When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing.
Make sure, before you go,
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you towards
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life;
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
– John O’Donohue

Over the past two months, I have taken on a slow process of unveiling, discovery and revisiting. Among recent milestones, the biggest was G turning twenty. I remember sitting at the kitchen table a few days later and thinking: I made it. I raised her for two decades. Not a conclusion, but an accomplishment. And then a wave of: he left. I did it. Alone. Just an acknowledgement, fading like that very wave crashing the shore and receding invisibly, forgotten. Almost.

New milestones: nearing three years of my things being in boxes and bins, or at least unused, frozen in time.

In a few weeks I can add: two years in Ohio. And: almost two years of carrying my dad’s last name—my real name—again.

Slowly, I am returning to myself. Or inviting myself home.

This is raising all kinds of questions.

*

It started with bursts of emergence last year. A solo day adventure in Dayton followed by solo overnights to New Jersey. Lake Erie. Columbus. One night only. Each time I felt an almost giddy sense of elation in my independence and freedom.

Last September, I took my health into my own hands and decided to go off the birth control which was supposed to be managing my peri-menopausal symptoms, to see if I already had started the year that, by its end, officially would drop the “peri” part. [It appears I had.] I steeped the decision in prayer and practicality: how do I look after myself and support this potential shock to the system? My first thought was acupuncture and herbs (TCM)—my old reliable healing modality, and rather quickly I found a source across the state line in Pennsylvania. A town with a Starbucks!

A week later, I met with my practitioner and discovered he hails from Toronto, Canada (to be distinguished from Toronto, Ohio, next door to our village.) Finding commonality immediately, we spoke of what it was to have such a different perspective in this region. How we use such care not to offend. How we don’t always understand, and how we try to be kind and send light anyway. Our concern for the greater sense of shared humanity versus the divide being exacerbated throughout North America. This was the first time I had someone to talk to. He still says I am like therapy for him; I say the same.

Fall turned into winter. In January I had another one-night-away for a party in Washington DC, dodging weather and Covid alerts with alacrity. And then it was Spring.

*

Nothing G and I have done is standard protocol. To a certain degree, this was true from the start. When she was little she used to say that I would go to college with her; she is the rare kid who wasn’t kidding, largely because she raced through her academic ride like a speed demon.

Single motherhood created a rare stew in which we wound up staying on more or less complementary tracks, with only a small deviations. At the same time, we had no consistent family home after she turned twelve. We had no immediate family on my side. We had no place we called home together from which my bird could fly and leave her mama to cultivate her garden.

There has been an ongoing suggestion our status would change at some point. This project we started always has been hers.

The person who flies will be I.

This is unsettling and feels unnatural to my traditional heart. My hidden heart. The heart that has had to stretch so much to accommodate her magnificence. The penny dropped when she turned twenty, but I didn’t feel it right away. Another wave crashed the shore, gone and forgotten as it receded into the vastness of itself.

*

Since April, I started exploring the question “what next?” throughout the greater Northeast. In May I broadened the scope, and in June, farther.

I began writing this piece in Great Barrington, Massachusetts at a restaurant walking distance from our last apartment. The day prior, I saw our old landlord walk into town to buy his coffee. Just as before.

Traveling deeper into our old territory, the Pioneer Valley, where I raised G from one to twelve and a half, people keep asking me “why are you here?”

I hear a profundity in their question they may not intend. I do not know. There is so much I do not know. As I said to a friend, thirty years ago we were certain in our ignorance that what we were doing was right. Now, with vastly more experience, we lack the certainty we assumed we would gain—or at the very least, retain.

Another friend listened and said, “you are blessing old paths you once took.” I love this. And to a degree, it is true.

In my own words, I begin to see it as a form of life review.

*

When my son died on the self same day that he was born, before he could live and breathe with us on this side, I began a different kind of journey driven by a desperate need to understand about the veil between us. Stories of near death experiences gave me uncanny comfort.

A frequent reported ingredient in an NDE is a life review involving an omniscient sense of the person’s life, often with an ability to see every facet of an experience including the point of view of the others involved. From the first, I was captivated. I still read them, all of these years later.

Occasionally I try to do a life review on my own as a form of meditation. Trying to see within the spaces, trying to capture what I might have missed or forgotten. How did I get from there to here? How did we? Sometimes I will take just one scene, one day, one memory or one person. The omniscient part is hard; typically I don’t even try that. It’s difficult enough just tracking this, us, then, here, now.

