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By Mama Paloma, 08/04/2012 09:42

I posted last night’s essay, rather impulsively, without waiting, at 12:30am. The first thought I had on waking this morning was this:

Redemption isn’t about receiving love, it’s about giving love.

What? The other half of my brain responded. But that’s backwards.

As I pondered it more, this idea began to make more sense to me. I reflected again on the piece I read last night about the “penal-substitution theory of atonement.” The author proposes that Jesus didn’t die to balance some kind of cosmic account. He didn’t “pay our price” because that would mean God didn’t really forgive but just transferred our balance to someone else who paid. He died because he lived out his practice. Gently, relentlessly, he spoke over and over of God’s unbelievable love and forgiveness. This was so threatening to the powers that be that he was killed. He lived his practice of love even though it killed him.

Whether you believe that accounts of Jesus are literally true or not (for the record, I don’t really know and this doesn’t bother me), the Jesus of  Biblical stories was indeed the perfect role model of love. He redeemed through his love. I consider myself a Christian (though others won’t because of that last parenthetical comment) because I endeavor to follow that example of living from love. (And am supported in this by Buddhist and Taoist teaching and meditation, especially, as they give practical direction on reigning in the ‘ego’ that so often gets in the way of that radical kind of love.)

Still, somewhere in my rational, Western mind, redemption has been sort of separate from love. Love is great and all but people need to be accountable.

This has been a major barrier in sorting things out with the-one-I-am-having-such-a-hard-time-loving. I realized that have demanded in a number of ways that he be accountable for his actions as a precondition for my continuing to show loving-kindess towards him. I can pray for his happiness and well being but I still, somewhere deep down, want him to pay.

I have been looking at the other person as being the one in need of redemption and forgiveness. He’s the one who did wrong, right?

Right?

I get heaps of support for this. Righteous anger and disappointment are reflected by all who care for my son and I. And, indeed, I want justice, I want consequences, I want him to know that he has wronged us and suffer for it.

Of course that’s right.

Except for this. As I realized this morning, all evidence to the contrary, I am actually not in a position to judge him–his motivations, intentions, or worthiness. My practice is acting and living out of love and equanimity. It’s what I aim for, continually move toward and back to.

The situation, as it stands, where I stand, is that I am the one in need of redemption. I have stepped off of my path of love and into the murky, dangerous realm of the cosmic balance sheet. I am mired in the muck, tangled up in the twining roots of trees that choke out the sun and hide all manner of creepy crawly things that bite.

I have felt stuck here for a long time.

What struck me this morning is that release from this stuckness – a practical and spiritual redemption – is readily available.

All I am required to do is to return to the path of kindness, gentleness, compassion, equanimity, and love regardless of the other’s actions.

Because, truly, that’s what Jesus did. He showed the way, loving even those who couldn’t see their worth and worthiness. Holding to the truth of the-Love-greater-than-we-can-imagine-or-understand even when it meant his execution and still not being held down by this – which is why we have Easter, right? – somehow rising up from destruction to live on eternally as The Inspiration to love.

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By Mama Paloma, 01/04/2012 22:01

It’s a feeling I know well, the weekend creeping to a close. So many things undone – laundry, housework, my son’s lunch for the morning. The week looms large.

And I just don’t have it in me.

It’s something I have been noticing for a while. This spent-ness. This fatigue that doesn’t seem to be abated by the self-care I fit in between the child and the paid work and the (very dominant) unpaid work and the halfhearted attempts to get out there and meet someone to share this crazy, wonderful life with.

I have been trying to figure out how I can live with more balance, more enjoyment, and build up some kind of reserve.

And I can’t figure it out. Time and again, my well is dry and I stare into its depths, parched and longing.

I have failed.

At least for tonight. Tonight, I am going to end the effort, head to bed, and let tomorrow come without trying to figure it all out.

Maybe it will rain.

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By Mama Paloma, 23/01/2012 22:19

He stared at the open palm of his left hand for a long time. That ten-year-old girl grasped this hand and hugely changed something inside me, but I can’t give a reasonable explanation of how such a thing could have happened. Still the two of us understood each other and accepted each other in a very natural way in every last particular–almost miraculously so. Such things don’t happen all that often in this life. For some people, they might never happen.

