There are few things worse than having "The Heart of Rock and Roll" stuck in your head at two o'clock in the morning.
Except possibly having this catchy '80's ditty replay itself over and over as your child reaches out across the pillow you have erected as a barrier between your bodies because you refuse to cuddle him as he has been repeatedly requesting for the past hour.
It's the same old story I've told before. All seems to be going smoothly with Jake's ability to sleep through the night in his own bed. Then we go away somewhere—in this case my sister-in-law's house in West Virginia—and he gets to sleep with us—in this case on a twin futon pushed up against our queen futon, so I could reach over with a reassuring hand every time he cried out in his sleep. His first night at home he sleeps right through and I think all is well. And then.
The crying at one a.m.
When it started, I stumbled to his crib and he grabbed at me in that way that precipitates the full-body cuddle of a half-asleep boy that I love, love, love. Except that I don't love it quite as much when I know it will make it impossible for me to ever put him back in his crib. Or when I have been roused from my own much-needed sleep to stand, shivering, in his room, squinting into the darkness.
"Does something hurt?" I asked him gently as I rubbed his back but kept his feet firmly on the crib mattress.
These are the new rules. If something hurts—impending incisors cutting their way through tender gums, tummy churning from the rice with black beans on which he chowed so happily at dinner, an aching ear or head or feverish limbs—I pull him to me and sleep next to him all night, happy to provide succor when there is a good reason for it. But if the middle-of-the-night demand is triggered only by the natural (but less than ideal) desire to displace Mike and sleep in bed with me, I must put my foot down.
It's a tough call, but one with which I felt comfortable. Until last night, when his only response to my queries, my desperate calls for him to tell me something, anything, was wrong so I could carry him back to bed and go to sleep without worrying about instilling any habits I will regret tomorrow night, was, "Come up."
Apparently, all that was wrong was that he wanted me to hold him.
Which, in the light of day, seems like a worthy reason to ask to be held. But, bladder bursting and feet bare on cold hardwood floors at one o'clock in the morning, this is not a request that merits my sympathy. Instead, it elicited a quick and unsympathetic ride to the bathroom, where I plopped him on the floor wailing while I tended to my own needs and then a similar ride to and plop on the bed just abandoned by Mike. Followed by the whimpering and cries of, "Mommy!" and attempts to breach the pillow barrier between us (designed to show that I had no choice but to put him in my bed but would not make it the pleasant experience for which he was hoping).
As I stuck to my non-cuddling guns—because you really can't change your program in the middle of the night—and listened to the unwelcome refrains of Huey Lewis and the News, I had an unsettling thought.
What if something really was wrong—a bad dream or indigestion that didn't register on his literal-minded scale of "Does something hurt?" or being too hot or too cold—that he couldn't articulate? I imagined him several years hence crying out from the full-sized bed I will wisely buy him so I can lie next to him and comfort him as he recounts his nightmare about the gorilla living in our laundry basket that pushes me out of the car and drives away. (This is an especially vivid one that remains from my own childhood. Believe me, it was scary at the time.)
Why, I thought uneasily, will Jake get more sympathy precisely when he is more able to explain what it is he needs from me?
That Mommy Instinct Thing Again
We all know, of course, that there are things you just have trust when it comes to a child who can not yet fully express himself. Like your ability to perceive and fulfill his needs through the intimate method of charades you have developed together.
I like to think I first developed this acute mental telepathy skill with my first child, my basset hound Roxanne. While she had the advantage of understanding some of my words, I was left with only her poignantly expressive eyes, impressively modulated grumbles, and wildly communicative tail to discern what she wanted. While some might suggest that dogs don't get what they want, only what we deign to bestow upon them, those people would not understand my point here. I am not using Roxanne as an example of how I was able to communicate through empathy and sign language and deep, abiding love with my dog. I am using her as an example of how I was able to communicate through empathy and sign language and deep, abiding love with my first child.
Since then, I've had a little more help. Like the article in the New York Times likening toddlers to cavepeople and suggesting you communicate on their level—acknowledging that you understand what they need rather than trying in vain to reason with them. ("I understand," I said urgently last night when Jake began stamping his feet and crumpling into a toddler tantrum because I would not let him reach into the drawer with the can opener and other potentially lethal kitchen instruments. "You want the can opener. I understand.") Or the article in Mothering explaining why Time Outs are of limited use when most of what is bringing on the tantrum is frustration at the inability to communicate. (Imagine: You want a cookie. Your parents offer you carrot sticks. You try to point out that there is some obvious miscommunication going on. You want a cookie, not carrot sticks. When you make your argument forcefully, they send you away, still cookie-less, to a Time Out. You are now angry at the injustice perpetrated upon you, which has precious little to do with the cookie at this point. If they were to give it to you, you would be sated by the breakthrough in communication more than the cookie itself.)
In other words, I feel like I can communicate quite well with my child, and I like to think this is part of what contributes to his generally sunny disposition. Now, in particular, I delight in decoding the phrases that come out of his mouth. "You want juice? No, shoes? Oh, a spoon!" "Teet a treat? Beet a what? Oh! Sesame Street!" It's an endless and endlessly entertaining round of Pictionary, played with toddler enunciation rather than poorly drawn adult pictures.
And so, last night, I began to worry that I was undermining our communication by refusing to hold my boy. While simultaneously thinking that if I did hold him, I would be communicating something I really didn't want to—that it's okay to cry for my bed in the middle of the night.
But how to communicate such a complex system of rules to my little caveman?
You Can Only Send Love Out; You Can't Control How It's Received
What hurt most deeply last night were my own memories of what it feels like in the middle of the night when you're all alone and want to be held and there's no one there to hold you.
