what I can't get out my mind

It emerged quite unexpectedly, like a bear after a long hibernation, in one of our conversations over peeling carrots and chopping mushrooms.
My son said, "Mom, do you know what I just can't get out of my mind?"
I replied, "Tell me, my boy."
My son went on with a voice that spoke of haunted dreams, "SPIDERS!"
"Spiders?" I asked, intrigued.
"Spiders, and when I had to run away from that guy with the stick in Botterdorp"

Last Spring, my son and Julie, a 17 year old friend from Germany staying with us, went for a walk in the oh so quiet village where my parents live. In Botterdorp, no one locks their doors. The village is far from hustle and haibo of crime ridden city life, and let's just say the biggest danger facing the village policeman (singular) is that he might fall asleep on duty.

My son and Julie went walking often in the beautiful fynbos-clothed hills surrounding Botterdorp. On this walk, Julie and my son were surprised by an aggressive young man carrying a stick who attacked Julie and pushed her to the ground. He was after her phone. Once he had it he stalked off, leaving Julie shaken up but thankful not to have been harmed physically. The instant my son saw danger, he sprinted 2km to my parent's home where we were having leisurely cups of tea, completely oblivious to what had just happened. He told us what had happened in high definition animation, and I immediately jumped in the car with him and drove off to find Julie. We were relieved to find her walking home. We all went to the police station and described what they'd just encountered. Julie spoke about it, but my son said he didn't want to talk about it because it made it happen over and over again in his mind. That was 9 months ago.

In the weeks following, my son had 4 or 5 nights interrupted by nightmares, and we gave him things to make him feel safe, like Superman pyjamas, a torch and big stick. Under his blankets I would find a whole artillery of bows and arrows, water pistols and sticks that he would take to bed with him. And still he refused to talk about what happened. Whenever we visited Botterdorp he was happy, until asked if he would like to take a walk, which is what his grandfather does most afternoons with his dogs. He point-blank refused to go for walks there. We stopped asking him about it, and over the next few months he gradually took fewer and fewer weapons to bed with him, so we assumed he had begun processing the trauma he experienced.

And then suddenly, while preparing supper together, he let me in on his fears.
I affirmed him again, as we'd done many times, for running home - saying that getting away from danger and coming to call some adults to help was the best way to handle it. He usual response to this is silence, which is an unusual response from my son in any circumstance.

To my adult/parent brain, the fact that my child ran to safety is a relief. Yet the fact that he can't get this incident out of his 7 year old mind, and his silence, suggest that he has not yet got back his sense of power which was taken from him that day.

Since this little peak into his psyche we have watched the (original 1980's) "Karate Kid" movie several times and have played many games where our son defends himself using karate, and sticks, and all manner of weapons. His before-bed prayers are all about thanking God for keeping us safe. Hopefully, through playing and drawing and talking he will work through his experience a little more each day. He will never return to that state of feeling invincible, but I'd settle for my son feeling brave enough to go walking again in the fynbos with his grandfather.


Song Link: Little Brother (B Steady)

Sandy's petals

Our 5 year old's questions had to come sooner or later, and I'm a firm believer in "sooner" rather than leaving it to some jaded peer to give him answers, possibly wrong, possibly scandalous answers. And "sooner" seems to be a time of wonder when information can be received in a beautiful marveling way, in the way of a child.

Our 5 year old was the first to notice a few drops of blood on the ground, right where our puppy was dancing around, greeting him with exuberance.
Mom, come quick! Sandy is bleeding!

I rushed outside, and then realised the emergency wasn't the kind of emergency involving a vet, but rather one of rapid-response parenting.
Sandy was on heat. What a surprise!
I guess she is a teenage doggess all of a sudden.
Thankfully at that moment the neighbourhood scallywags from up the road called for my son and he charged off to play marbles with them in our back yard, temporarily distracted.

That afternoon was the day before one of my 3rd year exams. In delight, I grabbed the opportunity to procrastinate do some pro-active parenting rather than pore yawningly over my study notes.
How was I going to explain this great, big, possibly scary concept of menstruation to my 5 year old son?
My foot nudged against the recycling box under the kitchen table and an idea sparked: I would make a doggess out of recycling, complete with lady insides.

