On Guard

At night I put on my armor.

Eyes open. Ears sharp. Muscles taught.

Awake that you may sleep.

I’ve been alert all day, protecting you

from demons

of

a different sort.

My loyalty

is fierce enough

to bat away the sleep

that yawns at me.

But deprivation

takes its toll

on the body and the mind.

The spirit

is not

untouched

by fleshy need

and mortal care.

The outside battle mirrors

the one within.

Can I relieve myself

of duty?

Never.

Can I find a way

to care for myself

and you

at the same time?

I try and fail,

by my own standard, anyway.

Can I trust

you can stand

alone

long enough

for me to breathe

and remember the hedgerows

at their peak

in the green summertime

so far from here?

That’s a lie.

A story someone else has told.

I’ve never seen them,

so there is no memory

to dust off

and recall.

But I own a few

seeds that I pocketed

long ago,

before you were a whisper

on the wind.

The Daffodils in

that soaking April…

the gnarled old tree

I claimed,

I sat in,

longing for home

and discovering it

all at once.

My two minutes of solitude,

head ducked against the rain,

feet treading on tired cobblestone

as strong as it ever was.

It was a taste

that awoke

a lifetime of hunger.

I yearned most of all

for you, my love.

I must remember that.

Why do I forget the most

when I look at you?

What threat was I imagining

I spotted on the horizon

when you lost the roundness

of your cheeks?

Dragon Slaying

As I sit down to write, my mind settles on the muscles in my back and shoulders I don’t have names for. They’re pinched, tight, acidic. These are the muscles that allow my arms to wrap around my toddler in the night as we co-sleep. To wrangle my four-year-old against his cinderblock will into a diaper change I’m convinced is best for him, no matter what he has to say about it. And lately, to grip the shaking shoulders of my six-year-old who runs throughout the house in the middle of the night in a mind-world I cannot enter, terrorized by demons I cannot see.

Stop! I command. With my mind, I banish them. I bring him to bed with me, and squeeze his muscles with mine for as long as it takes to both lull him out of his night terror and into sleep. It could be ten minutes, it could be an hour. But my muscles won’t relax until his do. I apply relentless comfort to reassure his existence and kill his phantoms’—a quest that brings new meaning to the old phrase, “bedtime battles.”

Our bedroom is equal parts bloody Colosseum and mother hen haven. But it is my aching muscles that make this room anything at all. Don’t worry, child. I take this pain gladly. I will slay your dragons with my last breath.

And during daylight hours, I will train you with chores and fortify you with fairy tales and grow you with a garden, because someday, before I am ready, you must be. And I will be forced to watch you outside these eyes, hold you without these arms, and whisper, voiceless—screaming for you through the halls of heaven.

A body is a vessel. No more. And no, no less.

Bouncing back

One night in April my six-year-old asked if he could work on lego robotics.  I looked at the dinner table, covered in leftover Easter candy, rocks from the backyard, and last night's dishes.  "When this end of the table is completely clean, you may," I said, and handed him a package of baby wipes.

"Can you help me clean?" he asked.

"No, I'm cooking dinner.  You'll need to do it if you want room to work on legos."

He made quick work of the task in the typical, whistle-while-you-work manner he seemed to be born with.  "Mom, it's all clean, see?"

I retrieved the lego set from a nearby top shelf, and handed it to him.  He set to work.

After a few minutes of quiet, he asked, "Mom, how do you meditate?"

He'd mentioned meditation several times over the last few days, usually modeling the stereotypical lotus pose and humming with his eyes closed.

I asked him, "Well, first we need to know what meditation is.  Does meditation mean sitting in a funny position with your eyes closed?"

"No," he said," it's giving yourself new thoughts."

We've all been working hard at giving ourselves new thoughts lately.  My oldest child and I find ourselves gripped in the chokehold of anxiety more frequently and viciously than the rest of the family, and I've been trying to share some coping skills.  The six-year-old has been listening.  While he is a cheerful, carefree child by nature, he's getting older and is more aware of dangers, both real and imaginary.  He has also been plagued by night terrors for the past year, that seem to come and go in waves.  He spends the first few hours of sleep in his bed, but I find him nestled in our bed more mornings than not.

