There is a sharp double edge to the sword of having family come visit - eventually they leave and in doing so, take a little piece of you with them. Like walking around with a hole in your shirt, you feel the breeze but can't pinpoint quite where it comes from.
We've just spent a lovely week with my mom out here, a week that seemed to last about 47 minutes...and at the same time felt as though she'd always been here. I think that every child deserves to have grandparents around them to adore and spoil them, and every parent deserves not only the wondrous break, but also the satisfaction of someone confirming what they already know - that their child is the smartest and most amazing creature that ever walked the face of the earth. It is a cruel fate that we only get this once in a blue moon, as circumstance dictates that no one has quite enough money or time to make the trip as often as would be desired. And it is during these visits that you seem most to notice how big is the hole in your life that you were ignoring (if only to avoid the emotional realization of how much you miss your family) and also how quickly time passes. You suddenly see your mother as a grandmother, yourself cast in a role that once was hers; holding the baby in your lap, feeding, bathing changing encouraging...when did this become your reality? Weren't you just the child? Where did that wrinkle come from (yours or hers...)? When did your child learn to say 'accessories' or 'pissed off'? How did I get on this whirlwind of advancing time and how the hell do you get off??
Now obviously I don't want completely off, nay that is a fate worse than aging, but still, what the F? I was watching some video we took of Nahanni getting her new little 'red retro kitchen' (that took four hours to assemble) for 'christmas' (early since Jeanne was here) and I saw myself in a light I had never seen...I was suddenly *gulp* - a middle-aged mother...
How the hell did that happen?
Wasn't I just a young ingenue on the rise, face splashed across the screen or the page in all its (authentically) porcelain glory? Wasn't I just young and fit and upwardly mobile...when did I get...old? Okay, okay, don't lynch me yet, I know I'm not old old, but still...where have all the flowers gone? What happened to me? And what will happen to me when all I have held dear about myself seems to have faded away? How does one age gracefully in every sense of the word? How do you deal with the sadness of watching your parents grow older in pastures beyond yours as you do the same...? How do you deal with the sad realization that days are numbered for us all and that when you live far from each other the ones you share in real time and space grow fewer still?
I spend an inordinate amount of time in grocery stores nowadays and of course, one is bombarded by the rags and the latest one screamed out that 'Jen and Courtney [the ultimate symbols of urban youth and beauty] had face lifts and 'amazing' Botox'! What is there for the rest of us, or worse yet, those of us trying to still retain the tenuous grasp of that game without succumbing to (or necessarily affording) those lifts and tucks and paralyzing enzymes? It seems a little to me like those mythic snakes eating their own tails...there is no winning way to do that...
Yes, it is cruel to see previously unlined faces fall prey to the spiteful ravages of time and gravity, for who doesn't prefer their former unlined self? But by the same token, I saw myself holding Nahanni in that video as she shyly gaped at her new, exciting toy and I saw what I had earned in becoming her mother. The lines that sweep my temples are nearly all hers - and they hold in their hearts a million laughs. I am not the svelte young doe I was (or at least remember myself being?) but I hold in my arms something of such immeasurable value that I think in many ways is degraded by wishing away the battle scars that accompanied the life that led to her.
Am I talking our of both sides of my (gradually increasing) ass? Yes, undoubtedly I am. Goddammit, I want it all! I want my mother young and close and I want money and time and fortune and enough fame to get good roles but not so much they go through my garbage and I want privacy and time with my child and time alone and a clean house and a ravishing sex life and a Ph.D. and to have bought short on the sub-prime fiasco BUT...
Well, you know what the Stones say. And gods, have you seen how they aged?
I have no pithy answers. I am as confounded now as ever, and I supposedly know far more. Is this the fate of these years? Whatever will become of me...? How will I gracefully wend my way through time and space creating the life I wish for my family and myself? I cannot stop what is happening. I cannot stop aging, cannot change distance or time or reality...I can only breathe through the trials and try to do it with aplomb and as much grace as one can muster in mismatched socks and pants with avocado handprints the exact size of an eighteen month old...
I miss you mom. Now I really get it.