Our birds and bees conversations so far have been vague, and my son knows that procreation has something to do with boy magic and girl magic coming together to make a baby inside a mommy. He hasn't yet asked more questions, such as how the boy magic gets inside the mommy...  I vowed to God as a teenager never to be a parent that just hands my child a book explaining how our body's work, never to make the subject taboo or embarrassing, but rather to convey how miraculous it all is. So, with these thoughts in my head, Pandy, the recycling puppy, began to take shape from a halved juice bottle, with an abdomen designed to open up to show her magic parts.

While sticking and stapling and constructing I racked my brains for an analogy that would not gross out my child. Eventually I settled on a flower image, and placed an egg (bead) inside the flower.

Later, when the neighbourhood scallywags had gone home, my son came to see what I was up to.

Son: Is that Sandy, Mom?
Mom: Sort of, except this is Pandy.
Son: Oh, ok, she looks a lot like Sandy.
Mom: I wanted to show you what's going on inside Pandy.

His eyes widened as I pulled the 2 parts of the abdomen apart.
Son: Oh cool, Mom! She's got a flower in her tummy!
Mom: Inside Pandy, there is a very soft, very special nest.
Son: What's it for?
Mom: The nest is where girls and Moms keep their magic - little eggs that wait for some Daddy magic. If some Daddy magic comes along then the Mom's egg and the Daddy magic will make a baby puppy, and that puppy will grow inside this beautiful warm soft nest.
Son: Made of flowers?
Mom: No, it's not really made of flowers, but it is soft and cushiony like flowers. To keep the tiny little baby puppy safe and warm.
Son: That sounds nice
Mom: If no Daddy magic comes along, then the soft little nest has to be changed. Just like your bed-sheets, that I wash every now and again.

  Silence from my son (which is rare)

Mom: So when the nest has been there a while and it needs to be changed, bits of the nest come out of the mommy or girl dog's punani. It doesn't really hurt much, the bits of the nest just come out, and then a new nest grows, all ready in case some Daddy magic comes along.

Son: FROM HER PUNANI?
Mom: Yes. Like this (demonstrate with petals coming out of Pandy recycling dog)
Son: Ok.
Mom: But the nest is not made out of petals. It is made out of a soft cushion of blood, and when a new nest needs to come the old nest comes out as little drops of blood, not petals.

(Son has lightbolt moment) Is that what is happening to Sandy?
Mom: Yes, exactly.
Son: Her nest is coming out, and a new nest is growing inside her?
Mom: Yes, you understand it very well, my Love.
Son: So she is not sore in her tummy?
Mom: It can be a bit like a tummy ache when the little nest loosens up to leave her body, but most of the time she can't feel it.
Son: OK. Can we go and ride bikes now? (end of conversation.)


We've had no more questions since then about Sandy's bleeding, but its been interesting to overhear him relaying some of this information to one of his friends a few years older than him.

Son: Do you know why my puppy has blood petals coming out of her punani?

The grace of giving space

I've posted this amazing article by Laura Munson (written in Oct 2013) here for the sake of being able to refer back to it, and not lose this in the haystack of the internet.

I found its bluntly honest look at the inside of a midlife crisis storm really eye-opening. I pray I have even half the strength she has when faced with any kind of up-close rejection.

THE LAST WORD: HE SAID HE WAS LEAVING

Let’s say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You’re still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s—gazing into each other’s eyes in candlelit city bistros, when you were single and skinny—have for the most part come true.

Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farmhouse, the children, the dogs and horses. You’re the parents you said you would be, full of love and guidance. You’ve done it all: Disneyland, camping, Hawaii, Mexico, city living, stargazing.

Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”

But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say, “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.

Here’s a visual: Child throws a temper tantrum. Tries to hit his mother. But the mother doesn’t hit back, lecture or punish. Instead, she ducks. Then she tries to go about her business as if the tantrum isn’t happening. She doesn’t “reward” the tantrum. She simply doesn’t take the tantrum personally because, after all, it’s not about her.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying my husband was throwing a child’s tantrum. No. He was in the grip of something else—a profound and far more troubling meltdown that comes not in childhood but in midlife, when we perceive that our personal trajectory is no longer arcing reliably upward as it once did. But I decided to respond the same way I’d responded to my children’s tantrums. And I kept responding to it that way. For four months.