H. Murakami, 1Q84, p. 523-524

Five years ago, for my birthday, I bought myself a ring. I stumbled on it in a tiny jewelry shop in Lisbon. It has several thin, intertwining threads of metal, organically irregular in thickness, with a few small diamonds caught in the spaces where the threads cross. When I saw it, I immediately thought of the ways our paths and lives cross others’ all the time bringing us shining moments of connection. I asked to look at this one-of-a-kind piece and it fit me perfectly, as did the metaphor.

The other day, a friend from my teenage years popped online and said hello. Back in 1989,  in an unusual and romantic setting, we had one of those innocent, exciting Summer romances that come with sheltered adolescence and naivete. We had only been vaguely in touch the past couple of years, via FaceBook, after two decades of no contact.

He asked me if I remembered a particular day…when it started to pour while we were swimming in the harbor and we huddled together under the dock to avoid the enormous tropical raindrops which were cold compared to the warm sea water. He said he would never forget that day, that it had stayed with him all these years. “It was beautiful…,” he wrote, “…its funny how that never happens now.”

The conversation touched me and it was more than nostalgia. I happen to be reading Murakami’s latest book, which I received (in hardcover, no less) as a Christmas gift. One of the main story lines is about the pair in the quote above, the pure and unrequited love they carry throughout their lives. As my friend described his memories, his experience of that moment that so resonated with mine, it was hard not to draw a parallel with the fantastical fictional world of the novel I am reading.

It has me thinking of how, most of the time, when those diamond moments occur, we have no idea if the other person shared that experience. In those moments, for me at least, it doesn’t even register as possible that my presence, my small action, my taking the hand of another, could create and impart something they might hod dear.

Too often, I don’t even realize the value of the moment until later, when I pull it out with the leftover change of the latest journey and find, mixed in with the lint and metro stubs, a sparkling gem. These I treasure, imagining that I am the only one who carried the moment away in my pocket.

Every great once in a while, usually when a friend is up too late at night on the other side of the world, probably more than a little drunk, I get a glimpse of something like this and it makes my heart ache a little. If we could know those moments truly when they come, if we could recognize rare magic and give it its proper place, what would our lives be like?

And what price do we pay when we don’t? That thought brings to mind another Murakami piece but I’ll leave my reflections on that one for another post.

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By Mama Paloma, 16/01/2012 06:00

…but not for the same reasons of those who fought against this day being established and, later, recognized (the usual suspects–Helms, Reagan, the state of Arizona) or those who complain loudly each year–usually by attacking something about the day’s honoree.

I hardly resent recognizing the accomplishments and contributions of a smart Baptist preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. who became the ‘face’ of the non-militant U.S. black civil rights movement of the mid-1900s.

I am just sorry that we have to.

I am sorry that Dr. King and so many others have had to spend their talents and energy and, too often, give their lives to push back racist laws, one small town at a time.

I wonder what Dr. King’s life would have been like if he hadn’t been pulled into fighting for the recognition of black people as full human beings. With a mind like his, he might have accomplished amazing things. Or perhaps he would have lived out his days as Joe Pastor and liked it. Who knows? Who knows what millions of others might have been able to do or see, or experience, had their day-to-day lives not been restricted and constricted by segregation or consumed by its elimination.

I am sorry that those who sought to advocate for the right of citizens of color to sit in a cafe and order a coffee had to endure taunts and shoves and smoke being blown in their faces–and that was just in training.

I am also a bit peeved that it has to be ‘justified’ with calls for a day of service. Don’t get me wrong, I believe Dr. King, who touted service above all, would approve of people doing work to better our community on any day. I just think, Wow, Lord forbid we just have a sacred day to honor a black man…better make people work for that day off!

I am sorry that there is a day to honor one who fought for equal rights and, bizarrely, one to honor Columbus, and not a single national holiday to honor the losses and acknowledge the legacies of slavery and genocide in this country.

It wouldn’t take much to do so. We don’t even have to figure out when. For example:

March 25 is the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. How about we declare that a national holiday and hold memorial services and days of dialogue?

And what about August 9– International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. Am I the only one who finds it a bit embarrassing that the only visible (that I know of) recognition of this day in the US happens at the UN building? Seriously, people, can’t we take one freaking day to celebrate Native American culture and heritage and the remarkable way they have survived every effort to annihilate them? Can’t we have even a minute of national silence, perhaps with candles or a bundle of symbolic sage for the millions slaughtered or strategically exterminated in the name of manifest destiny and because they, too, were not seen as fully human?

