Too Much for One Suitcase

I remember the day my daughter Lucia was born. I felt an enormous wave of surprise and then joy. I was sure Lucia was going to be a boy because my mail carrier Denise always said that I was carrying a boy. She was so sure that it made me sure. “When you can’t tell you’re pregnant from behind, it’s a boy,” she said, “because girls steal your beauty.”

I remember being kind of appalled by that statement, but I was fond of Denise and decided to simply accept her prophecy and disregard the rest. I was in labor for forty-three hours. This was in the days of flip phones and fewer cell towers so we were not in touch with the outside world every second. While I labored in the hospital, no one on the outside knew what was going on.

Finally, in a fit of energy that came literally from the depths of my loins, I stood up, leaned on the extra bed in my room, and squatted Lucia out. “It’s a girl,” the midwife declared, and as I stood, legs trembling, they bundled her up and gave her to my partner to hold while I hung out a while longer to deliver the placenta.

When I finally held Lucia I felt like I knew her, like somehow she’d always been there. I was elated, comforted, that this little being would be familiar to me — I had been a baby girl once and worked my way through the stages of girlhood into womanhood. I would be able to understand and comfort this precious being. I would be a good mom to her.

Now Lucia is seventeen, at the edge of womanhood, the precipice of independence. I still remember as clear as yesterday the moment I first held her, first understood that she would be my daughter. It’s been hard lately. I’m the heavy, the rule-maker, the line-drawer, the boundary-setter. In the eyes of a young woman who feels ready to launch, I am a major spoiler.

Last week in a hangover of mother-daughter conflict, I was walking along the lake and I had the image of a suitcase, an old brown canvas suitcase with Naugahyde trim and silver buckles, stuffed with wrinkled clothes and too many shoes. The suitcase was too full to zip up and clothes were squirting out from all sides. This suitcase is Lucia’s life right now. She is bursting at the seams and I am trying to tuck her in, squeeze all her parts into the suitcase so I can zip it up and keep her contained. It’s not working. 

I’ve been thinking about that suitcase, about how it would feel to Lucia to be stuffed into a place she no longer fits. I’ve been there. I faintly remember the days when I didn’t understand why my parents had rules; I remember thinking the demands they made were arbitrary and controlling. The curfew, room cleaning, and nightly dinners made me mad and resentful.

A few days ago I caught Lucia in a big lie. She tried to cover it up but ultimately exposed herself and got busted. The suitcase was exploding before my eyes. While I waited for Lucia to come home from a friend’s house I panicked about how I would respond to her. My partner talked me through it —  she reminded me that Lucia needs guidelines and consequences, she coached me to stay calm, and reinforced the reality of the situation — that Lucia is still Lucia, she’s just being seventeen.

When Lucia got home we went upstairs to talk. “Do you want to say anything?”, I calmly asked her. Sitting on my bed, legs hanging over the edge, she looked at me and told me the truth about where she had slept the night before. 

We talked for a long time — about what a better option would have been to retain trust in our relationship, about what’s going on with her at school, about how she feels tired and overwhelmed in her life right now. I’ve imagined how insane it must be to be Lucia — school every day, a job both weekend days, homework, friends, college prep. It’s a hamster wheel of responsibility in a body that’s still figuring out what it means to be in charge.

The feeling I got from Lucia, even though she’d just been busted, was one of relief. “I just feel so tired Mom, like life never stops,” she moaned while lying on her side, perched on her right elbow. “That’s a message,” I told her, “and you have to listen to that. You have to set some limits for yourself so you don’t feel so crazy.” 

I understood at that moment that right now, as much as she wants to, Lucia can’t hear her own signals. There is too much noise and distraction and expectation. She’ll keep going, maybe until she’s in trouble. So for now I need to help her know her limits.

The conversation went far better than I had hoped. I felt, for the first time in weeks, that we’d truly heard one another. Shortly after we talked I went to sleep. The image that came to me was of Lucia floating in a large plexiglass box across the universe, swishes of stars all around, a beautiful dark sky, a great expanse. I imagined Lucia floating within the box, traveling somewhere. And in my mind, I knew that she needed to stay in the box to stay safe. 