*

In the living, I didn’t realize that we moved house at times that aligned with chapters in G’s development. Consequently there is a distinct geographic element to the tracking of her growth and childhood. Gestation/bedrest, birth and first year: Los Angeles. One through just three: Northampton, MA. Three through seven and a half: Florence, MA. Seven and a half through twelve: Deerfield, MA. Twelve to twelve-and-a-half: on the road. Twelve-and-a-half to fifteen: South Egremont, MA. Fifteen to sixteen: Brooklyn, NY. Sixteen to eighteen: Great Barrington, MA. Onward: Ohio.

A while ago I realized that when I visit these places, it is as if I can revisit my little girl.

Recently, what I discovered is that when I revisit these places, it is as if I can see myself, too, responding to my own life and motherhood at its different stages.

Chapter by chapter, there is a profound sense of “somewhere,” that may have defined her (the jury is still out on this). But these places certainly defined me. In some cases they were my choice. In some, they were hers.

Each one changed me. Each location, I am finding, reminds me of whom I was then, both when I arrived, when I left, and the remainder.

Revisiting each reveals to me a little bit more about myself and how I survived. Not all of this lands as words. Some of it just rebuilds rooms in my heart, opening long-closed doors and windows.

*

As my university class recently celebrated our thirty-first reunion, I rekindled memory of my collegiate self, the young woman who carried my father’s name. My real name. The name I stopped using less than one year out of school.

I question how true I have been to myself, or if, in the name changing, I shape-shifted into someone else.

In the dying of my father—both literally and in name—I lost something essential. My guiding light and source of strength. The person to whom I most wanted to prove my worth. My very identity.

Lacking Dad, I clung to what I had. A partner. And to what I wanted. Children.

The ”somewhere” for these early chapters was not hospitable to my spirit. I felt caged by industry, defined by image, separate from a coast and a sea of people I adored. Before the internet and social media brought us back together again, I missed many important events that I still regret.

When I went on bedrest, it was partly a relief. The four fresh white walls of our little home gave way to dreams of wide open spaces. If the outcome hadn’t been so tenuous, I would have luxuriated in this liberty even more.

As it has been said ad infinitum, G’s successful arrival transformed my life. Her brother was my spiritual portal behind the veil; she was my guide on this side. He was the chrysalis; she the butterfly.

Any preconceived ideas I may have had of parenting went out the window as she asserted her needs. Listening seemed to be the only way to calm her. Arriving in Northampton when she was one, I started attending La Leche League meetings where several mothers expressed their surprise that I hadn’t planned on being an attachment parent. Equally, I was surprised that they knew their philosophy at the start. Of course, I already knew what it was to have an intention as a parent and have it fail. For there to be a chrysalis but no butterfly.

Before G was born, I also knew about about surrendering to outcome. I knew there was so much I would never know or understand. So much, outside of my control. But if I listened. If I invited a change in perspective. If I turned toward the light, joy seemed to emerge. And so it was.

*

I see now how far I traveled for motherhood, both to receive its bounty and to host it for two decades. Everything else was secondary. While this seemed self-evident at the time, today I wonder.

Not long ago, I sat up and looked around. Another wave crashed and receded.

Back then, I did not have time to examine my loyalty or my commitment. All hands were on deck so much of the time. I saw it as my duty to carry the flag and the cross of our family, never thinking twice about it. To some degree it was a comfort. I had a job; I was needed. Until I wasn’t.

Now something completely new is being asked. How do I simulate that wave and recede? How do I turn toward my own light?

Questions of permission arise. Questions of allowance as well as questions of what would happen if I did not.

I remember a powerful moment with my mother, within six months of her passing. I did the quick math indicating that she had lived twenty years more than Dad. Twenty years, Mom!

I know. I thought I was so old then.

Would you have done things differently if you knew how long you had?

Yes.

*

A friend and I recently joked: if we had two lives to live, what we would do? It’s a harder question, having just one. Despite being very independent, I have spent all of my adult life in some kind of active, committed relationship. Wife or mother, hardly any genuine overlap. But inside, I feel myself as more autonomous than loyal. Outside, I may seem the opposite. Honestly, I think it’s more about responsibility than loyalty.

This freedom of spirit comes up as I travel my beloved eastern seaboard, revisiting old homes and opening myself to possibility. I receive few answers about the future but get many replies from the past.

Driving by parks and walking country paths, I see the glorious places that were backdrops for the parenting of my child. Nature was our bedfellow; commercial noises were at a minimum. There was not a lot of interference in those early years. G, the pup and I walked her to school. We played. We laughed. And we created.

