parenting adult children – There Is A Time

Love and Ashes

“You were a fire that burned away everything I knew, and I was born in the ashes.”
William C. Hannan

It’s February. There are hearts and flowers to deliver and, if you are Catholic, as I am, there are ashes to be deposited on foreheads.

What do I make of love and ashes?

Ashes.

Thinking of them, I see visions of a fire burning bright and embers flying away from the flame, as if in a race to escape the heat. Left behind, after the fire subsides, are those gray grains that didn’t get away.

Our family has made many fires through the years. We’ve made them outdoors in backyards, indoors in fireplaces and stoves. The two of us, or the four of us together, or sometimes many more, aunts, uncles, cousins, we’ve bathed in the light and soaked in the fieriness.

I enjoy the warmth, but sometimes I scurry away, like the embers, because the temperature can be too warm and the company perhaps too enthusiastic. Peace is calm, cool, and quiet, isn’t it? But yet, I remember these fires with a smile upon my face.

What of them, ashes?

They do remain after the light, the hotness, the tenderness.

There is a sadness I feel when looking at them, seeing them cold and lying there. Gray, still, cold, and finished, they just waste away.

These same have been placed on my forehead many times. I always feel as one with them.

Religion aside, I am but dust. It is refreshing to be reminded of this. I, too, will waste and lie still one day.

What then of love?

I love in such new ways now. Loving and living life after lots of change is like a new fire is ignited, and all that was is gone (and that is not bad, it is simply just finished).

I do see light rising from the ashes of my life. I hope that you can, too. I will not scurry away, I will stay.

Love and ashes are tied together for me this February. My heart is delivering me from the gray grains beneath my feet, and I am walking toward the fire.

One day, that fire will subside too. I hope that I can always remember it with a smile on my face, or maybe then the smile will be on yours as you remember me.

Memories are but love and ashes.

Continue reading “Love and Ashes”

An Impression of Thanksgiving

Picture of road

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart

“I wish you a Thanksgiving where you see a state of nothing. Not a “nothing” that lacks meaning but rather one that is a window toward a light. A light that brings you clarity, satisfaction and peace.”- me

I looked up the definition of “thankful,” and it states that “thankful” means being pleased and relieved.

Pleased, satisfied, and happy are words that paint a familiar picture of Thanksgiving.

This holiday conjures up images in our minds. The images are of happy smiles, a warm fire, and an abundant feast filled with the colors of red, orange, brown, and yellow. These colors dance on a bright and festive table.

Thanksgiving can give the impression of a hectic and decorated time.

Yet, it is the word relieved that echoes in my mind as I read this definition. In reflection of this year (and this life I’ve been living), thankfulness is a welcome emotion.

To me, being thankful at this time means being relieved.

Relieved derives from the Latin word “relevare”. This means “re”, intensive force, and “levare”, raise, from “levis”, light.

Are we relieved at Thanksgiving? Are we raised with force from the light and clarity of our day-to-day struggles?

To be reassured, comforted, and free of anxiety, this paints a picture that is actually quite devoid of color.

Almost transparent this portrait is, and at the very least, it is translucent. The idea is light and fair. If one looks, one can see to the other side of the image, just vaguely.

Perhaps feeling thankfulness is not feeling anything at all. Perhaps it is to sit in the emptiness. This is an emptiness filled with relaxation and restoration.

I wish you relief.

Not an attainable goal for the world, sadly, but maybe for you, alone, today or tomorrow.

I wish you a Thanksgiving where you see a state of nothing. Not a “nothing” that lacks meaning, but rather one that is a window toward a light. A light that brings you clarity, satisfaction, and peace.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thin String

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.-
Havelock Ellis

When is letting go and holding on the same thing?

I think I am doing both right now.

I remember when I was about eight years old, I went to the zoo with my younger sister and my Dad.

We had a fun day (as I remember), and my Dad bought us each a balloon. My father gave me the two balloons to hold as he put my little sister in the car.

Then, I accidentally let go of her balloon, and it floated away. I felt awful. I remember the emotion. It was guilt. The feeling was like being washed with rain. Water was pouring over me, soaking me, and I couldn’t get dry. It was a very sunny day, but my being was saturated. I was covered in failure.

Eventually, I had to let go of more than her balloon. I had to release my sister completely. She died when she was only eight years old from leukemia. I remained here, a sister one minute, and then, an only child the next. I relinquished.

The feeling I had as she “floated away” wasn’t like being washed in the rain; it was more like, in my mind, I was trying to shoot to the sky to hold her hand one more time. There was no guilt, but certainly there was grief. I realized I was here and she was gone.

So, how does this story of loss connect to my life now?

I am holding on to one I love. The vision of a possible painful outcome compels me to cling to her. Yet, I know of disappointment, and I am not stubbornly possessive, so I have an internal desire to let go. I want to move on and away.