The obstinate denial in this country galls me. Even bloody Australia has a national “Sorry Day” acknowledging the effects of colonization on the Aboriginal peoples. Geez. I know, I know, a holiday is a token and no token will adequately address or redress the enormity of these past wrongs and their effects. But even the cheesiest of holidays are touchstones…Valentine’s Day doesn’t make love real but does force us to acknowledge it’s reality.

Indeed, I am sad and angry that there has to be a Martin Luther King Jr. Day and, at the same time, grateful.

Because, much as I wish were were living the legacy of fairness and compassion and respect for human rights, we are not. We are living the legacy of slavery and are barely removed from the reality of the inhumanity of those practices. Without Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Dr. King, the Freedom Riders, Malcom X, and the countless ordinary and remarkable and anonymous people who stood up over and over again to the laws of inequality, where would we all be today?

So, today, I honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and, at the same time,  I challenge you to look our legacy straight in the eye, without blinking.

However you can. As often as you can.

See the living, breathing reality of racism and inequality that is still part our our institutions and lives every day, whether we acknowledge them or not.

Let’s own our legacy. Because, until we do, it still owns us.

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By Mama Paloma, 09/01/2012 22:19

This holiday season, I did something I haven’t done in five years. I took a holiday. Really. The full week between Christmas and New Years. Five days away from even my son. In that space, that time, I reflected and got clear about my intentions and hopes for the coming year. I made plans. Over the past year, I have been increasingly aware of the un-sustainability of my life. For the past five years, in every way, I have been sapped–financially, emotionally, psychologically, physically. My plans weren’t grand, but about setting up my life in subtly different ways, ensuring that well-being remains at the center of how we do things at Casa Paloma.

And I landed on January 2 back into a shitstorm. Too much work stuff landed all at once…good stuff, but more than I could possibly handle in that short week. My mom, goddess bless her, was facing some challenges and dramas of her own that demanded my support even as they strained our relationship. My plans–for serenity, for finding more ease, for increasing time with important people–were derailed from the start.

Or were they?

I felt like crap–overwhelmed, tired, sad–but decided to just show up and do what I had planned. I got up and did my 10 minutes of yoga each morning. I did our morning meditative reading. I ended each day at a set time, more or less, and sometimes (gasp!) left my laptop at the office. I played online scrabble and read a bit in one of the books I got for Christmas (which, the past few years would have sat on the shelf, gathering dust, as I waited for ‘the time’ to read it). I got more sleep than normal.

And, by Wednesday, I was already feeling better. By the weekend, I was chugging along, ready for anything and enjoying the ride. My experience shifted when I shifted in my experience.

I dropped more than a few balls. The thank you notes I dutifully helped my son prepare on Boxing Day? Unmailed. I haven’t had/taken/made the time to address and stamp them. The Christmas returns? The TV bracket that needs to be bought and installed? They are waiting. As are any number of things on the long list of To Dos.

But the important stuff? It’s getting done. In three days, more or less, I got a fellowship application submitted on time and without incident, coordinated another grant meeting, presented at a weekend conference, facilitated a group, and caught up with clients. I sorted out my health insurance situation (more or less). I stopped for play and ice cream with Addison, set some boundaries with mom, (not going over well…but we’ll get through it) and spent some time reaching out to friends who have been sidelined by my work and general busyness for too long.

In one of the reflection exercises, I was asked to give this year’s “word.” The first thing that came to me was “Open.” This is my resolution, my resolve. To be open to the possibilities I don’t see. Even the possibility that my life can be more than manageable, that I may savor and enjoy and still be enough.

With that, I am off to read more of that book.

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By Mama Paloma, 02/01/2012 14:21

This year is starting off with a sigh. While I want to feel inspired, motivated, optimistic, I  am actually more on the tired and discouraged side of the spectrum. I have reflected, envisioned, sought support, worked my ass off, meditated–the works–and I just seem to be stuck in this place of almost-there.

I had hoped to clear a number of things from my plate in 2011. Have some resolution (and regular, agreed-upon child support) with AJ’s dad, have my nonprofit work sustainable and compensated, have something to show for the first four decades of my life. I even planned some special things…a trip for my birthday, a mini-vacation to end the year. In spite of my best efforts, it’s all fizzled, or just failed to progress. Nothing is horrible, but nothing is great either.

I have tried so hard. I am ready for great. I need a little bit right now.