Memories are housed in the shiny mica we pulled out of the graveled driveway. In the seats of the swings she rode for hours. In the scents of the changing seasons. Everything so close to the ground. Much of it (and many of the people) still there, similar if not the same.

While we have gone. Grown. Changed. Moved on.

*

In my venturing travel, I include places where I lived before my name change and feel an almost unimaginable brightness from within me. A sense of timelessness and recognition. I visit a friend, and we dress up regularly for dinner—something I adore doing and have not done for decades. (This is also something we had to do most nights at boarding school.)

A spark of many sparks, almost like a sparkler, begins an awakening of memory. Of me. Before. Me, my parents’ child.

Me, adult but belonging to myself.

Me, dare I say it, not a parent at all.

Who am I? What parts past, present, future?

I see something: twenty years belonged to G, but thirty-two belonged to me. [It seems I am counting anew, creating now two separate columns. Venn columns, slowly separating in sharedness, but never to completely un-touch.]

A question floats through: how many more here, for me? I recently redid my will. I think of my exchange with my mother. But does it matter? What if I counted now as if I have twenty years, what then? What if I were terminal? It is said the ego meets its match in the face of death and terminal illness. I do not want to play at ego games at this point; I want to serve my soul’s highest purpose. This adds to the complexity of the mix. I want to make this next chapter rich and meaningful. Parenting is a hard act to follow in the meaning department.

I find fragmented, confusing answers. I do not know how to serve my soul’s highest purpose. I do not know how to follow an act that filled me with such a sense of purpose. My answer is as convoluted as my attempt to design a sense of place: I would like to be walking distance to town, in the country with access to long country walks, with friends nearby in a city that never sleeps. Clearly, I want to be able to walk. I want to be close to the earth. I want to be close to my friends who happen to live all over the world, if not all over much of the eastern seaboard.

Another question is asked: who was I at five? Before anyone had a chance at really defining me? I believe a strict hand and governor already molded me. But maybe, maybe I was a free spirit. A free spirit that my mother felt the need to corral and saddle for this world. Of course, I dressed up for dinner, even then. I remember loving it. I dressed up even when I didn’t have to, out of the treasure chest at the foot of my bed. I still remember its smell. I dressed up my dolls up, too. At five, I was a traditional girl playing traditional games, but with doses of sauce and spice that my mother felt the need to bridle. I note how conservative I was when I went off to college and even when I graduated. I note how and what I chose then, believing I could be Betty Friedan and bake cookies at the same time.

These travels in themselves are connecting me back to myself. After one constant family home of my childhood, it strikes me that the mere quantity of places I have lived and the way I embraced parenting outside of my imaginings may reinforce this theory of my free spiritedness underneath it all.

*

Time and space. Like life, limited commodities.

One of the rules I have made for myself is not to repeat, not to go back. I am not certain I will keep to this rule, but it is penciled in. There is so much of this country, of this world, I have not tried.

Priorities emerge, too, in this space, time and life review. Whether I will stop moving. A large part of me craves to root deeper than ever, but maybe that is simply a consequence of my current circumstance.

Questions arise of whether I did all of this at the altar of parenting? Now that those needs are shifting, what of me remains in the sieve when the water runs through? What parts of me get returned to me, deposited at the shore after the next wave recedes? And the next? Is this easy or hard? Will it be somewhere or anywhere within a region I already know I love.

When will I get to unpack?

One thing I know: I do not want to unpack without a deep sense of consciousness about what I am doing. I have lived quite some time now without the contents of my boxes. And while I yearn like crazy to have my own home again, I also carry a newfound kind of wisdom about the responsibility of these possessions. About the weight of spreading them out on walls and in cabinets, on shelves and in closets.

Something about this next step may stop my movement. And ground me. One sounds worrisome, one sounds wonderful.

One day, somehow, I will be home, and my roots will begin to settle yet again. Perhaps for a longer haul than ever. Perhaps this is what I have always wanted (there is a strong sense that it is, and that this is part of the sacrifice involved in my wild way of parenting). I sense I will exhale. I will burrow into my space. I will host friends and host myself anew. I will ask the person that is I to step forward. The person who has traveled all of these miles and tried all of these lives and raised a child into adulthood. I will ask myself to emerge even further. Meanwhile, I seek to uncover what is truly mine, truly of me, and my remaining work here.

*

Here is the fear housed deep in a parent’s heart: what if?

Here is the spark, the light, the truth: so what? (Stop not your path for fear.)

Vision still slightly obscured, I see flashes of the greater sparkler, partly still hidden in my heart, awaiting its finding.