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The title of this post is also the title of a poem by R.S. Thomas. Rest assured, he did not steal it from me.
The day began with the noise of gunfire. Every New Year's Eve in the morning, people -- and I don't know who they are, just local folks -- get together to shoot black-powder muskets. The intervening year gives us just enough time to forget about this tradition, so that every December 31, we are surprised anew.
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Though the year is turning, the season has not, yet. It's still Christmas: the seventh day, a kind of mid-season Sabbath, especially if you consider that the six geese of yesterday are meant to suggest the six days during which God worked at the business of Creation. Today, the seven swans a-swimming stand for the seven sacraments, the gifts of grace.
Anyway, the way the liturgical year drapes itself over the edge of the calendar year makes me think of an enjambment in poetry. The line breaks, but the syntax overrides the interruption.
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Which of course means we still get to listen to Christmas music.
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This new year is the year in which, God willing, the first of my children will leave home. She turns seventeen next week, which is suddenly seeming like an awfully young age to venture forth into the world, though it's how old I was when I went to college, and we've about come to the end of the line of possibilities here at home.
Today she's been upstairs banging out scholarship essays and finishing applications with redheaded vigor, and who can blame her? The whole process is a little like planning some open-ended road trip, where you know you want to wind up at Firehole Canyon in Wyoming by two weeks from Tuesday, but between here and there, who knows; and after that, between the campground and the Pacific Ocean, anything could happen. The fact that the adventure, right now, exists purely in the imagination is what drives the show. You want to get it down on paper, so to speak, even knowing -- or because you know -- that you have no clue how it's all supposed to turn out.
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Several months ago, Amy Welborn asked where all the menopausebloggers were. And I replied to the world in general that
there's not much to write about what's not happening. Or, you do see them, but you see them being those homeschooling mommy-types, because that's what they were doing when they became hormonal changelings, and being a changeling means only that you change. Everything else stays the same. The only difference is that now you're not pregnant, birthing, or lactating any more (even at the height of my fertile glory, I never crafted), and you're maybe a little more taken up with weight-loss, because after all, there is something to say about some things that don't happen.
Of course it's not true that everything else stays the same. If it were, then nobody would be leaving home, and nobody else would be weeping in my room at the prospect and then going off to console herself by trying to play Epiphany's old 1/4-size violin, with a resultant noise like rutting dragonflies -- or at least, the noise you imagine that rutting dragonflies would make if they wore clip-on microphones like Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain -- which, let me tell you, is at least as disturbing as the sound of black-powder muskets going off all over town.
This long, odd thought occurred to me just now. Seventeen years ago today, I was waiting for a child to emerge into the light. I was beyond waiting -- she'd been supposed to arrive on Boxing Day, but by New Year's Eve still had given no indication of ever meaning to leave her dark and comfortable place of residence. Though I myself was very uncomfortable at that point and heartily sick of being pregnant, at the same time I remember being pierced by a strange pre-emptive nostalgia. I wanted to see the baby; I wanted her to emerge and live her life; at the same time, I found myself clinging just the tiniest bit to the loveliness of waiting, unknowing, bearing that unseen child closer to my heart than, physically speaking, she would ever be again.
It was a little like not wanting Advent to end, at least not before all its import has really sunk in. Here on the far side of Christmas Day, the whole year gathering itself to jump the cliff, that previous sentence actually sounds sane to me. Wait, wait, come back! Let's do it again! I'll pay attention this time, I swear!
Well, as we all know, time does not backwater. What strikes me now, though, is that although I'm past having babies, what I'm waiting for now is the birth of my first adult. It's like a pregnancy, but also like midwifery. And it is a generativity which, though screamingly obvious I guess, has taken me pleasantly by surprise.
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Ah. The dragonflies have taken up singing.
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Meanwhile, because heretofore John Denver has been woefully underrepresented on this blog . . .
Merry Christmas AND Happy New Year.
To Jen, and to all y'all, too.
17 comments:
"Anyway, the way the liturgical year drapes itself over the edge of the calendar year makes me think of an enjambment in poetry. The line breaks, but the syntax overrides the interruption."
Sally, that is just a lovely thought. I'd never have thought of it like that; but what a perfect simile! I'm going to be pondering it all evening.
Well, it just kind of struck me. I knew all that prosody would come in handy someday.
I had to laugh--I'm a post-menopausal blogger! Been blogging for years, but just started anew over at Wordpress in December. I find there are still things to say. Thanks for your interesting post.
I knew there had to be more of us out there! Welcome (and welcome back to blogging)!
I loved this post. This season, my thoughts have so often turned to waiting, changing, maintaining, and being a mother of adults. Thank you for expressing all this and Miss Piggy, too.
I grew up with John Denver which made me, of course, seriously uncool to my friends because I am not actually old enough to have grown up when John Denver was cool. I actually own that album and my children somehow became obsessed with that particular rendition of the Twelve Days. I'm actually okay with that and I can handle it quite a few times a day as long as my finger is poised to turn off the music before the next song arrives. Because if I hear John sing "The Peace of Christmas Day" one more time I might do something drastic.
I like what you wrote about your daughter's adventure to come. Parenting in a way which supports the readiness for this type of adventure... well, it frankly frightens me. I'm still processing my college experience and why it was, and wasn't, what is was. It seems you are fascinated rather than fearful. I need to be more of that!
In all truthfulness, I am not looking forward to the hole her absence will leave in our household -- her siblings are going to miss her like crazy, for one thing. And I'm going to miss her company.