But instead, at this moment, I am sitting in my living room with a half-undressed tree that may spontaneously combust at any moment, ornament boxes piled around, suitcase unpacked, my son methodically taking receipts and such I have put in a bag for shredding out of said bag and spreading them around the rest of the mess.

I want to fight this feeling…to push through and clean up and put on a shiny smile. Today, though, it seems important somehow to sit here in it, to acknowledge the shit I  stand up to each and every day–the effort of holding at bay the chaos and the loss and the fatigue and the loneliness that lurk, waiting to wash over and swamp my little life raft. So, for this moment, I am letting it be.

I know it won’t look so bleak tomorrow. I will wake up and get up and do what needs to be done to inch my life forward. I will find meaning and inspiration and humor and joy again. But, right now, it’s all pretty pathetic and lame and sad and it’s real and it’s really OK.

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By Mama Paloma, 13/12/2011 10:07

My son goes to a cooperative preschool. This means that it was started (in, I think 1951–one of the first of its kind) by parents and is, to this day, in theory at least, run by parents. In a classic co-op, all parents take regular turns at teaching. But Hilltop also has a strong commitment to all kinds of diversity, and the programs have evolved to support working families who might not be able to take time off during the week to teach in their kid’s school. This has led it to be a bit of a hybrid, with a minimal number of paid staff with some parents helping teach and others, like me, showing up for the other stuff. Parents do the laundry, parents organize fundraisers, parents help keep up the facilities.

Among other things, each family has an obligation to do six hours of ‘maintenance.’ This usually happens on a Sunday. It’s not torture–a bunch of us show up, everyone takes on some tasks, people bring snacks–but it really isn’t what I want to do on the one day a week I usually try to keep free. Working two jobs, including evenings, just doesn’t leave much down time, or any kind of time, with my little guy and, I really feel that he needs more from me given his dad’s absence. It can feel like I am taking away from the little guy to head off to do anything on the weekend. Too often, though, in the non-profit world, there are must-do activities on the weekend. I am constantly torn.

But I am someone who keeps my obligations…so I do it.

AJ started late last year, in November, and very shortly after that there was a parent work day at his school. The property has a back yard area, with a hill (which has been named “The Hill”) that the kids love to run/play/fall all over. A grant had been found and a group of parents had designed and planned some significant improvements to The Hill, and we were all asked to make the vision a reality. I had work commitments that day but carved out a couple of hours to join in. Upon arrival, I was given the task of painting tires–which had been embedded in the hill to create wide, secure ‘steps’ for the kids to race up and down. Working with another mom, we turned the drab old tires into alternating bright blue and pink. When we finished, I raced off to shower and go to my next thing. When I saw AJ later, he asked what I had done and I told him. The following week, The Hill was officially opened, and event I missed because of work. AJ was very excited about the Jeep and the slide into a pit of rubber chips. It’s a cool hill.

The next Maintenance Day, a couple of months later, I put together a prefab play kitchen. It was easy. I lost some pliers out of my tool kit but they were returned. No big deal, really. Just part of being a parent.

Then, this Summer, the real importance of Maintenance Day hit home for me. In one of those quiet moments–in the car or early in the morning, I can’t recall–AJ piped up, “Hey, Mommy?” ‘Yes?’

Thank you for painting the tires on the Hill. They look really nice.

This was at least six months after the Maintenance Day in question. We had not discussed it since the day The Hill was opened. Yet, my little guy, barely three years old was sitting there, independently reflecting on and appreciating my pathetic attempt at involvement. I could imagine him telling his friends, “My mommy painted the tires on The Hill.” It’s the kind of thing he would do.

Now, of course, maintaining our school is reason enough to drag oneself out on a Sunday morning. But the real deal is this. Our kids see what we do and it matters to them when we are involved in their schools and other activities. It shows them that we think what they do is important, that they are important.

It lets them take our presence with them as they go out into the world without us. What more could a parent want?

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By Mama Paloma, 31/08/2011 17:46

December 27 is to be my fortieth birthday. Yep, the big four-oh. This approaching anniversary has got me considering how I have lived my last forty years and how I want to live going forward.

I have also been thinking a lot about legacy–not in a morbid, what-will-I-leave-behind-when-I-die way but more in the what-will-people-remember-about-this-tomorrow way. I have been considering the wake we leave as we move from one interaction to the next. Over the next three months, as that day approaches, I am taking steps to shift some of my habits to be more in line with the legacy I’d like to leave in my wake, the ways I would prefer to experience myself and be experienced on a day-to-day basis.

