storming/quiet
One day the weather is blue and warm, the dog bounding excitedly out the door, and the next, snowy-bright-white, easy-packing snow, the dog cautious, watchful. Soon after all is melted again and the snowperson's head has fallen off, a small, white ball among the unracked leaves.
One day the house is full of people I truly love who are celebrating or mourning, candles lit, an abundance of food; the next, my daughter is kicking me, twisting my arm, her most violent outburst so far.
And then we're standing on the roadside and she's holding a sign that says "I love my lesbian mom," and then there's another gathering that turns ugly toward the end and I'm wondering why I didn't step in when two friends got into an argument, knowing the hurt that could happen, kicking myself for pulling away. And then I'm screaming at my daughter louder than I ever have and she's crying, I don't remember why--too many refusals in a row to do what I've asked, to even consider the reasons for the asking, and immediately I'm guilty and sorry and so is she.
And then we're building a snowperson and she insists it's my friend T, who "will be here forever because she's strong-willed," and I'm surprised she's said such wise words about someone she doesn't know well who is, yes, strong-willed, solid, as S. says, "The way I want to be."
One last image: my daughter and I are at our first ballet lesson; she's graceful and lovely with her hair pulled up and her arms circling her head, and all the stress in my bones is dissipating as I follow her across the floor, thinking there's no way I haven't known her forever.
I didn't tell any of that in order but all if it happened in the last two weeks, the days tumbling into and out of each other, a science project and papers to grade and a dog to get groomed and phone calls from my father, mostly good, in the midst of all of it.
Tonight I am calmer than I've been in months. The grief of the losses the GLBT community sustained is fading. I did what I needed--took a two hour retreat and burned my incense and prayed the anger and bitterness away, gathered with friends who lit candles and signed cards for people who did what they could, went to a protest in Fargo and felt the surge of warmth and joy among so many like-minded people, many of them straight supporters. The joy of the big wins has softened, too, and I'm back to feeling cautiously hopeful about the state of the world in general.
And I am thinking now of how far S. has come, despite her recent outburst, and how even this one step forward, two steps back progress is incredible. In the last week she's faced the heartbreak of a boy who doesn't like her back and the anger of having to hear her friends casually use the word rape as in "That test raped me" and not have to face the ugliness of what that word really means. She asked them to stop; they didn't get it; she felt alone in the world, like friendship was a sham and nobody would ever understand her, including me. So she lashed out.
Immediately, she was sorry, weeping, going through the consequences without any prompting--one page about what she'd do differently next time, another page of apology, the computer handed over for the week. Tonight she talked with her therapist about it and assured me on the drive home that she's back on track, back in control.
I have felt a little out of control myself--drank a little too much at one of our gatherings (the non-political one), told some stories I didn't really need to repeat, didn't pay as much attention as I should have to S., struggled each morning to finish the prep for the day's meetings, suddenly no more than an hour ahead of my own calendar, if that. Something about the cold settling in, our bodies going stiff against it, makes it hard to feel in control.
What has saved S. and I from total disaster has been the long drives (well, therapy, too, but mostly the long drives). We drive every other week 1 1/2 hours for her therapy. We drove this weekend to the protest two hours away. We've started driving occasionally to the closest Unitarian Universalist church about an hour away, a small gathering, rotating leaders. It's lovely and moving and thoughtful and the people are warm. I wish it were closer, but it's something, and this weekend, S. insisted on going, even though we had partied and protested over the weekend and, frankly, couldn't afford the time.
"Driving makes me feel quiet inside," she said on the ride home on Sunday, and again tonight, as we watched the sky go gray-blue and the clouds lengthen and imagined the next snowfall forming, invisible but also forseeable--and because of both the mystery and circularity of storms, and also because they are so beautiful, we can go on.
One day the house is full of people I truly love who are celebrating or mourning, candles lit, an abundance of food; the next, my daughter is kicking me, twisting my arm, her most violent outburst so far.
And then we're standing on the roadside and she's holding a sign that says "I love my lesbian mom," and then there's another gathering that turns ugly toward the end and I'm wondering why I didn't step in when two friends got into an argument, knowing the hurt that could happen, kicking myself for pulling away. And then I'm screaming at my daughter louder than I ever have and she's crying, I don't remember why--too many refusals in a row to do what I've asked, to even consider the reasons for the asking, and immediately I'm guilty and sorry and so is she.
And then we're building a snowperson and she insists it's my friend T, who "will be here forever because she's strong-willed," and I'm surprised she's said such wise words about someone she doesn't know well who is, yes, strong-willed, solid, as S. says, "The way I want to be."
One last image: my daughter and I are at our first ballet lesson; she's graceful and lovely with her hair pulled up and her arms circling her head, and all the stress in my bones is dissipating as I follow her across the floor, thinking there's no way I haven't known her forever.
I didn't tell any of that in order but all if it happened in the last two weeks, the days tumbling into and out of each other, a science project and papers to grade and a dog to get groomed and phone calls from my father, mostly good, in the midst of all of it.
Tonight I am calmer than I've been in months. The grief of the losses the GLBT community sustained is fading. I did what I needed--took a two hour retreat and burned my incense and prayed the anger and bitterness away, gathered with friends who lit candles and signed cards for people who did what they could, went to a protest in Fargo and felt the surge of warmth and joy among so many like-minded people, many of them straight supporters. The joy of the big wins has softened, too, and I'm back to feeling cautiously hopeful about the state of the world in general.
And I am thinking now of how far S. has come, despite her recent outburst, and how even this one step forward, two steps back progress is incredible. In the last week she's faced the heartbreak of a boy who doesn't like her back and the anger of having to hear her friends casually use the word rape as in "That test raped me" and not have to face the ugliness of what that word really means. She asked them to stop; they didn't get it; she felt alone in the world, like friendship was a sham and nobody would ever understand her, including me. So she lashed out.
Immediately, she was sorry, weeping, going through the consequences without any prompting--one page about what she'd do differently next time, another page of apology, the computer handed over for the week. Tonight she talked with her therapist about it and assured me on the drive home that she's back on track, back in control.
I have felt a little out of control myself--drank a little too much at one of our gatherings (the non-political one), told some stories I didn't really need to repeat, didn't pay as much attention as I should have to S., struggled each morning to finish the prep for the day's meetings, suddenly no more than an hour ahead of my own calendar, if that. Something about the cold settling in, our bodies going stiff against it, makes it hard to feel in control.
What has saved S. and I from total disaster has been the long drives (well, therapy, too, but mostly the long drives). We drive every other week 1 1/2 hours for her therapy. We drove this weekend to the protest two hours away. We've started driving occasionally to the closest Unitarian Universalist church about an hour away, a small gathering, rotating leaders. It's lovely and moving and thoughtful and the people are warm. I wish it were closer, but it's something, and this weekend, S. insisted on going, even though we had partied and protested over the weekend and, frankly, couldn't afford the time.
"Driving makes me feel quiet inside," she said on the ride home on Sunday, and again tonight, as we watched the sky go gray-blue and the clouds lengthen and imagined the next snowfall forming, invisible but also forseeable--and because of both the mystery and circularity of storms, and also because they are so beautiful, we can go on.
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