The sky is darkening purple and Sam and I are sitting on a hump of dirt watching a red streaked swath of clouds glow over the trailers in the distance. We're waiting for our wishing star to appear so we can make a wish--his, I imagine, will be for chocolate. Mine, as it so often is, will be for grace--the grace to live peacably in each moment as it comes, regardless of what it brings.
We are growing up, Sam and me. We are navigating the uncertain territory of what I believe they call separation individuation. For about the first three years of his life, it came naturally to me to notice and attend to his every need. It did not come nearly as naturally or as easily to either one of us to notice and attend to the fact that our needs and wants are becoming seperate and distinct--even sometimes contrary. The more we individuate, the less I automatically know what he needs and the more he has to articulate what he wants, or more to the point what he doesn't want.
This has been hard for us both. It feels sometimes like the breaking up of a romance. I wondered one day if it could be possible that I was no longer in love with my child--but it is not that, of course. Every day he lives there is some new development in his personality that charms me and wins my heart all over again. But in some painful and unexpected way, the motherhood honeymoon seems to have come to an end. It is as though the extraordinary hormonal high that carried me through pregnancy, the most amazing birth and the first three years on very little sleep, suddenly wore off. And there I am again, that old me, the one I thought I finally got rid of when Sam was born.
I am introverted in the extreme, I often just want to be left alone. Some days it is physically painful to remain present, to try to focus on my kid, to interact in an authentic way. As we grow up together, we are learning each others boundaries, we are learning how to have them with each other. Setting his own boundaries is no challenge for Sam, but discovering that I had somehow become dense and no longer automatically know what he wants at all times has seemed as shocking to him as it did to me at first. Because of the isolated way we have lived our lives, it has been hard for him to adjust to this new stage. I have always been everything to him, and the time has come that I had to recognize that I could no longer be that Mama, and even that it no longer served as at this stage in our lives.
I am often tired these days. Where I used to play with him all day long, from waking to sleeping, I now maybe play only a few hours a day. In between I rest, work on my shop, we read, watch movies, clean house, he plays with his dad or by himself. This is good for us both, but it was painful to make the transition--in large part because of my own guilt about it. It took me a while to understand that I wasn't just having an off day, that my needs were changing and that I first had to identify what they were and then communicate them clearly to my son.
I need rest, and this can be frustrating for him but I am no longer able to simply override the tiredness and go play. I will turn into a screeching harridan if I don't get my rest so I am clear about that. And the clearer I am about what I need, the more readily Sam accepts these changes in our relationship. These days, for instance, he happily changes his diaper whenever it begins to smell and is again considering using the toilet. After months or struggle, I had a dramatic shift in clarity and stated simply to him what my needs were in the situation, and talked about being a family together and how we learn to work with each other to achieve the most harmonious home life possible. And my own vision shifted so that I was truly able to look straight at my son and see him so clearly that the rest of it seemed to fade away. I stopped nagging and, magically, we have not had a single struggle over diapers, hair, baths or teeth in maybe a couple of months now. It just happens naturally and not at my constant, white knuckled direction.
As soon as I let go of the guilt, as soon as I felt my own vision clearly and communicated it to him, as soon as I took the focus off the external and refocused on the love, we were good to go. Amazing. Amazing grace.
In the evenings now when we go for our walk in the desert, or just pop out to wish on our wishing star, or when I say a spontaneous prayer it is this that I ask for--the grace of confidence and clarity, the grace that brings peace regardless of circumstance, the grace that loves without reason, without limit, that goes forward without fear, beyond the obvious, beyond the circumstance, to the place where only love lives.
Under that twinkling star in the pale night sky, Sam goes first, making his little wish with his eyes closed tight. And then I make mine, and then we tell each other what they are. I have some chocolate kisses squirreled away as a surprise so that tonight his wish will come true, but the surprise is mine when he says 'I wished I won't get so mad at you, Mama.'
A thousand little thoughts jam into my brain at once in reaction to this--guilt, worry, joy, appreciation. I open my mouth to say something about how he needn't worry about that, and then I shut it again. It is his wish, and in our new roles as separate individuals, it is not my job to control, or to grant his wishes.
I gather him in a fierce hug and he giggles and says an exasperated 'Mama!' and I tell him we have chocolate kisses waiting for us at home. And so we run hand in hand across the desert, racing for sweet delicious chocolate that is no longer the fulfilment of a wish, but simply something wonderful all in its own right.
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