At the winter beach today, walking with my friend under a lowering sky which later became a lightening sky. Molly loved the beach and the swimming, but it has taken its toll and she is struggling to get up from a lying down position, those old muscles worked so hard doing the wild running that is one of her reasons for living. The others being: to be fed delicious food, (which for Molly includes raw carrots, apples, pecan nuts, and her favourite, pancakes!), and, of course, love.
When I was a little girl and a bigger girl and right up until I became a mother, when I was 23, I was quite brave. I didn't cry at the dentist, I was undaunted in the face of a chronic debilitating illness, but after I had given birth for the first time, I suddenly wasn't brave anymore.
It is such an utterly shocking experience, the whole painful process of giving birth, the labour which racks you, again and again, without letting up, until you don't know yourself, you are a loud wailing being, your greatest wish is for it all to be over, or maybe even for death. It changes you in ways other than just becoming a mother. It liquidizes your resolve, compels the springing of tears to your eyes at the least provocation, results in injury in a permanent part of your mind. (And yes, of course I would do it all over again!)
So I am a weeper. Like my mother before me, and my daughters who have come after me. A six year old girl with the beautiful name of Anna-Karien, spending the afternoon on a play-date for the first time with my little daughters, joined them in front of our tiny little black and white tv when it was time for the one series the girls always watched, The Yearling, about a boy living a poverty-stricken life with his parents in the Florida backwoods, who raises a baby deer and who eventually has to shoot the deer who has become a menace to his family's livelihood.
The girls and I were invariably in tears at some point in each episode, and this one was no exception. Anna-Karien looked back and forth into each face incredulously, what WERE we doing? And then, as if she had just been given permission to do something, she began wailing ferociously, tears and snot and loud snorting sounds, leading us to look at her with some surprise. I don't think she had ever seen anyone crying about an animated boy on a tv programme before, which does sound pretty lame.
But I believe that crying is a good thing, it releases tension, it is part of a passionate life, it washes your soul clean, and perhaps so many men become grumpy old men because all their unshed tears have pickled their feelings and emotions.
I remember when the girls and I went up the Empire State Building, at the top there is a walkway with a fence through which you can look out on the entire city of New York, under a full moon rising, the evening we went, which made it even more magical. There were so many people that we all had a chance to stand close to the edge for a while, then had to step back to allow the next wave of people their turn. As we moved back, a blind person with his seeing-eye dog, stepped in to my spot. And everyone made space for the dog, who put up both his front paws next to his blind master in order to see better, then surveyed the scene with an interested eye, sweeping his gaze in an intelligent manner from one side of the city to the other, enjoying the vast tableau. I walked away with wet cheeks, just as I did from the telephone after hearing the voice of my husband tonight, who had earlier been diverted because the plane "ran out of gas" (??), safe and sound in San Jose.
No comments:
Post a Comment