On Freedom

I’ve been trying to remember what it felt like to be in high school. There are mental snapshots of highs and lows, spaces and faces and scenes. Important milestones, notable failures, pushing parents to lift unjust restrictions. Those memories live in my mind as static photos, easily recalled but with little detail. What lives deeper and harder to grasp are the feelings I had during that time. Too much life has happened to me to stay in a feeling; feelings leave you, what you know stays.

I remember being disproportionately concerned about my hair. Not really enjoying the academic part of school. Wrapping the phone cord around the wall into the next room in desperate search for privacy. Being unsure of my place, my body. Myself.

I remember the burden of expectation. Of the requirement of figuring out who I am, without the life experience to inform it. I remember the singular goal of leaving the house to be with my friends in any capacity, at all times, every day.  I remember misjudging the intentions of others and being confused by my own emotions. I remember being conscious that I wasn’t supposed to know anything yet but refusing to forgive myself for it.  Refusing to lift the burden.

Recently, I drove what felt like one hundred 14-year-old girls to a football game. Each stop in each driveway produced another girl, anxious to get out of the house to be with her friends. As the car filled up, the volume of the music rose. There were more opinions about the playlist in every new driveway, and every request was expressed with high emotion and conviction. Every request was based on nostalgia.

A longing for a time of less burden even happens at 14.

Their voices raised to a collective scream that could kill cats, but I immediately remembered what it felt like to be them. I remember discovering music with my friends that spoke to everything we felt but didn’t have words for yet, playing it again and again as loud as our archaic stereos would allow. I remember screaming it at the top of our lungs and being completely in sync, knowing all the same things. Being the same.  It was total connection, total joy, total euphoria.

Total freedom.

Sometimes now, I drive with the music at a level that will undoubtedly have me in hearing aids within months. But I don’t care. I listen to all the things that make my body remember myself at different pivotal points in my life. I sing loud enough to kill cats. And just for a moment, I feel some of life lift.

On Good Lighting

Sometimes the light is so bright, you can’t help but see yourself.

“She needs to go now.”

My OB was sturdy in the way you would want a woman retrieving a human from your womb to be. She was unruffled, efficient, and temporarily deaf when I asked her if I should plan to cook my placenta and ingest it in pill form.  She was all business and at that moment, hers was to surgically remove the baby in my uterus with an umbilical cord wrapped snugly around her neck. The staff knew what to do, they had done it repeatedly. None of their lives were going to change from this, only mine. And his. My husband dutifully put on the uniform – blue scrubs, hairnet, mask, shoe covers. I was the only one whose face was entirely exposed. I scanned all of them, hoping at least one pair of eyes would meet mine, to ease the tsunami in my nervous system.  

Even my husband seemed somewhere else, preoccupied and tasked with something uniquely important. In contrast, my job was to do nothing yet soon, be everything. He walked to my bedside and grabbed Lambie, my ratty, stinky childhood stuffed animal that had seen it all for better or worse, and shoved her in my overnight bag. He squeezed my hand, his eyes soft and worried. “We’re going to be parents.” The sentence left his mouth, settled in the air, pivoted and landed in my brain as, “see you on the other side.” It felt like two soldiers clasping hands before the battlefield pulled them apart. It felt separate, singular and far from what was depicted in movies. It felt like the experience solely hinged on me.

Many pairs of eyes rapidly rolled my bed through swinging doors and the room swallowed me in brightness. It was almost demanding, the light – harsh fluorescence exposed every surface, sterilized tool, every pore on the unmasked part of their faces. Even the antiseptic air felt stronger, the humming machines made louder.  My doctor explained that under anesthesia, I will not feel pain but intense pressure. To deliver the baby, she would have to press down on the upper uterus to guide her out. This sudden emptiness and removal from the body can create a strong sensation of pressure on my chest. “It’s a redistribution effect and totally normal. It’s just your brain’s way of interpreting rapid shifts happening in your body. But, be prepared, it can feel like an elephant on your chest.”

