Choosing

20 Aug 2013 12 Comments

by Denise in Addiction, Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

After 15 years of living in a house, Natalie and I have to think apartment-style. We are overstocked with groceries we have to eat through and shampoo and conditioner we have to wash through. It’s Costco and its coupons that’s turned me into a hoarder. Excess disappears into the nooks and crannies of a house. Here – what am I to do with the 50 or so vintage chenille bedspreads I’ve collected to cut up and make into pillows? I could sew for the next 20 years and still not run out of fabric.

I’m swirling in the chaos of the newly-relocated; there’s nowhere for my eye to rest. And I’m still not done moving. This week, Natalie will pick up the last of what’s left at Nadiya’s. Except for the dozens of books I bravely decided to get rid of. What am I supposed to do with them in the short time I’ve left to decide? Have I ever considered that each thing I buy needs a place, that I am responsible for where it goes and where it winds up when I’m done with it?

At home, I’m taking out the photographs, taking out the urns. I found out urns came in different sizes when the funeral director handed me a catalog full of them. You can put all your ashes in a big one, or distribute them among varying styles. You can put some in mini-urns to give to family and friends. They even sell necklaces with charms to put them in so you can carry them with you all the time. Natalie and I sat browsing the catalog one day to choose. Is this fucking crazy, I asked? We’re picking out urns like we’d be picking out our next pair of skinny jeans. I wanted the large rose Cloisonné since I’m all about flowers, but decided to try something different, gold with a band of Mother-of-Pearl inlay. Phil couldn’t deal with looking, so I chose a smaller, more masculine-looking one for him; a rich, deep blue with a matted, etched silver top and bottom. Natalie chose a tiny one similar in style to Phil’s; charcoal gray shot through  gold, with a matte coppery-gold top and bottom.

Phil hasn’t taken his so I’ve given it a place here. Natalie’s is in its velvet box in a drawer. Me? I should have gone with the rose Cloisonne.

There used to be a commercial where a decent if neurotic-looking woman was speaking into the camera with desperate earnestness about all the reasons you shouldn’t smoke. By the time we realize she’s speaking to her kid, the camera pans back and we see the kid’s just a quizzical babe in a high chair, more interested in sticking his fingers up his nose than anything his mom had to say. The message, of course, was to start planting those seeds early and all will be well.

I did that. I am an addict. I told my kids the things I was supposed to tell them about smoking, drugs and alcohol and the science that says alcoholism can be passed along in your genes.  I thought my loving attention would be enough to stay addiction’s hand. I drank because life was unbearable. I thought all I had to do to keep that from happening to my kids was to remove the misery factor. Happy kids don’t drink or do drugs, right? And they certainly don’t die before their parents do.

When Philip was maybe 16, Phil and I found out he was smoking both pot and cigarettes. I was more surprised by the cigarettes than the pot. Who does that any more, especially without a job to afford it? As far as the cigarettes, Phil and I talked to him and he promised he’d stop. Then I got a call from a friend. I was uptown, she said; I saw Philip smoking and I thought you should know. When he came home that day, I told him I knew he was smoking and where he was when he was doing it. He shrank. How do you know, he asked? Because I know, I answered; there are more things I know about you than you realize.

Which wasn’t true, of course. I was trying to strike the fear of God into him. Or of Me, which really wasn’t necessary.  Philip wasn’t a sullen, rebellious kid; he didn’t want to risk my anger, much less my disappointment. I never knew how much he needed me.

And as far as the pot, a week after we found out about it, the three of us sat down with a therapist whose specialty was addiction. The following week, two home drug tests arrived in the mail and Philip was seeing the therapist by himself. It took one visit for her to tell us this was not a kid with a problem. Still, we did one random drug test on him a couple weeks later. It was negative. We kept the second one in a drawer as a threat.

Ed says I feel tremendously guilty. My therapist says the same. Since I do not believe I could’ve done anything differently, I don’t see why they should say that. I mean, a different mom might have grabbed Philip by that long, curly hair she so lovingly encouraged him to grow and not let go until she knew he was safe. Until she knew he stopped hanging around with the kids she didn’t want him hanging around with. Until she got him so interested in books and music and ideas that his mind would have been full of the richness of life instead of being fucked by drugs. But I am not that mom. I am this mom and I did the best I could so what do I have to be guilty about?

See, what I don’t understand is all this talk about what a good mother I am. Philip was sweet and funny and responsible and if you met him, he’d shake your hand and look you in the eye. That didn’t come from nowhere, I’m told. But if I’m to take credit and comfort for the loving face he presented to the world, where does my responsibility lie for the drugs and the alcohol and the poor choices he made that led to his death? I am not God is another thing I’m told. Fair enough. But I am his Mother. Wasn’t my job to teach him enough to choose better? This is the knot I can’t untie, this is where my thinking twists and turns and wraps around itself because no matter my love for him or his for me it wasn’t enough to set him on a path that would have kept him here.

I’m only just realizing the depth of the guilt that’s been running my life. It’s hitting me now how deeply ashamed I feel that Philip’s dead whenever I see a mom and her son doing whatever everyday things a mom and son might do. And if this was your story and you were telling it to me, I’d tell you just how much you didn’t have to feel that way because I’d see it so clearly. But to see it about myself – not so much. It’s going to take faith to see that life means something and discipline to stop my monkey mind when it says otherwise. Faith and discipline, both of which turned to ashes when Philip did. Thing is, how come I believe Philip’s spirit doesn’t lie in those ashes, yet not believe that mine doesn’t, either?

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Gratitude

04 Aug 2013 13 Comments

by Denise in Addiction, Death, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

In AA there’s a lot of talk about gratitude. Make a gratitude list. Replace guilt with gratitude. Put some gratitude in your attitude. All I ever felt about that was resentful. Gratitude for what, exactly? And it wasn’t my circumstances so much as the way I felt. I didn’t take my first drink at 11 for nothing.

Things were difficult with my parents. But I’m not talking about abuse; I was an emotionally precocious kid with a mom and dad I felt I had to manage. At 55 I see they did the best they could; back then, it wasn’t enough.

In the nature/nurture debate, I stand on the side of both. We come into this world with what to work out, and our parents don’t always help us in the way we want them to. Sometimes we can only learn what we need through difficulty, starting with the Moms and Pops. And as far whether we carry either light or grief (or anything in between) into this world, I can speak to this because of my pregnancies. With Philip I felt the same light and ease about him as I did for all the years he was here. With Natalie, I felt a heaviness, and a stubbornness. And she and I have talked about what it is she feels she carries because there are times and ways she’s troubled that seem to just be part of her.

