Come my friends...

 

When I was in the 7^th grade, my parents took me to see the movie “Dead Poets Society.” I don’t feel like it’s an overstatement to say that it changed my life. It was the day I knew I wanted to become a teacher. It was what started a lifetime of interest in studying residential schools. And most importantly, it was the moment that I realized I loved language:  That there were others that loved language. That poetry was not just for sappy 14 year old girls who published their diaries in the back of Seventeen Magazine.

The movie quoted various parts and pieces of all manner of verse. But the one that struck a chord with me (though truncated) was Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” That day in that theater started my love affair with this poem (that day, followed by no less than 83 viewings of a VHS tape of this movie that I wore completely out before I had even finished high school.) 

We revisited “Ulysses” in our high school English class (thanks Dave...) I wrote a paper on the poem in college and taught the class the day we covered the particular writing. It has been with me for many years, this verse; sometimes when it found me and other times when I called it to my side.

Assuming that other normal, non-nerdy people don’t have a working knowledge of this poem, let me tell you a little bit about it, and why it has always been so appealing to me.

The poem is based on Homer’s Odyssey, and tells the story of our hero Ulysses.  To SparksNotes this up for you all, basically, after his voyage, he comes home, looks around and says, damn. I’m old. And I’ve been through hell, and war, and adventures and battles. And now, here I am finally home. What to do, what to do?

The poem is his response to this return. And his answer?

Don’t stop. Keep living life to the absolute fullest. (I cannot rest from travel, I will drink life to the lees.) Embrace the battles fought by learning from each one. (I am part of all that I have met.) Shun stagnancy. (How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!)

I always loved the ambition. The optimism.  The thought that at the end of someone’s life after a million adventures and hardships, you could still-- would always-- strive for something else; something better.  I didn’t understand why I liked it at age 13. At age late 30-something, I can’t imagine a text more perfectly encapsulating how I want to live my life.

If you happen to be one of the, like, 1% of the world who recognizes this poem at all, it is no doubt due to the last stanza:

Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

The number of times these lines have run through my head in my lifetime is innumerable.

But they are fresh for me right now.

By all accounts, 2014 has not been one that I would choose to replay for either me or my friends. Beyond the smaller life things that seemed to crowd the lives of my loved ones; job changes and losses; homes lost or sold; hirings and firings and moves and scares and every day stresses, has been the bigger things this year: Massive illnesses, near death experiences, divorces, deployments, and the passings of loved ones both old and very young. It’s been a year for the books, to be certain. Not the kind of book you’d voluntarily check out from the library (though possibly fodder for a Lifetime mini-series.)  

I’m not going to try to sugar-coat it. I’ve been generally trepidatious about the holidays this year and much more subdued than is typical for me. It’s the first year I’ll be without my dad, which is no little thing for me. I miss him tremendously, especially at this time of year when typically I’d be thinking of fun things to send him; having Ellie make him pictures; planning my trip home to see him. And Thanksgiving. That was our holiday. We were never apart on Thanksgiving. It is my favorite holiday of the year. This year, he will be conspicuously missing from the table.

So will J.

I mentioned the general crappiness of the year the other day to one of my dearest friends as I was inviting him to join Ellie and me for Thanksgiving. “Even though it’s been a crappy year for us both, let’s get together and celebrate anyway,” was the gist of my invitation.  

He looked at me sort of funny and said basically that he didn’t agree with my assessment of the year. Now, this was quite something coming from this particular friend, given that he was one of the people I would have decidedly chalked up on the side of “suck” if I was making a tally board for the year. 

I looked at him puzzled. “Listen, I got sick in a place I could get better; what could have killed me ended up being not as serious. I have had family trouble, sure, but it’s resolved. 26 years of drama finally over. Your husband is securing your future by doing this deployment thing as quickly and painlessly as possible guaranteeing that he can take care of you and Ellie forever, buy a house and never have to do this again. Your dad passed quickly without much suffering, when you knew he was ready. It could be viewed as bad. But I don’t know…I feel like we’re all still doing pretty good in spite of it all. ”

Though much is taken, much abides.

That’s all I could think in that moment. That he was right. That though it seems like so much has been taken from those I love this year, we all have so much to be grateful for still.

This year, and hopefully every year, I need to remember this. I have so much. And I’ve got so much more to do. I don’t have the time (or desire) to dwell on what has gone. I have so much to be thankful for.

I’m hosting a Thanksgiving my father would be proud of this year. Though he’ll not be at the table, he’ll be here. And  I’ll have a house full of friends and family putting to rest the bad, and sharing with one another our grateful thanks for those things which abide.

Come my friends...

And though we may be a little wrinkled and weathered and worse for the wear (Smite the surrounding furrows!) …and though we may not be a strong as we used to be…that which we are, we are. Made weak by time and fate but strong in will…

This year, we all have heroic hearts. And regardless of what has been taken from us, we will continue to strive…to seek…to find…

And not to yield.