She adjusted another screaming spotlight, addressed her team like a general to her soldiers and began her verbal safety check, stating my name, type of procedure and anesthesia given. The team settled in their places and their eyes finally met mine. I felt a sudden shift to not wanting the connection. I wanted the lights to dim. I wanted a mask. I wanted anesthesia to sedate the elephant that was preparing to climb onto my chest. I wanted more time to learn more and be better, stronger. I wanted to eat more spinach. I wanted more time to seal the cracks in myself.

I wondered what they saw, in me and all the first-time mothers at this moment. Could they see the fear and self-doubt I was carrying to get here after two 12-week miscarriages or were they immune to the novelty - making mental grocery lists or recounting a regrettable argument with a friend? The reality of it brought about my separateness once again. No one was thinking what I was; this was done many times a day to millions of women - most of it successfully - under unrelenting light where nothing goes unexposed.

Leading up to that moment, I thought I had to acquire the information, the knowing. I spent all my time looking outward, asking other people, reading books, embracing the blind consumerism that goes along with vulnerability of impending motherhood. You need this thing, it will help. You will sleep. I’m still on the parent path but I’m further down it and there is no destination. All I’ve learned so far is that knowing myself and listening to the organic rhythms that tell you what they need is the only way. You’ll still fail, because you’re human. But you’ll also succeed because you’re human and were literally built for this.

Under that light, I wish the people with only eyes on their faces would have told me to forgive myself over and over for as long as I’ll live. Not only because I deserve to be forgiven, but because my personal failings are largely universal, so shake hands with them. There’s no pressure to let them go, because they’ll be back. In elephant form.  

On Premeditation

I can’t think of anything more unspecial than anxiety. It’s so universal, it’s ordinary. Even dull. Some of us walk around facing it raw, letting it wash over us. Others self-medicate and file it away for another day, when it’s inevitably waiting in its same form, sometimes stronger. Mine has always been noisy – benign background static that, if I’m lucky, annoys me without owning me.  Always humming like an old truck in the driveway next door – not in my driveway, not yet.

When your child has anxiety, you seek. You set out to fix it, even if you’re yet to fix yourself. You override everything age has given you – intuition, voice, clarity – and put all of your faith in modern doctors (podcasters) and veiny Instagram protein evangelists. You try triangular breathing, box breathing, breathing while counting, breathing while hanging off of the bed upside down. You try ashwagandha, rhodiola, lions mane, tears of a one-legged goat.  You exhaust every option until you throw your phone into Lake Michigan and realize you were born with a free-of-charge, built-in static slayer. And so are your kids.

I understood the benefits of meditation and tried some well-known apps. I visualized beaches and prairies while my brain made grocery lists, fixated on using the word “awesome” incorrectly and fantasized about a better jawline. It was hard, uncomfortable. Worst of all, it was quiet.

Enter transcendental meditation (TM). I was skeptical; the veiny evangelists and the weighted vest ladies hadn’t even mentioned it.  But in fairness, who has time to meditate when you’re hitting the pavement at 5 am with 14 lbs. of hopes and dreams strapped to your torso?  I don’t know why, but something about TM felt innately connective and right. It was absurdly expensive and only taught by a private teacher, so naturally, I bought into it immediately.  Because why heal the world for free?

We arrived at the first meeting with fruit and flowers for the ceremony to receive our mantras, as directed by our teacher, Laurina. “Bring a variety; nothing too sweet, nothing too bitter.” Laurina greeted us in the lobby of a clean-ish suburban hotel. No one has necessarily been murdered in the beds, but probably wouldn’t take your shoes off. The teacher was annoyingly calm, completely lacking the desperate pleasing energy I like to bring to absolutely every new encounter I have.

She explained the process for our first meeting and asked which one of us would like to go first. My daughter looked at me, terrified. As any responsible, sound-minded mother would, I replied, “Hannah can go first!” and swiftly sent my 13-year-old into a hotel room, holding apples, bananas and sunflowers, with an eerily calm witch-lady.  After about 30 minutes, they emerged from Laurina’s highly sought-after, garden-level suite next to the pool, where I could only assume the smell of chlorine perfectly weaved with nauseating incense into a metaphorical warm, healing quilt.

