Something about change? Some kind of constant? As is often if not always the case, I find myself reflecting on the cycles and the seasons. Where I am in them and how the overlay of the multiple phases and stages intersect, interweave, and integrate.
Soooo much feels like it’s changing right now. I imagine that that must be how it feels for so many folks after so much uncertainty, followed by so much sameness, followed by so much reorienting; each having become part and parcel of the world for the last many months. And as much as I feel myself to be at a particular point within my own evolution trajectory, I am also so deeply interconnected in those of the community of my family that it can be hard to discern what part of the cycle I am in. Is this an end? A beginning? Am I still in the middle of something? Or is it really, always and forever, the interwoven play of a multiplicity of stories, each different, none separate.
This past week or so has been mostly just staying upright and keeping on with whatever is next. Wilfred has been in a bit of a sleep regression I think perhaps triggered by some developmental leaps, both in his own being and in the fabric of his daily life, that have him feeling very clingy and mama-centered in a way that is not so typical- for any of our kids ever really. But Wilfred is shy. Maple was observant yet independent. She wanted to assess a situation before establishing her place within it. Eider has always been full steam ahead. He has almost always simply jumped right in, figuring out the who and the what entirely on the fly. Wilfred is reminding me and teaching me that all children are their own and that he needs more time and more holding before he can set his feet down into the mix. Maybe it is a result of the quiet and calm of being a Covid babe or maybe it is simply a part of who he is and I am learning to hold space for that. I think maybe I was shy? I certainly wouldn’t call myself or any of the rest of us shy today. But we have space to learn how this is with our littlest.
Anyhow, all of this was perhaps exacerbated by our recent trip to Maine which involved not only different places and people but also an unfamiliar sleep situation coupled with some freezing temps that brought him into my bed and onto my breast in a way that he has not been since he was brand new. The whole thing has all of us sleeping hardly at all and me feeling a lot like a human pacifier which really becomes a dark terrain for me before too long. We have been circling the conversation of night weaning, like forever, and I keep dragging my feet and thinking that I can manage as is knowing full well that I cannot. But… but I am so tender about ending something that we have had since the very beginning, a major chapter in our origin story with one another. It is a severing of sorts and I am reluctant to make it. With Maple, it was hard and complicated like this too, but I knew that I would have another after her. With Eider, nursing was almost always uncomplicated and easy and it really just eventually and naturally faded to grey with little effort on my end. I was hoping for something like that now as well. Oh well. No child is quite the same as the next. As it should be. Anyhow, I am in a liminal space around the whole thing. Not wanting it to stay the same, not wanting to let it go. Feels like the central path of the mama for sure.
All the while… big happenings, and yet oh-so-natural unfoldings are lining up for Maple and Eider this summer. Eider was just accepted off the waitlist for a 3-week summer session at Farm and Wilderness in Southern Vermont. We just firmed up scholarship and financing last night and I am so excited for him I can barely stand it. I also am beside myself on how the hell I am going to make it 3 weeks without my guy. I imagine there will be some rough patches for him as well but good lord that kid deserves some time away from being my biggest helper and near-constant companion as well as the opportunity to be mentored and supported and course-corrected by folks beyond just Chris and myself. I am not a great letter writer but I aim to become the very best one this summer. Like, the BEST.
Maple too is set for a whole new grand experience beyond our nest this summer. She is spending 6 whole weeks on Islesford. Three with us when we are there in July, but then she is staying on in the home of a lifelong pal of hers for another 3 weeks. If all lines up as she hopes, she’ll be working both a job and an internship and just really stepping into the next phase of independence in such a massive way. And, I’ll tell you what, she is not missing a beat. Not a pause or backward glance anywhere to be seen. This girl is READY. Me? ha ha ha ha not so much. I mean, yes and no. She has adventures to be had that certainly do not include me and I am simultaneously thrilled for her and also a little bit broken on what feels like the back end of in-home child-rearing with my eldest.
All told, they will both be away from me (and Chris and Wilfred lol) for 3 weeks, which is a full 2 weeks longer than ever before. And strangely enough, I have only spent the stretch of a week away from them a couple of times in the last near-decade. The year that they were six and three, I was gone every 6 weeks for an entire week for an entire year while I was participating in a teacher training with D and Christina down in Tucson. It was a lot, and at the same time completely fine at the time. So fine in fact that in all of this time since then I have reflected on how that really was the window and there has never been another time that it could have possibly worked again in quite that way. And maybe because of them, but most likely because of me. It was easy-ish to leave six-year-old Moo and three-year-old Eider in a way that I cannot quite imagine at another time and which I certainly don’t imagine any time in the even remotely near future with Wilfred.
Yes, every child is different. And yes, everything changes. But one sure constant is that underneath whatever yesterday’s or today’s struggle is, no matter where we are within the overlay of however many cycles we are each individually and collectively a part of, I want to be still enough inside the center of the Big Picture that I am able to keep choosing responses that inform and encourage our growth as a family and as five people. Each our own. Each united relationally. Each evolving needs and desires and capacities. So, yep yep, it is fucking hard and heart-breaking. And all of it a letting go. Even on the front end. Can you see that from this telling? The way I am being asked to live into the opposites at the same time. Holding one close, maybe closer than is comfortable, while at the same time swinging the door open so that the others can begin to range into ever-expanding fields.
Gah. So that is the story. So much is up. So much is coming. Within it, I am trying to stay somewhat centered in what stays the same. Playing, writing, creating, back bending… with maybe the one new skill this summer in the form of becoming the most amazing letter writer and care package sender I can possibly be.