Becoming True

I want so much to write about what I've learned the past few weeks while riding the roller coaster of motherhood, but I'm not sure that I yet have words for that. I want to write about the perils of inauthenticity, the value of true feeling, the worth of real friends. There is so much woven into the rich tapestry of my recent experience I'm not sure I'm past feeling it into the place of writing it, and yet I don't want it to slip away.

For it's been a time in which I've wondered if I've lost my son's trust forever, whether I will ever grow beyond the reactivity and old patterns in which I have always lived, and in which I've also never been more sure that miracles are mine for the making.

It is Sam's Jim, standing in the kitchen, talking casually over Sam's head while I prepare lunch for him and our family, that closes the circle of this particular journey for me. Jim and Sam are wet and muddy from playing in the back yard, and tired and thirsty and hungry and laughing and I love them both very much. And I say again an inadequate thank you for the heroic efforts he made on Sam's behalf a few days ago, when the crazy dance of inauthenticity had me spinning in circles until I lost sight of the ground and spun myself over the edge of a cliff.

And I left home without telling Sam where I was going.

I am crying now as I write this. It is a hard thing to see in black and white. It brings back so many memories, it is so hard to separate this, the reality of this experience from the memories of my past. I swore my own child would never know that feeling, that feeling of abandonment and terror.

And yet, he went to look for me and I wasn't there. I told him I was going to take a rest, and I got in the car and drove away. And he watched me go, said Jim, but didn't seem to realize I had really left until he went to lie down with me and have a drink of milkies. And when he couldn't find me, he became hysterical.

As I was driving away, I knew how hard it would be and yet I couldn't turn back. Because I had waited too long. Because instead of admitting that I needed time away now and then and finding a good way to make it happen, I told myself I could be OK with Sam's desire to have me always with him, 24 hours a day. It had been three months or more since I left the house alone. It felt strange to be in the car alone. I felt an odd mix of something that wanted to turn into guilt, but didn't ever quite get there, and the rush of sudden freedom.

Because underneath all the old stories, I also knew that Sam was in good care, that he was safe and loved with Jim and his Dad to take care of him (that is Sam and Dad in the photo).

And they did. They stepped up like the heroes they have been waiting three years to become to this little boy whose mama blocked his clear vision of anyone else in his world. His Daddy held him while he cried and between them Jim and Husband deciphered Sam's words, which are hard to understand when he cries and his barely existant 'S' disappears. They put him in Jim's car, which has no front passenger seat and no seat belts (a sedan modified for sleeping in on the road), forget about car seats, and they drove to Shoshone to see if they could find me. And they bought him a juice and a cookie and they walked around until he finally became interested in other things. And when they passed a cop on the road they told him to duck down and he did and lay still as a statue--three renegades on the run!

But this story fills me with remorse because all I hear while Jim is repeating it is the story of my father piling my sister and me into the back of our old VW and cruising around the motels and bars looking for my mother.

But that's another story. It's not this story. It's not this reality, this time, this place. It is me reliving the experience I create over and over to mimic that past until I'm done with it, and I have this light and airy feeling that perhaps I am done with that small portion of it. Because I let myself feel what it felt like. I let myself feel guilty and sad about the present moment until I was done, I let myself feel scared and sad about the past until I was done. Then I let myself feel immense gratitude for the chance to feel these things, to work through these things, to have this moment, this freak out, and do it within the safety net we've created for our lives.

And all this was what I learned and felt, and that day things changed between Sam and I for the better in an amazing kind of way. I apologized for not telling him where I was going, for the hurt and sadness he felt. I thanked him for making it possible for me to have time away and told him how much it had helped me. Because, while standing in a sandwhich shop that afternoon, talking with a rough country woman about parenting, I also had another revelation about respect and about how Sam had lost respect and trust in me because I was not living in my authentic truth. And I felt the awful black hole of remorse begin to open up and try to swallow me whole, but instead I stepped away and sat still with all the feelings that were inside me, met them, shook their hands, invited them in for a chat and let them go when we were done.

And now, while I'm making lunch, I learn that my runaway day was not all about me. Because Jim says, so quietly I almost miss it, that he had no idea how much he could love another person until he came face to face with Sam's suffering. He said much the same thing most new mothers say about how they never knew how much they could love until they held their children in their arms. And Jim had five children once upon a time, children he abandoned many years ago in the murky past. But it wasn't until this, his 75th year on earth, that he came to truly feel the power of having his heart connected to another human being.

And Sam learned that he can depend upon his father and his friend. And I learned that I can depend upon them, too. And it came clear to me in a blast of understanding that there are so many things it is OK for me to not be able to do. It's OK if I don't want Sam to kick me in the shins, and oddly enough, it's OK for me to kick him back (ever so lightly) because it makes him laugh and then we are done with that. It's OK for me to need to have a morning out now and then, and it's OK for Sam not to want me to go. I still don't know how it will come about, how we'll make it OK for me to leave and him to stay and both of us to feel good about it, but I remembered to remember to leave the door open and just let the solution come in when it's ready. Hold the space for the possibility, that's all I have to do.

That's all I ever have to do. That, and love my boy and his father and his best friend, and even more importantly, myself. Because I am their rock. There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have thought 'Uh oh, anybody who has me for their rock is in serious trouble'. But I am growing up now, I get that I can be a rock. I have it in me and I'm finding it piece by piece. Sometimes I am a rock with jagged edges, odd shaped and asymmetrical, but I am solid nonetheless.

This I know.

Thank you god.