He’s pulling loose baby teeth out of his head with his own hands. The tooth fairy seems a mere afterthought, though the potential cash is still appealing. He points to his pillow, looks me directly in the eye, smiles and says, “I’m going to put my tooth right here, Mom.”
It’s June and Jeb’s wrapped up fourth grade. Summer’s on. I’d say he’s changed, but that would imply something that is static and complete. No, this here thing we’re doing has just begun, I suspect, and it’s all forward motion. Jeb is changing.
He and a friend fish down at the pond on their own. They ride bikes to the general store, no adult. Jeb’s doing back flips into the swimming pool, “Hey, Mom, watch this!” And I’ll nod approval (inwardly cringing) trying to sound nonchalant as I offer the reminder to push “waaay off” from the edge (already done without my prompting, but hey, I’m a Mom, this is what I do). Or is it?
Jeb’s had a decade of life lessons and my doting eyes. Seems he’s getting the hang of this Planet Earth deal. The foundation has been laid. The basics set in place. My Momness needs to take new form.
As his sphere broadens, I’m being asked to hang back (just a little). He’s learning from the world now, finding his place within it. Exploring beyond the bounds of the familiar lap of the Mother. This is a good thing. This has been the point of these last ten years of training.
Anything can happen. A Mother’s mind knows all this. So it’s a delicate balance. I’m being asked to grow up, too.
Let go, but still watch. Step to the side, but stay just close enough. Know when it’s okay to let him crash and burn (just not too hard).
I realize that this is the first time at this for both of us. It’s all one big experiment, as we navigate through this mother-child process. Ten years ago, we were one body, birthed to two. Over the years, we have been slowly, morphing, growing and stretching into our own individual spaces. One day, we will have separated to the point of no longer even sleeping in the same house.
We’ve got some time for that one, yet. For now, I’m still digesting the fact that Jeb’s feet are bigger than mine. Savoring that he still wants to hug and kiss me. Though yesterday I noticed when he sidled up beside me, we were nearly face to face. His kiss to my cheek, no tip-toes necessary. His voice so matter-of-fact. Mature.
“I think you could all agree that I tried. To be true. To be strong. To be kind. To love. To be right. But I wasn’t And I know you knew this, in each of your ways. And I am sorry. All is lost here, except for soul and body. That is, what’s left of them. And a half day’s rations.”
I watched the movie “All Is Lost” on Mother’s Day. Not exactly an intentional choice, but it was the DVD that was at the top of the Netflix queue that weekend. So Jeb, the Bohemian, and I hunkered down at the end of the day for this award-winning survival tale.
Robert Redford is the one and only character, as “Our Man,” a sailor, alone at sea. There is no dialogue, just the portrayal of a man on his boat, and the series of events that unravel after colliding with a floating shipping container.
I think this is where I give the “spoiler alert” warning (if you have yet to see the movie and don’t want to know details, pause your reading now).
The movie has been with me for the past few days, as I reflect, most specifically, on the ending. The film takes the viewer through the progression of events that begins with a hole in the boat. What ensues is a series of incidences, that despite his efforts, Redford’s character cannot surmount. As soon as he remedies one problem, another arises, as he swiftly loses one security after the next.
photo courtesy of Buffer Me Up
Eventually, he is left with only a leaking raft boat, drinking the condensation from the salt water he creates, using sunlight and a plastic bag.
Finally, with nothing left to eat, a last, remote hope appears in the distance. A light from a ship in the night. He’s able to ignite a fire, that he then fuels with the pages from his log book. In his attempt to feed the fire, trying to be seen, the flames get out of control and engulf his life raft, sending him overboard into the dark waters.
But for his own heart beat and breath, now, in this moment, everything is truly lost.
What to do?
Our Man has reached the point beyond doing. There is nothing to do, it seems, but to surrender. Let go. Release.
And he does. He lets himself sink into the shadowed depths, falling, slowly. Dropping down.
As he drifts downward, he can look up toward the surface and see his circular life raft aflame, a ring of fire. He has been burned by circumstance and sun. Stripped of everything he thought significant. He has passed through flames into the abyss of water, where his life is transforming. Everything he knows is dying.
It has been depicted in some epic tales that only through complete and pure surrender, have the greatest realizations been attained. There is the story of a man earnestly seeking Truth by sitting under a tree, then finally giving up his quest altogether. Once he relinquished his grasping grip, he became enlightened as the Buddha. Or the story of Jesus on the cross, completely giving himself over to the experience of a long and torturous death, only to rise from that passing with life, ever-lasting.