"That's right," I said.  "Your mind is kind of like this table.  It can get full and messy.  Meditating is clearing off your mind, then putting a new thought you want to have on it."

"How do you do it?  I have a thought I don't want.  It's a scary dream."  His normally turned-up mouth frowned and quivered.

"Well, it takes practice.  Would you like to do some meditating lessons with me so you can learn how?"

"Yes.  How about right now?  Well, after I finish building."

So that night, as my oldest worked on origami and my youngest two enjoyed some bonus Pixar time, my six-year-old and I went into his bedroom.

"First, you need to find a cozy, quiet spot you can relax in.  It can be a bed or a chair."

"Or a couch," he offered.

"Yes.  And you can meditate anywhere, anytime.  You just have to find the softest, quietest place available to you."

I asked him to close his eyes and take four breaths, filling up his lungs as full as they would go, and emptying them completely.  Then I guided him through tensing and relaxing all his muscles, starting from his toes and working up to his head.

He giggled and peeked a few times, asking the occasional question.  Then he said, "I still have my scary thought."

"We're not done yet.  This first part was just to relax.  Now we're going to learn what to do with our thoughts."

I was kind of winging it at this point, but came up with some imagery that seemed to work.  With our eyes closed, I told him to imagine that his mind was a basket.  He visualized it and customized it to his liking.  Then I told him his basket was to hold his thoughts, that it belonged to him, and he was the only one who could decide what thoughts could stay in his basket.  He is allowed to let any thought in his basket, and he can decide to take it out at any time.

He looked in his basket and saw a thought.

"What does it look like?" I asked.

"It's red and blue."

"What is it made of?"

"Air."

"How does it make you feel?"

"Bad, scared, and sad."

I told him that this thought didn't live in his basket; it was just visiting.  He scooped it up easily, blew on it, and watched it float away, over hills and rivers and mountains, out of sight, back to where it came from.  He said goodbye to the thought, and it said goodbye to him.

I asked him to look in his basket again.  He saw seven thoughts.  They were good.  We looked closely and saw an arcade he likes to go to with his dad and brother, playtime with his best friends, building with his Snap Circuits, and special reading time with mom.  We picked them up, held them, offered to share them.

Then I said, "These thoughts can stay as long as you want.  They will protect your basket.  You can hold them, take care of them, help them grow bigger.  Now I'm going to tell you about something else that protects your basket."

I told him to imagine a bubble around his basket.  This bubble is his to control.  He took a paintbrush and a bucket of strength and painted it, making sure not to miss any spots.  Thoughts that approach have to get his permission to penetrate the bubble.  If they don't, they simply bounce off and float up past the clouds, back to where they live, where they're not good or bad.  Just thoughts made of air.

I counted backwards from five to one, when he opened his eyes and smiled.  He then frowned again and said, "I want to practice it again."

"We'll practice it every day," I told him.

"Twice a day," he said.

"Okay."

It's been three months, but he hasn’t needed to practice it after that first week—at least not with me.  Most concepts click with him immediately, and he doesn't seem to struggle to implement them.  The gap between what he does and what he wants to do is virtually nonexistent.  (Mine is a mile wide.  He lives in the present, I in the past.  I'm learning from him.)

I've been thinking a lot about what he needs from me.  The low-maintenance child.  He's extroverted, fueled by play and people in a way I do not understand.  He's resilient, and when he finds himself in deep water, he simply bobs back up like a beachball.  He doesn't have raging anxiety.  He doesn't have special needs.  He doesn't throw toddler tantrums.  He's not a newborn who needs constant attention.  He seems to grow just fine wherever he's planted.  I'm unnerved by how simple it is to be his mother.  I know he needs me, but not in the way or with the intensity that my other children seem to.

So I show him tools and put them in his hands.  I give him time, space, ideas, and community, and let him run free.  With these, he goes far and doesn't look back.  And I watch, and marvel.

