Untitled (Lost & Found )

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me...”  — Leonard Cohen

Spinning my wheels.

I was always fearful I would end up spinning my wheels -- you know, to nowhere and feeling a million miles away, but still in the same place never knowing the cocktail of rush and worry of leaving or worse coming back unchanged.

Contrary to my mixed emotions lately and way it can feel that even though things are going forward you are facing it ass backwards, you can either change position or change perspective 

Ironically, it would be a stationary bike that sent me on a mission in the dark only lit by the safest candle this side of covid: literally, in 45 minutes, it took me on a journey of the steepest hills and wildest coasts, only to release from the saddle if the rhythm of the music matched the momentum of my peddles to the best place. Out of my head and find the fire in my soul.

In those fleeting moments of adrenaline mixed with clarity, I saw the words for my feelings. Like a painless tattoo. They rode in tandem along side me. Etched forever.

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me...”  — Leonard Cohen

I have watched my children for almost a decade and a half collectively, and regardless of the weekday or weekend, our time had a way of standing still in the moment yet flying by in a photograph. How before it was Monday afternoon the next Monday morning was here. Yet so much went into the seven days it took to get from each other. Speed is sometimes measured in laugh lines. Because the tracks of my tears can be covered with concealer.

My children are raising me differently than I am raising them. In tandem we evolve. Their essence, energy -- fuck! Everything is etched into me forever. I find through their youth I am growing up again. Struggling with maintaining the patience with the roller coasters of the things they haven’t done or learned yet that I know all too well. Maybe it’s harder the second time around. The happily ever after mixed with the tragedy in the climax. But then sometimes we end up on the same road. A path neither of us set out to take but have little choice in. And we just need to get back into the saddle and peddle against the wind.

The next season is creeping up on us. The white out winter is almost completely melted, and I can feel the water of the aftermath underneath as my tires hydroplane through the puddles to school drop off and pick up. No! Not because of my speed, but the inches and feet that fell the season before made it virtually impossible not to. The white out covered the green grass, colorful flowers but not the rainbow prism in the early morning sunrise. I still have that. The one through the dining room chandelier that I purposely love to step through to make my first cup of coffee before the house awakens uncaffeinated and cranky— or is that just me...

There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”    —Leonard Cohen

They don’t call it March madness just for the wild outcome of the underdog, but the way we see the spring awakening in all of us -- the lions and the lambs.

I’m looking forward to March this year. Not just for the basketball and the hint of warmth from the spring but what this will mean to me personally. I will be celebrating something I could have hardly imagined. I’m the Cinderella story no one saw coming -- mostly, me.

Two years ago, I witnessed the world and mine crumble, and the oxygen be sucked out of the atmosphere. Having trouble breathing wasn’t just a side effect of Covid but a side effect of not getting it. I had no control, and the weight of it all was like a loss of gravity. Falling slowly into a darkness but having to be the strength and light when it was impossible at times. Giving my all and everything not knowing what the outcome would be. All we had was time and yet it felt too much at times.

I always loved March until then. It brought people together. It was magnetic. East coast vs. west coast. The style was different, but the message was the same. Everyone from everywhere and suddenly it was canceled. We were encouraged to be six feet apart, or worse: separated by time and space into a cyberspace reality. Everyone and everything I once knew was gone. There was a new normal with no manual. As if mommyhood wasn’t confusing enough at times, this was all a bunch of gibberish. I feverishly wondered and worried about the ones I loved from getting sick and what would happen if they didn’t -- the side effects of both. And strangers: those I was yet to meet or felt like I knew all about across social media and television platforms. The alternate reality became my only connection to the outside world.

Yet it kept me further inside. In my head. In search for someone to talk to and listen. I wasn’t cutting it day in and day out. But in the end, I was all I got.

And then there were the nights the endless nights. Way too late, I began to feel like it was like a Jerry Lewis telethon. Kinda cringey and kinda important and all in grainy color. I knew I needed sleep but mom-somnia was in full effect. And those nights when I was  awake -- wide awake when I wasn’t worrying, I was reading or writing. Wondering what was my part in all of this? Hoping when the sun came out the next morning the light would start to appear just like as you emerge from Manhattan’s midtown tunnel --I loved that moment all my life. So simplistic and so dramatic. Something was awaiting on the other side. 