And she is both wonderfully and exasperatingly stubborn.

Regardless of how I got wherever I was, when I was 24 I walked into AA  and thought I found the answer. Back then, I thought there was an “answer.” A one thing I was missing that maybe could be found there. I went to meetings nearly every day for ten years. I watched people come into the rooms and get sober and get earnest and get God and I just didn’t understand why I didn’t get it, too. After two years of not drinking, a man I knew said to me, “This is the first time I’ve seen you at a meeting and you aren’t crying.” Crying has been a big part of my life. It was the only way I knew to ask for help.

I refused gratitude because something always felt wrong. I didn’t want to live and I didn’t think that was normal. I figured most people were happy to be alive but had their moments when they struggled. Not so me. Depression was my baseline; anything else was an aberration. I had a job, a nice apartment, I was making friends in AA; none of it mattered because of what I felt. No matter what I did, I was unhappy. And angry that I was following the rules but God didn’t reach his hand inside my gut and wrench that misery right out once and for all.

I didn’t consider that vomiting on a daily basis had anything to do with my state of mind. I’d started doing that when I was 22, and continued for the first three years or so after I stopped drinking.  I stopped when I met Phil, who seemed quite sane in the face of my crazy and who I didn’t think would stick around if I kept flushing all dinners he treated me to down the toilet. So I dragged myself to the city to attend the Bulimic/Anorexic stepchild-meeting of AA and got control of not only eating, but of letting the food stay in my belly once it got there.

But AA remained the main front. One day I did my fourth step. That means I “made a searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself. There isn’t any one way to do it, but at my sponsor’s suggestion I looked at all the troubled relationships of my past and wrote about them as honestly as I could. Four hours later, I’d learned something. Every relationship I wrote about was the same. I could’ve save 3 hours and 45 minutes had I just changed the names. It couldn’t be that all the people in these relationships were the asses I thought they were. I had a part in all of it, but I couldn’t yet see it.

Of course, all that did was cement the idea that there is something wrong with me.

It’s been a torturous route to gratitude, and it isn’t the fullness and peace I imagined it would be. And I would really appreciate it if someone could explain to me why so much of what matters in life is learned through suffering. Is it the curse of living in a world of opposites? I mean, how do we know except by contrast? If everything was, say, red, then we wouldn’t know not-red. If I’m “happy” all the time, how would I know that I am, except by its unhappy opposite?

Ironically enough, I’ve learned of gratitude through Philip’s death. See, I know how much worse this could have been. If he had to die, at least there was the clarity of love between us.  And I do believe I was being prepared for his death. The images of him dead, picturing myself at his wake, the terrible vulnerability I felt in him and the desperation I had to let him know that I loved him. The joke about finding him dead of an overdose.  That apology I made to him, that seemed to come from nowhere. Philip’s answer to that was, “Mom, I love you and I’m grateful for you.”

He was 21, and he knew gratitude. When I was 21, I sat in a bathtub  and hacked at my wrists with a razor. Yet he is dead, and I am not. Am I the only one who finds this bizarre?

I am grateful that much as Philip’s dead, he’s not gone. He’s not here the way I want him to be, but he’s here in the way I need him. I’m blessed to feel him, to hear him enough to write down what he’s trying to teach me. I’m grateful for the people he’s brought into my life since he died, and for forcing me to feel the heart I didn’t know I had.  He is my muse. And I am grateful that he cracked me wide open because something had to jolt me into the reality I’ve spent my life trying to avoid.

But gratitude is a place I visit, not the home that I yearn for. I’m still struggling with things I’ve struggled with long before Philip died, before he was even born, things that seem insurmountable now that he’s gone. And if my life felt hard more than good when he was alive, it feels impossible to cope with now. Philip’s trying to teach me how to do that. Then you shouldn’t have left me, I tell him; you shouldn’t be gone.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

No Way Out

12 Jul 2013 17 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Home Birth, Motherhood, Pregnancy and Birth Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’m on a crying jag; I’ve a lot going on, and it keeps hitting me that Philip has died. I can’t even say, “is dead.” And people are kind, and that makes me cry even more. Yesterday I wrote to Lucia, Elizabeth Blue’s mom, “And I am overwhelmed at the moment; Lucia, I miss him so. Sometimes I feel like I’m being slowly strangled. I try to remind myself that the moment when I face death I’m going to think it all went so quickly, so let me love my son where he is and my daughter where she is. None of us are here forever. But when I miss him like this, that’s exactly what it feels like. “ And in the worst possible sense.

Which brings me back to Elizabeth Blue’s incredibly prescient and powerful, “Bird’s Nest.” In part:

“Five days ago I watched two birds mate.
Yesterday I watched as they began
in unison
to build their nest.

Today it occurs to me
that I will be gone
by the time they lay eggs
and the eggs make way
for the new life
within them.

Today it occurs to me that I will be gone
The lines between body and land have blurred
and the land will miss my body.
Perhaps it will be lonely
I think it will weep.
I think it will miss me
more than my mind or body
could miss it,”

Reading that poem is like watching Elizabeth discovering something, and what a something.  Nature has much to teach us, if we pay attention. How often we don’t because we’re so busy thinking, as if thinking is going to solve our problem when it mostly is our problem. The mind, it is said, is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.

Elizabeth recognized that maybe the world needs us more than we need it. How different from raging at death because this goddamn world gets to go on while we or those we love do not.  But what is the world, if we are not there to witness is? A world of form requires our recognition. It’s such a big place, this world, such an overwhelming place. And the terror of death is that we’re leaving it behind, and it still gets to be, while we turn to dust. Or does it?

Life is relentless. Death isn’t enough to stop it, but it’s more than enough to wreck those of us who are here to witness it. This is what I mean: maybe death is forcing us to confront just what we think Life is. Forcing us, because we don’t like to think about death. And if we don’t think about death we will become shallow and brittle because nothing will matter except what we look like, what we have, whatever is external to us, whatever draws us farther from ourselves.

I am aching, aching for Philip. Try telling that part of me that, “Death isn’t enough to stop it.” But there’s another part of me that’s struggling with faith and acceptance and the certainty that there’s something else going on, stuggling to understand it and articulate it in a meaningful way.  And there is my constant communication with Philip, who is there for me in a very real way, and who’s been teaching me things always.