I miss him.  But he makes sure he's where he needs to be, and that's out in the world, not clinging to my leg.  He knows where I am.  And he comes back at the end of the day ready for the bedtime snuggles only I can provide, and the sweet dreams he creates for himself.

Weaned

Yesterday I got my toddler to sleep in her bed at naptime without nursing her.  This has never happened before. 

She’s a focused, peaceful, no-fuss kind of person.  As toddlers go, she asks for relatively little during the day.  She’s content to explore, forage, rejoice in her brothers’ good fortune, and create her own purposeful work.  She keeps me in her line of sight, and all is calm.  (With her, anyway.  My three boys are another story.)

But at night, she asks for all of me.  And I oblige, partly because I feel such gratitude for the flexibility she graces us with each day.  But mostly because she is wee, I am tired, and we have a rhythm. 

I’ve felt a gentle pull the last few months to change it.  Because co-sleeping is beautiful, but nighttime nursing is a little wearing.  And my husband is sleeping a room away, and I think it would be nice to be nearer.

But after all the nights my husband was gone during all the years he traveled for work, my little ones and I have perfected our bedtime routine and my husband and I have forgotten ours.

He’s home now.  The long-hoped-for local position at his company became available a few months ago, and after four and a half years of going the extra mile (quite literally), he earned it.  Sleeping a room instead of a state away feels like heaven.

But I am bonding with someone all night, and he is not.  Hence the pull. 

But this means more work for me.  To create two new nighttime rhythms. 

The one with my husband feels elusive.  His frozen shoulder pain dictates his sleeping position.  He likes a fan blowing on him at night, and I don’t.  And the farther out of earshot my children are, the harder it is for me to relax.  When I hear them breathe, I rest easier.  So when I am in the master bedroom with my husband, I lie awake long after he’s fallen asleep.  And when I’ve finally calmed my mind, relaxed my body, and given myself permission to turn down the volume on my internal baby monitor, a child cries out my name, and I know I would have gotten more sleep if I’d stayed in her room to begin with.

Are nights for rest or relationships?  With my toddler I can do both simultaneously, automatically.  But when I sneak away from my child’s room and lie near my husband, I can do neither.  Because he’s already sleeping without me.

I want to jostle him awake, and let him know I’m there.

He claims I have no time for him.  I might just as easily claim he has no time for me.  But where is the purpose in playing that game?  So night after night, I fight the urge to fall asleep with my child, even though that’s what works.  I rouse myself if I’ve drifted off, disentangle my body from hers with my fingers crossed that she won’t wake.

I have time for him!  I’ll prove it!  I walk in the master bedroom and lie down next to him, hoping he’ll sense me and roll over to acknowledge me.  But his breathing is heavy and slow.  He’s in another world.  And I think of how hard he works and how tired he must be, how selfish of me it would be to put my arms around him now.  I cannot steal a moment of his sleep.

In my child’s room, guilt robs me of sleep.   In my husband’s room, loneliness does.  I don’t know why a person can be so close and feel so far.  Like the date night that comes after weeks of fighting for time to talk, only to find ourselves alone together with nothing to say.

Now what?

So I sit in the hallway, bedless in a house full of beds, and write.  I hear the rustle of blankets or the gentle bonk of a knee against a wall as my boys shift in their sleep.  I don’t have to look to intuitively sense and mirror the steady rise and fall of my toddler’s chest in the next room.  But when I listen for something—anything—coming from the master bedroom, I hear nothing.

Travel and babies and more babies and more travel have weaned us off of each other.  Can we learn to synch again?   I know we can, and know we will.  But not tonight.

There’s been a brief window with each of my children that opens when I’ve weaned one a few months after getting pregnant with the next one.  They slowly learn to sleep on their own.  My husband and I find ourselves in bed together at the same time more and more frequently, and after a while, a new rhythm is forged.  Our rhythm.  And it’s nice and I sleep and we connect.

Then the baby is born, my husband says goodbye since there’s no sense in both of us being sleep deprived, and I’m up in the nursery all night every night again.

See you in two years.

Then it’s time for the toddler rhythm.

