being held by the One who hears it all.  We make haste with one more hug and kiss; dash down the stairs with kisses blown.  Often there is a hungry dog waiting, too, and a sink full of dishes.

Then, later, in the grown-up hours, after a glass of wine and hands entwined, together, we watch those bodies seem so small.  We tiptoe close in, grasp tightly to door knobs, feeling the turn so as not to click awake those Little Ones, and let our prayers out in sighs heavy with the day’s weight.  Small, round bellies rise and fall in rhythm.  Night’s light dulls the edges, blurs day’s brilliance into haze. Now it is with full peace that I cross my fingers over foreheads, sweep sweaty hair behind tiny ears, and kiss baby lips.

And then it is again, the fullness of night bearing down on our house in small hours, I waken to barely a cry, stumble sleep-drunk to the nursery.  I press his not-yet-awake body to mine, sink deeply into the chair.  I lift my shirt.  And again, press the ball of my foot against the floor, sending the chair creaking, the weight of my body and his, my world, back and forth, rocking.

fortress

It is standard dinner conversation: “Tell me about your day, Daddy?” the Eldest asks, in between bites of burrito and giggles of nonsense.  The interruptions, routine: the Littlest spurting protest cries, demands to be picked up.  The dance-call, familiar: I’ll hold the Littlest while Mark eats a few bites, then pass him over the table to into Mark’s grasp, taking turns holding this family together, and dishing out seconds.

It is this common family life that is now settling back in our house.  Mark has finished the work project that had him tied up with night shift. Now I eagerly peck him on the lips, barely awake to wish him well as he heads out the door to work at 5:30am.  This is familiar to me: knowing that he will be at our table for dinner.  The Little Ones run down the front steps to greet him in the driveway when he comes home, still covered in the day’s dust.  They, too, are thankful for his presence at the table.  They rejoice in their father’s hands tucking them in to bed at night. I take comfort in him by my side when I’m turning lights off, locking doors for the night.  I sleep easier when he is the last thing I see before I close my eyes.

We are now in transition, though.  When Mark was gone, I couldn’t rely on our old rhythms to get us from one shore to the next.  The benchmarks of how to mark time no longer made sense.  We needed new structure: the day was divided off differently, now.  New routines were created, new rhythms established.  And I built a fortress: a tower to protect myself.  Brick by brick, slowly, daily, I stood these supports together to steady myself in the darkness of parenting alone.  Mark is back now, and I have a partner again, but I find myself stuck, still alone in this fortress that I made.  I didn’t have an exit strategy in mind.  Now we’re doing the hard work, together, of knocking down this tower.  We’re reconstructing our home.

These past two months of upended family life have pushed me to my edge, and at moments passed it.  I did what was necessary to keep our family going, not always with grace or finesse, not always thriving.  And that’s the thing, isn’t it?  We want more than survival — we’re made for Life, Abundant.  And it’s not enough to hold my breath, wait until this one stress-test-of-life passes, because there’s is always another.  I’m beginning to understand more what it means to fix my eyes on Jesus, “the author and perfecter of our faith.”

Tonight, it’s bath night.  We’ll have dinner together.  I’ll try to hear about Mark’s day, in fragments.  The Little Ones and I will tell him about ours.  We’ll set the table together, fold laundry together.  We’ll hand Little Ones around, corralling and cajoling; admonishing and teaching; praising and encouraging.  Together, we’ll take down my fortress, fight through the hard conversations, step on each other’s toes more than we care to.  Together, we’ll hammer these new beams into place, build new rooms, with windows for the view.  Together, we’ll remember what makes this our home.

winter and weekends and worlds of white

My emotional pendulum tends towards bluesy-ness in the deeper days of winter. Touting my own self-awareness, I have always allowed my self to lean into it, not fight what feels so natural in the world around me.  A glimpse out the window reveals tall trees, darkly silhouetted against an often steel-grey sky, each individual tree set apart from the cluster of trees; the forsest that seems so integral in summer.  So, too, I feel individuated, alone; narrow and darkened.