Whether you literally believe these stories or not, the alchemy of pain and struggle into freedom is a metaphor that’s been woven in tales throughout human history. The legend of the Phoenix bird rising from the ashes is a classic story of unbounded potential emerging from a fierce forging. A prize only attained through the complete release into the flames.
Only as I am writing here, am I realizing the significance of watching “All Is Lost” with my son on Mother’s Day. How the final scene in this movie, as Our Man plummets down into the ocean’s black abyss, is one in which I can relate to in my own way.
I have my version of the plummet on the day my son was born. The moment when the mid-wife had checked his heartbeat as he was still in the birth canal, crowning, but not yet born. How she asked me to call upon whatever Powers that I needed to help me birth my baby. That the time was now. He needed to emerge. All of the magic and phenomena I could muster, must be called upon to bring my child into the world.
And when I asked for help from every deity of every lineage I knew, what I heard and felt was nothing. What I saw in my mind’s eye, was a vast and infinite tunnel of blackness, through which, I was quickly falling. There was nothing to hold to. Nothing to grasp. Nothing to help me.
For years I struggled with this birth experience (my son was born healthy and well – so Grace was with me somewhere I like to think). I questioned myself. I believed I’d done something innately ‘wrong.’ That I was so far adrift, I didn’t even know how to pray correctly, at the time of life and death, when I needed it most.
I told this story to a woman who was a Buddhist. She had become blind in the middle of her life, then later, regained her sight. She knew, intimately, about the darkness.
When I expressed my sadness and confusion around having felt not a thing in one of my life’s greatest hours of need, she asked with wonder, “You got the darkness?”
Awe and whisper in her words. “Not everyone gets the darkness.”
Robert Redford’s character, got the darkness. The nothingness. And just as he slipped into all its mystery, he looked up to the surface to see that boat with a light approaching his blazing life raft. Far down with little oxygen, he makes one final attempt.
He swims towards the top, pushing through water, kicking his way back to air.
The final sequence is left to interpretation.
A hand from the boat reaches into the water. Our Man grasps the hand.
The screen shifts from the black, watery shadows to a flash of bright, white light. The film ends.
Was he rescued?
Or did he die trying to reach the surface, the helping hand, only a part of some afterlife illusion?
The movie lets you choose how you want to see it.
Just like life.
So my Mother’s Day delve into “All Is Lost” was unintentional but poignant. I’m still mulling over my birthing story and all that wasn’t there. And all that was (most beautifully, my healthy son, now 10 years old and growing).
Fewer words, no explanation necessary. These are aspects of poetry I appreciate.
Yet it feels as though a few more choice sentences want to follow The Absurdly Beautiful Appointment– a post from a few days ago, inspired by the experience of motherhood.
We all came from Her. Some of us will one day be (or currently are) Her. Each journey unique with common threads.
Myself, I steep daily in the essence of this vast maternal task. Living, wondering, resisting and embracing all of it.
If my poem expressed that mothers are “filled with an endeavor that cannot be given real words,” I’m not sure what I’m doing here in Addendumland trying to further elucidate the unspeakable.
Maybe, you the reader, already got all of this:
That impregnable darkness. It surrounded me when I called upon the saints to assist in delivering my son. Neither atheism nor enlightenment was born of that abyss. Though I was granted a healthy baby, fresh into my arms, my heart filled with hopeful questions.
There is the new mother I know. Set upon a lonely path of living with the father that doesn’t want to be one. Bestowed upon them, a seven pound bundle of purity embodied. A soul housed in a home of shadows and anger. She rests by her mother’s heart, beating with both the greatest joy and deepest disappointment.
And there is every mother’s fear. One that sentences can only stumble through. The heart-searing loss of a child. Hers was only three years old. Death’s blanket hung upon her, though Life insisted she keep breathing. She walked with pain so deep and tender, it hurt to have another touch her skin.
You see, some of these are the mother stories never told.
Though there is beauty, too.
The vulnerable glistening of low tide waters on a mother seal and her baby, resting in morning sun. Their bodies gently rocking in the softest ocean waves.
Or the night when I am witness to the wonder. Firelight in darkness. My boy jumping with his dreams under the stars, whispering wishes near my face with sweet abandon. He wants me to live forever.
And I love this love. And I know I’ll die (this seven-year old does, too, in his own way). I can only embrace the beauty of the moment, bittersweet with understanding that all things change.
Shafts of light dance rainbow prisms in the same room where darkened corners house unknown treacheries. This is the heart of a mother.
You may see her busy about town, though she is often quiet about what it is she’s holding in her chest. Because, of course, how could words describe it? And when would the time be right to tell you?
She’s herding children, running errands, checking off her list. Making sure she meets her appointment.
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