I’m not pregnant this time.  It feels...unfamiliar.

When my daughter learns something, she learns quickly and well.  Getting her to sleep last night without nursing was not difficult.  She had only one nighttime waking and let me cuddle her back to sleep instead of nursing.  This seamless transition was almost two years in the making, of course, but that’s why it was seamless.  To disassociate nursing from sleep, I knew I needed to wait for her development until she could see there are other ways of being close besides nursing.  I won’t make milk forever, you know.  And she’ll need more than that.

And now I feel double loneliness.

I watched a film once of midwives reflecting on the births of their own children.  One woman said, “You can cut the umbilical cord physically, but emotionally you never really do.”

It’s funny, this attachment to our babies.  So strong, so instinctive, so imperative to their survival.  But the ultimate goal as a parent is for your child to leave, to learn to do without you.

A marriage, on the other hand, is born with no instinct, no shared DNA.  But its ultimate goal is unity.  Some people think it’s impossible.  It can often feel that way.

I write and think and work a lot on growing things.  Growing plants and growing children and growing learning and growing courage.  Child-raising is gardening.  I’m steeped in that world, and getting wiser with experience.

Marriage is welding.  I don’t know much about that trade.  The potential damage of that much heat scares me, and the precision required is not in my skill set.  The vision it takes to forge something new and solid out of two strong, separate things?  I don’t think that big.

But as I write this, I realize that God does.

Repotting

My seedlings need repotting.  The paper cups are holding them for now.  Their stems are thickening.  Their leaves are green and strong.  Their roots are peeking through the holes I poked in the bottom of the cups.

They turn to the light from the window.  I rotate them every so often to give them a chance to face a different way.  I think this should make them more well-rounded.  But I'm not sure how much that matters.  What matters more is making sure the taller plants don't block the light of the smaller ones, since they all share space on the trays by the window.

I check their soil more than once a day, to make sure it is still moist.  I know the peas drink faster than the rest.  They're looking for something to climb.

I resist the thought to plant them outside, even though April is here and beckoning.  It was seventy degrees and sunny two days ago, and tempting.  But there is a quiet wisdom in me that tells me, "Not yet.  May will come soon enough."

Yesterday, the wind rattled and rain blew sideways.  This morning I wake to a layer of snow on the ground.

I was right to keep them here.

There are experts with the greenest thumbs and reliable weather vanes.  They've done this long enough to advise people to wait until the last frost (though some are too impatient or uninformed or can't be bothered).  The day is no mystery--it's predicted with impressive accuracy by the weatherman, and I circle it on the calendar.  I trust it, and look forward to it.  I love my seedlings.  I will love planting day too.

Of course, you don't just go and stick them in the dirt all at once.  First you get their feet wet, so to speak, with a process called hardening.  You take them out of doors for some fresh air, a little exposure to the elements, a handshake with a bee or two.  Then it's back inside.  You do this over the course of days, increasing the duration a little each time.  So when you finally introduce them to the garden bed and let them stay, they'll be confident enough to be willing to extend their roots and accept their newer, vaster home.  It's more dangerous out there.  There are bugs that will nibble their leaves, voles that will gnaw on their roots if they get the chance.  I take precautions.  I'll plant marigolds and green onions nearby to ward off the pests.  I'll set traps for the voles.  But I can't prevent acts of God or Nature.

So I'll pray.  I'll check in every day.  I'm prepared for the work, expecting some to thrive and some to go awry.  I'll give them the best conditions to help them bloom.

None of this will matter, though, if I don't plant them in a sunny spot.  That's my part.  The rest is up to them.  But they know how to grow because they know what they are, (though they might not be conscious of it).  The growing part is in their DNA.

I'm getting ahead of myself.  For now, there's still snow outside.  But they're ready for more.  So this time in between sprouting and hardening, I'll repot.  I'll give the climbing ones trellises.  Some fertilizer or peat moss for the ones with paler leaves.   I'll put the smaller ones closest to the window.  Because there's still so much room to grow in this house, and so much to do.

May will be here soon enough.  And we’ll be ready.