As school vacation ended this past week, I was desperate for my children to go back to school. When we have all been in the house for a little too long there is an itchy, restless feeling around the edges of everything they do. In my body it manifests as massive fatigue. When they were all home it felt like a huge effort to do anything, the second they left I found myself energized and able to address my to-do list.
I don’t like that itchy, cranky feeling, it feels like a lack of gratitude. Sitting in my warm safe house with my three kids and my loving husband and feeling unsatisfied seems fundamentally wrong. I know I only feel this way because I am desperate for us to return to the routine that comes with school and work. Even knowing that, I search for an antidote, I remind myself how lucky I am, I sit for meditation, or go for a run. Truly there is only one thing that really helps, and for me it is reflecting on the alternative.
Last New Year’s, Colin wasn’t feeling well. He was tired, stressed and his back hurt. In fairness, we are both tired and have been since Ben appeared in 2004, so when he complained of exhaustion, I ignored it. When he talked about his back hurting I told him to stretch, put your legs up the wall and breathe deeply. When he said he was going to see a doctor, I shrugged. The doctor ran a million tests and they were all inconclusive. Colin’s face was slowly turning gray but I couldn’t see it. I was too busy thinking about the details of our life. The kids’ schools, our leaky roof, our muddy driveway, my own aches, pains and frustrations. I was so engaged in our day-to-day that I wasn’t able to see that my husband was fading away. Or maybe I didn’t want to see it.
In February he had an angiogram, and they found and cleared a significant blockage, one they call the “widow-maker.” At the time I just focused on how lucky we were. I heaped praise on Colin for seeking out a second opinion. I talked about the miracles of medicine and joked that he had eaten his last cheeseburger. We have a habit in our family of turning difficult realities into punchlines and this was no different. He would joke that with his new “gear” as we referred to the stent that he was like a newborn; he could throw himself into bad habits with gusto. I would feign horror, knowing that we would find some easy middle ground.
It wasn’t until the end of this year that I really thought about how differently the story could have ended. There are many skilled practitioners of Buddhism who can find gratitude without thinking of what could have gone wrong. I am not one of them. As 2015 ended, I found myself thinking more and more about what could have happened, about my life without Colin. Not just the practical financial aspects, which would be grim at best, but also the impossible loneliness I would feel in his absence. When I find myself irritated by the hundreds of water glasses he manages to use and leave behind in a day, or the peanut butter with a knife sticking out left on the counter after lunch, or the fact he never quite remembers to close the fridge…. When I see those things and start to think to myself “what the ????” I think about the other ending we could have had to 2015, the ending where my husband got so gray that he disappeared altogether. When I think about that I don’t even see the water glasses or the peanut butter.
One of my favorite phrases in Buddhism is “skillful means.” It is used to describe the many different methods available to people as they search for truth. The longer you practice, the more clear and efficient your means become. It isn’t especially skillful to appreciate the life you have by imagining the worst case scenario. But for now it’s what i am working with. I cannot seem to learn the lesson enough times that the real treasures are hidden in the most ordinary days.
I am a polygamous parent. We all are to some degree. If you have more than one child you know they need different parenting styles and norms. In our case having two sons who are neurotypical or normal and one daughter who is severely autistic, we are almost constantly managing two distinct families. We are lucky in that our sons adore their sister and vice versa. Since the moment they left for sleepaway camp she has insisted on spending hours sitting in the car. Despite the fact that she can’t speak she understands that eventually that car will bring her back to her brothers wherever they may be.
When a house is filled with young children it vibrates with movement. Even when they are absent their clothes swirl in the dryer, their dog snores on the couch, their toys wait patiently on every available surface. I have found that it is easy to get caught up in the movement, particularly if both parents are working. There is always something to do: a meeting to attend, a room that needs picking up, an appointment that needs scheduling, cupcakes that need to be made…..The days seem to gain speed until all of a sudden they are years. I remember holding Benny once when he was small, it was two in the morning and he was on an elaborate sleep strike. It felt personal, as if his 8 or 9 week old self was deeply committed to disrupting my sleep, potentially forever. I was giving an internal finger to all those well meaning people who had looked at my newborn and said “enjoy it, it goes so fast…” Not at 2 in the morning it doesn’t…..
Katherine Osnos Sanford 