These are the Things that are Measured

I am terrified that I will not measure up.
That my best will not be best enough,
Or even close at all.
I am terrified that I will fail
Life. Or my son.
I mean, its one thing to fail me.
I've had a lot of practice at that.
I think of all the almosts,
all the near misses,
All from the comfort
of such distance,
Measured in time
and passing moments.
Or maybe seen thru
several layers of gauze,
so that the edges blur,
and the pain of all that
misplaced potential
softens, so that it is
At last,
At best,
Bearable.
But only from a distance

Still.

Still, I am terrified
that the scales that
rise and fall in a graceful arc,
a pendulum sweep of
Enough to Not
will find me wanting.
Though the real secret,
Of all the hidden secrets,
Swaddled so carefully
by the gauzy batting
Of time and passing moments,
the real secret is
   I do not fear at all.

I know.

There is an infinite and
Measureless chasm
Of measuring up.

Tempered by Love (an Enough Essay for my son)

I picked my son up from his father's a few Sunday mornings ago. The mechanics of that particular statement just boggle my mind. That I have a child - a sixteen year old, no less - is one of the more astounding facts of the universe. That I have a sixteen year old and have not yet managed to break him -  no sprains, no breaks, no major illnesses - that's even more miraculous. He’s navigated a trauma or two, but they have been no more than the small dramas that are part of growing up.

I fear breaking him. I remember when we weaned him from his bottle. I sat outside his room while he screeched and screamed for hours, begging wordlessly for his bottle. What kind of mother was I, for God's sake? How could I deprive him of the one thing that would bring him any comfort during that long dark night? If I just gave in, if I would only relent-- silence! Blessed silence and a happy, sleepy, sleeping boy! My actions were sure to produce some hell-spawn, I was sure of it. I whimpered hopelessly to my mother on my cell phone, "Please tell me this will not be fodder for some therapy session when he gets all sociopathic on me in a few years, all because I wouldn't give him his bottle."

I could hear my mother, who has suddenly become infinitely wiser over the years, roll her eyes. "Don't be silly," she said. "You all went through it, you all turned out just fine. You all wound up in therapy for completely different reasons."

Oh yay. Something to look forward to.

He has been amazingly resilient, this not- -so-small-anymore man-child of mine. He has weathered a lot in his small life. Nothing big and dramatic, just the normal flotsam that seems to comprise struggling middle class suburbia in the 21st century.

From the time he was born, his dad (then my husband, no w my ex) and I both worked full time, leaving the house before sun up, coming home in the dark. Our son shared that schedule, off to daycare at the crack of oh dark thirty, where he interacted with strangers for 11+ hours a day. And in time, we were the strangers. We were absentee parents and we lived under the same roof as our son.

He survived the barely noticeable tension of two parents coming together from two completely different worlds, that just-below-hearing-level buzz that sets your teeth on edge for reasons you can't quite pinpoint until you're exhausted from trying to find the cause. Everything was an issue, because neither of us realized there were any issues to be had. Discipline. Religion. Family. Holidays. Friends. School. Even his diet became an issue during his first twelve months. Pick something, anything. We approached life so differently, and our son became the unwitting battlefield for our philosophical disagreements.

At five, he was diagnosed with a profound hearing loss. Now there are some words you never want to hear in the same sentence, uttered by a doctor: Neurological. Profound. Congenital. And the best words of them all: We don't know. They ran every test imaginable, and they still don't know how or why he has an 80% loss of hearing in his left ear and a 20% loss in his right.

At six, thing between his father and me started to get tense. By seven, our family life was rapidly deteriorating. Despite my best intentions, my son was witness to our private hell writ large. And loud. We yelled and screamed and stomped and struggled. We did it all wrong. There are lessons in conflict resolution that he has learned that will take God only knows how long for me to un-teach, if that's even possible. Fodder for my own therapy sessions, I think...