I am starting with the concepts of attention and choice an the power we have in our choices about what we pay attention to.

This morning, I took a few minutes to watch today’s featured TED Talk TED.com

(If you love this as much as I do, please go to this link Julia Bacha: Pay Attention to Nonviolence and comment.)

this talk literally brought tears to my eyes. The impact of war, discrimination, and environmental exploitation on civilians is near to my heart and my work is driven by the same certainty that what is reported on in these situations will grow–violence or peace-making, disconnection or community. I wrote to Ms. Bacha immediately and hope to connect as colleagues and kindred spirits in this arena.

Closer to home, though, I was challenged by this statement (emphasis mine):

Parents can incentivize or dis-incentivize behavior simply by giving or withdrawing attention to their children. But that’s true of adults, too. In fact, the behavior of entire communities and countries can be influenced depending on where the international community chooses to focus its attention.

It reminded me of yesterday morning. I had just gotten up after a virtually sleepless night, the result of 1) a rather distressing email from an employee (Oh, why did I peek at work emails just before going to bed?) and 2) my son waking up in the night, vomiting. My entire day was shot, the second in a row to be thrown off by external forces and my own physical limitations, and I was, shall we say, a bit cranky. And depressed.

I opened my computer to try to get something done and immediately this comment by Marianne Williamson popped up on my Twitter feed.

There it was, my life’s work being applied to my life. I sat there for a moment, considering where I have been affirming the power of the problems. It’s not a short list. Finances, the situation with my son’s father, an untenable work-life imbalance, a non-functioning nonprofit Board, my health, three-year-old AJ’s tantruming (Terrible twos? Try tyrannical threes!)–all of these had drawn me into a focus on what isn’t working, where the problems are, how I am stuck and powerless and alone.

I was confronted with the fact that this experience is to a large degree a choice, a series of choices I am making every day. Ironic, really, isn’t it? My therapy practice is called Talking Possibilities and here I was, choosing to talk about, ruminate on, and prioritize my own problems over the actually quite rich possibilities that are available to me.

Home with a sick child, I spent the day being with this awareness, considering how to shift each of these areas. I started noticing my reactions to things and shifting the meaning I was making.

This wasn’t just ‘positive self-talk’–which I find too often to be a kind of denial of what is. I was able to be with my son and empathize as he experienced that uniquely awful sensation of knowing another bout of vomiting is to come. At the same time, I was able to–not enjoy, I don’t want to ever see him unwell–appreciate the opportunity to give him the experience of being attended to, comforted, and understood and to teach him about self-care and patience. I was able to take time to consider how to respond to my employee with empathy, to value the opportunity that this situation presents me–to simplify and take back valuable time of my own–and to choose not to respond right away but give myself space to attend to other priorities. I still haven’t sorted out what to do with the more emotional parts of the baby-daddy situation but did realize that I had been choosing to believe I had to figure out things that I can and should get help with. I decided to wait for good advice and not throw my energy at the situation until I was clear as to what I should do. I called a friend for a referral to a specialist in International Family Law. Finally, I turned my attention to my own physical and emotional state. I took stock. I have been really depleted for some time now and, remarkably, no one has come to rescue me from that. I realized that it is high time that I take ownership of my own well-being, that I have many options for balancing and enriching my experience of life, and decided that this needs to be my top priority for the next few weeks.

All of this from a choice. Had I chosen, even by default, to give my attention to all of the challenges I am facing on a day-to-day basis, I would have likely been immobilized and buried by noon. The choice, in a moment of abject discouragement, to give my attention to the possibilities, shifted my experience immediately and space almost magically opened up for solutions to emerge and for me to take steps toward them.

We give our power to what we pay attention to, whether we are talking about international peace-building, parenting, or peace of mind.

We live in a flash of light;
evening comes and it is night forever.
It’s only a flash and we waste it.
We waste it with our anxiety, our worries,
our concerns, our burdens.
~Anthony De Mello~

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By Mama Paloma, 14/08/2011 23:35

I have been thinking a lot lately about legacies, the little legacies we leave throughout our lives and the ways we live on when we are gone. The thoughts are still brewing but today the urge to put some of those thoughts down took hold.

