Duplicity

So, here it is the end of another week. How do they fly by so quickly? As much as I want the weekdays to go by so that I can spend two wonderful uninterrupted days with my son, every time we tick off one of those weeks just inches us closer and closer to him being all grown up and not my baby anymore. As much as I cheer and feel genuinely elated over every milestone, and every inch of independence he gains, I am really beginning to struggle with the duplicitous nature of my own emotions. I read that “the decision to have a child is to accept that your heart will forever walk about outside your body.” So true, and yet only part of the story. There are so many things that no one tells you about parenthood before you join the club. For starters, they can’t. There is no way to put it into words. And secondly, you wouldn’t be capable of understanding it if they tried. I mean, I am a very intelligent person. But understanding intellectually that you are about to love another person beyond your capacity, and actually experiencing the feeling are wildly different. It’s like the difference between watching Buzz Aldron walk on the moon, and ACTUALLY WALKING ON THE MOON.

So here I am, trying to put into words something I’ve already said cannot be communicated. Why? Because that is who I am. I have had to cope with a lot of heartbreaking events in my lifetime: my parents’ divorce, loss of loved ones, relationship breaking up, and the biggest one to date, the loss of a child. And each and every time I have used writing as the outlet by which I come to terms with my pain and learn about the new person I have become through that experience.

So what is this thing that I am feeling? This double edged sword that has divided my heart in two? It amazes me how emotions that I previously thought were mutually exclusive can swell up in my heart simultaneously. How can a moment make you feel both joyous and depressed? Proud and humbled? Competant and befuddled? Excited and terrified? I am learning that these complex feelings that seem to be opposites are actually the same. They are two sides of the same coin. You think that just growing up, being an adult, is all it takes to mature. That is not so. I see now that there is an aspect of our humanity that cannot be learned outside of parenthood. There is a capacity for love and adoration that cannot be fathomed! There is also an amazing ability to continue to function in spite of a level of pain, fear, anxiety, and self doubt that is beyond measure. So I am learning how to cope with this new found dual faceted emotion I’ll call ‘duplicity.’

I’ve been stewing on this for a few days now. Discussing it with my learned advisors who’ve ‘been there, done that.’ And talking it over with my peers who ‘are there, doing that.’ And they’ve been tremendously helpful. And now what’s been brought to my attention is not only must I learn to cope with it, but I must also come to terms with the fact that I will feel this way FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE! This will not only plague me as my child grows out of babyhood, but also as he grows out of boyhood, out of adolescence, into adulthood, into family life, and into parenthood himself. Every step of the way will bring with it both an exquisite joy and a searing pain as a new and wonderful phase of his life opens up before him while a part of life will be sealed forever in the realms of memory only.

So, while I cannot yet say that I have my mind or heart wrapped around this concept, I can say that they are stretching. I suspect that they will continue to stretch and grow daily, as my boy and I do, until one day many years in the future when the metaphorical fingertips just touch each other on the other side as I learn my last lesson on this earth; that my child must continue learning and growing and changing on his own without me while I wait for him with God. And that there is nothing I can do to prevent it. And that he’ll be ok.