By eight, it was all over but the shouting. Even separated, my ex and I continued to shout. We fought and argued and cried and repeated it all, again and again. Life got dicey in ways I couldn't ever have imagined. This was not the life of a nice Jewish girl from the suburbs, dammit. I shielded my son as best I could, but I could not shield him from everything. Things got worse. Things got better. It was an emotional tug-o'-war, and I was tangled in that taut rope, straining to get my end clear from the muddy middle. Sometimes I think I even succeeded.

My son seems to have survived all of this. He may not even be the worse for wear. He is sixteen, taking his first steps – sometimes giant leaps, sometimes a small stutter step - at independence from me. He is at once shy and bold and friendly and mean and smart and smart alecky and happy and sad and whiney and a thousand other emotional adjectives. There are days when I want to sell him to the highest bidder. Ok, not days: minutes, maybe an hour at most. When he gives me the sixteen year old equivalent to being weaned from the bottle, and all I want is blessed relief from that incessant incantation of Mommommommommommom. Just five minutes, I want to plead. Give me five minutes of peace, a chance to breathe.

But mostly, he is this incredible gift: fragile as a soap bubble that floats, higher and higher, catching the sunlight, reflecting clouds and sky. But tough as steel, as leather. Enduring as love. I love him fiercely, passionately, wholly. Without reservation. Unconditionally. I, who swore I would never have children, who was convinced that the maternal instinct had skipped me entirely, I have been gifted with the care and feeding of this boy, this almost man.

I tell him every day, and have, since the day he was born: nothing you do or say could ever make me love you any less than I do now, and I love you more than the earth and sky put together. I may be afraid that I will break him in some way, but I also have made it my mission to let him know that he is enough. Ever and always, he is enough, and he is loved. And wonder of wonders, despite my faults and failings, he knows. So, while I may provide him with endless fodder for some therapist's couch some day, that fodder will ever and always be tempered with love.

#BlogElul 15 - Learn

A conversation, heard almost daily in my house when I was a kid:

Mom:   Stacey, you know why they don't send donkeys to college, don't you?

Me (after much eye rolling and shaking of the head for the sheer inanity of the response that was sure to come. And a deep, teen-aged sigh of resigned disdain, which actually preceded most statements that I made between the ages of 12 and, um a lot later in my life).: No, Mom. Why? (sigh)

Mom:   Because nobody likes a smart ass.

Ha ha. Said no one, ever - not in response to that joke. And it was a joke. Right? I'm going with yes: it was, if nothing else, an attempt.

Thing is, I was a smart ass. I was cocky, condescending, sometimes downright mean and obnoxious in my know-it-allness.  I was way too smart for my own good. No one, least of all my mother, could teach me anything.

I stayed a smart ass for a long time. I thought of it as protective coloring: I lashed out with my tongue, my rapier wit, that cut with laser precision, drawing blood and leaving scars, all as a way to push you away faster than you could hurt me. Because if there was one thing I had learned, in my short decade or so, it was that you would hurt me. You would crush me and leave me in the dust. In a heartbeat. So the extension of that great piece of learning: push everyone away, as fast as you can. Make them hurt as much as you do.

I was so very wise for a ten year old. Fifteen. Twenty-three. And on and on. I was so wise that I learned absolutely nothing.

Don't get me wrong - I learned a lot of facts. I was pretty gifted in school. I went to college for free on a merit scholarship. Got a full fellowship to grad school, to work on a PhD in Early Modern English history. This does not roll off the tongue with any grace or ease. I used that as a wry excuse for quitting the program after a year and a half. That was much easier than admitting another great learning of mine: that I was a fraud - at life, at being a student - at being a human being - and if I didn't quit, and run, and hide, Someone would find out. I have no idea what would have happened if Someone - whomever that was - did "find out;" I just knew it would be bad. Maybe I'd get kicked out of school. Maybe I'd get kicked out of life.

So I did what I had learned to do best. I quit. I left. I hid under a suit of armor that protected me from all the slings and arrows that life had to offer.