This year, too, for added measure, I have a cascade of chemicals in my body as I live in this postpartum time.  Add to these things the swath of winter illness in our community.  My intense need is to cover my Littles with these mama wings, thinking I can offer some sort of inoculation.  This could be a perfect storm for my brewing melancholy to dive to deeper depths of blue.  We’ve chosen isolation, mostly, because I am fearful to expose the Littlest to much of the world just yet, and while, with the tendrils of our own hearts, we have woven a tapestry of this new version of our family, I am still missing my larger tribe. I am choosing to stand alone, guarded tall and strong, but can’t help and yearn for deeper community, too. Living this tension of my own creation, I, like those trees, am reaching skyward alone in this season.

Which is also why this weekend, so simple in its form, was so good for my heart.  I have taken to not making calendar plans for these days, and have found freedom in following our own rhythm instead.  Snow pitter-pattered down around our house, making the outside world glisten a bit like a storybook tale.  Still tightly tethered to the Littlest, I decline the snow adventure, though never fear!  Daddy to save the day!  Ever watchful from my perch, I witness the joys of winter play. Snowmen, snow angels, snowball fights, drippy snotty noses, mud thick on their boots as the snow became rain (and then back to snow again).  Most of all, though, it was the brightness which delighted me.  The sunshine, multiplied exponentially because of the snow, cut a path through the dust into my family room, and I followed that path around the room all morning, turning my face towards the warmth.  My cheeks were tugged in the crescent of a deep smile that I couldn’t deny.  Thankful, oh-so-thankful for the swath of sunlight.

It was the simple company of my family-folk, little else to do but fold laundry, and build cities, and make paintings, and read stories, and take baths, and dig our roots deep.  The weekend was time carved out to bless my soul, strengthening me for other dark days to come.

Winter has it’s purpose.  I know that Spring will soon be upon us, and those dark and lonely trees will sprout out tender little buds.  I know, too, that this Littlest one gets stronger by the day, and soon I needn’t worry so much about his shelter.  My greater tribe will still be there, continuing to march out the paces of life, and we will come alongside again, matching our footfalls to theirs.  My tree-like limbs will grow strong again and leaf out to create the dense familiar green forest of summer.

 

reflections: upon one week

Fastest week of my life, really.  It seems as though with each subsequent child the tide of life pulls stronger and I can’t seem to shore myself, or my family, up against it.  Already, he has been ours for a week, and I look back and think, where did this time go?  Our week was pock-marked with doctors appointments and preschool drop-offs; introductions and games of Candyland. When there was just one newborn, settling in at home seemed like a timeless eternity, marked not by the numbers on the clock or the days of the calendar, but instead of moments, edged blurred, of nursing, and sleeping; of reheating the coffee and dozing on the couch.  That was a gift I didn’t realize at the time.  Because, really, the bigger kids, though in transition, too, still need meals: three square.  And bedtimes.  And someone to be awake with them in the morning, to play, to read, to snuggle.

And this just makes things go by too fast.

Mark is back to work today.  And I grieved, last night, I did.  I mourned the end of our family nesting time.  I welled up, full of hormones and melancholy.  It’s not that I’m fearful, or anxious.  I’m not overwhelmed, mostly.  I know that we’ll survive these days, and I’m watching deep growth in our family in ways unexpected.  But we won’t ever get back this first week.  The world around us demands that we fall back into line, get back to the grind.  Of course, our budget demands it also, and so we send him off today. My body tells me to be slow, easy, and my psyche echos this pull.  And I have to believe that his paternal instinct tells him the same.  So, though today is hard for me, it is hard for him, too.  I know that he, too, is grieving this.  This.

And as in all things, this is a time of balance.  Balance between newborn needs and bigger kid needs.  Balance between my needs and the needs of the house, the home.  Balancing standards, balancing expectations.  And balance only comes after unbalance – tipping the scales, setting them right again.  I’m especially finding difficulty in balancing this intense call I have to do little else than hold a new babe against my breast, and the sense that the bigger kids might benefit from a return to normal way sooner than I am ready.  The Eldest has school, and I’ve been flexible with him, letting him choose when he wants to go and when he would rather stay home.  Not surprisingly, he has missed his friends and the structure of these days.  Me?  I’d rather have him here with me.

There is an ebb and a flow to this time; a changing rhythm.  Smaller movements, slow and still, but it’s rhythm all the same. Maybe this is why I’m drawn to winter babes:  it is bracingly cold outside; there is no rush to change out of our pajamas to have grand adventures out in the world.  Instead of the daily or even seasonal beats to which we often march, the rhythm I’m tuned to now is the pulse of my heart, inside my body and out.