Only when she got to her destination could she safely push open the walls of the box and explore. If she pushed one side of the box to open it before her destination, red lights would flash and a great siren would blare to alert her that she was entering the danger zone. 

As I drifted off to sleep I felt a sense of calm I haven’t in a long time. This teenager parenting gig momentarily made sense to me. Right now I’m the red lights and siren. I have to be the warning signs until Lucia gets to her destination (whenever and wherever that is); until she learns to listen to her own signals. 

I understood that the suitcase I had been trying to squeeze Lucia into was too small and confining. It was too dark and closed and stuffy. 

The image of Lucia in a more expansive galaxy helps me remember that Lucia is going somewhere, maybe somewhere far away. To get where she’s going, she needs to be able to see, to look around, to experience life. There is still a part of me that wants to zip Lucia into a suitcase and release her when her pre-frontal cortex is fully developed, but if I did that we’d both be miserable.

For now, I just have to stick with the idea that for the next little while, as Lucia travels across the universe of adolescence, I can help her by signaling the danger alarm for her. In not too many years I know that she’ll be old enough and wise enough to signal it for herself. 

Tunnel Vision

 

Parenting is a dark tunnel. They don’t tell you that the moment your baby is born. And even if they did there would be no way to believe it. The glow of amazement is too saturating; no darkness can permeate that moment right after your beautiful baby is born.

But adolescence is another story. A teenager’s job is to travel away, to move outward, following the umbilical cord of life away from one’s mother and towards the great wide open plains of life.

I parent in a way that I wasn’t parented, which means that I over-parent. Throughout my parenting life, I have been over-involved, over-engaged, and over-invested. I love being a mother. It’s one of my greatest accomplishments and constant delights. I never get tired of my daughter Lucia, even when she is impatient and irritated with me, even when she throws her clothes on the floor and leaves her bathmat in a wet, mildewy pile. I’m like a loyal golden retriever, always at the ready for some action. I pant for joy when I see her and lick at her heels for attention when she passes by. 

For many years this worked. My loyal, abiding presence was welcomed by Lucia when she was a baby and a toddler, and even a pre-teen. But now that she’s seventeen it’s an impossible equation — loyal dog and jet-setting traveler. 

Lucia is normal — school, work, friends, shopping, sporting events, parties. She’s living her life to its fullest, and that’s her job. And I am still here, lying in my dog bed, tennis ball in my mouth, ready to play. 

I know what I am experiencing is a universal experience for parents of teenagers. There is a natural grieving as parents watch their children leave the nest. The healthy thing for our children to do is fly away. 

I am working my muscles of patience and faith, trusting that this phase will evolve and Lucia will come back. Intellectually I know this truth, but emotionally it’s hard to be a lonely old dog. And scary. The unknown of Lucia’s life as she forges her own path is terrifying for me. There are days when I am filled with worry so fierce I have to close my eyes and count my breaths until the grip in my chest dissipates.

What came to me a few weeks ago as I meditated one morning was the image of a young girl at the end of a dark tunnel. The tunnel was like a coal mine, dark with a dead end. The girl was me as a nine-year-old. She (I) was far away, maybe 200 yards into the tunnel. I could see her and I wanted her to come closer so that I could take care of her, comfort her.

Since that morning, when I meditate, the same image appears to me. As I’ve tried to make sense of this vision, I realize that the girl in the tunnel is me, but it is also Lucia. Lucia is far away and I want to draw her nearer to adult me, to the light at the opening of the tunnel. I want her to come closer. I want to know Lucia, to understand and comfort her. 

But I am also the little girl. The feelings of fear, darkness, the unknown, are mine, not Lucia’s. My irrational parenting fear is that Lucia is lost at the end of the tunnel because I do not know her, do not feel her, or understand her right now. But I’m wrong. Lucia’s not in that tunnel. She’s in the light, her own light. 

Lucia is fine. She is finding her own glow of amazement out in the world. And that’s what she should be doing. She’s not lost. She’s glowing. She’s living her life without a drooling dog nudging her shins to throw the ball. It’s what I want for her. 

