Hold It Against Your Bones

My mind is a jumble of thoughts, and I feel it’s only fair you know that right at the start. Diddy is rolling around in my brain to my absolute rage and horror, along with my heartbreak over Amber Thurman and her little boy who now has to live without his beautiful mama for the rest of his life. I don’t know what to do with myself, I feel so much grief for that little boy, and I could just weep thinking about her, thinking about him as she felt herself slipping away in a hospital bed. Then there’s Rich Lowry, who should be punted directly into the sun, and a bunch of bros I upset on threads today.

I need to step away from the rage for a minute, though, because I’m emotional in the way you might be when the ground is shifting underneath you. Rage has been burning through me so often lately, I feel more exposed than usual, like my synapses are raw and frayed. I burst out crying in the shower the other night, at brunch on Saturday, and walking my dog yesterday in front of two strangers walking toward us. They looked alarmed, and my dog ran circles around me until I was wrapped in his leash like a mummy, and he was pressed up against my legs so tightly I almost fell over. Then I laughed as I spun myself free of the leash, wiped my eyes and shook my head. That’s kind of how it is, I cry, then I laugh at myself for crying, because everything is okay. My son heads to college tomorrow. This has been on my mind for over a year, from the time college applications became a daily part of the conversation, and we both started envisioning a murky future where he wouldn’t be living at home full-time anymore. 

It’s a strange thing to grow a person inside your body, to go through the insanity of childbirth, to spend the majority of your time and energy keeping them alive for eighteen years, only to drive them to college one weekend, and then drive away. Obviously he’ll be back. I’ll go visit. But this particular season of having both kids in the house is coming to a close, and something new is going to emerge that I can’t quite see yet. Also, I’m going to miss him so much it hurts. I write those words and tears spring to my eyes and a lump forms in my throat.

Last spring we went to visit a bunch of colleges, walking around campuses trying to imagine his life in each place. The student tour guides would walk backwards and tell us to let them know if they were going to walk into a tree or a person, answering questions and talking about their experiences, how the professors were, how the food was, what to avoid. I tried to offer my opinions to my son only if he asked, which he usually did.

At UC Davis. Not where he’s going, but doing a good impression of the guy behind him.

We’re close, we always have been. He was my little sidekick for two years, coming to my yoga class in a sling when I taught, then eventually taking my class as a toddler, much to everyone’s delight. When he’d get tired, he’d sit down on his mat with his Hot Wheels. When his sister was born, we became like The Three Musketeers. Lots of laughter, lots of hugs, two sets of little feet pattering around the house. It’s hard to imagine him somewhere else, not walking into the living room saying something hilarious as he flops himself onto the couch, not hogging the bathroom, not hugging me on the way out the door every day, or before bed every night.

My daughter is emotional, too. We had a good cry together in my car the other evening, sitting in the driveway, engine and lights off, lit up by our phone screens and that mix of love and grief we all know. Of course I reassure her, myself, and him - he’s emotional, too. It’s just a transition, an evolution. We’re so bonded it doesn’t matter where we are. He’ll be six hours away by car. If he needs me, it’s a no-brainer, I’ll be on the 10 before he finishes the sentence. If my daughter needs to see him, same. 

As for me, I am going to try not to get in the car unless he asks me to, or she needs me to, because I know this is the natural order of things. He’s ready. Me? I’m trying, but are you ever really ready to watch the one thing in your life you treasure more than any other - having your children close to you - change and evolve in ways you can’t quite imagine? I wouldn’t want him living here forever, of course. We’d drive each other crazy eventually. I know I drive him crazy now sometimes. I want him to go out in the world and make a great life for himself. But I can’t say I’m ready.