I hid for years. Mostly, I hid inside a bottle. Alcohol blotted everything out, but every once in a while, I had to come for air. So I hid inside the armor of a fiery-eyed activist, working for peace, organizing for justice. I hid inside a tailored suit, selling stuff with a silver tongue, using my words to draw pictures of need and desire. Even after I got sober, and crawled out of the bottle and into the light, I still hid - in work, in marriage. In God. Even that - I loved the community, the holiness and the life of the synagogue. I loved the struggle and the dance with God. But I hid there just the same.

I hid, because it was what I had learned. What I knew. What felt safe.

I still hide. It still feels like the safest bet to me, and I am desperate to feel safe. I still wear my protective armor day in and day out. I may be old-plus-three, but all those lessons learned still run deep. Bottomless pit deep. I'm like the broken kid who can only watch everyone else running and playing and just being, only from the sidelines, resigned to loneliness, but oh! so very wistful.

I've noticed though, that there a few cracks in the armor. And God, it is getting so heavy. And I am so weary. And I would love nothing more than to say that, for every crack or fissure in that damned armor, some old lesson dies, or escapes, or maybe gets buried, and I learn something new. I learn a different way to be. I learn to live life unguarded. Unprotected. I fear there is no symmetry in this.

I am no longer the condescending, derisive, smart-assed kid who knows everything and so can learn nothing. Thank God. But I don't trust the other lessons much - the lessons on hope, or kindness or love. I am learning them. Painfully slowly, true, but I am learning.

I learned - am learning - to live a sober life. A life without having to pick up a drink to be able to get through the next hour, the next minute, the next bit of eternity. I learned - am learning - to seek God. I am not promised that I will ever find God, but that is not the point. I am learning that the joy and the grace are found in the quest. I learned - am learning - that love does not have to be (and should not be) conditional. I learned - am learning, and I find I face this lesson again and again - that, broken as I am, weary as I am, lost and hidden as I am - I am (just maybe) enough.

(c) Stacey Zisook Robinson

2014

Carrying kindness until it is enough

I have learned, over the last decade or three, when I am offered a compliment, to nod and smile and say "Thank you." That's out loud. Internally, there's a whole dialogue of negation that eventually devolves into a spirited and oh-so-mature rendition of "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" If you have the mental image of a small girl-child in pig tails and black patent leather Mary Janes, fingers firmly placed in her ears and eyes squeezed shut, we're on the same page.

I am old plus two, dammit. I gave up pig tales and Mary Janes a long time ago.

I am a successful businessperson. I love telling anyone who asks what I do for a living (and a handful or two of people who don't) that I am a professional Jewish mother who reads spreadsheets. Really. I actually get paid to tell people what to do. I am a trusted advisor, for God's sake, a consultant on some pretty complex stuff that, while it may not have the impact level of, say, stomping out world hunger or curing the common cold, still helps keep the world moving and my clients on track.

I have a son whom I have managed to not break , not even once, since the day he was born, fourteen-and-a-half years ago. While there are times I fear he has been secretly raised in a barn by wolves, while I must, at times, keep myself from lapsing into a rousing chorus of "One boy! Boy for sale! He's going cheap..." from Oliver!, while there are days when I bemoan the fact that there is not enough duct tape in all the world to contain him, I am willing to concede he's a pretty awesome kid who may actually have a few saving graces.

I can raise a child, consult with the C Suite, sing and write and teach and make am amazing pot of homemade vegetable beef soup that would bring tears to gourmand and peasant both. I can carry on lengthy conversations with madmen and God (and do so, regularly), and dance in the palm of God's hand (not quite so regularly, but that's another story for a completely different day). I bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, too, but I hate the thought pf cleaning up all that spatter and grease, so a microwave will have to do. I am, in short, an accomplished, functioning, savvy, multi-tasking, multi-faceted adult woman of the 21st century who can do more things by Tuesday than most people get done by late Wednesday afternoons (I'm just not that energetic in the morning).

What I cannot do, at all, is take a compliment.