Yet, sometimes holding on and letting go are one and the same.

As a young girl, I was holding the balloon. I still remember I had a tight grip, but somehow the balloon flew away from me. Watching it fly was like watching my heart release and travel with it. I let go before it was the right time. The failure to hold on was my failed obligation and purpose.

This instance is not the point of departure or the cessation of holding on. I must still endure.

I’m holding on as I am preparing to let go.

Hopefully, this time when this loved one floats away it will be toward independence and health.

I do not want to feel like I relinquished control, but rather that I just voluntarily stepped back from any claim to her.

I am fearful. I am hopeful.

The thin string I hold is briefly in my hands. This is my momentary purpose.

If I pass it to her carefully, maybe her feet will stay grounded. I think letting go and holding on can be the same thing, as I want her to hold on, and then I can let go.

It is just a passing game when the time is right.

Time Enough to Love.

I was fortunate enough to travel to the Redwood National and State Parks in July this past summer. My recollection of the energetic and wild Pacific Ocean leaves me with a feeling of reverence and uncertainty.

This place is ever-changing, and it holds very little of substance. Tides roll in and out, washing the beaches with rhythms of uncertain time. The ground beneath this place is moving in an unfinished design.

Perhaps the memory of this adaptive coastline is a metaphor for me to use in looking at my life (and yours?).

There is a time and a purpose we are told. But this time is fleeting. Now I see that. A purpose that rests in position is simply on the verge of the next decisive moment.

I see only one condition that transcends limits and parameters. That influence, in all that is or all that was, is love.

Love, as a purpose, is timeless. Its dimension has a magnitude beyond the understanding of any human mind.

I have named this blog site, “There is a Time,” and gave it the subheading “Time for Love”. That is a title and a subsection all wrapped into one name. I named it this because I see that time, love, and purpose are really all one entity.

I am far from able to live this purpose to its fullest. I am far from understanding its limitless reach.

I started this blog as a distraction. I was in a moment when my two children were to start their adult lives. I wrote about myself, a mother saying goodbye, and I wrote about change.

I didn’t know that neither of those sentiments was stable. Goodbye is an end. But what is an end? Change alters terms, yet some things remain, and some things depart.

Within a year, my goodbye went to fear. I thought that I might lose someone that I love forever. And in the same year, I realized I had two daughters.

No person has been lost. Only one is truly and more authentically found. Both children are beautiful and lovable.

I will try to continue to write about what I learn about love. I know the boundaries of love have no finality. Yet, I am human.

I will write about how the fact that I am human (and so are you). I will write about how easily I can prevent the extent of this purpose, of love, from expanding.

I can halt it simply because I don’t understand its capacity.

I have deep respect for life. It is absolutely amazing.

Yet, life is represented by time. So it is not limitless. I am bound to time, but not defined by it.

Time enough to love. Sufficient time to be love.

That’s all I have.

Look. Think. Love.

We are family. We are devotion. We are love. We are humanity.

“The things that we love tell us what we are.”– Thomas Aquinas

Here We Are

Photo credit: dragonflyshots.com

Look at us. Here we are.

Look. Then, please think. Don’t say.

I am reluctant to show you who we are. Yet, I must.

I read comments and words everywhere that are so hurtful. The words on the screen, and on the page, make me want to run away.

Some days that I wonder how I am supposed to live. Me, and I’m not the one in danger, I can’t seem to breathe sometimes.

You make me so scared.

You can’t mean what you say. Do you?

If you thought, felt and knew her you wouldn’t say anything.

If you could be in my head for one minute and sense the love and care I have for her then you would be silent.

You would think. You would try to begin to understand.

I loved a child for nineteen years but maybe that child didn’t even exist. That child is gone or never was. Gender has to mean nothing to me, yet it means everything to her.

I have two daughters.

Can you be quiet and think about that?

Think about personhood. Think about the quality of life of an individual and how much that matters to you. You are a person, aren’t you?

Think about her, my youngest daughter. She is equal. She is beautiful.

Think about family.

Can you think about us living, playing, eating and sleeping under the same roof for years and years? Can you think about the intimacy of us?

Yet, within that closeness there was an omission of truth. There was a simple and authentic truth about one of us that was somehow ignored. Yet we loved and still love.

If you could imagine this, then you’d know how beautiful this special loyalty we have to each other is. You would make no noise or disturbance. You would refrain from hurting us.

Please don’t make me run away. Don’t frighten me.

Don’t hate us. Love us all, or go away discreetly.

Mostly, consider her, beyond me. Please don’t make her afraid or anxious. Make little noise or disturbance for her. She is easily broken and vulnerable.

Maybe her power will grow and her strength will rise if you can just think and not say.

You can hold us up with your silence or cut all of us down with your words.

Please consider the possibilities.

Look at this. Here we are.

