Conversation Time With Jordan

My baby boy, Chase, turned six months old this week. I love watching him grow and do new things, and I more than love the increasing level of emotional interaction he can have with me, but the swift passing of his baby-ness has suddenly hit me in the stomach.

I have always been the kind of person who runs through life...I go as fast as I can and hit as many bases as I can as I chase whatever is just beyond the horizon of possibility, but over the past few years I have been trying to train myself to slow down, to stop and enjoy the good parts of time before it passes. Train as I might, I'm just not wired that way. I'm built for challenges. I put one foot on the ground in front of the other and I run toward them and face them head on. Sometimes I don't win, but usually I surprise myself. Even when I'm exhausted and sore and running on blistered feet, I find that, if I keep running hard enough, the blisters will callous over and it won't hurt anymore...my skin thickens as I beat back against the world that challenges me.

The past six months have been full of challenges...graduate school, life-changing decisions, difficult relationships, the death of a loved one...and of course learning how to be a mom to a newborn. They were a beautiful six months, but probably the hardest ones I've ever faced, and I have to admit that I haven't taken much time to stop and allow myself to juice the good feelings. I have at times let stress and fear overshadow my happiness and overwhelming gratitude to the universe for blessing me with this amazing little creature. I have focused on chasing the challenges away, on thickening my skin to protect myself from the threat of pain.

Chase can't walk yet, but he tries. The earth has not yet pushed itself against his sweet, soft, innocent feet. He doens't know about challenges...he doesn't know about pain...he doesn't have anything to be afraid of. And the thing that is so heartbreakingly beautiful about it all is that he doesn't even know to appreciate it...he just wants to go, go, go. I want so badly to speak his language, to beg him to just slow down and enjoy this short time of being a sweet and innocent baby in a mean world...I want those feet to stay soft just as long as they possibly can.

But when I snuggle up to those soft, sweet feet, that innocence that I just can't preserve, I realize that my heart isn't calling out to him...it is screaming at my own mind - slow down, enjoy this short time; the challenges are going to come anyway...there is no need to chase them; You will be strong enough to face them when they come...no need to harden yourself up right now.

So tonight I pause...tonight I revel in joy and gratitude at the gift of this little boy and his power to reach me in unbelievable ways and teach me unlearnable lessons. I love you Chase Jackson Gross.

When I reminded my sister in law which one of my grandmothers it was who had passed away, she said, "Oh, the tiny one? I remember her...she was fancy." If there is one perfect word to encapsulate my memory of Gran, it is definitely fancy. I only got to know her for what seems like a short twenty three years of her very long life, and now that she is gone, I have become painfully aware of all that I did not know about her life before I was born. For the greater part of my memory, Gran has always been a small and delicate looking woman. Especially in the last few years, after pancreatitis and the loss of her true love, Dudley, took their toll on her body, Gran's fragile body seemed almost breakable at times. It didn't hold her back though. She was always going and doing...and she ALWAYS looked fancy. In just about every memory I have and every photo I've seen, that tiny little body of hers was decorated with the latest vibrant and colorful fashions. She was always decked out in some beautiful, sparkly something...Her outspoken beautiful fragility reminded me of a butterfly.

Sometimes when I'm driving, a butterfly will fly close to my car, and I just know that even if I don't hit it directly, the winds I've stirred up will have pulled that beautiful, fragile body in and smashed it up or thrown it down under my tires. But often I'm surprised to look in my rear view mirror and see, a few yards behind, that the little thing has somehow fought the wind and the monstrous gravity caused by my disturbance, and caught smooth air again. That was my gran...she managed to remain delicate in a world that doesn't take care of delicate things. So many times she was up against something much bigger and stronger than her, and she somehow managed to survive with impossible beauty and grace.

Some butterflies spend their entire active lives flying over three thousand miles to find a warm place for the winter. They fly for months, encounter who knows how many predators, and bring unspeakable joy to those who are blessed to witness some part of their journey. After making the impossible trip, they bask in warm sunlight for the rest of their lives. Gran made it through many impossible things, and she got to that warm place when she found Dudley. I am blessed to have seen her beauty and felt her love for a small part of her long and beautiful journey.

I'm reading a book right now that says the purpose of life is to seek happiness. I find this idea interesting and hopeful. I desperately need life to have a purpose. I need to know that I've come to be who I am and where I am for a reason...that I'm not just going through the motions everyday. The truth is, the motions are hard. Even the best things about life are hard...loving a person, acheiving success, expressing yourself. These things do bring great happiness, but they, like other things, are a tightrope walk of designed intention and tremendous effort. And then there are the hard things...the scary things, the painful things. Why participate in any of it if there isn't some purpose...some magnificent and individual purpose just for me?

So...seeking happiness. It seems simple enough. It could be a purpose, I think. I could work through life one day at a time just for the purpose of putting forth a valiant effort toward finding an ultimate happiness. I guess in a way that's what I'm doing, or maybe what I should be doing. But you know what, at the end of the day, I've read a little too much poetry to believe that's all there is to it.

I think finding happiness is just a piece to a much bigger puzzle. I think that the need to seek just the good in things may be a part of human nature that life is trying to train out of us. We can do our best to try believe that we can have mostly just the good things if we are good enough people, maybe even imagine that we have some control over it all...but eventually the hard things are going to beat their way in, and we are going to have to feel them; we are going to have to learn how to deal with them.

No, the ultimate lesson in life cannot only be about how to find happiness. That's way too easy. I think the thing about life is that we just have to learn how to let it be...how to relinquish the delusion of control and try to be the best people we know how to be through everything...to try to carry around and share as much happiness as we can and to be prepared to let life get in the way of that sometimes...to reconcile ourselves with the fact that even sadness has a purpose. I am thankful to have a little poetry to help me deal with that reality...

The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney)
From the album Let It Be

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be. Yeah
There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be...