“Late have I loved you,
O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!
You were within me, but I was outside,
And it was there that I searched for you.”
– St Augustine

Recently I have had this intermittent sense that I need to call home, to call my mother. I haven’t spoken with her in a while. I run my battery of questions: do I have it in me to face whatever mood I find, if she is depressed or if she attacks me? Do I have the energy to be there for her, to respond and to recover myself? (This took years to learn. First that something was wrong; second, how to protect.) If you know my story at all, you will know that my mother died over eight years ago. There is no need, real or imagined, to call her.

But this feeling persists, and I wonder what it is.

*

Since my last post, I moved house. This morning I am writing from my bed, in my new apartment, surrounded by my treasures—crystals, books, photographs, memories—and again, if you know even a fraction of my story, you will recognize what a big deal this is. It has been over three years since it was a regular thing for me to sleep in my own place surrounded by these comforts, most of which have been in boxes for almost as long.

Arriving here, I brought everything with me. Essentials and treasures from many lives and what amounted to bits from five houses. My childhood. G’s childhood. Our erstwhile marriage. The summer cabin. My city apartment. And what I collected in Ohio to expand into what I expected to be my next home, the former convent.

Unpacking all of them was a celebration, an elegy and a homecoming in its own right. Lying here, writing this, is a bit like a dream. I am half an hour from the home of my happiest youthful memories, where I first was invited to belong to a community and myself at once—and where I felt distanced from my mother’s instability and my ability to trigger it.

The most common question I get right now is why here? There is no easy answer, just that it felt right. It’s close to people, places and opportunity. It feels safe and somewhat known while being unknown and discoverable. It amuses me that our movie’s tag line was about reclaiming your life. Even that is getting integrated, somehow. This is what I need. What I want. My next step.

*

Obliquely, I was asked to leave the Ohio project. “I want to work without a net,” G said, “I would like to center my operations out of the convent. It’s in the middle of everything else.” And, “our relationship will be healthier from a distance.”

My primary commitment always was to get the lead warning sticker off of the front door of the convent, making it habitable. After clearing inspection on August 19th (another story), I found my apartment on the 20th, packed what was not already in boxes from the minute I got home on the evening of Tuesday the 23rd to Saturday the 27th, and we drove the U-Haul across Pennsylvania on Sunday, August 28th.

Mid-September I navigated the administrative necessities of state change: new license, plates, insurance, etc. Curiously, I always get panicky when dealing with my official documents, worrying that I won’t have the right things, or I will get in trouble. Although I have no known grounds for these fears, I have a recurring nightmare that I lose my wallet or handbag and thereby lose my identity with no recourse. My most recent one was the second night here.

My identity. Yes, it could be that.

My mother. My child. Me.

*

I am going to admit something now and then crawl under a rock. (I always shudder to write and post these things, why should today be any different?) I am tired of parenting. There, I said it. I am bone tired. Exhausted. I love my child. I am tired of carrying the weight, the worry, the doubt, the fear. While I am in awe of her vision, her ideas, her bravery and her sense of possibility, I am tired of being the one she calls when she needs propping up, when things are dark and overwhelming, when she breaks down. I am tired of my own helplessness in the face of these calls. I don’t like that I don’t understand, that I cannot seem to help, and I never have the right answer. I don’t like that I can see how at least some of it can be considered my fault. (I always am able to see where I am to blame. I have a lifetime of experience proving this point.)

I am staggered with the concept that despite twenty years of such committed service my grade will remain under review. For ever. I am only as good as my last action, reaction, non-action or reply. This should not surprise me. But it does.

These thoughts catch my breath as, slowly, the scrim of the past reveals itself, and I hear my mother say, “you’re not the sweet little girl you used to be”, “you only call when you need something”, and “I am so alone, you have no idea. You are lucky you have X.”

