Light/Dark

"Okay, mom," she says agreeably when I request something of her. She takes it in stride and it's telling that this is remarkable. Wayland and I catch eyes and can't help but smile. "Progress," he mouths at me, and I nod quickly so she doesn't see.

::

The next morning I lean in to help her with her high top shoes and she's still furious, beyond furious, because I insisted she take her own nightgown off earlier. Before I can move she's hit me in the face, hard, screaming, "I HATE YOU! I WISH I DIDN'T HAVE A STUPID STINKING MOTHER!" And I grab the blanket in her lap, clenched fists, overcome with the urge to lash out back at her, to hit and scream and lose control as she has.

Instead, I drop the blanket and leave the room. She's screaming, "SORRY! I'M SORRY, MAMA!!!! I SAID I'M SORRY!" I take a breath, two breaths, three breaths, more breaths, until the hammering of my heart is softer. I come back and calmly resume helping her with her shoes. She is sobbing into her blanket. "I said I was sorry!" She is wailing. "Why won't you accept my apology?" When I try to explain that I have accepted her apology, but one doesn't just get happy as soon as soon as they hear an apology after they've been hit in the face. Before I can get this out, before I can make sure she at least hears the message, she screams "STOP IT! WHY ARE YOU STILL MAD AT ME?" While I'm trying to explain. She just wants it to go away.

::

Still, last night, back to last night. She is calm and agreeable and REASONABLE, even. "When I say that mean stuff, like I hate you and stupid and stinking, it feels like I'm lying," she tells Wayland. "Even while I'm saying it, it feels like I'm lying."

She is snuggled against Wayland's shoulder. Her eyes are alight with an easy happiness.

This is what I hold onto. More light than dark.

The weight of something dazzling.

I see the word "stardust" somewhere and I want to write it. I want to scoop up handfuls of gold glitter and feel the weight of it in my hand before I toss it to the wind. I want to see the air shimmer. But the truth is I'm miles from stardust sitting at a desk in a basement, surrounded by stark white walls.

 I have told myself since the new year dawned that I will just try this year. And that's it. I have cataloged again and again over the course of last year where things feel like they are lacking. And I also spent the better part of last year just noticing that. Hey, wow, these things are just not working. The factors of my life are aligning in a displeasing way. Just look at that. With the kind of strange awed wonder that someone has when they're taking in an incomprehensible mess. It's the equivalent of being told to clean your terribly messy room when you're a kid. You just don't even know where to start. So you shut the door and pretend it's not there. Until your mom comes in. Hey, make the bed, she says, then pile stuff on there. Once your floor is clean, you'll feel better, and the mess is central there. Then you can start organizing. And that's what you do, and hey, she's right. That was easier than you thought it would be.

Working your way through a messy life is another story, of course. There's no tangible thing to look at, to organize. But the boiled-down message from my mom isn't really "start with the bed," it's just "jump in and do it, you have to start somewhere, just do it already." Jump. Start. Do.

And so I will let that be the tone for the year, and strike the word "hopefully" from that phrase because so much apathy rests in the idea of hopeful. Instead I'll suck in a breath and roll up my sleeves and just get started. From here the air is dry and plain and the walls are blah but action breeds miracles when you really take a close look. Action breeds miracles and there it is, and you do and do and do until you've got it, the stardust, the weight of something dazzling in your hands.

When going back means moving forward.

I said goodbye to the girls this morning and walked out of their school, feeling heavy with a peculiar kind of grief. I said goodbye to the girls and I did not say hello to Madeleine's first grade teachers. We didn't even make a right-hand turn down the hall where her classes were held. Didn't even tour past the room where I'd had several meetings with her teachers, worriedly scanning the notes I'd scrawled before driving to the school, nervously tracing over knuckles with fingertips, leaning back and trying to find the right combination of words that would tell them: I'm worried. Help Madeleine. What can I do? What is going to happen to her?

I said goodbye to Violet and I said goodbye to Madeleine and as I left the school I said goodbye to an old reality, some random fact about my daughter that somehow became a part of who I was. Mad was a first grader, now she's a kindergartner. Goodbye, first grade. Goodbye some odd idea of supposed to be.

It's good, great, wonderful that we were able to make this move for her. I feel pretty certain that this was the best thing we could do for her, things being what they are, but it doesn't make it hurt any less, shelving some idea of progress, coming to terms with the idea that Madeleine's peer group is a bit ahead of her. That we'll need to go back to move forward.

Because if motherhood has taught me anything, it's that progress isn't linear. Growth doesn't happen in an unceasing forward line. Growth is stops and starts, retracing steps and reconfiguring plans. Growth is a lurching heart on the way out of your kids' school building, your daughter's big eyes and thoughtful frown as she stares out of the car window, taking measure of what's to come, her palm in your palm and a gentle squeeze goodbye.

Now, now now.

The road stretches on and on, slicing thick through piles of old snow. Cold wind bites the car and we blast warm air at ourselves from the inside. We've been in the car for six hours now and we're not even halfway there. And that's okay. Of course it's okay. In the backseat my daughters are sleeping, little pulses of warmth and love. My husband at the helm. And for the briefest of moments I feel the gears and cogs of time align themselves around me. I'm there at the center and I can see so clearly where I stand, when I stand: now, now, now. This is happy. And just as I recognize it, it passes, and I'm sucked back through the cogs: forward, forward, forward.