Dammit. What the hell is wrong with me? I squirm- literally, my face goes pink and hot and my skin kind of crawls for a second or two. I, the lover of words, the woman whose motto is "Why use ten words when a hundred will do?" and who can't manage to say hello in less than 500 at best- I lose them all: I am speechless and get tongue-tied, both at the same time.  I am a dear in the headlights and a butterfly pinned to black velvet. Pick your own metaphor for that vaguely prickly, mounting feeling of trapped stuckedness. Go ahead; I'll wait. I'm sure I've not yet plumbed the depths of that particular literary device. There are bound to be a few I've yet to overuse. Let me know when you're ready and we'll move on.

Denial. Deflection. Dismissal: I am stopped cold by kindness. Every time.

Ugh.

I learned it from my mother. We would have some huge, extended family dinner for some holiday celebration. As she was carrying in platters overflowing with bountiful goodness, she would begin apologizing: "The seasoning isn't quite right. I'm sorry. The soup is a little salty. I'm sorry. The potatoes aren't really very good. I'm sorry" This, before anyone had lifted a fork to their mouths. When the compliments came - and she's an excellent cook, so there was an excellent chance they would come (and besides, we live in a polite society; complimenting one's hostess is part and parcel of the gathering) - when they came, my mother would slough them off, becoming more and more uncomfortable with every word, until eventually, she walked back into the kitchen to perform some critical task of culinary magic. Basically, she went to hide, until she was sure the uproar of those horrible compliments had died down.

Every holiday. Every dinner. Every time.

There's a part of me, some tiny, daring and dangerous voice, that would really like to accept a compliment or two. Every now and then. I mean, a couple would be okay, right? I can be humble, even if I accepted someone's compliment graciously, maybe even gracefully, couldn't I? And that notion of tempting fate, or the evil eye, or the gods - that's pure nonsense, isn't it? 

There is some part of me, some dangerous voice, that is not daring. Not at all. It is sibilant and officious, and keeps up a steady, whispery conversation (a conversation hat feels exactly like walking through an unseen spider web feels in the dark and dank and narrow passageway, that makes you jump and sputter and feel like bolting), this voice tells me, again and again, ever and always, that I am unworthy of compliments and undeserving of kindness. I don't know that it's the same voice that my mother heard, or her mother before her, a long mine of mothers who learned to deflect and dismiss and deny, and who taught that lesson in every generation. My guess is yes: this is our ancestral voice, the one my family has carried from stetl to stetl and across oceans and time.

I am tired of that voice.

Now, lest you think  this is some cheesy little ploy designed to garner complimentary posts and comments (deflect, dismiss, deny) - it is not. I can think of nothing that would make me feel more uncomfortable than to find myself faced with a barrage (if by "barrage" I mean more than none) of laudatory comments. I know, I know: I post my writing, I announce some cool things that have happened of late. 

Here;s the thing: I don't know what to do with your compliments or kindness. I don't know how to carry that. Lies and shame seem so much easier. But they're not. They are familiar companions, and so feel safe. I cling to them, but what they are, are chains: rusted and biting, they cut into my skin and leave marks. They draw blood. They keep me small and weak and less-than.

Weird, to post and then shrug it off, an odd push-me-pull-you tug of war, a disconnect of small and dangerous;y whispered proportions. But there's that voice, the other one, the slightly daring and kind of dangerous (in a thrilling and adventurous kind of way) that just won't shut up. It just keeps up this excited, manicky  stream of consciousness: a "what if" conversation carried to a staggering limit. 

What if -

What if I just said "thank you" and then smiled? What if I believed it? What if I believed you? What if I took some joy in doing something well? What if I took pride in accomplishing something grand? What if pride were not a dirty word? What if I really were deserving of praise and kindness? What if I treated myself the exact same way I demand people treat one another? What if I defended myself (from myself) the way I defend those who are being treated with cruelty and met with shame?

What if I told that soft and whispery other voice to just shut the fuck up for a while? 

What if, indeed?