And, in this moment of reflection, what came to me? Monty Python. Yes, more specifically the Monty Python bit in Life of Brian where Brian (mistaken for the messiah) tells the gathered crowd,

“You are all individuals”

and the crowd responds, in unison,

“Yes, we are all individuals!”

I have come to think that this may be the greatest myth of Western culture. We (American white kids, especially) are taught from our earliest days that self-definition and self-sufficiency are the measures of success and accomplishment. Such narcissism has been enshrined in the same New Age mishmash that encourages (very selfish) people to spout truisms like “We are all just vibrating interconnected energy.”  This, too, I think is a myth or at least an exaggeration of what is..

Because, for me, one of life’s great mysteries is how we are individuals and yet also interconnected. How our sense of individuality and identity can only be experienced in the context of our connections to others.

Okay, now I must resist waxing even more academic and philosophical here. I could go on and on about my observations of how selves are experienced very differently in other cultures, how our taken-for-granted sense of individualism is very strange and sad to others.

But this isn’t a professional space. I come here as a mother. Right now this mother is struggling to make peace with my child’s father, and sometimes wondering if he shouldn’t just be pushed away, where he can’t hurt anyone.

This happens before each visit–coming up on the fourth of these–and in the context of a repeat pattern of dishonest/controlling/inconsiderate behavior on the part of the person in question. I get scared. Scared of suffering some new indignity, scared of being caught up in some drama not of my own making, scared of not having important information, scared of my son being hurt by or–perhaps worse–learning from this, his idol, that being a man requires dishonesty, control, and destructive self-absorption.

I also get angry. My ego jumps up and says “I am better than this. No one can treat me this way! Who the f@#k does he think he is? Just tell him to f&^k off!” My ego schemes ways to give him his come-uppance, have the final word, make him see me and wish he had behaved better.

But then there is my son. This gorgeous, brilliant, amazingly articulate child who loves his ‘daddy.’ I put it in quotes because most people in our lives don’t really see him that way. In my son’s 3.5 years, they have spent exactly 21 days in each other’s vicinity. Admittedly, distance, cost and other logistical issues have been the main issue since daddy decided to show up a year and a half ago. And it is also true that he is, when present, an attentive, loving dad. Still, the degree to which our little guy has internalized this connection is remarkable. He talks about his daddy, makes frequent references to things they have done together, cries for missing him.

So, I have been sitting, once again, in a stew of fear and anger as I have before. It’s an awful, scary place. It is a place that takes me far from who I want to be and how I want to choose to act from love and compassion to the exclusion of fear and self-righteousness.

Thankfully, someone or something always shows up to remind me of what is really important, of who I am and continue to choose to be regardless of the actions of others. Today it was Alice Walker. I have been meandering through her book Temple of My Familiar, in moments before sleep, for some time.

Now, I had planned to do laundry, organize the hall closet, clean up the house but then my neighbors had a very noisy party that moved from the bars to their apartment at 2:00am and didn’t let me sleep until I knocked myself out with a couple of Benadryl at 4:00am. Today, I am tired and cranky and have to be at a schmoozy thing for work at 5:00pm so I just cut myself some slack while AJ napped and set about finishing the book. As I read, I came across this passage.

“…if our parents are not present in us, consciously present, there is much, very much about ourselves we can never know.”

This rang so true for me, for my little boy. He needs to know his dad–with all of that man’s gifts and charms and flaws and failings–to know an important bit of himself.

I wish I could be sure he will create his identity only out of the gifts and charms, knowing even as I wish it that this is absurd.

The reality is that legacies are as complicated as the humans that leave them. I hope that, as we struggle with our flaws and failings, his dad and I are leaving our son at least a glimpse about how to be and to become, not an isolated individual, but a whole person in the context of a perfectly imperfect, slightly bizarro family.

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By Mama Paloma, 20/04/2011 23:18

“Mom,” AJ called from his bed tonight, “you forgot to put on my band-aid!” The previous Spiderman bandage had floated off in the bath, leaving a chagrined little boy’s elbow, skinned several days ago, woefully exposed. Indeed, I had neglected to replace it in our bedtime routine and so I went in and applied a new one–Buzz Lightyear this time, we keep several boxes on hand–and he fell happily to sleep.

These are the routines of motherhood. The soothing of wounds, the protecting of skin and bone and life.

