A lack of sleep and weeping at beauty

First off, I am going to do something i rarely do, and when i do, it is inevitably by accident and not design. Today is different. Today, i post something again. Deliberately. A few days ago, I posted a link to some music videos suggested by one of my favorite blogs. Well, I bought two of the artist’s albums subsequently. One of the songs I am linking again today. I made comment at the time about beauty. This song, with its odd combination of mourning and exultation is so evocative, so able to reach into your soul, and move it. Or at least it has done so for me.

It is a piece of music that summons ghosts. It evokes memories, calls up long shattered dreams and hopes, summons anguish long past. It is also a piece of music that, having done so, promises comfort, delivers a vision of a better future, reminds you that there is also hope.

And now, a warning. Deep introspection ahead. My blog is often my posts of things I find that capture my attention, often technical, but also of my other interests. But sometimes, well, I will reveal something of myself. It tends to be raw and uncensored. Therefore, be warned, such a post is looming, and it goes to some deep places. Some darker, sadder ones. This si not a happy post, nor is it entirely of sorrow. My life has much to rejoice in. Most of that is contained in the bodies of five of the most magic people there could be, my children.

Lately, I have been feeling very old. Nearly forty four is not really old. I love in a fortunate society with decent health care, and given my genetic history, can reasonably expect to live as much again, and with increasing medical advances in the field of gerontology, expect perhaps further, with ever increasing prospects for quality of life.

Yes, here I am feeling old, tired, as if winter has entered my soul and has no intention of leaving. I smile, but it is on the surface. I am easily moved to tears, yet less easily to mirth. Once, I was different.

I look at my children and see joy still. So loved are they, so deeply my raisin d’être, that I simultaneously rejoice in the adults I see them each becoming in their turn, and mourn the time i will no longer have with them, as each in turn moves on to their own life. I would have it no other way, and this is the ache every loving parent knows. Holding them back would be abhorrent to me, and the joy I find in each stage of them, the wonder of seeing then reach their potential, to come into their own and fly, is so sharply poignant joy and pain combined. When my oldest visits, I act normally, but there are moments when I see her younger self and i am choked with missing the closeness that we had, when she would run to my arms love and comfort, when I was so much more in her life. Would I change a thing now? Of course not, she is magnificent, magic, and I cherish her adult self as much, and am gladdened she has found her independent grown wings. I see the signs with the next one, so close to 18, and the middle one, almost 16. It oddly makes the times i have with the younger two, 9 & 7, more sharply focused on just enjoying them.

I think you are so busy learning with your first child. Having such age gaps (ahh, those gaps, that in a moment) has allowed me to learn many lessons about parenting, and be more in the moment, worry still, but less than earlier, about the job I am doing. I don’t think you ever stop inspecting your parenting to make sure you are doing your best, but you do learn a lot more about what really matters and what really doesn’t. I know with every fibre of my being how lucky I am to be their mother. I have been given such gifts – the joy I find in each of them as individuals, and the deep fulfillment I have found in being their mother.

I also know how lucky i am to have them because of the ghosts of their siblings. Like odd gaps in the fossil record shows life extinguished, so does the gaps between my children show missing lives. Five lives. Three babies miscarried too early to know who they were, but enough to know they were there, and I wanted them, dreamed about them, loved them, my children. Two little girls whose brief lives touched mine so deeply and profoundly, lost far too soon to have had a chance to live, my body their graveyard. One of them I got to hold and farewell, her tiny body cupped in my hands, eyes fused shut still. I held her tiny body and did not want to let her go, but I did. I held the tiny box we buried her in, and feel like I was burying my soul when I placed it in the cold ground. The most I could do was a warm blanket, and the toy that had guarded me as a baby. The only act of motherhood I could give her. Later I went on, in pregnancies filled with fear that breathed with me daily, to have my two youngest, astonished that somehow, miracles had occurred. Yes, of course that eased the pain. No, it does not replace my lost children. Each child of mine has been wanted and cherished and adored, even if unplanned – magic surprises they. None could substitute for the other, their individuals selves, their personalities are so wonderful. I cannot help but to look at them sometimes though, and wonder how their lost sisters would have played with them, which sibling they would have most resembled. I do not regret that sweet sadness, for it keeps them in my present, current life. They will be in my heart always.

I have good friends, but there I have lost, too, and unexpectedly, wounding me deeply. Each loss makes you question why, what happened. Sometimes of course there are obvious reasons, trust placed wrongly, friendships based in a relationship that ends, time and growing apart. But there have been a few, that mattered so deeply, that I swore were the sort that would be always there, the people who you share the deepest experiences with, that bring you much closer, create profound ties. And then some cloud blows over, from nowhere you have seen, and they are gone, carried away in the storm. You never know why. And it hurts so much. You lose faith in yourself, and you question each other friendship, and your ability to see warning signs. You become guarded, wary, unwilling to do anything that might risk that pain again. You either are incredibly cautious with the close friends you still have, hyper sensitive to potential issues, watching yourself so you don’t misstep, and then there are people you keep at arms length, unwilling even more to allow someone that close again.

Lovers are even more intensely that experience. I cannot imagine allowing anyone close again, having heard too many I love yous, too many promises of fidelity and devotion. “Love is not love when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no, love is an ever fixed mark that is never shaken”…Well, so Shakespeare wrote. So I believe. So I have not found. I have loved deeply, passionately, fully. I do not regret doing that, but something has burnt away inside me and left the fire gone, now a cold pile of ashes. I am actually quite shaken by how burnt out I feel, how scared in one level I may never know love again, but worse, the feeling i have lost some integral, passionate part of myself. I lost the capacity to dream when I cost the capacity for faith. Let’s be honest, a crippled 44 year old single mother ubergeek with an aging father is not likely to find love anyway. But it is far more frightening to me to think I have cost the capacity for it…

Winter, a dark cold chill has entered my soul. Work brings me some joy, some small memory of my former passionate self. My children, my father who is beating his cancer thoroughly, my remaining friends, all allow me to see I am blessed. And yet.

And yet I feel I am treading water, hopefully in a direction, though I cannot see it clearly. There is the very real prospect of doing my much dreamt of Phd, an almost long abandoned dream, and I am scared to even think about it for fear of loss. Who is this coward, who once embraced life with gusto and verve? Sometimes, I can lose myself in music, uplift myself, touch a note of genuine happy laughter with my kids, giggle with my friends, lose myself some more in the inspiring work I am doing. But mostly, it is just inhabiting a shell of myself, clinging to the fragments, trying not to let the kids know. The teens probably guess, ms 18 sees everything deeply, but even she cannot peer in this deep. And now ms 24 will know, but I will reassure her, and I will be ok in the end.

I am aware constant physical pain and the associated limitation adds to my problem. I know that sunlight deprivation, in a long cold actual winter also doesn’t help. I am awaiting spring. Perhaps warmth and blossom will awaken some corresponding growth in me. Perhaps the music reached me so, touched me deeply, because it contained hope, and I will take that were I can find it. In the meantime, I would say one foot in front of the other, but if you try that in a wheelchair, you go in circles. And maybe that explains a lot, too.

Now we return you to your normally scheduled tour of the intarwebs. And maybe this will stop people asking for more personal posts…