We are family. We are devotion. We are love. We are humanity.

Heartstrings are real.

from Emily Ann Studio If only we could all tie together like this! How beautiful it would be. I learned about heartstrings in this time. — from Emily Ann Studio
If only we could all tie together like this! How beautiful it would be. I learned about heartstrings during this time.

I’ve heard about heartstrings. I’ve probably sung about them. I don’t think I quite understood them until today.

Heartstrings tie us to others.

They are real.

I felt mine today.

Being human is being connected to others. It is love, sacrifice, and the absolute forfeiture of us that brings about “we”. It is in the depletion of self that we allow ourselves to be connected.

It is in this that we can equate with others.

A mother is so privileged. She knows how to do this.

At the end of this time that I’ve chosen to write, I choose to not write about the pain, the loss, or the closure that I’ve reached. I am choosing to write about the benefit and the liberty that is revealed to me in this moment.

I read about another mother today who wrote about how this final chapter in raising her children is like closing a door. It can be that. And I guess in many ways it is.

It is really the end.

The end of days and nights of mothering, it is. But it is not the end of being a mother.

As long as they are alive, we will be their mothers. My mother is mine and will always be so, as long as I live.

I am theirs. No chapter closing will end that. Only fate and destiny control that portal’s closure.

I felt the strings pulling me back as I drove home from Boston today. I felt the heartstrings straining, and the car moved forward. The ache in my chest was almost unbearable.

I love them. I am connected.

Yet, I am linked but not attached. I wrote about this perforated attachment when my oldest daughter was a baby. I always knew this day would come.

I don’t want to be melancholy. This is really a good day. It is a moment in time worth cherishing.

Both of my adult children are beginning anew. I am just a mere four hours away by car.

Yet, I’m not really the main character in the sequel to this story. The characters are represented as blocks of color that will be filled in as the story unfolds.

I am grateful. I have learned from love in ways that my younger self couldn’t have imagined.

I remember listening to love songs as a teenager and thinking how wonderful it would be to love someone. I never knew that love would give me more, teach me more, and guide me more than I could ever conceive.

Love is really all there is. Love is an open book, not a closed one.

At this moment, I am humbly appreciative.

I am forever held together with the fabric of a heartstring. I am perpetually thankful and incessantly grateful.

Heartstrings exist. They fasten us to others.

Unity is wonderful. It is strong. That is why heartstrings will never break, and it does not matter how far they are pulled apart.

That is what I have learned. There is a time to be filled with gratitude. That is what this time is.

Turning A Corneri

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“Don’t look back, you’re not going that way!”-

If only I’d known how many turns she’d take!- 7/2015

Are We Turning the Corner?

Yesterday, truly, I felt paused and in an anxious halt. My child didn’t want to talk about what is to come. They seemed paralyzed in the moment. I felt frustrated and confused.

Tonight, we did the laundry together. It wasn’t awful. It was pleasant.

This child knows how to fold clothes better than I do!

I saw faint hints of a smile today that weren’t there yesterday. They may be turning the corner.

Are we both?

I think so.

There have been so many milestones and corners turned over the years. However, this one is like turning the corner in a foreign city. The streets are strange, awkward and uncharted. It is uneasy moving forward and almost too frightening to turn the corner.

Maybe that is what we’ve been feeling all week.

But I suppose the streets are less dark today than yesterday. They seem safe enough to turn the wheel, at least a bit.

I know there are so many people who are turning corners more frightening than ours and that it seems silly to be so distressed about something as simple as an offspring going to college. But I, the mother, want my child to move onward with risk abandoned and with resoluteness and purpose.

The grin beamed of progress.

The corner is just ahead waiting to be turned. I’ll see you all around the bend and I’ll let you know how it is when we get to the other side.

See What Happens

Trust, when the colors fall on the page they will look like a feeling.

“Be brave enough to live life creatively, the creative place where no one has ever been.” -Alan Alda

If I’d only known that she’d have to go on to live life not only creatively but authentically. She must be braver than anyone I’ve ever known!- 7/2015

This child was always one to take the lead and see what happened later. We couldn’t keep up with them when they were a toddler. Swirling around, causing commotion, a whirlwind of activity, they were that for sure. Swift, impulsive, and almost dizzying, as a mother, this little one tired me!

When they were in the fifth grade, this child splattered paint on the page. They wrote an artist statement expressing that they did this because they wanted to see what happened when they randomly threw paint down on paper. They concluded in a paragraph explaining that the painting turned out to look like the great feeling they get when they ride on a roller coaster.

How do colors on a page look like a feeling? Fifth graders know about those things. Fifth graders with the wonder of my child most certainly know.

I think maybe I’ve forgotten what a feeling looks like on a page. Maybe I haven’t forgotten. However, I don’t want my child to forget how to do this!

This child leaves this weekend.