The truth is my fear is not about her, it’s about me. It’s the fear of the loss of my daughter. It’s the fear of change in my role as a mother. The dark tunnel is real. But it’s my tunnel, not Lucia’s.

When I meditate now I try to envision an open tunnel, one with sunshine and light on the other side, a tunnel that leads somewhere exciting and wonderful, glowing golden fields leading to rivers and mountains and towns and cities. I imagine Lucia running towards the light, out of the other side of the tunnel. My heart smiles as I imagine her running free, finding great adventures and happiness on the other side of the tunnel. 

I Remember You. But I Don't Remember Me.

 

Last weekend I spent two days with my twin sister and three of our high school friends. We’ve only seen each other a handful of times over the years because we live all over the country in four different states and it’s hard to get together, especially as a group. To my surprise, everyone was able to coordinate their busy lives to make the weekend happen.

It’s been more than forty years since we became friends in a tiny high school on the south side of Chicago. We’ve lived all over the country and the world. Some of us have been married and had kids. Some of us have been divorced. We’ve lost parents and siblings. We’ve gone to college and graduate school. We’ve had jobs we’ve loved and jobs we’ve hated. We’ve each lived over half a century. The opportunity to come together and connect as older women was thrilling.

It was also slightly daunting. My twin sister told me that she almost texted us all that she had COVID on Thursday so she wouldn’t have to come. Another of the five said her daughter had to really egg her on so she’d follow through. I myself hemmed and hawed about getting on my 6 am flight after a long week of work.

But we did it. The five of us gathered at my mom’s house outside of Phoenix. We decided to hold our reunion at my mother’s house in part to offer her a distraction from the recent passing of my stepfather. I’ve been worrying about Mom being alone after over forty years of partnership. I thought bringing the old crew back would be healing for her. What I didn’t realize was how healing it would be for the rest of us.

We spent a total of forty-eight hours together. We drank coffee on Mom’s patio, hiked, shared meals, went thrift-shopping, and laughed. We sat outside in the sun or on couches in the living room drinking our coffee or our wine, sharing stories of our current lives and retelling stories from our high school days. We laughed until we peed. After a few hours, it felt like we were in high school all over again.

It was hard to believe that forty years had passed since we’d first become friends. It was obvious from the outside that we’d all aged, but energetically everyone felt fundamentally unchanged. As I watched and listened to these old friends, they felt utterly familiar — the dry sense of humor of one, the squinty-eyed cackling laughter of another, the overflowing curiosity of a third, and of course the life-long knowing of my twin sister.

They were all so familiar to me, yet as I thought back to myself, to what I was like at that age, I couldn’t place myself. It was as if I was a ghost. I wondered if I’d been like I am now — anxious and chronically planning, directing, taking charge. I wondered if my friends felt the same familiarity with me that I felt about them.

Why couldn’t I remember myself as a teenager? At age fourteen or fifteen or sixteen, I was so focused on the outside that I couldn’t connect with what was on the inside. I observed and studied my peers —  how to dress, flirt, eat, dance, and interact with my parents. I learned how to be from watching others instead of from feeling myself.

I thought back to how I was in high school. Our sophomore year I spearheaded a service group to help us bolster our college applications. In our senior year of high school, I planned our spring break trip. I booked the hotel, bought the plane tickets, and wrangled the troops to get us all from Chicago to Sanibel Island, Florida via Newark, New Jersey on People’s Express Airlines. I was the one who took more than the mandatory science and math classes because I thought it made me seem smarter.

And looking back to my younger years, I could see that I am still very much like I was in high school. I still plan the trips and organize the events. I still take on too much responsibility. This is me. This has always been me. When I was a teenager I felt too self-conscious, too different, to embrace this identity. But now I’m older. I’m wiser. I feel okay about who I am.

Over the course of the weekend, we all laughed with (and sometimes at) each other. My friends and sister playfully teased me for my over-planning and bossy approach. They grew irritated by my insistence that we create a shared album of the weekend on our iPhones. But it was okay. I could laugh with them because I wasn’t looking for my identity outside of myself anymore. Finally, after all these years I could see myself clearly. I could just be me.