She's graduating early -- skipped eighth grade -- and our original deal was that she would have a "gap" year, living at home and either taking classes or working, before going to college. But a number of factors, not least of all her own drive to get on with things, really point to her going away. Chief among these is that we moved when she was 14 to this small town, where the other kids are very content, but which has been claustrophobic for her, socially. Her best friend here went to college this year, too, leaving her at loose ends -- just when she'd finally been settled and happy.
She's filled her time with good things, chiefly orchestra, but it just seems very clear to me that she needs more. And "more" really isn't the local high school. I feel far better about her college prospects (smallish Catholic liberal-arts schools) than I would about just about anything else she might have considered doing. The atmosphere at her #1 choice, where she's already been accepted, seems far more positive to both of us than high school. So I don't really feel afraid for her -- she's been taking classes on a college campus for two years, and I think she's up for the real deal.
But it'll be big changes for everyone, and interesting to see how things shake out here at home with the other kids. And of course, the thought of your child's really not ever being fully a part of your household again is . . . strange and hard. But it's not like we haven't been preparing for this from the time she was born. The big shocker is how quickly it happens.
Hoo. John Denver singing "The Peace of Christmas." That does seem the stuff of nightmares, or parodies, whichever comes first.
More on the subject of parenting: I have so many friends in real life and online who are in the throes of young-motherhood, with babies and small children, and it seems strange to me sometimes not to be in the middle of all that any more. When did that happen? Seven years ago right now I had a newborn, a one-year-old, and two elementary-aged kids, and all those new-parent things were still on my mind, even though by then I was 39 years old and not really new at parenting any more (though I was new at parenting my newest child).
It's such a cliche, saying, "It all goes so fast," but it does. I remember my oldest daughter's first year as eternal -- my youngest daughter's first *seven* years have taken maybe five minutes. I still kind of forget she's not a baby.
The other night a friend whose oldest daughter is 12 asked me what it's like having an older teenaged child, and after having to think about it a minute I said that it was like suddenly having another nice adult in the house. Which is true -- I didn't especially set out to be my children's friend, but I find both my teenagers to be really fun, funny, interesting, delightful people (most of the time; we all have our moments), with whom I enjoy spending time. But how we got from attachment parenting and nursing and the toddler who couldn't stand the way her clothes felt, and all the other things which used to consume my thoughts 24 hours a day, to this nice quasi-adult thing, is really kind of a mystery to me.
As one more post-menopausal mother (of 5) - with only one teen left - my thoughts these days are on a different channel than my younger mommy friends. One hurdle I see in blogging about this stage is that my personal challenges so frequently involve the specifics of other (now adult) lives. Not sure I want to reveal too much about my young adults or my reactions to them. But with all 5 home over the Christmas break, I'm very aware that life is evolving. At the very moment that I rejoice in the companionship of my semi-adult children, I'm also re-working my approach to household management and expectations.
I really enjoy teenagers - at least, I enjoyed other people's teenagers. Am hopeful that I will enjoy my own when she arrives. Right now that "I'm not a kid and I'm not a teenager" stage is hard on them and on those around them - both yours and other people's.
Kate -- That's a very good point. I do blog about my children quite a lot (maybe too much), but especially as they get older, there are huge areas of their personal lives which are just off-limits. You can't get mileage out of things that happen with them in the same way that you can with all the poop, puke, and chaos of toddlers and preschoolers. What you read here is a charcoal sketch of the real thing, and sometimes even that's probably too much. I can see that becoming even more true as their lives take off. They are *their* lives, after all, not mine to turn into blog fodder.
Pauler -- I think it probably does help to know that you like teenagers categorically. I don't remember being especially afraid of E's becoming a teenager, even though on the night before her thirteenth birthday we went to a party where every single person -- and it was doubly the case if that person had no children -- took it upon him/herself to inform me that by the end of the week my child would have turned into a monster, with tattoos.
"Gee," E said in the car on the way home, "that wasn't very nice, I didn't think."
So far, so good, anyway. Thirteen is a moody age, at least for boys -- I think of it as the Y-chromosome version of 11, which to my mind is the nadir for most girls. But on the whole, I really like these people. And I'm hoping that these transitions will go as smoothly for the younger ones, though the fact that they are more or less a matched set makes the dynamics really different at any age than what we experienced with the older ones.
I'm not quite menopausal, and I don't blog, but my oldest are college freshmen this year. This time last year, most of the other mothers I knew whose oldest were applying to college were very weepy at the prospect of losing them. I, on the other hand, felt a deep sense of accomplishment: we and they were achieving what we've been aiming for all these years.
Not that we don't miss them, of course. We, too, enjoy the company of our semi-adult children, and they enjoy ours. Watching them grow without as much input from us is also fascinating.
My verification word is "speri"--how appropriate!
I tend to vacillate. I haven't been exactly weepy -- still got three more at home, so we won't exactly be lonely, and though the shift in dynamics will be interesting, I am looking forward to focusing on my second child as the oldest for a bit, and thinking that it will be good for the youngers to move up the ladder, too. But the thought of her not being here all the time, and really being, all of a sudden, grown up and gone, does give me pause from time to time. It'll be strange at first, for sure.
I do know what you mean about that sense of accomplishment. Yeah! We got a college acceptance letter! It's really happening! Homeschooler's Life Not Ruined! &c. Just writing up a narrative transcript to send around with the applications gave me a huge sense of wonder at what we've actually done, what this child has actually read and written and talked about and experienced.
Oh, and if you were menopausal, the sight of grass growing would make you weepy. Or homicidal. Or both.
This is the first chance I've had to listen to that Steeleye Span carol. It's great, and I love the pictures, too.
"labless" Is it "la bless" or "without a lab"?
AMDG
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