Forgive me (Feb.28, 2012)

I just watched a show in which the characters were celebrating Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. It’s also the day of forgiveness. I know February is nowhere near the Yom Kippur season, but something about the episode is rattling around me like a desperate bird. I am thinking about family, in all its forms. I hate the way my parents can be so critical of each other sometimes, not really listening or connecting. I know that there is deep love there; I just wish, and have wished for decades, that they could turn on the spot and see each other and the world with different eyes. That they could drop their need to be right, their need to control the situation (overtly or covertly), their need to appear intelligent or perfect or beautiful or superior.  I’m so tired of how it spreads to us, their children, and affects the relationship I've chosen for life. I see it when I want to be right, when I want to look smart and perfect and when I hate being out of control and my temper flares. I detest more than anything A being mad at me, like I do my parents or brother being mad at me. And because I can’t seem to get past these patterns yet, not with daily meditation and yoga, not with therapy, here we are, emulating them for the next generation. I refuse to stand by and watch. Perhaps a better approach is to befriend this shadow side of mine (and all of ours), to understand its triggers and hungers, thank it for its wisdom and lessons. I think I need to stop filtering my parents’ issues like a wrinkled old kidney and step aside. Give them some space. Give me some space.

I wish I hadn't yelled so much at my dad as a kid. I wish I hadn't criticized my brother so much as a teen, and now I wish I wasn't so hard on my mom. Mostly I wish I could forgive A for getting pregnant when I couldn't for carrying our son, for being absent for a while. Somewhere along the way I've broken, and I think it has actually been cathartic. Since successfully crossing the Year-1 line as parents, I feel fantastic and fresh, hopeful. We are eating better, spending more time together. I am still raw and sore, but new skin is forming, strong, flexible skin, my own skin. It bears the marks of life like tattoos imprinted, but wears them proudly as if to say “here is my story, and what I have overcome”. This new skin is powerful, peaceful, and looser (and not just because I’m turning 35). It covers a more integrated body beneath it. My eyes and arms are wide open. Forgive me, all of you, for being honest, for hurting you, for resenting you. I love you forever. 

E

image from http://www.tibetanbuddhistaltar.org/2010/12/how-does-one-learn-to-forgive/

Four!

Heads’ up people, she wants four. Not four Danish doughnuts, four soy lattés, or four People magazines (although she’d welcome all of those). A expressed casually with a sheepish grin a few weeks ago that she wants us to have three more babies. And this is after pushing that lump of a boy out of her still recovering body and being stuck like an all-hours dairy bar since. WTF and whatever the kids are saying these days! When did “let’s have kids” become “let’s populate the Empire”? Has she been whipped up into a nationalist frenzy? Very unlikely, although had we remained in Quebec we would be much celebrated and financially compensated despite being anything but “pur laine”. No my friends, it’s something much more powerful that politics, something secretly ruling humankind for always, it’s… hormones. Maybe it’s just Ben; he is pretty awesome. But I’m pretty sure the hormone motherload has hit and she’s hooked big time. It’s more powerful than her, like the Borg she can’t resist. All physical memory of pain is erased. The nearly nine months of nausea, poof! All our conversations about two, maybe three children, ignored. Intelligent Nature has dug Her clever talons deeply into the willing vessel of my woman, who conceived, carried and popped out this baby like nobody’s business (it’s irritatingly genetic). I will admit that A’s got bragging rights. And if I may say so, is looking fine six weeks later. It’s so bloody unfair.

Our baby just left midwifery care after a sumptuous six weeks post-partum and she’s already talking about a sibling. She wants ‘em fast and furious, like an assembly line of babies. Would she stop at four? Nobody knows. The big elephant in the room (despite a dearth of reality show offers) is of course the chilling truth that I’m next up again to the batting cage. Good… god. I can’t say that I’m really looking forward to picking off all of those emotional scabs. Sometimes all that saves me is the quasi-theistic and totally fatalistic feeling that Ben had to come first, and through A. And that when I try again (or IF, though I’m pretty sure I will) maybe it will be time for one to come through me. That is of course instead of thinking there is anything wrong with my body or karma, or that I have the genetic heritage of conceiving at a turtle’s pace. What A’s enthusiastic new “Breeder” t-shirt’s glittery red letters shout at me is “you better conceive post-haste cuz if you don’t and we switch back to me, the bottom line is my clock is ticking and I’m getting OLD!” Fhew! She’s actually said much of that to me, especially about her fears around aging and “geriatric pregnancies” (after age 35 and we're 33). There is also the implication that I have a time limit, and it’s coming from her, not Time. This is deep stuff. I am not ready for more kids yet. Though I can imagine it in the future, I can barely cope with what’s already before us. Like they say in those 12 step programs, woman, I’m taking this one day at a time.

E