I was never afraid of childbirth. In high school I’d  tell my friends, “I’ll have the babies, but you have to raise them.” Back then, I didn’t much like kids, couldn’t imagine even liking my own. But labor seemed like an act of bravery, a jump into the void; confronting the uncontrollable, wondering if I’d come out the other side.

When I was pregnant, I felt the same (about labor – not kids). My kids were born at home with no doctors telling me what to do, no fetal monitors strapped around me, no someone I didn’t trust directing me. I was searching for authenticity through my femininity, and what could be more feminine than giving birth? I wanted to deliver my child with the help of a midwife who trusted that my body could do what it was supposed to, and who knew what to do if it didn’t. I wanted a woman to help me give birth, one who had borne  a child of her own. Barbara, my midwife, turned out to be that person.

Since attitude is supposed to affect experience, I thought my good one meant labor wouldn’t hurt too much. I might’ve gone in blind, but at least I went bravely. Labor was ferociously, savagely painful; I was scared. I let loose with moaning and yelling and pleading for Barbara not to leave me. Of course she didn’t leave me. Even when I bit her. I wasn’t in control of what my body was doing, how it was doing it, or the pain I felt. I couldn’t say, “Could we just take a break and rest for a few minutes please?” Labor is the relentless force of Life as it takes shape, and in those terrible moments I realized there was no way out but through.

That’s what Philip taught me during his birth, and what he’s trying to teach me through his death. Thing is, when labor ended my son was born, the pain was gone, and every second of it was worth it. What of Philip’s death, then? What kind of “end” could there be; what do I get to hold in my arms, what will ever make me say this pain was worth it? I’ve been told now it’s me that’s being born. It’s not enough. I feel less than I ever was without him here because he took a part of me with him when he went.

He brought me full circle, this child of mine. See, I understand why women choose not to feel that pain. But had I chosen differently, I would not have had his guidance then, and I wouldn’t have been able to see that he’s helping me now. Because I do see it, even if I don’t always accept it.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

It’s What I Have

09 Jul 2013 10 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I have stories since Philip died, stories about the way he’s still in my life, what I hear him say and how I hear him say it. I’m blessed because really, he’s always around. It’s not weird or spooky, either. I just talk to him in my head, and he talks back. I also keep journals where I’ll listen to what he’s saying and write it down. Call it Philip, call it my love for him allowing me to tap into a deeper wisdom that’s “inside” me, a wisdom that’s available to anyone who’s willing to seek it – no matter. To me it’s Philip, to me it’s part of the bond I have with him.

I’m mentioning this because I just read a post on behindthemaskofabuse about a lost dog, which reminded me of something and I’m in the mood to write about something that makes me smile. I have a wanting to be chronological about things, but if you follow along at all, I’m not, not really. Theres’s a narrative thread but it comes out as it does. I’m not in control. The writing sort of leads me, and I get it out best I can.

This happened a couple months ago, when it was still getting dark by 7:30 here on the east coast. I’d been working on a post and felt stuck, when something told me to take a break and go for a walk. Now, we all have intuition that we’d do well to pay attention to, and the more we do, the stronger it gets. Me? Meh. I don’t listen as much as I’d like. And in spite of the fact that when I walk, the writing comes rolling through my brain, I didn’t want to go. I’m a homebody. Stick me on my couch with my books and my computer and a basket of knitting nearby, and I’m good to go. Er, to stay. So I’m ambivalent; if I need a break from writing I can just stop, what’s with the going out business? But since I’m trying to pay attention to that “little voice” inside of me, I said to the doggies, guys – let’s go.

(Have I said anything about my dogs other than that they’re my dogs? I have two shih-tzus, Zoe and Pippin, and one day I’ll get my act together and post some pictures of them.)

It was probably around 7:00, probably just before the gloaming , and I decided since we’re going for a walk, it would be a long one. We could all use the exercise. Before going downstairs, I went looking for my wallet. I didn’t need it to go out, I just realized I didn’t know where it was which makes me crazy so I started running around looking for it. And I asked Philip where it was because I cannot begin to count the times I’ve asked him where things were and then promptly found them.

Not this time.

Downstairs I went with the dogs, and I started running around there, too, frustrated because I couldn’t find it and really frustrated because Philip wasn’t helping. Then I ran back upstairs and looked again, and again back downstairs. Then I remembered I had laundry in the washer in the basement that needed to go into the dryer so I went to do that, hoping that when I came back up I’d find my wallet.

Nope.

By then it was almost 8:00. I decided to just cut it out, forget about it, ask Natalie to help me look when she got home from gymnastics. I leashed up the dogs and went out, thinking I’d still go for a long walk because even though it was now dark, it was warm outside. I took my time heading toward the corner where I wanted to turn, letting the dogs sniff and pee because once I started walking, I wasn’t stopping. So they’re rooting around the grass and I’m stargazing and that’s when I felt a tug. Looking down, there was a little doggy, sort of like a Boston Terrier but mostly all black, sniffing around with my two. She wore a pink harness, without a tag. There was no one around but me. And while it occurred to me to just go on ahead with my walk, the saner part of me realized you don’t leave a dog out in the dark that looks like she doesn’t belong there. This one definitely did not belong there. So I took Zoe’s leash off and put it on Stray Dog, because Zoe – being a girl and all – would not leave my side, while Pippin – being a somewhat blind, somewhat deaf boy and all – wouldn’t have noticed I was gone until he found himself staring up at the bottom of my neighbor’s Lexus.

First thing I did was ring the bell of the house we were standing in front of, thinking maybe she escaped from there. The woman that answered never saw her. Next I asked some guy who happened to be walking his own dog on the other side of the street – he couldn’t even see her in the dark, much less know who she belonged to. So I decided to bring her home for the night, call the police to let them know in case someone was looking for her, and deal with what to do with her the next day.

The four of us turned to walk back home, moving real slow in case someone happened by looking for her. Sure enough, I saw a van come onto my block, driving slowly, window opened. Hey, I yelled as he got near, are you looking for a dog?

Turned out he’d been driving around for half an hour looking for his dog, thank you very much. We briefly chatted about how she got away, where all he’d been looking for her. I was just glad I had her because he lived on this side of Bloomfield-major-thruway-Avenue and he was looking on the other side of Bloomfield-major-thruway-Avenue and had he found her on that side, it might have been in various, scattered body parts. Off they went and I was happy to have done my good deed for the day.

