I’m driving along the same street I traveled for years, to take my kids to school and soccer practice, going right by our old house. Only this time my three grandchildren are in the car. Everything is the same, in a sense. Only the trees are a lot taller and I’m a lot older. The spiral of life has gone around a turn, and I’m at the same spot again, only at a new level. Deja vu, but not.
I grew up in this area, and still harbor the visions of the familiar streets framed the way they were when I was as little as my grandkids. I pass the wall with the holes at the top, where my grandfather lifted me up to peek through. One of my first memories. We pass the graceful house where my mother and I lived with her parents after my father was killed. Those grandparents probably saved the day.
I remember being in the thick of parenting, right in the middle of planning three meals a day, doing endless loads of laundry, trying to figure out why only single socks emerge from the dryer, and attempting to explain some of life’s deeper mysteries and heartbreaks to two growing girls, without breaking apart their hopefully secure foundation. Now I’m driving carefully, hoping I can get these three to school at the right dropoff place with all the stuff they need and any arguments solved so they can have a happy day.
My ambitions have been simplified, along with my life. My daughter is the one who must manage a daily schedule so dense that any illness or breakdown or minor crisis will use up the slim margin of time and energy she has available. She is usually sleep deprived, always vigilant, and missing the luxury I have of timing a walk in nature, a meditation, and maybe an afternoon nap.
I am full of admiration for her, and for these three passengers of mine. My daughter and her husband have taken what I gave to her and revved it up a notch. My daughters are better mothers that I was.
I am trying to catch any shreds of shame about the mistakes I made and coat them with love and compassion. After all, that’s what I want my daughters to do. See their journey as mothers the same way they might see the whole journey of life: a partially blind expedition into the unknown, armed with good intentions.
By the time I drop the three precious ones at school the last day, before my flight home, tears spring up and flood me. After worrying about whether I could manage all three, I have done it. Now I’m sad to go. Next time I’ll volunteer for a longer stint.
The tears also signal my grief at being a special event grandmother who lives far away. I must visit their lives instead of being a daily part of them. My influence will come in bursts, rather than being part of the orchestral melody of their growing up. I hope the theme of my influence has to do with being true to your own true self, honoring your creativity, and putting your relationship to the natural world ahead of the artificial one.
I cry because I see that as a grandmother, I have led many lives. Probably ones I don’t remember, with each of them. And then within this one, there has been my life as a child, then as a mother, and now as an elder. The observer in me is pleased. All the strands have woven together in a feeling of gratitude. It is good to be home again.
This is a reprint of a favorite post for theSpiritedWoman.com I wrote last year after babysitting for my grandchildren. This year I’m missing them. And, I’m still trying to learn the lessons of how to have compassion for myself.
Is there a way you can “go home again” and re-visit a memory, coating it this time with compassion?
