Vibrant Nation

Several months ago, a friend who reads my journal regularly mentioned that Russ still felt like a shadowy character to her. She asked me to write more about him. It hadn't occurred to me to do that. It was a perfect case of being too close to see clearly. Absorbed as I was, Russ was very much alive and real to me. It took someone outside looking in to help me see that wasn't the case for most of those beyond our "magic circle."

After my friend read what I wrote about Russ, she said, "I never really understood--now I get it!" That was an eye-opener. She didn't understand the power and pull of our relationship because she only knew me. She had no sense of Russ, so it was, to her, a very unbalanced equation. I wondered how many other people I cared about didn't understand either.

I decided to send the two journal entries to close friends and family with a short explanation: "Apparently this relationship hasn't felt real to a lot of people because Russ has been a blank page--so I thought this might be helpful." I heard back from my mother instantly. She said, "I love, love, love, what you wrote about Russ!" She's very open to getting to know Russ, so reading those journal entries made her feel good. Finally, she could "see" him through my eyes.

My younger son Cole, however, refused even to read what I sent him. He's 25, but more undone by the choices I've made than I had let myself see--so this is how he's letting me know. Cole is not a talker. We've had one difficult conversation about his not wanting to read my journal. I came away with the disturbing realization that his refusal to read about Russ--or anything else--was not about Russ at all; in fact he actually likes what he's seen so far. It's the tip of a very large, very cold, and very sharp iceberg. Old issues. Old hurts. Old blame. I doubt if there's a child of divorce alive who couldn't recite a litany of crimes committed against them, the unwitting victims of a devastating debacle. He has been hurt by things we've barely begun to talk about. It's very hard to hear, or rather feel, that kind of pain and anger from your child, no matter how old they are. The very stuff of Mother Hell.

My daughter, Blair, on the other hand, has talked a lot. She's the squeaky wheel among my children: I've known from the start that she felt hurt and abandoned by my moving to Maine to be with Russ. All this time, she has resisted coming to the farm to visit. She wanted to meet Russ, but at the same time, she wanted to keep him at arm's length. Her thinking went something like, "If I allow this to become real, it will be worse. If I can keep it unreal maybe it will go away." But after Blair finally read my journal entries about Russ, she called me, sobbing. She said, "I'm so happy for you, but it makes me sad too." This is a nineteen-year-old girl who is still torn about my relationship with Russ, but she said to me, "After I read that, I could see how happy you were. I know what it feels like to be in love, so I understand. I could see that this is someone you've been looking for all your life, and that made me really happy. But I feel like the parent who's sending their child off into the world."


Isn't that amazing and sweet? It was a poignant moment because of course I knew exactly what she meant. As a mother, I've felt sad watching my children move into the wider world, because I was losing them in a way that had become familiar. But I also knew it was what they had to do. It's a double-edged sword, isn't it? So when Blair said that, I had to laugh. "I think seeing how happy I am makes it harder for you to be mad at me." And she said, "Yes." And she was crying. Partly because she's happy for me, and partly because it's now real for her, and it looks good, so it's not likely to go away. Wise beyond her years, she is. It isn't always so easy to see that two seeming opposites can be simultaneously true. Happy and sad--all in one body, all at one time.

I'm so proud of her.

Newsflash: Both Blair and Cole are coming to visit at the farm in a few weeks. So we'll all leap into these new waters. You've got to start somewhere.