I turned back again to head toward the corner, unsure of what to do. I’d been out a while and maybe it was enough. Or maybe not. Maybe I should go for a short walk. Or maybe not. Maybe I should stay on my block. Or maybe not. And while I’m dithering over this most important decision, I heard Philip say, “Mom, you know what to do.”

I’m going home, aren’t I? I felt him smile.

And I’m going to find my wallet when I get there, aren’t I?

You get why you didn’t find it sooner, he asked?

Of course I went home and of course it was there, right there on the first floor, right on the table where I’d left it.

The story I’m telling about Philip and me doesn’t have a simple narrative. It could start and end with the story of his death, but it doesn’t. It’s a living story that keeps evolving even as I’m writing. There are happy things along the way, there are clear ways I know Philip is around and many ways he makes me smile. Not least of all do I rely on his confidence, encouragement and wisdom. I am blessed with this easy access. If Philip had to die, this was the best way it could be turning out.

But that’s just it. Philip has died. The other day I wrote to Ed, “When Philip died…” and if I wasn’t already sitting I would’ve been knocked on my ass. Did I really just write that? Will it ever stop shocking me? Because in all the ways life’s swirling around me and in all the ways I imagine it turning out, the one mad true thing in all of it is that Philip is dead. Please, I want to say; please. Please what, please to whom? I’d made sure to remind my kids that “please” was not the magic word they might’ve heard it was. Using it didn’t mean you got what you wanted, it was just the civilized way to ask for it.

And if the answers to my please are the living connections I make along the way, then there’s where I need to place my faith. For sure that’s what my son is asking of me, for sure it just doesn’t feel like enough. Please, then, may it be, because it’s what I have.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

So Tell Me

06 Jul 2013 27 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

From Fourth of July:

Today is Natalie’s birthday; Happy Birthday to you, my sweet girl. I love you so.

Today I found us an apartment; Happy Birthday again, Natalie. It’s small, but we’ll make it work. It’s located exactly where we want to be, the rent is okay, and – the big one – they’ll take the dogs. Around here, that’s a Godsend. My application is in and I’m waiting for approval. The manager who showed me around wants us there. Assuming all goes well, we’ll move August 1st.

Today, I’m wondering how it got to be July again, without Philip. I didn’t want to use this blog to whine, but here I am. I think of him, my stomach churns, the tears at the back of my eyes spring forth, my voice has to fight its way out of my throat and the dark place is all there is. Natalie just turned 20; she’s closing in on him and I’m scared. One day she will be older than him. Do I have to add, ‘God willing?’ And I think I say this stuff because I’m reaching out for help, and I know people care, but no one can take this from me because if they took my grief, they’d take my love. And there is nothing that can “take” my love for Philip.

                                                    *******************************************************************

 So I piece together all that has happened and continues to happen. It’s the grace of connection I’m yearning for, the light of meaning, the knowing of what it is I am waking up for. My son – I don’t know how to live with him dead because the feeling is too much to bear. But these bits and pieces along the way tell a story, a story whose meaning I’m struggling to find and whose end won’t come until my own does. If, even, then. I’ve talked about some of it already: Philip, not yet two, saying his grandpa was, “In the light;” the day at the beach, when I almost lost him; the desperate need I had that last year to let him know how goddamn much I loved him;  my “all bets are off” conversation with Natalie; my “dead in a ditch” message, which ironically enough makes me smile because that’s the sort of joke Philip and I would laugh at. And I feel him, smiling back at me.

Then the fact of where I was at spiritually, emotionally, psychically. For the six months or so leading to his death, I’d crossed a line, chosen to live, chosen to stop asking why I was here and accepted the fact that I was. Tried to figure out what I wanted to with the life I was given. Began to understand my inner state was up to me, that my emotions did not, in fact, control me. And I had the tools to work with all of this. Take a breath, take a mental step back from inner turmoil, look at it. No resistance, I’d say, which is the same as “accept it” except those words meant something to me in a way “accept it” didn’t. “No resistance” was a big, deep breath to which I had a physical response. My chest would relax, my arms and shoulders followed. My stomach remained tense and knotted. My stomach was always knotted; it was a question of it being background tension or being whacked-in-the-solar-plexus tension. “No resistance” helped me manage myself.

And, of course, I kept reminding myself, “Accept it, leave it, or change it.”

A year before Philip died, when he was a second-term sophomore, he took a creative writing class. He liked me to read his work and one day sent me an essay about a kid walking down the street, high on LSD, what this kid saw, what he felt like. Shit, I thought.

A week later he came to visit. You know that story I sent you, he asked? That kid walking down the street? That was me.

Well, duh.

“Philip,” I said, “listen; I know you drink, but now you’re doing drugs. Drugs are dangerous. I can’t force you not to take them, but I am asking you please, please, do not do drugs.”

To which he said that he’d done LSD twice, that he didn’t like it, wasn’t going to do it any more, not to worry.

“This is great,” I answered. “I’m your mom, you tell me this stuff, I can’t do anything about it, and when they find you dead of an overdose, they’ll blame me.”

We laughed.

And then there’s this:

The months leading up to Philip’s death, I kept seeing him dead. An image of him would float up in my mind, from the waist up, in a soft yellow button-down shirt (??), his eyes closed,  dead. I didn’t get upset, didn’t think I was having a premonition. I just saw him, dismissed it. Except for the couple times I thought about it a bit, thought about myself at his wake, pictured myself waist down, wearing exactly what it was I wound up wearing when I was actually there. And when I pictured myself, I wondered how I would act. If I truly understood “accept it, leave it, change it.” Because if I did, I’d have to be at peace. But how would it really be?

