We’ve been back to school for a month now, and I can hardly draw the line in my mind between what was summer and what became this new school year. It happened so fast, which seems to be how time goes in this stage. A flurry of activity, moments bursting into a fast-pace river of life that doesn’t stop rushing forward for one second. I like to package a season up in my mind and tie it with a bow of meaning, and this is what I’ve been thinking about lately.
Perspective.
At the beginning of summer, two of my kids took summer school classes and one of them did an internship, and since that effectively kept us homebound when my summer instincts are to flee from home and see the world, I felt a bit stir-crazy. Staying home causes me to stress out about everything I have more time to notice. Chipping paint, garden beds full of weeds, closets that need to be organized, the feeling that I should be writing more, exercising more, cooking more, this home project, that home project. Everyone is home, so there is more cleaning and cooking and I feel just as busy and stressed as I would during the school year. What I’m trying to say is, I can’t relax at home.
The river doesn’t stop flowing. It may ebb and wane, but it isn’t going anywhere. When one source of stress simmers down, in my experience it just pops up in a different form somewhere else. This was the setting of my summer.
Now, me, not wanting to waste time, did sincerely try to weave in special moments to break up the monotony of these days at home and make lemons out of lemonade. We saw a couple movies (Backrooms, Toy Story, Spider-Man), saw a Linda Lindas concert in Los Angeles, went to a local zoo, found a few house projects (painted my bedroom purple!). The kids went to a few day camps. Things like that.
Still, my monkey brain struggled with a barrage of thoughts constantly pulling me into the direction of MORE.
Should I buy a new wardrobe?
New blinds?
Should I remodel my house? A pool? New bathrooms?
How about more plants for the garden. I always need new plants.
I should write. I definitely need a new writing device.
Or how about I start planning a trip. Japan? Paris? Iceland? Vietnam? Where should we go?
It’s always something. I need more. So much so that it makes it hard for me to sit still and relax. I make lists for lists for lists. I tell myself I should be more productive. Do more. I spent a lot of my days trying to recalibrate those thoughts.
Later in the summer, I started following the Lindsay Clancy trial. I was a mock trial kid in high school and have always loved trials. I thought about how no matter what you think about the trial, the fact that you can be going about your life with your hopes and dreams and ambition, and then have something like mental illness crash into you in the worst all-consuming way, completely changing the trajectory of your life—it is truly frightening. And, I believe, something none of us are necessarily immune from. Sometimes I wonder why this doesn’t scare people more. I hear people wanting to burn Lindsay at stake for what she did, and others advocating to do more for new mothers suffering from the unknowns of postpartum psychosis, but to me, how are we not absolutely terrified by the reality that one day we are here, but tomorrow something can completely turn our lives upside down?
One of the ways I coped with the sudden loss of my husband 10 years ago was to consume as many sad stories as possible. Some people think this is horrifying. After all, who wants to hear sad stories when you are feeling the worst possible sadness of your life? A lot of people think that sounds sadistic. But to me, other stories gave me perspective. It grounded me in reality. I am not alone. I am not the only person to suffer. And in many cases—even though in the grief world we are not supposed to compare our grief—I saw other people’s suffering as larger than mine. It doesn’t bring you comfort in the traditional sense, but it does make you aware that this is what life has always been about, you just probably had the luxury of being naive to it all. Through these stories, we learn about resilience. The ways people have overcome their grief. How it has transformed them. I found it encouraging to learn that I wouldn’t always feel like I wanted to die. That there was light on the other side of the tunnel.
This year I have listened to a lot of 9/11 stories. Really bone-crushingly sad stories of loss. Just today, I listened to a story about a man named Jupiter, who had recently changed his work shift from nights to mornings to be able to spend more time with his 5-year-old. His wife recalled the events of the day, finding out that everyone on the top floors of the World Trade Center didn’t make it out, having to give hair from his hairbrush to offer DNA that would eventually identify his body. Telling their son that his father was gone. Spending the rest of her life separated from the man who she loved. A son growing up without his father.
I was driving my youngest to his FNL practice when I listened to the tail end of the interview. I had to wipe tears from my eyes. As we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I think about how I got stuck visiting my uncle in Alabama on that day, unable to fly home when the airports shut down. How teenage me was fixated on my freedom to travel (or lack of) and had no clue about Jupiter’s story, or the many other stories. I knew it was tragic. I just couldn’t relate to that kind of loss.
And then one day, I would have to tell my children that their father was gone. I would have to live the rest of my life without the man who I loved. That changes a person.
The silver lining of experiencing loss is the empathy you gain. I feel things so much deeper now because I know what it feels like to lose someone, to be scared, angry, resentful, guilty, depressed, raw, depleted of any desire of wanting to continue without them.
Until one day you do.
And then you do it again.
And slowly, you pick up the pieces of that former self, and you rebuild. Not the same person who you were, but someone else. And this is where you have choice—an opportunity—to build an even better version of yourself.
Perspective.
