It has been a really brutal winter for those of us stuck in
this seemingly endless polar
vortex that led to an absurd amount of snow days, freakishly frigid
temperatures and entire city shutdowns. At the beginning of the week, however, we
had actual spring-like weather. I
wore a skirt. And flats. Then Wednesday, bitter about its middle-of-the-week
status, brought a thirty-degree temperature drop and more snow. But for those
two days, I felt more alive than I have in months. Everyone else seemed to be
feeling the same way. When I pulled up at one of our most popular toddler
parks, it was buzzing with parents and kids hyped up on sunshine. I seriously
thought (hoped?) that we might all break out in song and dance, flashmob style,
to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy.”
I’m sad to report that nothing of the sort materialized, but I danced a little
in the parking lot until my son—only two but already embarrassed by my
shenanigans—told me to cut it out.
For me, at almost 33 years old, the transition from the hard
freeze of winter to the soft warmth of spring is a welcome but expected shift; I
survived the winter because I knew that it would eventually end (we’re not
quite beyond the
wall, yet). I hadn’t considered, however, what my son thought about the
perpetual state of cold. When I stopped
to think about it, I realized that last spring was half his lifetime ago. The
days when we frolicked half-clothed from sunrise to sundown, when shoes were
optional and new grass tickled our bare legs, when milk-drunk was still a thing—those
days are nothing more than some hazy baby heyday to him. I first realized this
as we got out of the car and he stopped in his tracks to stare at a group of
college-aged boys across the grass. Engaged in all manner of muscular feats,
they were, wait for it…shirtless. It’s no secret to those of you who know us,
that my son is a never
nude. He requires head-to-toe clothing nearly all of the time. So seeing a
group of half-clothed guys was akin to, I dunno, a unicorn sighting or
something else of equally mythic proportions. “Mommy!” he exclaimed as he stood
there squinting in his sunglasses, “those big boys are naked! I see his’s [sic] belly buttons!” I explained, of course,
that they weren’t naked, merely shirtless. “Huh…” he responded, part-assenting, part-incredulous
and part-awakening to this new “nudist” movement before him. As we walked over
to the playground he kept glancing backwards, as if to make sure that those
guys were still there in all their lean, vaguely threatening, bare belly-buttoned
glory.
During these past few months since my mom’s death, I’ve felt
similarly shocked and scandalized by all of the things that her passing has
laid bare—particularly, my mortality. I can’t take my eyes off of it. I feel
like I’m perpetually looking over my shoulder for all the ways that I might
die. Quietly growing cancer. Sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Car crash. Plane crash.
Train wreck. Heart attack. Victim of random violence. Shark attack. I guess
those last two are somewhat redundant, but you get the picture. I’ve always
been a worrier, but I’ve never really had this kind of palpable anxiety about
my death. Clearly, death has always been on the horizon for me. (Unless, of
course, vampires really do “come out of the coffin”;
I’ll gladly sign up for that blood drive in exchange for immortality. Zombie
apocalypses can suck it, though. No thank you to rotting flesh and brains on
the menu for eternity.) However, I never felt that it was imminent in the way
that I do now. I understand how people end up as shut-ins, too terrified to open
the door to incalculable variables, to unforeseen dangers and to those encounters
that sideswipe us, leaving us wounded on the side of the road. Luckily for me,
I have this beautiful kid who needs to be walked and watered daily (and
sometimes I feed him, too!). So I’m forced to go about the practice of living
while I continue to fret about dying. It’s a practice that I’ve found
surprisingly invigorating. Seriously, try it. Get some major death anxiety and
then go about your daily life. It’s better than BASE jumping.
When we finally made it from the parking lot to the
playground, he ran straight to the swings and asked to be lifted up. I rolled
my eyes on the inside and said, “wouldn’t you rather go down the slides?” Last year,
he hated swinging. He’d sit in the swing for about 45 seconds before asking to
get down. And then up again. And then down. It was maddening. He’s always been
opinionated and independent, but I wouldn’t call him a risk taker, and there
was something too risky about the swing for him. I could tell that he
desperately wanted to enjoy it, but he just couldn’t give himself over to it. I’ll
admit that some days, lazy, exhausted and/or ambivalent, I wanted him to love
swinging so that I could just stand in that hypnotic sway for a few minutes
with the other moms. Nope. He wanted to scrape his knees toddling and toppling
around on the pavement. He wanted to eat woodchips and sand. So I expected much
of the same when he asked to be lifted up into the swing this time. His little
fingers gripped the swing as I gave him a few gentle pushes and then,
tentatively, he tipped his back slightly, looked up at the sky and exclaimed:
“Look, mommy! I see an airplane!” He let out an exhilarated shriek of joy as he
told me, “I go fast! I flying!”
That’s what life feels like these days. I’m going fast. I’m
flying. I feel the riskiness of life each time I get into the car to drive away
from my son’s daycare. I feel it as I sit down at my laptop to write. I feel it
each time I open myself up to new people and new places or old people and old
places when I’d rather be sitting at home alone. I feel the way that each of
those choices suspends me above huge chasms of uncertainty, the way they
promise failure and destruction. Fear is healthy. It alerts us to danger and
keeps us out of harm’s way. But there’s something compelling about fear, as
well. It can lead us to the most breathtaking heights and profound discoveries.
It strips away the detritus of complacency, of habitual living, of losing
oneself in the drone of the day-to-day. We are more alive than ever when we’re
lit up with fear, racing toward or away from something. Adrenaline junkies
everywhere can attest to this. Every day is life or death. Our lives hang
perpetually in the balance. #YOLO. You know what I mean; you’ve heard all the
idioms and clichés before.
That day, we stayed at the swings for a long-ish stretch of
time (in toddler minutes, anyway) feeling life anew as the wind rushed through
our hair, and we considered the possibility of disaster, weighing all those
what ifs: What if the swing doesn’t hold? What if I fly away? What if this life
gives way before I’m ready? What if it’s all as painful and disappointing as it
sometimes promises to be? Okay, so my son was still just concerned about those
shirtless boys and the wispy white trails of airplanes as they zigzagged across
the sky. But I was thinking, “well, what if?” Here’s what I know. I’m a little
(A LOT) more gray-headed than I was at this time last year. But that just means
I’m a little wiser, too, right? My pockets are heavier, lined with those hefty
stones of loss and grief that threaten to drown me some days. In other ways,
though, I’m lighter than ever; each day I find myself shedding the things that
don’t really matter in favor of those things that do matter. And, yes, I’m
afraid of so much these days. But I can’t shake this feeling that it’s not the
kind of fear that I should run from. Instead, I feel a little more certain
every day that it’s the kind of fear that I should lean into. It’s the kind that
makes me want to tentatively tip my head back. Because sometimes, if we’re willing to
relinquish the safety of the ground and give ourselves over to soaring, fear
leads us to the things we most desire, to that exhilaration and joy that we
might not have found otherwise.