Time takes time, you know?

 

“Patience and time do more than strength or passion.” I’d never heard this quote before today, but having this come across my desk right now seems, well, fortuitous or serendipitous or…you know, some other “ous” that means that it was a nice thing to see just now. 

The concept of time is a funny thing. 

I do not embrace this concept generally, but especially when J is gone, I throw any concept of length of time right on out the window. It’s not that I lie about the amount of time that J and I are going to be separated. I just don’t think about it—don’t keep track. I live in this pretty blissful state of stupid that I affectionately refer to as The Land of Vagueness (it’s an admittedly bad name for a fictional world.) 

“How long has he been gone?” “Oh, you know, a few weeks.”

“Time’s sure passing fast, huh?” “Is it? Ok.”

“Wow, I didn’t realize he’d been gone so long.” “Oh, you know, we’re moving right along.” 

Daddy will be back in a little bit. Daddy will be back soon. 

These are the phrases that I have come to rely upon as my go-tos; as my blissful statements of indistinct time and random activity. (And pleasant alternatives to what I ACTUALLY want to say when people not really involved in my life try to tell me how quick the passage of time is. How AMAZING that he’s already been gone so long; and that he’ll be back in the blink of an eye! By the way, these are not phrases from you that enter into my ear-hole happily. You have been forewarned. ) 

Until yesterday, I myself have had no real concept of this deployment length, other than that we’re someplace in the middle. Maybe it’s because I am not counting months. Maybe it’s because I don’t really know when he’ll be home other than a ballpark couple of weeks (probably…maybe… plus or minus…) Maybe it’s self-preservation, because if I don’t take the time to figure out how much time is left, I can buy into my own fib that it’s all going to be over soon.

I mean, hell, right now the only way I’m measuring time is in number of garbage days I have remembered to take the trash cans out to the street. (By the way, I’m 13 for 13 as of today. Yeah. I’m killin’ it with the trash.)

So, some days have passed. There are more days in front that will still need to pass. I’m painfully aware of the fact that we are currently stuck in the middle of the deployment. We’re not in the beginning stages where we’re still trying to figure everything out. We’re neither close enough to the end to start a countdown—nor closer to the end than the beginning. 

It’s just the crappy middle part. 

Owing to my lack of calendar dependence, and my general avoidance of all things time related, you will imagine my surprise when yesterday, Ellie came home from school and said to me, “Mommy, see Daddy in March?” 

Now, my child has no idea what that means. No idea how long that is. No concept of the length of a day, or a week, or a month. She doesn’t know what that breaks down to in terms of minutes or hours. But all night last night she skipped around the house almost singing “see Daddy in March! See Daddy in March!” 

I don’t know why this bothered me so much. I haven’t articulated the come-home timeframe to her, mostly because I don’t really know it myself. She definitely didn’t get this phrase from me, partially because I’m afraid to said it out loud for fear it won’t come true. (Sorta like spilling the wish you made when you blew out your birthday candles--best to just keep that one to yourself there buddy, you know, just in case…)

I’m sure some very well meaning person at her school, who had no idea of my aversion to labeling time, and who most likely was just attempting to calm my child who pretty constantly walks around asking for Daddy, just said “you’ll see Daddy again in March.”

In March. 

When my kid so easily proclaimed what I haven’t been able to say, it broke me a little bit. Why did she have to say MARCH? Suddenly, I realized that March is MONTHS away (and seems like a thousand years away…) Just when I was starting to kind of let myself believe that I was almost done with all of this, there it was. March.

But the more I thought it about, the more I realized that maybe not everyone operates like I do. Some people, maybe even Ellie, need the direct object at the end of that sentence: See Daddy, When? In March (nerd alert: there’s definitely a diagrammed sentence in my head when I say that.) Maybe that brings some degree of comfort to her. Some degree of truth. Not a vague “soon” or “later,” but rather “March.” Regardless of how long that seems, it is a concrete end point. 

So for now, I’m going to let the kiddo have her phrase. As my Ben says, “in time, I won’t hear what you say. But time takes time, you know?” And until that time comes, I need to remember that more so than passion or strength, right now, it is only patience that’s going to move the hands on the clock forward. 

Patience, and just a little bit more time (16 more weeks, to be exact. If I had been counting…)

Unintended parenting

 

I’m not sure if it has exploded recently or if I’m only just now paying attention to it because of Ell, but there seems to be no shortage of articles/ blogs/ posts/ books about how hilariously hard it is to have a toddler. (Scary Mommy anyone?) I’m constantly reading about the 40 simple steps to get a toddler into a car (ok, that one was actually really funny…) or how kids take up all your time and your space and your waking hours (and your will to live.) 

It seems like the entirety of the interwebs* is obsessed with trying to make light of how really just effing challenging it is to raise a kid. I myself read pretty much all of them as they come across my news feed (it’s a bit of a sickness, really.) Oh, what does the Honest Toddler have to say today about how (tongue-in-cheek) crappy a mommy I am? Oh what does the Huff Post say about what it takes to be a good working mom? (In a related story, Huffington Post...I feel like your content has taken a bit of a left turn recently. But, whatever, I digress.)