“ I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.”        —Leonard Cohen

I took a pause to write in my diary for a week. Let my self-love settle into my heart. Re-read my letter to my younger self and let my older self “big sister” it. The kind of sibling I don’t have but I’m raising in my two boys to have. One who tells it to you straight. Loves you hard and maybe even hates you hard (at times), too. Give you passion and purpose and healthy competition. Blood is thicker than water— for me it’s myself.

I also took a pause because life did not. Every time I thought I had a moment it became someone else’s.

My boys had no school and no sports all week -- February break. And I almost forgot we did that indefinitely two years ago but not as a vacation but a staycation. This time we went somewhere warm. Somewhere it felt like they didn’t know covid exists. We borrowed their sunshine and scenery and kept the tan as a souvenir. It felt so 2019. But it also didn’t feel like a vacation for me, just a relocation. I was thankful to breathe different air and watch my boys enjoy the water and sunlight see their bright smiles as they didn’t have a care in the world. That’s all I want for everyone -- individual happiness. Sometimes seeing others joy is what we need to have our own. But it was just before the plane took off, I was kindly reminded both at departure and arrival to put the oxygen mask over my nose and mouth in case of emergency before helping my children. It was just the message I still need to hear -- that was my souvenir.

Don’t forget how important I am, too.

My boys bicker. And love each other just as wildly. They are quintessential brothers. I heard the closer you are with your sibling the more normal it is to have these kinds of swings. It’s not the playground kind in my house sometimes. It’s east coast vs. west coast rap somedays. The style is different, but the message is similar. These kinds of moments where I’ve said no more than I’ve said yes and I reffed another game down to the buzzer beater.  The best example came during this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. Mary J. Blige became my spirit animal -- maybe every mommy’s. While everyone was enjoying the entertainment she so dramatically and interpretively displayed in the iconic conclusion, it reminded me how I feel after some days. KO’ed and winded. I sang my swan song for the day in front of millions of people and with that mic drop I’m out.

But then it’s quiet. Calm. They are in tandem with one another, and the flow of oxygen and the gravity keeps me grounded. Everything is just right. It’s magical. I envy what my boys have but I revel in it, too. How lucky they are to have these built-in best friends -- and so am I.

Our world is far from calm these days. The turmoil in the distance thankfully is too far away and over my children’s head to worry them about it, and they are back in school, so they don’t have to see it across the screen like they did with quarantine. I can control the narrative about war. This war is like a vicious sibling rivalry of the wicked kind. Worse than when they thought Jackie and Joan Collins were at odds. It’s serious stuff. Another March and another madness.

Now we’re home again and settling back into our routine and saddle of everyday -- school starts Monday. It was at bedtime we read one of my all-time favorites. We read “Elmer” by David McKee. I love that book. I love its message: When Elmer, a patchwork elephant, discovers a bush in the jungle with elephant-colored berries, he shakes the bush and rolls in a berry mash until he is as gray as the others. Now no one seems to notice him; for a time, he enjoys his anonymity, but after a while he begins to realize just how quiet and dull things are when he's not around.

So, with one change of scenery his individuality reappeared, and it was just what everyone needed— including himself.

I told my boys the importance is ageless even if the book is young. How being yourself is what makes you special. and we all need someone in our lives who makes us feel that way. Most importantly, we need to make ourselves feel that way, too. Don’t get lost in wanting to get lost but get found in being what you were searching for. Somedays, I’m both: the lost and found box.

Love I get so lost sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

 All my instincts, they return
The grand facade, so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

 In your eyes
The light, the heat (in your eyes)
I am complete (in your eyes)
I see the doorway (in your eyes)
To a thousand churches (in your eyes)
The resolution (in your eyes)
Of all the fruitless searches (in your eyes)

 Oh, I see the light and the heat (in your eyes)
Oh, I wanna be that complete
I wanna touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes

—    In Your Eyes: Peter Gabriel