When they were little, we used to pile into my bed every night after dinner and bath time. We’d be a tangle of limbs, their little bodies curled up next to me or across me, it didn’t matter. And I’d read to them for at least an hour, often more. Eventually they’d fall asleep and I’d write, sometimes until 2 or 3am because it was the only quiet time I had - life of the single mom. It was so cozy, and I wonder if the sound of fingertips flying over a keyboard has seeped into their unconscious as the sound of safety. I remember being exhausted a lot, but also knowing this was everything. This was a season, it wasn’t forever, and I’d better not miss it. The two of them dressed up as Jedis, scampering into the kitchen. The two of them on the first day of school with their little knapsacks. The two of them in kayaks on the lake at my mom’s. The two of them getting ready for Homecoming. The two of them, my heart. Even when you’re present, cherishing it, the seasons fly.

Sometimes I’d look at them, and it would feel like I was going to burst from the ache of tenderness and love. I’d say, “Uh oh, love attack!” and grab them and kiss their chubby little cheeks over and over while they laughed and squealed. Then I’d pause and take a breath and look at them. “Is it over? Do you think I’m done?” And they’d say no and start squealing some more, and I’d say, “No, you’re right. I am not done, I’ll never be done,” and go back in for another round. Sometimes I still go in for a round and they let me, even though my son towers over me now, and my daughter is eye-level. They’re tolerant people and I appreciate that.

One night when my daughter was four and my son was six, after dinner and bath time, and just as we’d snuggled into my bed, there was a huge rainstorm. It was like the sky had opened. One of my favorite things in life is the sound of rain on the rooftop. My kids’ eyes got huge because it was so loud. Suddenly, I had an idea. “Do you want to put on raincoats and boots and go for a walk?” I asked. They were incredulous because it was bedtime, and excited to have an adventure, and we put on the rain gear we rarely need in Santa Monica and walked down to the beach. I’m an east coast gal, I appreciate a good rainstorm and I thought they would, too. We didn’t run into a single person, because I imagine there aren’t too many people who would think that was an ideal time for a walk. But they jumped in puddles and laughed in delight as we walked down the hill, their little faces wet and happy. Then we stood on the beach - just the three of us - with the ocean rolling in, the waves wild and the Santa Monica Pier lit up, and it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. Their little hands in mine in the midst of all that. 

I live by the beach - and within walking distance of the amusement park - on purpose. The happiest time in my childhood was at the Jersey Shore with my maternal grandma - my Nanny as I called her - my mom, aunt, uncle and cousins. Being near the ocean calms me. It reminds me of how small I am, and how we’re here for such a blink of time. The waves are going to roll in and roll out as they were long before we arrived, and as they will long after we can’t dig our feet in the sand anymore, because we’re stardust again. Then we’ll exist only in the memories of those who loved us, and those we loved with our whole hearts. That’s all we have and all we get - and it’s a lot.

Me

The last few years have taught me the wisdom of letting go. As much as we want to cling, to grip, to wrap our sticky fingers around the steering wheel and will things to go the way we want them to, the truth is, things are going to happen the way they happen. The only thing we get to work on is the way we respond, the meaning we draw from it, and the way we ride the ride. We get to work on the way we love the people we love, and the amount of compassion and patience we can extend to ourselves, because this isn’t easy.

I lost my mom in December of 2021. I’ve written about it a lot. I’m writing a whole memoir about my relationship with her, but also about the rage of being a woman in this world, and the rage our mothers pass down to us along with their genes. We had such a tough time together, for all kinds of reasons, but in the end it didn’t matter to me. I let go of every way I’d been hurt and disappointed, and I just loved her, openly and without holding back. I knew she was dying. I knew my heart was breaking. There was nothing to do but let go and love. There never is.

Here are two poems I want to share with you if you’re so inclined.

The first is Khalil Gibran:

On Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

From The Prophet (Knopf, 1923). This poem is in the public domain.

The second is by Mary Oliver, and I have never gotten through it without weeping:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

Sending you all so much love. I’ll be with my kid this weekend, getting him settled in his dorm room, and figuring out how to drive away on Sunday without bawling in front of him - so I am not recording the podcast live. I am recording it before I go so it will be ready for you on Saturday. Thank you for spending some time with me, I appreciate it so much.