Through the rain
My mom has been in town all week, helping our expanded nest with its transition back to “normalcy”. Normalcy. The word feels shrouded now in a fog so thick, even Fresnans might balk at driving in it. Everything feels new and unknown, like: when will I get a good night’s sleep? Like: how will I keep from pulling out every last hair if it rains all winter (like it did today) and Elijah can’t get outdoor time? Like: did our apartment suddenly shrink with Charlotte’s birth…or was that me actually wishing today that it was even smaller, and there weren’t any walls at all so that I could go pee or get lunch or change my clothes without worrying that Elijah might be “playing” with the baby? Like: how long can an introvert-leaning contemplative go without time to recharge (read: be alone for more than 30-second chunks at a time)?
But I digress. So my mom (god bless her soul) has been here all week (god bless her soul), and we’ve (read: she’s) accomplished tons that I could not have done alone. Our freezer is packed with food. Our tub is clean. The laundry is washed and folded. I decided that this was the week for some clothes-shopping, too, since my wardrobe feels nearly entirely unwearable at this point, and the thought of going shopping on my own with an infant and a 2-year-old makes me want to turn myself inside out. So off we all went to the mall, after the 75-minute diaper-changing-snack-packing-spit-up-wiping-teeth- brushing-tantrum-taming-nursing-burping-diaper-bag-packing-double-stroller- smashing-into-messy-trunk warm-up was accomplished.
It was drizzling out, and this was the time of day Elijah normally spends running around at a park. I had in my head a vision of my mom running around the outdoor parts of the mall with Elijah while I pushed the stroller, indoors, with the baby sleeping in it, to any number of racks of clothes that were made for me, that practically screamed “I was made for the body of Kristin” and flashed same phrase for momentary lapses in my hearing. The dream was as good as real when we pulled into the parking lot.
Between the car and the first store I intended to enter, however, Elijah proceeded to race around so maniacally that it was I who chased him – I who am 31 to my mother’s 57, I who have watched the child long enough to know the dangers he’s capable of barreling himself, wide-smiled, into. I, who had major abdominal surgery 3 weeks ago and am still so pitifully weak from a heart-problemed pregnancy that running hasn’t yet occurred to my atrophied muscles as something sane people do. We reached Macy’s with me thinking: 1) I can’t leave Elijah outdoors with my mom; that wouldn’t be kind, and 2) I’m exhausted and my nerves are fried. The sight of clothing stores makes me want to climb into deep, dark holes on my very best days (nothing ever fits me, everything is too expensive, the cheap stuff sucks, the myriad racks with the myriad options over-stimulate/whelm me), so I knew the outlook of this particular outing wasn’t good. Was actually bad. Quite terribly so.
Elijah immediately tore off down an aisle. I tore off after him. I picked his wriggling body up and carried him back to my mom and the stroller. “He can knock down manikins,” I told my mom. “He can get lost. Are you up for chasing him? Is this a bad idea?” She said she was game. I set him down, his legs egg-beating before touching the ground. The two of them were off and out of sight before I took a breath.
Okay, I thought. Here I am to get some clothes. Let’s do this.
But when I looked up and tried to face all those racks, I couldn’t see any neon signs at all. I couldn’t hear any voices, telling me where to go. None of the unsubtleties of my dream were remotely getting realized. All I could see, in fact, was a blur of light and color through tears streaming down my face. I wanted to run far away, far from the stroller with all the snacks and diaper bags and carseats and babies, far from the racks that blindly hate me, always, far from the rain that had made my feet cold and wet and the sleep-deprivation that made me so raw in the first place. In a blur that needed no tears for its creation, my mom and Elijah passed by. “I can’t do this,” I blubbered to their backs. “I can’t shop.”
And with that, we loaded Eli into his seat and left.
I’m thinking about the experience tonight, laughing, yes. But crying, too. This is a stressful season, a crazy-making season with young kids and their constant needs and not enough sleep or time alone for me. (Or clothes!) I’m looking longingly across the fence at other’s struggles, thinking first, how much I’d rather have something else to struggle with than what I actually have, and wondering next whether that’s just the way of things: people looking across fences, sure that what the next person’s got is much better. Much easier to wrestle with or struggle through – not to mention, of course, the stuff that looks like easy-breezie, or just plain happy living.
Could it be that my primary challenge, my primary pathway toward peace, is to accept the challenges I face as what is my “is” – to somehow, even in the midst of the occasional or constant bout of tears or chafing at my “is”, nestle into it, or at the very least look it in the eye and shake its hand and say, “Here we are. So here, in fact, we are.”
I’m too tired and raw to end with eloquence. Have any of you found peace with the struggles you face? What are some ways you’ve found, or are trying, to find it? I’m ears. Lots of them.