“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.”

His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recovered and composed myself, I managed to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.

He drew back in surprise. Apparently he’d expected me to burst into tears, to rage at him, to threaten him with a custody battle. Or beg him to change his mind.

So he turned mean. “I don’t like what you’ve become.”

Gut-wrenching pause. How could he say such a thing? That’s when I really wanted to fight. To rage. To cry. But I didn’t.

Instead, a shroud of calm enveloped me, and I repeated those words: “I don’t buy it.”

You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to “the End of Suffering.” I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.

My husband hadn’t yet come to this understanding with himself. He had enjoyed many years of hard work, and its rewards had supported our family of four all along. But his new endeavor hadn’t been going so well, and his ability to be the breadwinner was in rapid decline. He’d been miserable about this, felt useless, was losing himself emotionally and letting himself go physically. And now he wanted out of our marriage; to be done with our family.

But I wasn’t buying it.

I said: “It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy. There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”

“Huh?” he said.

“Go trekking in Nepal. Build a yurt in the back meadow. Turn the garage studio into a man-cave. Get that drum set you’ve always wanted. Anything but hurting the children and me with a reckless move like the one you’re talking about.”

Then I repeated my line, “What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”

“Huh?”

“How can we have a responsible distance?”

“I don’t want distance,” he said. “I want to move out.”

My mind raced. Was it another woman? Drugs? Unconscionable secrets? But I stopped myself. I would not suffer.

Instead, I went to my desk, Googled “responsible separation,” and came up with a list. It included things like: Who’s allowed to use what credit cards? Who are the children allowed to see you with in town? Who’s allowed keys to what?

I looked through the list and passed it on to him.

His response: “Keys? We don’t even have keys to our house.”

I remained stoic. I could see pain in his eyes. Pain I recognized.

“Oh, I see what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re going to make me go into therapy. You’re not going to let me move out. You’re going to use the kids against me.”

“I never said that. I just asked: What can we do to give you the distance you need ... ”

“Stop saying that!”

Well, he didn’t move out.

Instead, he spent the summer being unreliable. He stopped coming home at his usual 6 o’clock. He would stay out late and not call. He blew off our entire Fourth of July—the parade, the barbecue, the fireworks—to go to someone else’s party. When he was at home, he was distant. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He didn’t even wish me “Happy Birthday.”

But I didn’t play into it. I walked my line. I told the kids: “Daddy’s having a hard time, as adults often do. But we’re a family, no matter what.” I was not going to suffer. And neither were they.

My trusted friends were irate on my behalf. “How can you just stand by and accept this behavior? Kick him out! Get a lawyer!”

I walked my line with them, too. This man was hurting, yet his problem wasn’t mine to solve. In fact, I needed to get out of his way so he could solve it.

I know what you’re thinking: I’m a pushover. I’m weak and scared and would put up with anything to keep the family together. I’m probably one of those women who would endure physical abuse. But I can assure you, I’m not. I load 1,500-pound horses into trailers and gallop through the high country of Montana all summer. I went through Pitocin-induced natural childbirth. And a Caesarean section without follow-up drugs. I am handy with a chain saw.

I simply had come to understand that I was not at the root of my husband’s problem. He was. If he could turn his problem into a marital fight, he could make it about us. I needed to get out of the way so that wouldn’t happen.

Privately, I decided to give him time. Six months.

I had good days and I had bad days. On the good days, I took the high road. I ignored his lashing out, his merciless jabs. On bad days, I would fester in the August sun while the kids ran through sprinklers, raging at him in my mind. But I never wavered. Although it may sound ridiculous to say, “Don’t take it personally” when your husband tells you he no longer loves you, sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do.

Instead of issuing ultimatums, yelling, crying, or begging, I presented him with options. I created a summer of fun for our family and welcomed him to share in it, or not—it was up to him. If he chose not to come along, we would miss him, but we would be just fine, thank you very much. And we were.

And, yeah, you can bet I wanted to sit him down and persuade him to stay. To love me. To fight for what we’ve created. You can bet I wanted to.

But I didn’t.

I barbecued. Made lemonade. Set the table for four. Loved him from afar.