Since I’m not Jesus or Buddha, I’ll tell you how it really was. I was wrecked. I walked into that funeral home with Phil and Natalie and my brother and outside the room he was in was a plaque that read, “Philip Smyth Jr.” which made me just a little more sick and a little more dizzy.  The name that so touched me when I saw it on a birth certificate or passport or high school diploma or fencing award or even in his own uneven handwriting, now turned on me. Are you telling me that the last time I saw my son we were saying good-bye in the restaurant where we’d just eaten dinner, and the next time I’ll see him is when I walk through that door and he’s lying a coffin? Phil went in first. I waited a minute to follow. And there he was, handsome boy, lying dead, looking exactly like he always did and I fell to my knees and sobbed and all the wide world was Philip, dead. There was no life in that body. What am I to do with this? What the fuck is this? What does it mean to be dead? That’s not an academic question, it’s a blood-and-guts question because Philip was just here, just around to talk to and laugh with and eat with and hug and just like that he wasn’t. So where was he? Don’t tell me he’s in my heart, don’t do that. Of course he’s in my heart, he’s my son. He has been in my heart since the night I woke from my sleep and heard  – I heard – the whisper in my ear: you’re pregnant. It is not enough that he’s in my heart. He has to be where I can touch him, watch him, call him, hold him. Where I can feel he protects me because I know he’s got my back. What is this dead body, what has this to do with my son? I am his mother, I carried him alone before he was born and I’ll carry him alone now that he’s dead. Don’t tell me you’re there to help me because I don’t even know what you’re talking about. If the dictionary-def of help is, “to give or provide what is necessary to..satisfy a need,” then tell me what can be done to bring my son home because that – that – is my need.

So tell me what you’re going to do to help me, and don’t leave me alone when I say that you can’t.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

I Just Don’t See How

30 Jun 2013 12 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I am glad to have had this week away. The timing couldn’t have been better. Nadiya is selling the house and Natalie and I have to move. It’s a huge, elegant house, the kind of house that has to be “staged.” Nadiya already bought an apartment where she’s moved her dog and three cats, and where she now mostly lives. She’s turned the house over to the realtors, who are in the business of making the most  money they can in a way that I find creepy.

I have nothing against making money. Money is good. But me and my daughter and certainly my dogs don’t figure into the realtors’ plans. They want us gone, which is the only issue where Nadiya has set her foot down. We can stay right up to closing if that’s how long it takes us to find an apartment. But to the realtors, Natalie and I are “The Third Floor” and “The Sewing Room” and “The Other Bedroom” and I don’t think the clear but angry email I sent to remind them we are actual human beings changed any minds. We were told what to pack up and what of our furniture would be moved. We are living out of boxes. This weekend was the Big Showing. When we got home from California Friday after midnight, we drove straight to my friend Kirsten’s for the weekend so that not so much as a toothbrush was in view or (God forbid) a stray hair was on the sink to remind anyone that we live there.

I’ve left the dogs with my mom for the week, and I’ve been put on notice that when the house is to be shown we are not to be there. When Natalie and I are both out of the house, we are not allowed to leave the dogs. The painters informed Nadiya that the dogs regularly poop on the third floor. We live on the third floor. I would know if the dogs “regularly” pooped up there. If  one of them pooped when the painters were there, s/he probably had an upset stomach in which case Nature wasn’t calling, She was screaming.

I haven’t worked full-time since Philip died, but now I have to. Turns out the job I found is temporary, so I have to look for employment elsewhere. I’m looking at apartments I don’t know if I can afford and that will please allow my dogs and please leave me money for food once I pay the rent. If I take a job with a shelf-life, what do I do with two dogs, a daughter and an extravagant rent when it expires?

And I hear my son saying, “Have a little faith, mom. It’s okay.”

I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing: I’m looking for a job and looking for an apartment and I’m looking for a reason to think any of this will be okay because none of it is going the way I am wanting it to go. I’m scared and I remember a couple weeks ago that Ron, over at the xanax diary, wrote, “…life isn’t really about the good times, the celebrations or victories. Life is really about the struggles we face and how we face them.”

I am not facing this well. I just don’t see how this works out, and reminding myself that my portion is no worse than anyone else’s is no help because all that means is things can get worse.

You work your faith – whatever it looks like to you – when things get rough. It’s easy to have faith with a son who has your back and a daughter by your side, a job that’s comfortable and a place to live you call “home.” I don’t think I’m going to look back on this and be proud of myself. Last week, finding out the job was temporary put me into a semi-coma, where I remained for the second half of Natalie’s competition and for which she called me out.

“I asked one thing of you,” she said. “Just to be here to calm my crazies. I need to be able to come to you. I saw you across the floor at the gym. You looked like death. And I was on my own.”

She’s right. I got unexpected news that I did not want to hear and instead of going all Krishnamurti on it, I panicked. I’ve already said worrying doesn’t prevent anything, it just makes you miserable before the inevitable. Seems I’m unable to follow my own advice, especially where money is concerned.

What I’ve left out of the equation is Life. That the things that happen unexpectedly don’t always break your heart. I went to see my grief counselor yesterday. We talked about work. What does Philip tell you? he asked. All he says is, “bake.” I answered. I walked out of there deciding to get back to it, to start making cakes for a restaurant that’s given me a standing order and to take it from there. Then Natalie called. Want to have dinner, she asked?

So she, James and I sat down to dinner at the new upscale diner with a menu that included wraps, veggie burgers, all-day-long breakfast and the ubiquitous panini. When we finished eating, a man who worked there came to ask how it was. Are you the owner? I asked. I’m one of them, he answered. Do you need a baker, I asked?

He introduced me to his dad, who said they’re going to need a baker at the seventh restaurant they’re opening, and for now I should bring them some cakes and we’ll take it from there. As I’m writing this I’m waiting for the first one to cool so I can bring it over.

You’d think I’d trust Life a little more, especially with Philip whispering in my ear. Panicking is familiar, and it’s still what I do. There’s more to this, of course, more to Life and its mysterious ways as I’ve experienced them, particularly with respect to my son. And in my next post, I’m going to talk about some of it.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Suffering is Optional?

24 Jun 2013 5 Comments

by Denise in Death Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I started this post on a plane to Palm Springs, California. Natalie’s a gymnast, and is competing at World Championships. We both giggle at the name; it’s true that it’s worldwide, but while it sounds like it’s important enough to be televised, the only cameras that’ll be there are the ones all the parents have brought.  Still, there are talented gymnasts competing, and I’m proud to say that Natalie is one of them.

The last time I was on a plane was May, 2012, three months after Philip died. My so-always-so-generous cousin Maria took  me and Natalie for a long weekend to Key Biscayne in Florida, right outside of South Beach, Miami. Maria and I were both born in April; “For our birthdays, we’ll go,” she said. Like a sad little puppy I followed, not knowing what I should or shouldn’t do but hoping that if someone was taking care of me, it would somehow please make me better.