When you start to pay attention, you know that there are a zillion ways other humans have (and maybe you, too) suffered, and in a lot of situations, it was out of their control.
But in the ways that we do have control, my thinking is that we seize the hell out of them and live this one wild and precious life on our terms.
At the end of summer, I went to Kauai with my children. We are squarely in a new chapter of travel as a family. I’ve been traveling with them since they were born. Our first trip after my husband passed away was to Japan. I had the 1-year-old strapped to my back. My daughter was 3, the oldest turned 7 in Hiroshima. People said I was crazy for traveling with little ones.
They won’t remember.
Too much work.
Why do that to yourself?
Now two of the three children are proper teenagers. The youngest is 11. I wish I could strap him to my back again, but alas, he might break it.
One day we were at Poipu Beach. There were sea turtles sunbathing on the sand. My youngest called me into the water to look at the fish. We saw a rainbow, a clownfish, and an assortment of others that were amazing to experience in the clear, warm water. I love that finding fish still excites the baby of our family. The other two kids were building a sand fort near our towels. It was fairly busy in the water, mostly young families. Someone had fish food, luring the fish in and drawing people over to the commotion. I noticed a young mom holding her toddler. The child was whining loudly and thrashing around. Even fish didn’t interest him. He needs a nap, I immediately thought. Stop fighting nature. The grandma approached to check in with the mom, whose tired face told an entire story of motherhood struggles. I kept waiting for the father to relieve the poor woman, but he was with their older child looking for fish. Grandma asked how they were doing. “It has been a hard day,” I overheard the mom say. It was only 10AM.
And it is so hard. But when I watched her holding her toddler, a part of me also ached for those days when Peter Jack was strapped to my back, chasing toddlers, small children with round cheeks and missing teeth, squeaky voices asking questions about everything. You don’t remember the meltdowns or the hard bits. You remember how they smelled as a newborn. The way they wanted to be in your arms.
I wanted to tell the tired mom, enjoy it all. Right now. Someday you will long to be right here, tired, with toddlers, the sleepless nights, the newness of your motherhood chapter still unfolding. You will never get that time back.
I’d like to ask the people who tried to discourage me from traveling with small children years ago why they thought waiting until my kids got older was a good idea.
Let me tell you.
Traveling with teens is no joke. I don’t care what anybody posts on social media.
My kids have started to venture in the social media world. They can now see what I post. I made my Kauai post. Snorkeling at Ke’e Beach, a rainbow appearing against a backdrop of a mountain of jungle. Green-blue water and clear skies. Chickens trailed by their chicks, begging for crumbs at the pizza place where we ate at. Puka dogs on the picnic table overlooking Poipu Beach, roosters in the trees calling out as a gentle mist started coming down. All of these beautiful moments.
“Those pictures didn’t show the entire story,” my oldest pointed out.
No. They didn’t.
The moments I got mad at them for wanting to sleep all day instead of snorkeling.
The bickering.
The complaining.
Their resistance to helping with anything.
The lack of enthusiasm.
I’ve realized that the truth is, it is all hard. Every stage. Every moment. Such is the nature of life. They were hard as toddlers, they were hard as teens, and heck, I’m sure they’d be hard if I traveled with them as fully grown humans. They will just get more opinionated, right?
But I would hope that they would agree that all of the wonderful moments outweigh the difficult bits.
Was I supposed to wait until I was retired to see the world? Alone? Bones aching, pill-popping, schedule my trips around my doctor’s appointments?
No thank you.
I’ll take the hard bits, because I have a sneaking suspicion the hard bits just keep getting harder.
I accept the challenges of each chapter. I don’t want them to stop me. It does take, however, constant perspective work. I get frustrated. I lose my shit. I feel disappointment. But also: gratitude, joy, wonder, curiosity, happiness, love, excitement, hope, connection.
And knowing that we are always one degree away from a completely different reality also helps me stay grounded in my perspective. Or at least not float too far away. When the monkey brain starts going wild, I have to pull on that string and reel myself back.
Here is where I need to be. Not there. Or there. Or there.
It is a constant struggle.
When we were watching Spider-Man at the theater this summer, I leaned over to my daughter during the movie and whispered, “There is a spot on the screen. I can’t un-see it.”
On the bottom of the large screen, there was indeed a black patch. I immediately thought: I paid good money for this experience. This is ruining my experience!
“Just look in the middle,” she whispered back. “That’s what I’m doing, and then you won’t notice it.”
She was right, of course. I never paid attention to it again. So wise, these kids of ours. We just need to keep borrowing their beginner’s eyes.
But it was a good reminder. Perspective. Choose what you can in a life full of curveballs, unknowns, all of the things out of our hands. You get to choose perspective. It will make for a more pleasurable experience.
I’m looking forward to what this next season will bring, and I wish you all better weather, pumpkin lattes, colorful leaves, and all of the small moments of autumn that bring you joy no matter where you are.
Teresa Shimogawa 