They are no longer familiar with splattering paint. High school asked for more assembly, less creativity. Late nights, long days, and tiring assignments needed organization that nearly broke their spirit!

Still, this one is one of the most original and creative people I know. This is being said objectively, I assure you.

They were voted most artistic and received an unexpected superlative in their high school yearbook. I know they may have forgotten that they are creative. The superlative reminded them and me. Oh, yes, that’s right!

This beautiful person is an artist, for sure, but not in the way you are thinking. They do not color with paint but with notes, sounds, rhythms, and breaths. Still, they can really splatter color! I can’t wait to see what happens!

Am I ready to let them go? No, definitely not. Not this expressive, imaginative, ingenious creature, I can’t be prepared to release this one. They are visionary. True, sincere, naïve, and too honest, yet surreal, and they cannot be ordinary.

Someone who wants to see what happens doesn’t really know what is happening. I am scared for them.

I know I have to see what happens. If you know me, help me trust that when the colors fall on the page, they will evoke the same feeling as riding a roller coaster, and that the colors are beautiful, safe, and pretty.

Thanks.

Joy

Update: Joy, this has followed this daughter from the start of her life apart from me. As her mother, I am still being fed with her dreams. 7/2015

There is joy in a morning, any morning. It is the start of a new day. The beginning of something, maybe something magnificent and unexpected.

There is joy in this day.

I remember a day, a beautiful summer day, when she was sitting in her “clip-on” high chair. The chair was clipped to a picnic table (I’m not even sure if they still make these, as they are probably no longer considered safe). We were having a picnic at the park. We shared sandwiches and fruit with each other. She giggled and laughed. I smiled and sighed. Birds sang. Bees buzzed. Sun shined.

That joyful summer day was a historic moment when I knew there was truly bliss in motherhood. If I had a Facebook page at that time, a photo would have been posted with the caption, “This is the triumph of motherhood”.

Joy, delight, and gladness are what we really hope for. Delight is what we remember. It is what we want.

There is such happiness in this moment. This morning marks the sunrise of newness. The onset of a start.

My daughter is feeding me with her dreams, and I am feeding her with my hope.

There is joy in the morning. This moment is the triumph of motherhood.

About A Month Or So

“Yea, I shall return with the tide.”- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

I had not thought about the tide and how it brings things back. Again, if only I’d known! I didn’t. I don’t know if I’d have felt differently then. I know I do now.- 7/2015

I’ve named this Blog spot, “There Is A Time”, not because I really know this to be true. I don’t know for sure about time and space, no one does. For me life has always sort of happened.

It has really been the attitude I have taken on this journey, and the choices I’ve made, that probably have influenced the time, reality and direction of my life. There may be more to it. That is a matter of faith and that’s another story. It is not the story I want to blog about now.

However, in my world, right now, it is a time. It is a time of change and letting go. It is a point for reflection and for anticipation. Moments will be filled with welcoming and saying good-bye. A month or so of feeling a strange newness and mourning the loss of the familiar.

I am the mother bear and my cubs are emerging from the den. They are hungry, starving really, craving for their new life. They are wild with desire to experience all that life offers. I am cautiously releasing them into this uncultivated landscape. I know they will be windswept and tossed about but they will land, conceivably softly. In my imagination they find order and peace. Or at least that is my hope.

Life is like that. I know that now.

They will find out all about life.

It will be on their own, along this free and self-determined path, that life will teach them and take them by the hand. Life is our classroom; and as undetermined and lacking in design as it may seem, somehow life does create its own parameters. That, too, is another story.

Over the next month or so, I will blog. I will jot words that come to me, the mother bear, the one standing behind and holding back. I will watch and listen. I will let you all know how it seems to me as I let go.

I have always heard people talk of an “empty nest”. This seems so very sad. The image of a nest, empty, dirty and cold, is not pleasant at all. My home will not be this empty place. I am determined to make it more than that. Maybe a cozy den where I’m happy to be alone is a better image to conjure up. I think I am liking the bear image better than the bird.

In children’s literature it is the bear cub and the mother or father bear that get so much attention. There are few stories of birds and nests. I think this is because a bear can cuddle and warm their offspring. It seems that letting something you’ve cuddled go out into this world just seems less cruel. They will have to go anyway, too big for the nest, too curious for the den. No matter really, they go.

It is love that will sustain them. Love is the nutritious food that I’ve fed them. That is what they will need to bear out this journey. That is what I know I want most for them to stumble upon and fall into along the way.

Join me for a month or so as I give them a cuddle or two more before they go. Join me as I stand back, watching, waiting and hoping.

About a month or so. (jemmbarr.wordpress.com)

“You were a fire that burned away everything I knew, and I was born in the ashes.” William C. Hannan

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“You were a fire that burned away everything I knew, and I was born in the ashes.”
William C. Hannan