Not Acting

Had a tough day yesterday. I don’t write that much on the good days so if I seem to be a chronic whiner, this might be why (or else I just am, which relates to this story I’m about to tell). No, really, I had such a bad day yesterday that, as I went to bed, I knew I needed Anne Lamott. I needed deep…with humor. Man, did I need it.

I’ve kept Bird by Bird on my bedside floor for years, but when I went looking for it the other day (a sure sign that the “serious” bug bit at least a few days ago), I couldn’t find it. I thought for sure that if it wasn’t there it was in one of my sunroom bookshelves or stacks. When I first looked, I scanned. Still couldn’t find it. Forgot about it.

But last night, tired as I was, I was determined. I went book-by-book through the bookshelves and stacks. I asked Angie if she knew where it was. I looked again, and then trudged off sorrowfully to my bedroom where I then thought, ‘Hell, if I can’t find Bird by Bird, I’ve gotta’ find something else.”

I went and got Traveling Mercies. Whew!

I swear to God just having it in my hand began to lighten me up. As I was getting into bed, taking my nightshirt out from under my pillow, I thought, ‘This is one of the two things I learned from my girls’ dad.’

They came home from one of their infrequent weekends at his house twenty-some years ago, and put their little duds under their pillows because that was the way it was done there. I thought it was brilliant.

It got me trying to remember what we’d done with their pajamas before that solution came along, and what I’d done with mine as a kid. I couldn’t remember either.

My mother actually did her perfect housekeeping so deep beneath the radar that I can’t remember putting pajamas or toys away...ever. Things were set out; things disappeared. This was not the case with me, so maybe the girls’ pajamas would lie at the end of the bed (or under it). I thought I might remember hanging my own gown on a hook of the closet from time to time.

The other thing the girls learned from him (the ever to remain unnamed dad), and passed on to me, was brushing your tongue (as long as you had your toothbrush in your mouth anyway.) I’d never heard of such a thing but it made sense to me. The first time I stuck mine out to examine it, I couldn’t believe all the gung on there. Now there are even toothbrushes with tongue scrubbers on the back (and having a grandson in the house I’m well aware of the tongue scrubbing Oscar of “Shark Tales.”)

Such strange thoughts. Light thoughts. Freeing my mind from “heavy” thoughts.

Maybe it’s one of the reasons you ought to write about your good days more often…or maybe not. My misery wasn’t spiritual angst this time but concern over my grandson’s new pre-school. His mom is starting school herself, and she’d decided it would be a good time (Henry just turned three), to get him in a school environment too. She chose a Montessori School and I fell in love with it. That’s what I could have written a blog or two about – how cool it was.

Watching a little boy, just about Henry’s age, tending the plants. You want to feel your heart just about burst, go to one of these places and watch these kids in their tiny aprons and watch their small fingers as they go about their business so precisely: unrolling a mat, carrying a plant, unscrewing the spout from a real (glass) water sprayer, filling it and walking back with total tightrope or beauty pageant balanced concentration. Turning the plant by inches and spraying all around. Putting everything back where it came from.

Or observe the little girl making art prints. Or hear the hush of children not screaming.

Then…after the falling in love, and after determining it was just the right fit for Henry…THEN it gets revealed that the hours of her school, and the hours of his, don’t mesh.

Now let me tell you that when your grandson has lived with you since birth, and you begin, along with your daughter, the hard work of moving them, and you, along to independence, you feel like an ogre if you want to say, “This doesn’t allow you to be independent!” You want to cry because she didn’t simply go out and find a daycare situation that met her needs, and you want to cry because she found a school that’ll meet her son’s.

When you’re trying to carve out a little time for something like writing (or your life), and you see another something that’s going to whittle that back once again, and then you think you’ve got to balance it with ‘what’s best’ for a three-year-old boy…well let me tell you…you feel it.

This sandwich generation stuff is exasperating.

Simply talking about it makes you feel selfish (at best), especially when your husband still thinks he and you can do it all, and your daughter is making all the appropriate noises about wanting to do it herself. I got myself downright sick over it. I’m still burping as I type.

We managed to work out a reasonable-sounding solution, and I comfort myself with the idea that this is what I’m going for as much as anything else. I’m going for a new and desperately needed “not going along” stance in life…you know…when you begin to say “No” to a few things so you can say “Yes” to a few others…and then, sometimes, you compromise (and hopefully don't have too many things to whine about).

I turned Traveling Mercies to a page with a corner folded down and read about a time when Anne’s son was sick, and her terror, and read that “sometimes when you need to feel the all-embracing nature of God, paradoxically you need to hang out in ordinariness, in daily ritual and comfort.” She talks about friends sitting on the bathroom floor with her (where she went to hide her terror from her son) and how it was like the old days when they were on LSD and “sat close and breathed together.” She says, “It would be great if we could go in and out of this place without needing drugs or Ahab on our trail – go into the mystic or the eternal present or whatever we might call it out here in California. But mostly it seems like we can’t do it when we have our act together, because we can’t do it when we’re acting.”

See why I needed her? This “not going along” thing is like not acting. I needed to work through my feelings for Henry and my feelings for me. My protectiveness of his spirit and mine. I even needed to consider my daughter a little bit. And so today, even though I’m still burping, my concerns are up and out and if it all works out as it was negotiated, Henry will get his time, and I’ll get mine.

Quote from Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, Anchor Books, a division of Random House, 1999, p 167