Among many other lessons, children are powerful teachers about what it means to be in a relationship with another person. It means that you won't always get your way. It means that sometimes their mood will bring you down, or yours will bring them down; it also means that sometimes their mood will bring you up, or yours will bring them up.
Simply put, it means that sometimes it will make it feel easier to be on this earth, and at other times it will make it feel harder. And this is true with almost all relationships. But one thing that feels different to me about children is that even at its hardest and most uncomfortable, having children always makes life more worthwhile, and this is something to fall back on during the hard times. Having children is the first job I remember wanting as a little girl, and raising them feels like the most important job I'll ever have. I love my children dearly, and feel lucky to be able to enjoy them most of the time, but even when the joy isn't at the surface, I never lose sight of pure goodness of the relationship and its mutual benefit for parent and child.
Not so for me with romantic relationships. In these I find that even in my current relationship, where the goodness and the joy are much closer to the surface, that I go through times of profound doubt about the benefit to myself and to my mate about being in a relationship. I don't feel the certainty I feel in my relationship with my children, though I do seek it in ways that society suggests one can find certainty in a romantic relationship: desire to cohabitate, to marry. Meeting with reluctance on those fronts, especially as deeply into a relationship as I'm in now, makes me feel really uncomfortable and filled with doubt about its "rightness" -- something I never, ever question in my relationship with my kids.
It makes me wonder what would happen if I just chose not to doubt its rightness, rejecting the need for certainty and the fear that arises when it can't be found. I try to do that, but inevitably, when I get too uncomfortable or too scared, I listen to the doubts and they take me further away, to a safer, less vulnerable place. A place without the same lows, yes, but also without the same highs. And I really think that's the primary difference between loving a child and loving someone romantically -- I'm not afraid to love with my whole heart when it comes to my kids. Fear doesn't drive my decisions in that role in the same way that I sometimes allow it to in my lovelife.
I read someplace once that the only people deserving of unconditional love are children. And I get that. If this weren't true, those who were abused by their mates wouldn't have a reason to leave, even in the wake of being mistreated. And so another complicating factor, apart from the guardedness that comes from wanting to protect yourself -- or maybe part and parcel of it -- is ensuring that a relationship with another adult has agreed upon values and expectations that allow for the creation of boundaries within which both partners feel safe and capable of getting their needs met.
Given this, I think these are my quests in the coming year: to choose love -- for myself, for my children, for my partner -- but also to work on coming up with those agreed upon values and expectations and boundaries that will help bring a measure of stability -- and maybe equally importantly -- to continue to work with being ok with the uncertainty and the impermanence of the human condition.
It's unusual, I know, for me to blog on for so long without getting to the song choice, so without further ado...
Soon after my daughter got back in the car after a fun-filled day of downhill skiing with my boyfriend a couple of hours north of Madison, she started to complain about having to ride in the car. Granted, she was more frustrated with this than usual because a broken DVD player meant not being able to watch her beloved Garfield.
Upon seeing a mileage sign on the side of the highway saying 112 miles to Madison, she remarked: "This sucks. We're 112 miles from nowhere and I've got nothing to do."
And the irony of the statement struck me as
Cat Stevens voice began to sing inside my head:
Miles from nowhere
I guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there
Look up at the mountain
I have to climb
Oh yeah, to reach there
And of course, the thing that is so hard to understand as a child, maybe because it's pretty damn hard for adults to understand it sometimes, too, is that it's not about where you're going. It's about where you are. Right now.
Learning to be ok with that, not attaching too much significance to a particular destination or vessel:
Lord my body has been a good friend
But I won't need it when I reach the end
...that's our challenge as human beings, I reckon:
I creep through the valleys
And I grope through the woods
'cause I know when I find it my honey
It's gonna make me feel good
...to realize that it's not all about feeling good. It's about feeling, and being ok with whatever that feeling is:
I love everything
So don't it make you feel sad
'cause I'll drink to you, my baby
I'll think to that, I'll think to that.
Miles from nowhere
Not a soul in sight
Oh yeah, but it's alright
Here's the part where Cat Stevens is grappling with the values and expectations and boundaries bit that I was discussing above -- only he, at least in these lyrics, is choosing the easier, but less rewarding (in my own humble opinion) path of shutting out others:
I have my freedom
I can make my own rules
Oh yeah, the ones that I choose
As for me, I choose to make some of the rules, and to learn, little by little, step by step, that my ability to make room for others' needs and to live by their rules (at least the rules of theirs that I can accept), is ultimately going to lead to a greater freedom than being alone ever could:
Miles from nowhere
I Guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there.
I should know. I am a mother.