————————

This morning, I came out of a meeting to a text message from a friend. “‘Restrepo’ Director Tim Heatherington Killed in Libya I’m so sorry…”

As I said to another friend later, this is news that is shocking but not surprising. Like many people who posted blogs and articles today, I first met Tim in Liberia, West Africa where he had stayed on with one other journalist behind rebel lines while the rest of the world pulled out. He was committed to covering the experiences of those affected by war and that very often took him right into the thick of it. Within hours of his death, Tim had been eulogized many times over by bloggers and the big guns–the New York Times, Human Rights Watch, CNN. A quick Google search will get you all the background you want on the guy. I particularly appreciated Parting Glance: Tim Hetherington and a number of posts by people who knew him well, all of whom echoed my experience of Tim as a singularly sincere, compassionate, and intelligent person who put his life on the line to bring the rest of the world stories that would otherwise go untold. His recent film Diary (2010) was, frankly, a bit hard to watch as many of the images of Liberia were familiar as was the dissonance of living with one foot in that world while carrying on a life at ‘home.’

But this is a blog about being a mom. It’s about the hopes and realities and schemes and dilemmas of this journey.

Today, I found myself thinking about Tim’s mother. I have never met her, don’t even know her name. If his character is any representation she is almost certainly a truly decent and lovely person. Tim was British, so I imagine she will be outwardly stoic and private about her grief. I am 99% sure she will never see this. I am not entirely sure that, if she did read it, she wouldn’t find it overly presumptuous and American in tone.

Recently, Tina Fey’s “A Prayer for a Daughter” made the rounds and, in my head, I have been composing my own “Prayer for a Son” since. With her trademark frankness and wit, Fey asks “First, Lord: No tattoos…” and goes on a few lines later to say, “When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.”

That line in particular struck me. When I was pregnant, someone repeated a quote that goes something like “to be a mother is to have your heart walking outside your body in the world.” It seemed schmaltzy and a bit over-dramatic. Certainly,  I would have better “boundaries” with my child.

Of course, all mothers understand that I just didn’t know yet the sensation of having your whole being driven to protect and nurture, even at your own expense, while at the same time having to release your baby into the world by inches. Attaching and letting go, all the time, in ways big and small is the impossibly unfair mandate of motherhood. Selfish as it is, it kills me to think that my little one, for whom I willingly cut hot dogs lengthwise and apply way too many band-aids will one day be faced with such decisions. And I don’t get to be there. I don’t get to say.

Recently, AJ has expressed a fair bit of ambivalence about growing up. He goes back and forth between wanting to be a “big boy” and wanting to be “the baby.” In his more vulnerable moments, he refers to himself that way–”the baby is scared and needs his mama.” I reassure him frequently, saying, “even when you are a big man, you’ll still be my baby.” I know that the day is coming, all too soon, when hearing that will make him roll his eyes and say “Mother.” I also know that it will still be true…always…until the day I die.

If I were honest, my prayer might include something like:

“..and please, for the love of all that is holy, help him to want to be a computer programmer or teacher or something else safe but definitely not a humanitarian worker or war correspondent or soldier or fireman.”

Already, I pray in vain. Little AJ’s commitment to the firefighting profession was voiced as soon as he could verbalize and hasn’t wavered since.

When it is time, I will try. I will try to have faith and be supportive and encourage my little bird to spread his wings and fly. I will try not to harangue and plead and be petulant. AJ’s father is currently running around doing extremely dangerous work in a country I have promised not to name, soldier to the core. I have also traveled to more than one place on the US State Department’s list of places a girl should not be traveling to and also worked in an unstable post-conflict zone. Our mothers have had to live with those decisions, the worry and letting go that they require. Tim’s mother had to make some peace with his choices and now has to live with the loss of her baby.

As I said before, I am almost certain that Tim’s mother won’t read this. But other mothers will. Perhaps, if you do, you can take a moment to think of this woman, bound to us all by the fact that she is a mother and she is living what we all quietly dread.  I hope that, somehow, in this darkest of nights, Tim’s mother perhaps can feel in some small way a bit of comfort in the presence of the other mothers around the world who, just by being mothers, can begin to touch the edges of her loss and are sending her in whatever unknowable way possible whatever unknowable thing it is that she needs to get through to morning.

Update: I was able to attend a memorial for Tim on May 24 in New York City. At the reception afterwards, I spoke with Tim’s mum and dad at some length. They were gracious and, at the same time, open about the depth of their loss. Please continue to keep them in your thoughts and prayers.