another year of kindness

a birthday, grief, retreating into love, resisting the urge to hug everyone

TRIGGER WARNING…mentions of violence against children and Israel.

Some of the words below may be triggering as they are my reflections and reactions these past few days, as a mother, around the news of what has happened in Israel. This is an observation around what happens to our hearts, and what happens in our homes, when we hear about brutality anywhere. So here we go.

I have been, as most of you, watching what is happening in Israel unfold. During the day I have uninstalled IG and FB from my phone so as not to get accidentally triggered when i’m not in an appropriate space to feel whatever comes up. However, the other night I had forgotten about my news feed and I got an update. Biden confirms children were beheaded by Hamas, I got this as I reached to check the time on my phone, while waiting for my three year old to hit that good sleep cycle (is it REM?), the one where I can leave the room and she doesn’t reach out and grab me.

Now since writing this, yesterday in fact, the White House has clarified that Biden has received the reports of these war crimes but not seen photos, as the News report I read had reported. This information came to me later and did not change what happened to my nervous system when I read the notification and so I leave this as is…as this is how I experienced it and maybe you did too.

I had just finished reading her a story called Water Water, about a girl who swims in one of the great lakes. She is held by the water which flows in the shape of a woman with long hair and arms swirling and loving. The sturgeons speak to her and she imagines the stripped rocks she is swimming with are whales and loch ness monsters…it’s Lorelei’s favorite, and she always points to the picture of the lake spirit, excited by the idea that there is something magic in the lake that loves the little girl.

I read her another story called The Chickens are Coming!, about a family in Brooklyn who adopt six chickens; in the end they all end up eating pizza and watching a show called The Deep Sea Adventures of a Lobster Named Leonard. She loves this one because all the chickens have names that start with D and it makes it easy for her to memorize them. Lastly we flip through a small Christmas board book, because my little one has Christmas in her heart every day. She wears her Christmas PJs out and about as often and on the regular as possible and I wouldn’t have it any other way

I love reading to her. I love when she notices if I miss a word, I love how she settles in a little deeper and always wants it to go on and on and on and I wondered instantly — if those children had gotten a story time the night before. If their mothers and fathers had let them fall asleep on their left arms, until they felt the tingling sensation protesting that they must move soon or else! but they breathed into it because that’s what love does, it breathes into those moments when you think you have to let go — and they watched their sleeping kiddo who wasn’t quite settled yet and thought about what they’d do tomorrow…just like me.

I looked over and Lorelei’s head was turned actually, so I could see the white of her neck glowing in the night light. Such a soft warm tender place. A place that should be wrapped with a scarf to keep the body warm, a place that should be tickled, a place my fingers graze when she walks next to me and leans into my body saying, Oh Mommy. And all I could imagine is how loud it must have been in the kibbutz. How loud my little one is when she hurts her foot, stubbing it on a crack in the pavement, the howling to let me, and the world, know she’s been hurt. I could hear them, I couldn’t imagine their faces because I couldn’t imagine anything so terrible. My mind tried to fill in the story without my consent, it tried to make a picture suddenly because it was seeking understanding but my stomach wouldn’t let it go any further than the words for it - the pictures were too much. I suddenly had the thought; I hoped they squeezed their eyes shut and I hoped the universe somehow gave them the grace of losing consciousness and lifted them into a quiet place. (This is what I always wish secretly when the world makes me afraid, I wish this for my own children and myself, should their lives bring them to a place of terribleness.)

But in my mind it wasn’t quiet, I could hear it…I kept thinking they were just like us…at home with their children when this happened…and it was deafening, and I could see red suddenly in the dark of the room I was laying in - looking at Lorelei I could see red pouring over her body like some sort of vision, and I began to weep. I just wept softly at first and then out into the kitchen it became uncontrollable and my partner just held me. Esme came up and I hugged her. When she asked why I was crying I told her I was, just sad …about the war. Just sad…that’s all baby. And I wrapped my arm around her, holding her close to my chest, and then I held her at arms length and looked at her face – seeing her freckles, her eye lashes, and wondering how anyone could do anything but hold a child’s face in their hands. I kissed her cheeks and her eyes and buried my nose in her soft hair as if I might not be able to do it again tomorrow.