I studied my daughter’s face; was she changed? Had she transcended?

She slid into the chair next to me. “I thought I was going to be sacrificed. Do you have my phone?”  She stifled a laugh and began a series of adolescent-bound texts that began with, “YOU GUYS…”

In short, we both completed the days-long course, learning TM properly, and I’m quite certain only one of us practices today. Yet in contrast to all of my other endeavors in the name of fixing myself and others, this one was not fruitless. Today, I am comfortable in the quiet, even when what it reveals is deeply uncomfortable. Today, I’m better equipped to simply sit in the static of her life. Whether she digs this tool from her toolbox one day to get closer to herself, I cannot control. All I can control is exposing her to deeply strange, unconventional and uncomfortable childhood experiences that may or may not be dangerous.

Not to brag, but I nailed it.

On Water (Guest poem by Hannah Pasz)

I love the water

The way it flows to its own rhythm

Unbothered by the world around it

To be true, I envy water

When I was a kid, I loved baths

The bubbles

To be true, I wished to never get out

Just maybe

If I stayed in the bath long enough

I could become a mermaid

And live in the water

Now I’m older

What once was childlike wonder

Is now optimism 

But who has time for that in the pressure pushing world?

Instead of swimming

I tan

Instead of pretending

I watch movies and watch while others pretend

Instead of dreaming

I scroll

So scared of being embarrassed in front of my peers

I swim over

To the appealing world of grownups

But the grownups stare across the ocean

Wishing they could swim back time

As I kick across the ocean

My mermaid tail fades

Into the trendiest sandals

And as I step onto the new land

I look into the water

I see myself waving goodbye

My old self 

I used to love the water 

On Breasts

The mammogram waiting room is the great equalizer.

Growing up, I frequently spent weekends with my Godmother. We lived outside of Chicago and my parents would send my brother and me to her Gold Coast apartment via the train - sans mobile devices -to stretch us a little and shift the scenery from our small-town lives. My Godmother embodied sophistication and freedom, her refrigerator was lined sparsely with the now-deceased soda brand Tab, Lean Cusines and skim milk - trivial items next to silky, rich, intentionally chilled French skincare.  She’d guide us through her neighborhood, down the aptly named Rush Street in the height of the 80’s, draped unapologetically in a real mink coat, a fresh Virginia Slim balanced between her long fingers. Rush Street was an artery of after-dark indulgence. Smokey, boozy, perfume-filled air floated over tables clinking with glasses, echoing with bold laughter and unbothered cursing. It felt like I could never open my eyes wide enough to take it all in.

“Look for the banker shoes,” she’d say.

Even at that age, I understood the essence of what she meant. At the time, the term largely encompassed men – successful men who could afford sharp, shiny shoes. Special shoes.

I scanned the mammogram waiting room. Women – mostly my age – shifted in their chairs, clad in ill-fitting pink, cafeteria worker smocks, tied in two places so their breasts could be released efficiently when called to service. It’s collective, this experience. Democratized. We periodically triple check our braless fronts, ensuring those sneaky mams haven’t escaped before their time, folding our arms over ourselves, smiling at each other kindly. Knowingly.

The door swings open.

“Rachel?”

She jumps up quickly; her laptop clunks on the floor. She pats herself down for her glasses, which are already perched on her head.

“Oh boy, sooner than I thought, so sorry! Sorry, let me just get all of this. I brought so much stuff, just wasn’t sure how long the wait would be. I brought too much, always do. So sorry.”

We smile empathetically and nod in alignment, as if to say, “we do that too. We take up space too. We’re sorry too.”

We’re scared too.

