A few weeks ago, I wandered into an uncharted rabbit hole with twists and unexpected turns leading obviously nowhere or maybe-possibly somewhere. Books, movies, memes, and podcasts, mysteriously had a similar vibration. And, there was an unnamed, yet familiar something in the eyes of people I came across in the wild. The entirety aligned with an ache I have carried for so long I lost understanding for where the ache came from. My projections for what it could all mean were found to be completely wrong when the route ended at a word.
Longing.
Pi, the emotionally-needy terrier who insistently opines I am his super hero, was recently left at home when I visited the west coast. Along with howling mournfully, I knew there would be moments he’d silently yearn for the door announcing my return to open. Forecasting Pi’s bereavement and longing clawed at my desire to travel. It took the time away, plus more back home, to digest that wandering through a warren of longing wasn’t simply a Pi experience, but an extensive howl shuddering through this life.
Thirty years ago, as twins played squash in my womb, the idea seemed odd—full-grown humans squeegeeing off the last bits of me to live wholly as themselves. As it was, I hadn’t conquered the ongoing result of the womb I pushed out of, which made it an unusual quest to pursue for two wee strangers. I attributed the idea dropping into my thoughts as coming from the ethers between this place and the next; guides, spirits, angels, or a god, tugging on my humanity with a mission.
“Raise them to be themselves.”
Staring at the full moon of my six-months-pregnant belly as eight limbs, two bottoms, and enormous heads swam in the soup of my essence, I couldn’t grasp how to raise children to be themselves. Never learning something doesn’t excuse the aftereffects of me parenting in THE WORLD during the 90s and the first twenty-plus years of the 2000s. I won’t accept a pass for getting it wrong over and over and over. At the same time, I hold awareness for the evolutionary feat it takes to create a new and potentially life-giving caretaking approach out of a trash heap of other people’s shit.
On a recent grey and misty morning, I frolicked in the amniotic fluid of the great Pacific Ocean. Swimming with me were the humans I alternately destroyed and with relentless care attempted to repair over and over and over. There are not adequate descriptors for the joyful peace I felt as one twin bodysurfed and the other leaped to avoid submersion in the waves. It came to me as a thirty-year-old echo of possibility.
“Raise them to be themselves.”
My heart grieves for the me who didn’t know—who couldn’t know—how to take that sentence and live what it meant. I grieve for the newbie humans who arrived in THE WORLD with all their knowing intact, only to have it destroyed or buried in bits and tussles. My grief seems to be uncontainable, expanding to others with similar circumstances—moms and children navigating through corrosive hand-me-downs and never realizing what’s being lost, or the awareness arriving oh-so-bittersweetly-late, like it did for me.
I imagine there are more humans than the number that have visited Starbucks carrying a similar unnamed longing. Low-humming insidiously in the background, creating and extending unhealthy relationships with people who “saw them” for a moment. That feeling is…hauntingly indescribable and while the taste of it may become lost, it can’t be forgotten. I recognized it for what it was when Mother Pacific enveloped our womb family. I almost couldn’t breathe. She-they-me-we were simultaneously seeing and being seen in a timeless moment of wholeness.
Belonging cannot be manufactured. I learned that failing over and over and over to caretake like someone who understood what “raise them to be themselves” meant. Belonging means living, providing, and accepting the thing that’s longed for. Not the volume of things that’s taught we SHOULD long for—the you-me-we connection that’s longed for.
Beholding longing in other people’s eyes reminds me what I have been longing for. Perhaps, we are longing for the same thing.
Existing with the room to exist.
Accepting in a womb of acceptance.
I wonder if the crux of the human condition is as simple and complex as the formula for Pi.
Me being me and you being you, and beholding that as if we’re forever and nothing else matters.
Pi knew you were exactly where you needed to be and patiently waited for you to come home so he could show you all the love he held for you.
Beautiful piece!! Beautiful twins!! Wonderful mom!!
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ahhhhh… this. What a transcendent moment (the ocean rebirthing you all) to witness through your words. Exquisite 💜