When we said goodnight Esme and I kissed and hugged and said we loved each other… she would start to walk away towards her bedroom, and then turn quickly and come back, and say, one more hug Mom, just cause I love you. She did this five times. Something that last week might have made me impatient for her to go to bed already. But this time instead each time she turned back smiling, my heart broke a little. I didn’t let her see it; I just smiled and willed myself not to cry. Because each time my heart whispered there is no one more for them. And I breathed in that love she was giving me. Happy Birthday Mom she said, thanks for being my mom and for another year of kindness.

Another year of kindness. What a thing for a nine year old to say.

I couldn’t get past, as my partner described, the feeling of privilege that I had of being safe with my own two children on my Birthday. We went on a riverboat down the St. Croix and the leaves were glowing and the sky was blue and bright. Every word my kiddos spoke suddenly felt like a gift I didn’t know how to unwrap. I was holding this beautiful thing in my lap while also feeling such deep deep sorrow. I had to keep bringing myself back into the moment; I could smell the cold wind, I could see Lorelei’s hair flying behind her as the boat moved down the river, I could hear Esme talking about Kingfishers, I could feel the sun on my face…we were safe, we were together, there was no trauma here in this moment for us. Not for us today.

Just to be able to have a birthday, to turn 45 and sit on a riverboat and yell out like a little kid Ooooooh Ooooooh, Bald Eagle!, Bald Eagle! Bald Eagle!…instantly frightening the eagle off its branch, grinning sheepishly at the rest of the passengers, but totally feeling like I’d just seen some mythical creature and so also feeling a bit gleeful at the same time. Again I felt it was all a gift and not one that I deserved more or less than anyone else; it was just being given and I had to sit with that. I had to appreciate it somehow. All day my chest would tighten and expand. It would become small and tight as it would remember and grief and incomprehension would roll over me and then it would come back and it would expand again...a deep shaky inhale.

It just felt like a dream. Sitting on the top deck of the boat, watching Esme with her binoculars at the railing. I felt myself falling in love with the people sitting around me. I could hear them talking about their adult children, I watched them sipping their coffee, one guy smelled like my step father, I don’t know what the soap is he uses maybe Irish Spring, but I had to resist the urge to hug him. They all looked so beautiful with their sweaters, and lives, and cold pink cheeks. I closed my eyes and felt the love falling into my center, like a pebble that had just been tossed into a lake, taking root at the bottom. The wave from it rolled out and reached my children, it washed over all the people around me, the ripple went and covered all the children and the mothers and fathers, the grandmothers and grandfathers…the ones that had died and the ones that were still suffering…all of them. I just sat there rippling, telling myself to just breathe in and out, don’t actually tell a stranger you love them right now.

The day after the news of what was happening in Israel hit I went to a Monastery. I had never done anything like that; just gone away and retreated. I have friends who have though and that was how I found myself setting my bag filled with five books (I don’t know why, but I had high hopes I’d get to some of them), knitting needles, and clothes for an overnight down in a very quiet room overlooking a small meadow. I’ve always harbored a secret to do a silent retreat or something intensive Elizabeth Gilbert style. And so this was thrilling. The bedspread was embroidered with little purple flowers, the rocking chair padded, the air completely still and quiet. A note card sat on the bed giving permission – if I wanted to be silent I could, I could just raise my fingers if someone spoke to me and they would leave me to my thoughts. I could sit alone during meals by the window and the sisters would know I wanted to be left to myself. I could attend prayers and mass or not, if I felt the need to sleep I should sleep (novel concept right?!), meal times and directions to the Labyrinth were included. A gentle suggestion not to read too many books was included…I looked at my bag and felt like I was not alone in what I was bringing. In what we’re all, always bringing with us…too much, and way more than we need.