           *By “entirety of the interwebs” I mean other than the cat videos…and, you know, porn. 

You’ve probably read the lists—the 50 things to say to your daughter—the 20 ways to bolster your kid’s self-esteem- the 15 most important life lessons you can possibly teach your kid…followed up by an expose on how we can’t ever say the right things to our daughters, bolster your kid’s self-esteem or help to teach important life lessons. It’s really quite exhausting, honestly. 

Yes. Being a parent is hard. Being a single-parent is harder. Being a single-parent during a deployment sucks. 

We all knew that the hardest part of this deployment was going to be the Ellie piece. This isn’t J’s first rodeo. And even the two of us have endured a deployment or two working the long distance relationship angle. No, this one was going to be about our two year old and we knew it going in. 

One of the reasons we did this deployment now was because Eleanore was little and we hoped, believed, that it would be less of an issue for her. She wouldn’t really know what was going on—too young to truly understand what was happening. Saying things like “daddy will be home soon” and “daddy’s at work right now” could be vague statements to a toddler who didn’t have a frame of reference for what those phrases really meant or how I was definitely stretching those definitions to the outer limits of truthfulness.

Well, I’m here to tell you friends, my daughter may only be two, and she may not completely understand the whys, and the hows, and the how longs, but she most decidedly knows that daddy is gone. And it is affecting her.

And as she gets older, even in just the 3 months J’s been gone, she’s learning to better articulate that understanding of his distance (much to my daily devastation.) Like in the mornings, when she crawls into my bed, looks into my eyes and says “I miss him.” (I know who him is.) And when she colors pictures and puts cups of imaginary coffee next to his picture in the living room to “give to daddy.” Or when she uses anything in the house that could be imagined into a phone to “talk to daddy” for several minutes at a time, typically mocking mommy (“ok, hon, I love you. Gotta go!”) Or when she thinks I’m not looking and she hugs my laptop, because that’s where daddy lives right now. 

The piece de resistance of course was when my girlfriend and I were shopping a couple of weekends ago and she sidled up to a mannequin dressed much like her father (cargo shorts and a t-shirt) and stood there quietly holding its hand until we had to go to the car, and then screamed at full volume for the whole store to hear “NO! Don’t make me leave Daddy!!!” 

(Yeah, that sound you hear right now is your heart breaking into a hundred million pieces. I made it to the car before melting into a puddle of blathering tears.) 

It’s hard to be a parent. Harder still to be a single parent. Being a single parent during a deployment sucks. 

A week or so ago, a dear friend of mine in an attempt to give me a laugh and a little humor sent me a link to one of those Huff Post parenting articles. I don’t remember exactly the scenario presented in the article, but the underlying idea of it all was that toddlers are ridiculous and exhausting and, well, good on ya mom, because raising a family is really hard. 

Much to my surprise, I fell apart when I read it. It was supposed to be a hilarious parody of life with a child, and here I was crying into the sleeve of my oversized sweatshirt (you know the one…that one that definitely needs to be in a laundry at all times, and yet somehow never makes it to the laundry room.) I felt so completely silly for doing so, but something about it just touched me—first that the universe acknowledged what I was doing was hard, but even more so, that someone close to me did as well. 

It was a cathartic cry. And caused me pause for reflection. 

It occurred to me that I have been focusing a lot (even if only internally) on how hard all this is, and on being so scared that on some level all of this was damaging Ellie is some strange way. “What am I putting this kid through?” “Is she ok?” “How badly am I screwing this kid up for life?” 

Lately though, I’m starting to feel like that’s not what’s happening at all. I’m enjoying the astonishing growth of my child as she matures and learns (and realizes things.) And even in all the heartbreaking moments, I love to see how compassionate my child is becoming. Yes, she is fully aware that daddy is not here. And yes, she misses him so much. But she leaves him gifts. She asks me to take pictures to send to him. She colors him things. She desires talking to him every day (even if it’s via banana phone.) 

She loves him. She really does. She’s two, and she gets what it means to love. And she’s kind. And has found ways to show him that kindness and love, even when he isn’t here. How incredible is that? 

It makes me feel like all the hard work is worth it. That in some crazy-ass unanticipated way it’s paying off. That somewhere in the crappiness of the poo-storm that is single-momming a toddler with a husband in a far-off war zone (and it is in fact a crappy poo-storm) that maybe I’m doing something right. And that we’re not just getting by. We’re more than ok. She’s learning, she’s growing and in the end she’ll be better and stronger and more loving for this whole experience. 

Maybe I will be too. 

And in the meantime, Huff Post, keep ‘em coming. Scary Mommy, sing your truth (I’ll sing along.) And Honest Toddler, I dare you to call me out on being a bad mommy. My kid has a banana phone. How about that.