You do not have to walk on your knees.

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Ugly old gray.

It's been a long time since Madeleine opened her mouth and broke the night in two. But last night she did it, with all the power a six-year-old possesses, which is surprising in its scope. Because in some ways, they have all the power. Their little minds unable to process an overwhelming emotion, a dawning frustration, they freak -- and everything falls to pieces.

You can ignore these episodes all you want, but damage is being done anyway. It's like closing your eyes while the hurricane destroys your house. You might not get worked up about it, but it's still happening. Everything is being torn down.

Last night I got torn down and even as I stood in the middle of the storm, desperately pulling the last vestiges of my patience together, trying to tie them into something workable, something that could withstand the onslaught, I lost them. Away it went, any control I had in the situation, and so I walked away from my screaming daughter, who at this point was just begging for hugs, screaming "Come hug me and then I'll calm down," I walked away. And she screamed harder.

It's hard to see in the fury of the moment when you should drop your guard, when it's okay to drop it all and snuggle. Some part of me says it's always okay to drop everything and snuggle. Another part of me, the larger, louder part, said that if she's coherent enough to bargain like that she knows what she's doing, and she should calm herself down. That same part of me was also more than a little upset at this point. It was like she was asking me to snuggle a recalcitrant honey badger that had already torn off half my leg. I just couldn't do it.

But that never feels okay, walking away from your clearly bereft child who is begging for a cuddle. Right and wrong. That's what the situation was. I can't see clearly even now if walking away was okay or not, if it was the right thing or not. Maybe it's just that it was the only thing I could have done just then. I don't know.

My husband said he didn't know if what I did was wrong or not. My husband said he couldn't say that. He could say that he isn't like me, unable to give affection when I feel so thoroughly wronged in a situation. What I hear is: he is capable of unconditional love and I am not. If he had been here, he would have done things differently.

I took this as well as you can imagine. I hung up the phone and sobbed like I'd just lost everything, which is ridiculous and not all at once. That's what's hard to deal with, isn't it? All those stupid shades of gray. It's hard to rest easy in a shade of gray, hard to make a decision when you're stuck there.

It was what it was and today is a new day and tonight will be a new night, and we both get another chance to do it better. I want to. I want to fix things. I also want to hide under the covers, head under a pillow, and never come out again. And there you go, another shade of gray. Bleh.

Tendons.

Why can't you run? Madeleine asks. What she's really asking is What's holding you back? At six years old she can't fathom this, a limitation in your own body that prevents you from doing what you want to do. What you say you want to do. At six years old she adores running and I watch her fling herself down sidewalks and hills with abandon, arms flying off to her sides like a soaring bird. Her muscles sing with potential, the very core of her sings with potential.

I point to a spot on my ankle, the spot that pings and aches all day long sometimes, off and on. "There's a tendon here that I pulled twice a long time ago, and it never healed right," I tell her.

"What's a tendon?" Violet asks, peering down at the permanently swollen area of my ankle.

I draw a line from the back of my ankle to the bottom of my foot with my fingers. "Tendons connect muscle to bone," I explain. "Mine got pulled, which means it just got stretched too far, so it hurts me a lot."

"See, Violet?" Madeleine asks. "That's why mom can't run anymore."

Something in me prickles at this. Because I can run. I just....haven't been lately. And the tendon is part of it, but it's not the biggest part. It's. It's. I'm at a loss and flounder for the words. "I can run," I tell the girls. "Just....sometimes I can't." A lame finish.

The girls don't question it, but I do, later, mulling over the question Madeleine intended to ask: What's holding you back? A tendon, yes. That connection between bone and muscle, the connection between what keeps you solid and what keeps you strong. This question and this connection are both at the heart of everything lately.

Why aren't you running? Because sometimes it hurts. Because sometimes I'm tired. Because sometimes the idea of that effort is exhausting, and I can fall so easily into a book and a cookie and a quiet office. Why aren't you writing? I just don't have the words. Because the idea of that effort is exhausting, and I can fall so easily into a book and a cookie and a quiet office. Why aren't you happy? Because sometimes it hurts. Because sometimes I'm tired. Because lately I don't have the words. Because sometimes the idea of the effort that goes into being happy is exhausting, and I can fall so easily into a book and a cookie and a quiet office.

What kind of madness is this, the kind where you see so clearly the path toward better things and you are paralyzed right where you stand? What kind of atrophy is happening, when the connection between what keeps you solid and what makes you strong is so weak, is weakening by the minute? Every minute you stand there, sit there, despairing over the way things are and hurting over the way things could be, if only. If only. If only.

Every morning I get out of bed and step down on that ankle. And sometimes it pings and sometimes it doesn't. And I take that first step. Every morning, the first steps out of bed, the blind stumble into the bathroom, squinting even in the dim light filtering through the blinds. I'm like a baby learning how to walk, every single day. Or I should be. The tendons are looser then, more flexible as you learn just what it means to be strong and solid on your own two feet.

Here's a first step, and then another. I'm grabbing the wall for support, I'm letting go, I'm letting go, I'm flying, if only.