I’d heard much about the beauty of the Keys, the glamour of South Beach, Miami. We were staying at the Hilton, large and elegant with ginormous flower arrangements in the lobby and crystal bowls of glossy green and red apples for the taking. Maria booked one room for me and Natalie, and stayed in another with her daughter, Gina. Leaning over the railing on our 10th floor terrace, I could see the bay a ways off. A parking lot was to my left, with hotels in all directions. Below, palm trees and such lined the circular drive that was busy with idling buses briskly greeted by courteous, uniformed attendants. Their willingness-to-please was exhausting.

I thought my sense of beauty might’ve died along with Philip, but I suspected not. Whatever beauty drew people here was buried under the massive amount of building it took to support them when they came. But just in case I was missing something, when Natalie joined me on the terrace I asked her if she thought the view was beautiful. “Hell no,” she answered.

Then our trip to South Beach, which was awful. Our cab driver let us off on Ocean Drive. This is the real South Beach, he’d said. It’s 1.3 miles of hotels, restaurants and shops which look as classy as Fifth Avenue New York in pictures but are a few steps above seedy when you’re walking past them at 7:30pm just-after-tourist-season. Music was blaring from each of the crowded, canopied restaurants that lined the street, which was impossible to navigate. Natalie and I crossed to walk on the opposite side – the beach side – giving us I suppose a better view of the much-touted Art Deco designed buildings, which my unsophisticated eye saw as run-down. We continued to Lincoln Avenue, where the concierge at the Hilton suggested we go. It was an outdoor mall like every other outdoor mall that’s been popping up in America, with a broad street closed to traffic, chain stores I don’t have to vacation to shop in and restaurants who employ people to stand outside to try to coax you in with extended Happy Hours and two-for-the-price-of-one entrees.

I suffer from tourist-itis. I don’t go away much, and when I do, I remain a perpetual tourist, feeling like I don’t belong, looking for something I can’t find, thinking if I follow the signs that lead to The Village there’ll be something old and authentic, something that isn’t a bunch of chain stores with different facades to match the climate. I can’t even find a place to walk beyond the hotel, never mind trying to find something to do besides what’s offered in the brochures of endless attractions. It’s the soul of the place I want to find – is it in the side streets, the surrounding neighborhoods, in the parks, on a mountain, on a trail? It’s like some big secret that the kind of people I envy know about. But I think it’s my own soul I’m searching for and if I can’t find it inside of me, I’m not going to find it outside of me, either.

This searching is no longer an abstraction. I am sick from grief. My insides keep folding in on themselves and I’ve not stopped asking myself just how I am supposed to live without my son. Natalie and I went to lunch after we landed. There was an elderly couple in a booth to my right, deep in conversation for the entire time we were there. And another elderly couple in front of me, sitting side by side at a table made for ten, more interested in their food than each other. He was a handsome man with his silver hair and beard, decisively pushing around the food on his plate, intent on which was the next bite he’d be chewing. She was pale and birdlike, her mouth gently turned down at the corners, slowly chewing food that I never once saw her put in her mouth. In her I saw the result of my long, long life without Philip. She is unhappy, I cried to Natalie when we left. And I am unhappy; how can I be okay without Philip?

Why do you do that, Natalie asked? Why are you paying attention to the couple you think is unhappy instead of the couple who couldn’t stop talking to each other? You are not going to be okay because you are okay.  It’s not a place you get to. It’s where you are, right now.

Part of me thinks she’s right and part of me is screaming you don’t know, no one knows, because you can’t be inside me and feel what this feels like. Am I supposed to take heart because so many are suffering and so many go on? I can’t, not in the way that other shared experiences might buoy me. But it is humbling, for sure; that I could feel so unbearably isolated and unnervingly grieved while knowing that every day people are suffering this, and worse. That my portion of pain isn’t any more extraordinary than anyone else’s. Pain, they say, is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

If so, I am choosing wrongly and feel helpless to do otherwise.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Maybe God, Maybe Not

15 Jun 2013 16 Comments

by Denise in Addiction, Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

When I joined AA I had pretty low opinion of God, if I had one at all. He wasn’t much of a factor in my life. If He created me, He must’ve gotten interrupted by a phone call or needed a bathroom break so that when He got back to it, He forgot what He was doing and left a piece out. If He existed, why wasn’t I happy? It didn’t seem fair that I walked around wanting to die while every day millions of others actually did.

God made no difference in my life, but drinking did. Why waste time on my knees when The Answer was limitless, close and affordable? And fast. If there was a God, He took too long, what with all those people he had to care for. So I took care of myself, starting with Boone’s Farm Apple Wine when I was 12 (those days I could take my 12-year-old-self into the liquor store and buy what I wanted) then graduating to rum, vodka or gin (mixed with soda so it wouldn’t taste so bad), pot, quaaludes, amphetamines and whatever I could find in any bathroom I entered that had a medicine cabinet.

God was a nonstarter until January, 1983, age 24, when I took my beaten self to an AA meeting. Instead of finding smoky basements filled with the old and the wet-brained, I found a group called Young Winners* and met people my own age. Younger, even. The group met on Friday nights, which made sense because Friday was drink-your-ass-off night. After the meeting, we’d go out to a diner. I didn’t do God and I didn’t do diners but I was doin’ what I was told because I believed it would make me better.

AA gave me the idea that maybe it was God that I was missing. I thought if I changed His name to Higher Power, it would change the way I thought about Him. Except HP As I Understood Him was still pretty much as distant and pissed off as my parents used to be. I was told prayer was talking to HP, and meditation was listening, so I tried both but I still felt like the only one I was talking to was myself. I was told not to worry, to “believe that we believe.” After a couple years, that’s exactly what I did. Praying got me nowhere so I let everyone else believe and concerned myself with keeping sober and trying to find the right group or the right book that would lead me to some version of a Benevolent Being just right for me.

What I didn’t know was that I was looking for something Out There that only existed in here. The connection I wanted was with  myself which sounded like some platitude until I understood what it meant. I thought I had a connection to my-self, a worthless, shameful self I devised and despised and so when I wasn’t drinking to destroy that self, I tried to do it by vomiting or starving myself (name me one addict who has only one addiction). I didn’t know that the “self” I hated was born and nurtured from the voices in my head which, powerful as they were, were just, well, voices, and since they were in my head not only could I choose not to listen to them, I could make them say something else. Something nice, even, weird and uncomfortable as that felt.

