What is it, do you think, about graduations, these endings of one thing and beginnings of everything else? I’m in the middle of them right now. This very second. This week. This sunny day, which is the eve of tomorrow, which is the day of the Actual Event. The gradution. The marked moment when the switch flips. The faerie door when we leave what we’ve known and enter the mysterious, magical future where it’s all potential once again, not yet pin-down-able.
One of my twin children–for I have two at once which is still a surprise lo these eighteen years later–wandered into my office moments ago with his stack of rumpled apparel for tomorrow. It needs to be steamed, which he knows because I told him, my mommy role still activated, and I offered to do it because it is a sentimental task. Not daily laundry; that’s been his for ages. I shall not. But steaming the symbolic robes? Yes, please; that’s mine. This twin child–the boy one–is valedictorian, despite my best efforts. I tried, friends. I really did. I have witnesses. I begged for a B. Just one. Because relinquishing perfection makes for an easier, more pleasant life (I truly believe this) and the benefits of perfection do not outweigh the burden, but my child is a rebel and a revolutionary and rejected my advice and so shall be lauded on the morrow, and I have an additional stole to steam. Which I’ll do happily and proudly because what mommy of worth isn’t just incredibly, stupidly proud of her baby pursuing his own dreams despite her?
The other of my twin children–a girl! who knew??–wandered in, as well, pulled, I believe, by my empty, full heart which is acting like a black hole, a vacuity, sucking its surroundings inside in a desperate bid to hold onto everything all at once, its capacity endless, its need great. She came for a hug as she often does and has reminded me since she was tiny to SLOW DOWN, FFS, AND HUG BACK, despite the fact that a) slowing and b) accepting affection, have, historically, not been my best things. It occurs to me now, as I’m writing this, that she may not know about b. Gosh, I hope not; wouldn’t that be amazing? If my child believes me to be as affectionate as I’d like to actually be? Sadly, though, the “a” ship sailed…none of my children are under the illusion that I’m not a frenetic, frantic rusher, trying to fit in All the Useless Things. I’m working on it, though, I swear. This twin child–the girl one–is receiving fewer plaudits this week than her brother, although it remains a mystery to me how this should be so, for this child has had to be So Brave. The bravest. Going on exchange. Leaving home for a year at 16. Living in Turkey where she realized she’s a she, as if that isn’t impossibly hard far from home in a country where such things are illegal. Coming home. Coming out. Battling her body and her brain and coming out (pun intended) on top of it all–more authentically herself, more humble, more open, more curious, more deeply aware of pain, her own and others’. I mean. Where’s the stole for that, I ask you?
All of which is to say…
What magic. What a miracle. What absolute magnificence.
And also…
Here we are at the faerie door, friends. Amazing.