I slept deeply, during the day, which I have never done in my life. I attended the mass and sang the prayers. I am not Catholic but it didn’t matter. I can’t really describe yet what it was about the place. I really feel it was the permission to set everything down, that and the fact that all the little things we hold and orchestrate during our day — down to just making lunch or holding space for whomever might approach you with a word or question was taken care of… there was nothing that needed to be done…my job was to rest and listen and rest some more.

I had thought I would make it a silent retreat, and my daughters were really excited about this idea — it seemed impossible to them, this idea that I wouldn’t talk for 24hours. But I ended up not being able to stay quiet — probably something there to unpack. The problem was I was way too curious about the sisters who were all smiling, beaming, love bugs walking around. I spoke to two of them about their lives and they were generous with their stories. One a spiritual director was also a Potter and Kayaker. The other a teacher and Oblate. We drank tea and talked about the many lives we live. We ate ice cream with chocolate sauce after dinner and the sister said perhaps we should get a cherry to put on top. 

In every moment there I kept hearing my heart say you are here, you are here, you are here; breathe deep, get the cherry on top, touch the sisters hand…the back of it was soft and I could feel the veins like little rivers softly flowing. You are here, they are not, don’t waste it.

I left the next day a bit hungover. Almost dizzy, kind of how you feel after a massage or acupuncture, just not quite in your body yet. I lost my wallet later in the day. I put spaghetti sauce on my salad instead of on the noodles. I was all messed up, but not in a bad way. I knew I could have stayed a lot longer, taken a week to just nap and do nothing. Just pray, walk the labyrinth, listen to the stories of the sisters and the birds….I told myself I could find a way to bring some of it, some of that peace, home with me somehow.

I watched my girls on a hike the next morning and Lorelei kept bumping up against Esme, and Esme would lovingly pat her head, and Lorelei just chuckled with such deep pleasure…it was so sweet I almost couldn’t stand it. Immediatley, because that is how it has gone this week, the joy took me to a vision of sorrow. I saw two little girls, sisters holding onto each other during the attacks. I tried to stay with the feeling of love and joy, not the grief, to pay attention to the moment I was in, to grasp it tightly yet gently with the reverence it deserved.

But it’s hard. When you are suddenly reminded, by something this horrible, that it can all be taken away so violently, when you’ve been shaken from your every day; what I have to get done, what I’m carrying worries - the Target list, or if your kid will ever go to sleep or eat what you make for dinner. Every single moment suddenly feels holy. And it’s not a sustainable way to live unless perhaps you live at a Monastery. I can’t walk through my days worshipping every word, every move my children make…but right now it feels like I should. Yesterday, Lorelei was in a full melt down and it was over not being able to listen to a podcast (thanks Brains On) which usually would irritate to me no end. Any protest on their part for a show or something digital makes me want to send them immediately outside. But instead I was almost rendered speechless by how beautiful her anger was. I was watching her cry, tears running down her face, and I held her and soothed her and was completely enraptured that I got to have a kid that was having a tantrum — that definitely won’t do in the long run….will it?

I just keep thinking about the feeling at the Monastery, and the thought that keeps coming to me is retreat; I must retreat into love…that is where I must go. I don’t know what else to do. I must love as much as I can, while I can. That is all I can do. In that retreat I will then be able to go out, to look out again and not waver.

I think when our hearts are breaking, when we are filled with sorrow and tired and feel like we are carrying too much, whatever that much is, we can go inward. We can pull ourselves back into our hearts where love lives. We can sleep if we need to. We can be silent and hold our hands up to say we cannot speak right now because our heart needs to be quiet. We can eat ice cream with a cherry on top and read picture books, running our fingers over the images of spirits. And we can cradle the faces and kiss the foreheads and the freckles of those we love….even if it wakes them up from a deep sleep. Sometimes that’s just what you have to do.

I am wishing you all rest, the deepest love, and reverence for whatever you’re feeling today.

I would love to hear from you. Either here in the comments or in this squirrely chat feature. Let me know how you are doing and how you are taking care of your hearts right now. Sending you love.