Which brings me back to Simple Isn’t Easy, but at least it’s clear and sensible. And revelatory.

Feeling more connected to a self that I was starting to like let me feel more connected to my kids. I was never as close to Philip as I was when he died. I might’ve tormented myself when my kids were growing up, but I didn’t torment them. My heart hurt for loving them and for not being able to feel how much they loved me back. And when I would tell Ed that in a show of love, Philip did this or Natalie did that, he’d say, “Why do you act so surprised every time you realize how much your kids love you?”

In the couple years before he died, Philip grew more tender than I’d ever seen him. Or maybe I just noticed it more because once he left to live on his own, he no longer had to come if I called, but he did. He’d often get in touch with me in the middle of the night to tell me he loved me. One night he called and said, “Mom, you fascinate me.” What the?? I was living on the top floor of my friend’s house ‘cause I couldn’t afford an apartment, I hated my job, I was manless and restless and still wondering what meaningful thing I could do when I got up in the morning, so what the hell was so fascinating?

“Because you’re growing up,” he said. “And I’m growing up. And we’re doing it together.” `

To which I said nothing because he’d taken my breath away.

The year before Philip died I found myself desperate to tell him I loved him. He was sweet and vulnerable and I didn’t know what I meant by that except I felt a hole in him that I was trying to stuff with my love. I told him that when I was a kid I was struck by the idea that an inch was such a tiny thing, but if you divided it, it became infinity. “I am that inch,” I told him, “and inside this body, my love for you is infinite.”

And a few months before he died, I sent him a text that read, “I am sorry for any time I was ever angry at you or made you feel bad about yourself.”

There was something between us, me and my son. Something relaxed and familiar and right. Something like we fit together, and all it ever was was easy. And that is why on the landing, when I finally stopped crawling and screaming and gave Phil a moment of space to say what he had to say, and what he had to say was, “They found him…” I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence because what I heard was Philip, and what he said was, “Mom, you gotta go deeper.” In the hot, swirling, sinking, stinking mess my world had become, I heard my son and I knew what he meant but all I could think was, fuck you, are you fucking kidding me, is this some fucking cosmic joke? and it occurred to me that right then, right that very second, there were people all over the world who were finding out their children were dead and they were feeling exactly what I was feeling and if it was possible to feel like this, what was the point of being alive?

Accept it, leave it, change it. Somebody, anybody – please, tell me; are there any other options? Because these are not going to work for me this time; these are most definitely not going to work.

*I’m not sure if anonymity only applies to people, but just in case, this was not the real name of the meeting.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

In The Desert*

01 Jun 2013 8 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”
–Stephen Crane

This is the kind of poem I live for. It is a tender and terrible look at the nature of Self and suffering and acceptance. Acceptance is not happiness. It’s living with the bloody bitterness of life without wanting it to be something else.

I thought of the poem because these last few days I have cried bitterly; on awakening, on the bus, at my desk, in the bathroom. I can do nothing for it. I’m tense and anxious and I just want the relief of my son coming home; I want to hear his voice and touch him and meet him for dinner. I want to watch South Park with him, watch him fence, watch him him rip off his helmet and tip it to his opponent, which he did with grace and dignity whether he won or lost.

Round and round I go, wondering how I’m to live with this, round and round, wanting Philip to be here but not wanting to be in anyone else’s shoes because it is my bitter heart. It’s just that the enormity of my loss has been hitting me again, and I’m starting to go under.

One of the ways my Very Own Personal Background has informed my grief comes from believing myself to be part of the Scotty-Beam-Me-Up crowd. My skin doesn’t wear well here, and I have a hard time inhabiting it in some peaceful way. Before Philip died, I decided to start fresh, to stop asking myself what the hell I was here for. It didn’t matter why I was here – the point was, I am here. So what do I do with the life that I have? I started by narrowing my focus to what I loved, because that’s what’s worth living for. First, my kids; as long as I have my kids, I’m okay, I told myself.  But before I could figure out what next, Philip died. My focus became so narrow I could thread it through a needle: Philip, Philip, Philip. I told myself I had to go on for my daughter, but what to do about going on for me?

I need to go back to the landing in order to go forward with the rest of my story, back to the night Phil came to me and said the unsayable. Something happened there, something I’m still trying to find language for. If I am at all a spiritual person, it lies in the fact that I believe there is a meaning to our lives beyond the events that happen in it. Our situations are the form; the meaning is in the content of those situations. Your car can get stolen and my car can get stolen, but beyond the inconvenience of it, what it means to me is not what it means to you. It can’t be. What happens in our lives isn’t separate from the context it occurs in.

Whatever faith I have is a culmination of what I’ve been searching for since I was old enough to ask about the why of it. There was AA, Buddhism, A Course In Miracles, Rebirthing, Past Life Regression, Reichian Breathing, Shiatsu, Yoga, Homeopathy, Eckhart Tolle. Therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. What I believe comes from what makes sense to me; from what I’ve studied and what I’ve lived. It doesn’t fit into a box that I can name, like Buddhism or Alcoholism or any other -ism. It’s evolving, because coming to consciousness isn’t a place you get to. It’s realizing you’re already there.

I believe in the simple law of Karma. On the physical level, it’s easy to see the consequences of our actions. I stick my hand in the fire, I get burned. It’s no different on the spiritual or psychic level. If, say, you live a life of greed, you won’t be at peace. An unhappy life is consequence enough. That’s it. I’m not talking great metaphysical platitudes. I’m talking common sense. And the fact is that we are the ones who decide what’s good and what’s bad. The death of a child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent – but it’s not a punishment. It is a fact. A hard, brutal fact. If I decide Philip’s death is a punishment for something I did, then – as my therapist pointed out – he becomes a prop in my life instead of a person in his own right. His death is not a punishment. It is a tragic blow, and the question is, now what? Because in some sense there is a big “supposed-to” about all this. A familiarity. Something I’m supposed to know or learn and that I couldn’t and wouldn’t if Philip hadn’t died.

The odd thing is that Natalie feels the same. He cheated death once, she said to me – at the beach. She’d had a feeling something was going to happen to him. Two weeks before he died, she told her boyfriend she was afraid that he was going to.