With fresh light, I juxtapose child-me with adult-me. True. I did not grow up into the sweetness of my eight-year-old self. I grew up to see my mother differently, and learn that her rages were not always my fault. I grew up to stand strong, be brave and acutely separate from her. I found out the hard way that I could not save her from her moods, no matter how many times I avoided stepping on a line or a crack in the sidewalk, no matter if I jumped out of bed when all of the numbers in my digital clock radio added to 3, no matter how many love notes I put on her pillow. Eventually, I grew up creating space to protect myself, loving her from a distance, forever slightly afraid of what she would say or do next. Also forever believing it would be different the next time, because sometimes, once in a blue moon, it was.

I always went back to check.

*

Once I wrote about the mystery of where the childhood selves of our children go, “it seems like they are separate people who have just traveled on… at the same time perfectly conjure-able in a parent’s mind and heart.”* That is not the question now. The question now is what is happening to me? I think I want to talk to my mother. Not an exchange mired in volatility, but one of those rare magical moments when we did connect, when we laughed or remembered something only the two of us could.

I want one of those rare magical moments, and in it, the chance to say: I am living the other side of the coin, Moms. I get it. I feel the absence of sweet little G in a way that is final, the same way you spoke of me. I hear you now, and I see there is nothing you or I could do about it, then or now. I see your side now. I feel the aloneness, that there really is only I, here. (Maybe God, too. That makes me feel better.) And yes, she only calls if she wants something. Just like I guess I did. I am sorry.

These days, I find myself picking up garbage on the streets of wherever I am as a mix of superstition and prayer: please let my girl be okay. Please ease my weight, my fear, my doubt. Please allow me the space and freedom to reclaim my life, my breath, my own belonging. Please forgive me for wanting this.

I am the same girl as ever, superstitious and hopeful, the world beyond my control.

*

Like my early days in my city apartment a few years ago, I begin to imagine what I will do next. And then G calls, asking if I can help her more. I hate myself because I do not want to and I do not know how to say no without it sounding like I don’t love you. I am tired of feeling like love is conditional. I just want her in my life; I don’t want to have to work so hard for it anymore. I am not sure this is possible, and it makes me sad.

The strange thing is this: a few weeks ago I left my child. Arguably, she found Ohio, and I came along with her for a while. But still. I left a part-time job helping her on her project. I do not have a new job to go to yet; I want to be alone with my thoughts for a while. I want to be released. But in so many ways her work as an artist is her identity, and I know she sees my choice to step away—or not help—as an act against her, personally. It is not. It is an act of self-preservation, an act of recovery that I don’t know if I deserve. I have not learned how to love or be in any kind of relationship properly. Too much or too little. On or off. I say this to her and says, “you’re right. You don’t know how.” We do not end this conversation well.

In this land of where I end and she begins, of non-attachment and discovery, I am in uncharted seas. I fear for what I have done and what I have left undone. I fear being recalled into service and fear not standing my own ground. I fear that she is not okay and fear that I cannot reclaim anything if there is nothing there in the first place. I fear that this is my duty, my role, my responsibility forever, and there is nothing I can do about it. (And I fear I will never get a good grade. Embarrassing, but may as well admit that, too.)

But there is something to prop up next to this litany of fears. I am happy here. I love my new home and having my treasures on display. I love how I keep seeing glorious sunrises, sunsets, the occasional cardinal, goldfinch, bluebird or butterfly, and I love stopping for a while to watch. I love how I get to hold someone’s hand and receive a hug every now and then. I love that I am near two places that bring me such joy, one a city and one a town, both within reach. I love that in so doing, I can begin to integrate all of my lives and parts of self, and I can learn things it has taken a long time for me to understand. I want to invite myself to my own table.

Half way through writing this, I went to Mass where I heard a most beautiful sermon about being present. “’Late have I loved you’,” it began, quoting St. Augustine, and it concluded, “the secret to prayer is not to try to make God present, but to make ourselves present to God. The secret to finding beauty and love in life is basically the same… Like the young Augustine, we are away from ourselves, strangers to our own experience, seeking outside of ourselves something that is already inside of us. The trick is to come home.” (Ron Rolheiser)**

Today I have no answers to my current questions, but I do have a sense of possibility for the present, compassion for the past, and new hope for a home.

*https://whereiendandshebegins.com/2021/01/18/two-rocks/

**https://ronrolheiser.com/being-present-to-god-and-life/#.YznQ7FLMI1t