And one day, there he was, home from work early, mowing the lawn. A man doesn’t mow his lawn if he’s going to leave it. Not this man. Then he fixed a door that had been broken for eight years. He made a comment about our front porch needing paint. Our front porch. He mentioned needing wood for next winter. The future. Little by little, he started talking about the future.

It was Thanksgiving dinner that sealed it. My husband bowed his head humbly and said, “I’m thankful for my family.”

He was back.

And I saw what had been missing: pride. He’d lost pride in himself. Maybe that’s what happens when our egos take a hit in midlife and we realize we’re not as young and golden anymore.

When life’s knocked us around. And our childhood myths reveal themselves to be just that. The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: It’s not a spouse, or land, or a job, or money that brings us happiness. Those achievements, those relationships, can enhance our happiness, yes, but happiness has to start from within. Relying on any other equation can be lethal.

My husband had become lost in the myth. But he found his way out. We’ve since had the hard conversations. In fact, he encouraged me to write about our ordeal. To help other couples who arrive at this juncture in life. People who feel scared and stuck. Who believe their temporary feelings are permanent. Who see an easy out and think they can escape.

My husband tried to strike a deal. Blame me for his pain. Unload his feelings of personal disgrace onto me.

But I ducked. And I waited. And it worked.

This essay originally appeared in The New York Times.

I carry your heart

...here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;
which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

- e.e. cummings


Possibly e.e. cummings can shed some light on my extreme discomfort over the past weekend when my Lentil, the one who's heart I carry in my heart, became besotted with one of the 16 year old exchange students that we're hosting for a few months.

Just a little 5 year old crush, but it left me feeling redundant and hollow.

For a day or two I have not been the one he runs to when he needs his bumps and bruises kissed, or when he commentates on every little event that happens in his world. It gave me a chilling flash forward to his teenage future when I will need to stand back and allow him space to be his own person, allow him freedom to be adored by others.

After lunch after church yesterday, Lentil went to play football on the field with the exchange students and some other kids from the neighbourhood. On the way back the exchange student Lentil is besotted with was talking to someone else with great interest. Not having her attention was too much for Lentil and he went tearing down the road in a jealous rage. The other children chased after him, picked him up and carried him home. I rushed outside, hearing his loud sobs from down the road, assuming he'd injured himself. His body was unharmed but his little man's ego was sore. I could see splashes of the dark clouds over my own heart all over his face.

    Jealousy.
That awful feeling of not being the centre of the other's universe.
Big new emotions for us...

It was my great joy to be the one to console him, and the one who snuggled next to him while he settled down for an afternoon nap. As we lay there waiting for sleep, he so sweetly articulated his feelings of falling out of her attention, and with such bewilderment.
'When the other kids are not here I'm her favourite, Mom, and then suddenly I'm just not her favourite anymore.'

the way you can get

After a long difficult struggle, my 99 year old Granddad finally shrugged off his cumbersome earth suit on Friday, and flew away.
I was relieved for him.

Spent the weekend with my mom, Granddad's last seed still standing, sorting through hundreds of old photos. Boxes of bittersweet memories, as is often the case when the relationship is a complex one.

One picture we found really struck a chord with me - a picture of my Granddad and Gran shortly after they were married, sitting companionably close, peaceful in each other's space, each doing their own thing.
This marriage ended in divorce (unusual in that time) and looking at this picture gave me a surge of tenderness towards these 2 young people, so oblivious of what lay ahead of them.

Being quite well acquainted with my own character flaws, and how fragile relationships can be, I found myself wishing I could have been their friend... to share some of their utter frustration, their joys, their rage, their gentle holidays as a family - surely so similar to my own peaks and troughs.

I remember the only time my Granddad opened up slightly to me: shortly after I got married he asked me how it was going. Stunned by the directness of his question I mumbled something about how surprised I was by the intensity of the feelings I had experienced in my first few months of marriage. He nodded and added, "Yes, the rage can be quite overwhelming. But equally overwhelming is how much we need that person..."

That little peak into his soul stays with me. So honest, so vulnerable, so open to being judged by his granddaughter.


I dedicate this poem to them, and to the part of them in myself - the seed of their seed.

I Know The Way You Can Get...

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love! 

From: 'I Heard God Laughing - Renderings of Hafiz'
(Translated by Daniel Ladinsky)