But here’s the thing. I don’t believe in destiny.  We are free to choose. So what do I mean by saying “supposed-to?” I am holding conflicting ideas because I have to. I am not talking logic, the kind of logic we apply to what we see in front of us. I am talking about the deeper meaning beyond the logic, the meaning that no one can find for us although certain people can guide us. I can say there’s something “supposed-to” about Philip’s death as well as say we are free to make choices and that he did not have to die. I have to be able to hold these conflicting thoughts and not settle for the false and ultimately deadening comfort of thinking I’ve got it figured out. It is my Mind that wants to know, while my Spirit wants to wander.

And this is part of what I have to tell you before I can get back to the landing.

*This is actually part of a longer poem by Crane, “The Black Riders and Other Lines.”

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Still the best day…

12 May 2013 11 Comments

by Denise in Death, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , ,

It’s Mother’s Day, and I am reminded that my children are the best thing I’ve done in my life. And I do know they’re not “mine,” not really. They came to the world through me, and I’ve guided them as I’ve let them go.  All letting go of them ever meant was allowing the bond between us to grow longer. They are, truly, the people I love most.

It might be more precise to say that they evoke the most love from me. That is my comfort; that this love is deeply me, and in that sense, I “have” my children. But I miss my son and I love him so much, so very, heart-achingly much. Still; it’s my love, and always will be.

This is my second Mother’s Day since Philip died. I have the last Mother’s Day card he’d given me on my desk. That year he and Natalie picked out particularly lovely cards, so I laid them flat on my desk, fan-style, as a decoration. This is what the front of Philip’s card says: “You are not only my mother, you are the woman who shaped my life.” He signed it, “Yeah, it’s corny. But it’s true. I love you.”

There is a reason – a very real reason – people say, “Don’t go to bed mad.”

So here are some stories because I very much need to talk about him right now.

Two weeks before Philip turned two – and while I was four months pregnant with Natalie – his Grandpa Bill (Phil’s dad) died. I took Philip to the wake. Death is a fact of life and I don’t think it should be hidden from children. The question is how to tell them? There isn’t any right answer. There’s you and your child and your capacity to know what s/he can handle and some imagination about how to broach the subject. I wanted Philip to begin to understand that sometimes the people in his life would no longer be there. I didn’t want to say his grandpa was sleeping and I didn’t want to say he was dead. One was a lie and one was too difficult to explain. There’s only so much an almost-two-year-old can grasp. So I knelt down to face Philip with a belly full of Natalie and said, “Philip, we’re going to see Grandpa Bill. He’s going to be lying down, and he’s not going to get up. Is that okay?”

Who knows how much he understood of what I was saying? But he was a calm child, so I wasn’t worried. I got him dressed, then picked him up and stood him on the kitchen table to straighten his little shirt, smooth his little pants. As I was being  a (slightly) fussy mom, I asked, “Philip, do you know where Grandpa Bill is?” to see if he’d say, “Sleeping.” Instead, he raised his little hand high in the air, index finger pointing toward the ceiling, smiled, and said “In the light.”

Whoa. I stepped back and stared at him, this sweet, innocent, amazing little boy, standing there with his hand in the air, full of smiles and secret knowing. I didn’t know where the hell that came from except to say that children are closer to something that gets lost for most of us as we get older.

After Philip died, Phil, Natalie and I went to the house he’d been living in to get his things. I took his notebooks, and it was just a couple of weeks ago that I looked through them. I found a short essay he’d written about his childhood, and he talked about two things. The first was the apartment we lived in until he was seven, which he described as small, dark and cramped. It wasn’t. It was a big, bright apartment, the entire first floor of a house. But the room he shared with Natalie was small, and maybe that’s what he was remembering.

The second thing he wrote about was the wake. He thought he was four years old, said that he saw his grandpa lying in a coffin and it was creepy, but that he looked around and saw people talking and laughing and then he knew it was okay. Being there struck him deeply, more deeply than I ever knew.

And this is what I mean about Philip being a calm kid:

We were a “traditional” family. Phil worked, which meant I got to stay home with the kids. They were my “work.” I nursed them because it was a way of loving them, washed their diapers because I didn’t like fuzz and plastic, made clothes for them because I love what I can do with fabric. I put them to sleep when they were tired and stayed up with them when they weren’t. And when they were ready for solids I made their food, which mostly meant throwing whatever I cooked for dinner into a blender. I don’t get buying Designer Baby Food packed in teeny, expensive jars. I can mash my own bananas, thank you very much. And what was the point of made-for-baby-applesauce when Mott’s-no-sugar-added served the same purpose? Earth’s Best came from my kitchen and not from a jar, no matter how many green fields, fresh fruits and diapered-only toddlers its adorable label had.

But traditional doesn’t mean popular, and the few friends I had went to work soon after their babies were born. My world was small and lonely before I had Philip, and shrunk to mostly me and him after he was born. By the time he was a year and toddling around I hadn’t changed my mind about staying home, but I was bored and frustrated which I attributed to my lack of imagination and not my circumstances. Most of my conversations were the ones I was having with myself, which is pretty bad news since I do not keep myself very good company.

One thing I did was set up a nook in the corner of my dining room where I could sew. Which involved pins. Lots of pins. When I worked, I’d wind up spreading out to the floor and the dining room table and I took my pins with me. Carefully, because pins in the hands of a child are weapons, which they’re likely to turn on themselves in ways I still don’t like to imagine.

But I wasn’t careful enough. One day Philip toddled over to the dining room table. One determined hand grasped its edge while one curious hand went searching until it found a box of 200 pins which made a slightly pleasing tinkling sound when he knocked them down and they scattered all over the hardwood floor.

Drastic times call for drastic measures, and it seemed to me that picking up the nearest chair and banging it repeatedly on the floor while yelling, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE! was the exact right thing to do. Except no matter how much I tried to lose my mind, a piece of it remained. “What the fuck?” it asked. “Your kid is watching you and you’re scaring him to death.”

Philip was behind me, and I imagined the terror that must be on his face, his eyes tearing, his mouth turned down and trembling, ready to open up and start howling. Goddamnit. I stopped with the chair and turned around expecting to gather him up to shush and reassure him, except he didn’t need any of that at all. He was watching me, little Buddha, waiting for me to stop, and if he could’ve talked I swear he’d have said, “Better now?”

I was, enough to laugh and pick him up and forget about sewing pins for a while. Which makes me think of the saying, “Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.” It never occurred to me what they were talking about.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

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