Did I forget to mention sheer joy?

I knew this blog would be disjointed and messy, but already? Day 2 and already the cracks are showing? The thing is, I forgot to mention joy. And I didn't come right out and say the word "grief," either. Probably because as writers we learn that there is nothing less effective than an abstract word of emotion. Without concrete details, words like "joy" and "grief" are empty suits at the conference table. So, details it is. In a moment.

The truth is, I've found this passage of my life to be filled with equal measures of both joy and grief that tend to balance each other out, more or less exquisitely, just when you think one is winning out.

A caveat: In addition to being vague, joy and grief are also relative. I'm painfully aware that one person's grief is another person's hangnail, and too often I berate myself for feeling sad about something when millions of people are bearing the unbearable. It's kind of pointless and in its own way, vaguely narcissistic to indulge in such emotional gymnastics, but, having absorbed 12 years of Catholic school, what can I say? Guilt is part of my core skill set. Once you practice something long enough, it's reflexive, like cell memory.

Moving on.

So here is a concrete detail of the grief part, followed by a joy scene, so I can get the sad moment out of my head and save the fun part for last:

This morning I woke after dreaming of my parents. The dream is too strange and tedious to burden a reader with, so I'll skip that part, but I woke up absolutely stricken that odds are my father will never see the ocean again. The South Carolina beach was perhaps his favorite place on earth. He and my mom and sometimes our families traveled there from Ohio to spend a week there once a year, for many years running. The other 51 weeks of the year, he talked about the beach, inserting it randomly in casual conversations, as in, "All I know is I want to go back to the beach." I think it was the only place he ever truly felt relaxed, free from the shackles of responsibility.

So I woke saturated in this salty wave of sadness about my father not seeing the beach again. And I thought, half whining and half praying, "Oh, God. Please. Don't let me start the day with sad thoughts." Still in that half twilight phase, I heard instruction, faint but clear as church bells slipping over a distant hill: Just let it pass through. As if sadness were some sort of weather to wait out.

It wasn't quite as satisfying as hearing a resolute, chipper voice say, "No worries. You can still get your dad to the ocean one more time. He's really probably up for it. Carpe diem. Book the ticket now." Which would be false, but so pleasant to hand wring about for a minute, or a week. To its credit, "Just let it pass through" also involved a lot fewer practical efforts like logging into Trip Advisor and talking my mother down from what would be a sure and prolonged panic attack, though in truth, jumping into action has always been one of my favorite ways to avoid quiet spiritual work.

So I let it pass through. Donned my hideous, metaphorical accordion-fold rain hat, pulled the tarp up to my shoulders and said, "Bring it on." And sure enough, something like comfort or at least grumbly acceptance slowly siphoned the downpour into a livable patter-on-the-roof level, quiet enough that I could hear my husband downstairs singing in the kitchen. He was actually singing "O Happy Day", which to me proves God sometimes cannot resist gilding the lily, despite all the fine talk about neither toiling or spinning.

In a few seconds I was ready to sit up and drink the coffee he (my husband, not God) had sat next to the bed a few minutes earlier. It was still warm. Not hot, but passably warm, and with almost exactly the right amount of milk. I was reminded of something Eckhart Tolle talks about, and that is basically, everything really is weather. He said it much prettier, and in paragraphs as dense and bittersweet as dark chocolate, but that's what I got from it. "This, too, shall pass" sums it up pretty well, Tolle tells us, but then cautions us in that relentlessly serene way of his that it also applies to the gorgeous weather, the impossibly blue skies and balmy perfection of spring.

Oh.

That thought was almost enough to make me pull on the tarp again. Or, I could go downstairs and get another cup of coffee. I chose the latter.

So here's the joy detail. My thirteen year-old daughter asked me to show her how to apply eye liner. She actually already knows, because she and her girlfriends have figured it out the way I did, by watching an older girl do it. I had two older sisters, and she doesn't, for which she has never forgiven me, but she has friends with big sisters. Anyway, she actually already does a quite lovely job of applying a touch of makeup in a pretty and fairly natural way as far as teenage girls go. So asking me to show her was clearly a throwaway, and I tried to be casual about it, but inside I was giddy.

I was giddy partly because we had just returned from a routine checkup on a stress fracture she had gotten from running, and somewhere between giving us instructions for a slow return to running and telling my daughter she was a fast healer, her excellent doctor deftly slipped in reassurance that this tiny oval shadow on her knee cap that the radiologist had pointed out with alarm was "absolutely-nothing-and-I-consulted-with-the-top-regional-man-in-pediatric-oncology-who-also-happens-to-be-my-partner-and-it-truly-is-absolutely-nothing-and-the-radiologist-is-wrong."

It was like being whisked to the precipice of a bottomless black canyon by an expert waltz partner, and then whisked back to the safety of the brightly lit dance floor where crisply dressed waiters carry trays of hors d'oeuvres and flutes of champagne, before you realize you don't know how to waltz and are wearing nothing but underwear, and dingy ones at that. The way he handled it was positively gallant, I tell you. Gallant and kind and brilliant. Other than almost vomiting on the floor, I handled it quite well. The whole moment was barely a blip on the radiologist's screen. I don't think my daughter even looked up from examining her nails, which clearly need touching up.

Afterward I was feeling celebratory, so we went to Discount Drug Mart and shopped for makeup and Halloween glitter and ridiculous snacks that I almost never buy (which is another story). We ate drive-through burgers with great gusto, too. We laughed a lot. I felt a little light-headed. And then we went home and while I was trying to make dinner and feed the dog and answer questions from my son about something, she asked me to show her how to apply eyeliner. I started to protest, saying, "How 'bout after dinner, I've got six things---" and then I stopped, and turned the grill off, and went into the bathroom with my daughter and the eyeliner and gave deep, wordless praise.

The Next Right Thing

When the people who raise us need our help, the role reversal can be gradual or stunningly sudden. Either way, it smacks us down in a brand new place, especially if we are raising children--in my case, teens.

For me it's like standing on a wobbly platform between two trains whooshing past me in different directions. Sometimes, it feels like all I am doing is waving goodbye with both arms. "Wait! I'm not ready!" I want to shout. "There's too much I haven't done yet! Mistakes that haven't been fixed!"

Kids and parents: just when you think you've figured out how to deal with them, they morph into different, unrecognizable beings. You know they're getting ready to pull out of the station, in more ways than one, and instead of being the serene, grounded, mature parent/child with all the answers, you're often clueless. (It doesn't help that your children think you're clueless/out of touch/lame, too, even if they only voice that opinion half the time they think it). You're stumbling around from question to question, breath to breath, sometimes crisis to crisis. Holding on tight one moment, trying to let go the next, and praying to know which to do when.

A lot of my life at this point boils down to asking, "Okay, what's the next right thing to do here?" and then attempting to do it, with a minimum of gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair, and renting of garments. Sometimes the next right thing to do is have the big talk with your parents about driving, and sometimes the next right thing to do is take a nap. I feel my way in the dark a lot. It's baffling, maddening, exhausting and filled with strange and unexpected moments of grace. In many ways, it feels like one of the most sacred passages I'll ever travel, and I'm lucky to get to do it. Many people don't.

But I could use some help, and maybe you could, too. Companionship on the journey.

Enter blog.

My aim here is to create a dialogue and exchange, along with some thoughtful posts on this subject. I'd like to feature guest bloggers. Just like the rest of my life, I'm feeling my way with the blog. It will most likely be erratic and messy and full of disjointed ramblings--just so it feels familiar and somehow, comfortable.

Welcome.