I looked down, past my untethered breasts, at my shoes – some of my favorite Nike sneakers. They say, “I’m a mom but I used to walk to work in the city with Kings of Leon in my headphones.” I scanned the room, taking in the spectrum. Soft, pliable ballet flats, smart, quietly confident loafers, edgy suede ankle boots, clackety-clack mules, nearly naked strappy sandals; and power-stance pumps – all broadcasting different messages to the world. It’s a luxury, this choice we’re given – to decorate our outsides, to curate the version of ourselves we want others to see. Even if our outsides don’t match our insides. Sometimes that’s the point. We bring bags of crap to the mammogram waiting room to keep the volume of noise exactly where it needs to be. To keep reality at bay. We’re all connected in this quiet effort to stay separate from one another. To pretend that certain kinds of life won’t happen to us.

The heavy door swung open, as every head popped up in anticipation. Rachel returned and gathered some lay-of-the-land information before resuming her wait.

“They’ll call you shortly for an ultrasound. Bathroom there. Water and snacks over there.”

“Microplastics,” I muttered, nodding toward the water bottles, certain the pink smock beside me would share in the irony. She smiled charitably.

“Megan?”

“Megan?”

I jolted up, fumbling for my book, glasses, phone, my toxic hospital-issued water bottle and apologized profusely. “Sorry. The wait was shorter than I thought. So sorry. Be right there. I always bring too much stuff.”

A gentle hand, attached to an arm wrapped in a pink smock touched my shoulder, as a woman leaned in.

“Same.”

On Mice

“You have all day.”

We were driving home from an event – a book tour I was anticipating for weeks. I sent him the link and billed it as a date night, knowing it wouldn’t be his thing. But that’s partnership, that’s marriage. Doing the thing that isn’t your thing. He’s conscious and generous about our varied interests – his more easily digestible within our current suburban midlife position: golf, paddle, highly unnecessary adult softball. Mine are slightly more abstract: sourdough starter development, meditation, a deep desire to tour a salt cave.

“Where…when do you want to go to a salt cave? There’s a salt cave?”

He tries on various faces that convey interest. Eyebrows lifted, head tilted, corners of the mouth turned up. Next, just one corner.

“I’ll look that up; we’ll find a great one. Salt caves.” He repeats it - it’s so forgettable the term could leave his mind before he can Google it.

Our date nights are increasingly important. The kids are older and more independent, so leaving them is terrifying. Parenting requires a new level of awake now, from caregiver to coach, therapist. Shaman. Everything we do in their presence is a synchronous dance of being completely ignored while examined under a microscope. Meanwhile, we project unresolved and unprocessed cognitive warfare on to them. The universe arranged it like this, so we begin to unravel all of the wires – like that ball of Apple chargers in the junk drawer that we pretend we don’t see every day – in the middle of our lives, just as our children emerge as opinionated, embodied, impressive albeit argumentative young adults. The comedic design of it is that we all must live in one house together and survive, like the Hunger Games.

The author who hosted our sexy date night published a book of essays and was touring to share her thoughts on opening to the creative process. I’ve been searching for my own process, denying that it’s probably (definitely) somewhere in the junk drawer ball of wires. “Intellectually, I get it,” I told him. “I know what to do, I just can’t get my brain to do it. I can’t get my body to do it. I don’t have the time or space to write.”

He looked confused. “You have all day.”

It must be serene, a mind like that. Logic. Structure. Reason. No mice scurrying in the walls at night, scratching behind the plaster of his thoughts, indicating some kind of impossible need. Through the windows of my home, the needs are clear; sink is full of dishes, the laundry pile is high, everyone is h(a)ngry and needs to be driven somewhere and then immediately picked up again. There’s a bounty of emotional needs as well, clingy dog included.

I made a deal with my mind mice. They’ll stay noisy and scratchy but will wait patiently for my kids to launch, at which point I’ll grow out all of the gray hair on my body and head, buy the sweetest little cabin in the woods, toss my phone in the creek and write all day long, willing my marriage to survive it.

But that won’t happen if I keep on my current comfortable path. Time is an excuse for fear – the same fear that prevents me from unraveling the ball of wires to learn what kind of electricity can really flow through them. Doing the thing is the only way to do the thing, so here I start.

Onword.