Twelve Jewels in My Crown: Rejoicing in My Children’s Lives
May 21, 2009
9:06 a.m. I’m at my desk. This is a first draft of my thoughts. Not transcribed from handwritten notes.
I just read an article from Sheila Bender’s newsletter for 5/21/09. It’s called “What the Moment Can Hold” by Abigail Thomas. It is an excerpt from her book, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life.
These are the lines that grabbed my heart and why.
“The first time I hold my daughter’s daughter I feel so sad. . . . the wrong emotion for this happy time, but I can’t help it. I’m remembering when the baby in my arms was my daughter, when it was all still to come. So many things did not go as I would have wished. There is so much I can’t undo. The baby is beautiful, as my daughter was, as all my children were and are. When I kiss my daughter she seems barely to feel it, seems almost to turn away.”
“I feel as if my daughter and I gaze at each other on opposite banks of some body of water. ‘This is a happy time, Mom,’ she says, and I take it as a reproach.”
I identify with Thomas’ expression of distance from her adult daughter and the regret she feels that shadows the joy of holding her grandchild. It speaks to me of the distance I feel from my children and how that gulf stands between me and them and thus between me and their children. I can’t rejoice in their children, because there’s a broken link, a void, a distance between me and them.
Just yesterday, I happened onto my long forgotten link to John’s blog and found him saying how he couldn’t remember ever going to a park with his family. I know that’s not true, but what does it matter what I know? It’s what he “knows,” or in other words what he feels is true about his past.
And then the thought comes to me of what I am just now (at 60) finally learning–that while our past on the one hand is a set of immutable facts, on the other hand those facts can be cast in a completely different light as our own character matures and outgrows the burden of self-pity and self-will. Awakening to this truth has been happening for me, so very gradually and in such an ebbing and flowing pattern for the last 20 years. It’s so amazing how we can grasp a more mature point of view for awhile, and then need to lapse back into our former immaturity. It reminds me of the ocean–how the waves come in-and-out, in-and-out, but inevitably, the rising tide causes each wave to reach a little further onto the beach.
Anyway. I too know I am remembering when the baby in my arms was my daughter or my son, and “when it was all to come.” I too am remembering “So many things that did not go as I would have wished.”
(Four hours later.)
I just went to blogspot.com and started a blog just for my children and entitled it, “Twelve Jewels in My Crown: A Chance to Remember and Be Glad.”
I pray that the hearts of my children and their mother can be turned to each other through this effort.
CH