These memories spring not only from my own childhood, when my parents had a strict not-in-our-bed policy and, I suspect, a lower tolerance for soothing the trauma of post-nightmare-distress than I. They are also from the not-so-long-ago days when I slept alone, as I had for the majority of the nights in the thirty-six years before I met Mike. The times when the primal need for human contact—for love—wells up and refuses to back down to the rational reasoning of a mind well-trained in the art of denial.
How could I subject my son to that cold, empty alone-ness? Here he was, snaking his body across the bed towards mine, only to have me rear up and reposition him back on his half, as if he were, not a small, needy child, but some mere acquaintance with whom I am forced, through unfortunate circumstances, to uneasily share a bed.
But I don't really know what he was feeling.
What I do know is that he receives constant care and attention and holding and every reassurance that he is well loved indeed. This, I also know, is my job as a parent. To make sure he never doubts my love, never doubts the love coming at him from the world around him, and is not afraid to send it back. Like when he grins and heartily greets strangers in the grocery store, who brighten up and give him hearty hello's in return. "That's a gift," I tell him. "Making people happy is a gift." "You are a wonderful human being," I tell him. "You are kind and you are loving and you have a marvelous sense of humor."
My job as a parent is also to set boundaries, to teach consequences, to help my child learn how to get along in a world that does have rules. And this job would, I now see, be far less fraught if I reminded myself—say, at two o'clock in the morning after an hour of an unhappy child next to me and unfortunate music stuck in my head—that as long as I do the first job well, I am doing the second well too.
Which, finally, leads me to the bit of yoga hovering in the background of this meditation. The scary, incredible, life-saving feeling of opening your heart. Of sending your love out without worrying about how it will be accepted.
Take, for example, the times you have gone out on a limb to do something nice for someone. Maybe for that cute guy in Algebra II you imagined inviting you to the prom even though you were just a sophomore and he probably didn't even know your last name. You bring him some chocolate chip cookies you have baked and offer them with a shy fifteen-year-old smile. And he responds with a look of horror and embarrassment so palpable that you drop the cookies in the trash on your way out of class and drown your sorrows in a Twix bar and the sympathetic ears of your best friend who concocted the cookie scheme in the first place. By the start of the next period you conclude that you will never, ever do something so stupid as to offer a boy homemade chocolate chip cookies again.
I won't deny that you've likely learned a valuable lesson that will help you navigate the Lord of the Flies terrain of high school. But once you've been off that adolescent island for a sufficient period of time—now, maybe?—there is another way to perceive that encounter.
The look on that boy's face is probably forever etched in memory, even if his name, hair color, and what you found so attractive about him in the first place are lost to you. In fact, that look of horror—that rejection of your offering—is probably the only thing you remember clearly.
But just maybe you can recall what it felt like to bake those cookies. Or that trembling moment when you approached him. The period of time when you were offering, opening your heart. Because, really, that's the lesson. Not the rejection part. You have no control over what other people will do, and you're in for a whole lot more heartache than a tenth-grade encounter could ever cause if you think you can.
But here's the beautiful thing. It's what happens in yoga. It's happened to me and to everyone I know who practices the art of opening your heart, of giving openly and without fear.
You receive love in return.
Maybe not from the quarter where you expected it. Maybe not in the way you expected it.
Maybe it's as simple as the man who cleaned your car when you got the oil changed pointing out how well he rid your backseat of the detritus of a toddler—rice cake crumbs and bent plastic straws and the occasional stick, briefly treasured and then forgotten.
"How old's yours, about two?" he says before informing you with a big, fatherly grin that he has a three-year-old at home. And you smile and your heart feels bigger and your day feels happier. Because this man did something nice for you and took the time to share his joy in doing something nice with you.
Scary as it feels to open our hearts—and that boy in Algebra II has a lot to do with exactly why it feels so scary—we are brought back to how easy it really is by our children, our pets, sometimes our parents, our best friends. Anyone who isn't afraid to explode with love no matter what your mood or reaction.
I think here of the times when Mike or I have tried to express a particularly urgent lesson to Jake by speaking deeply, firmly, almost angrily. "Never, ever throw a sharp object at someone!" we might say, holding him in front of our disapproving faces. Inevitably, he responds with hysterical laughter. Because he loves us and isn't afraid to open his heart and therefore is perhaps less concerned than I would like him to be about my displeasure over him throwing sharp objects at me.
But here's where he's teaching me a lesson. He's teaching me that because I have opened my heart so fully to him he's not afraid to open his back. He doesn't react to my anger and disapproval by feeling rejected and determined never to trust me again. He reacts with disbelieving laughter and sometimes even an impish kiss.
Or there's the lesson he taught me last night, with tears and with a renewed attempt to communicate just how much he wanted a Mommy cuddle. It broke my heart but it did not, in the least bit, close it. Nothing could, and the angst I felt and still feel over a simple middle-of-the-night toddler struggle is, in this sense, a gift, a reminder that my heart will always be achingingly open to my son. It might, on occasion, hurt—especially when he reaches adolescence—but that won't negate the gift he has given me of learning how to truly and deeply open my heart.
And there's no reason I can't take that lesson into my everyday. I can smile at strangers and not feel berated when they frown back. Because a lot of them will.
And I can, by opening my heart even in little ways, even to people I don't know, bring a little bit more love and peace into a world greatly in need of it.
The Most Trusting Heart Opener—Urdhva Danurasana (Upward Facing Bow). And a Few Others.
Wherever you are, as long as you are on your mat, there is a beautiful heart-lesson you learn in every single asana practice. Notice that at the end of savasana (corpse pose), as you close your practice, you roll onto your right side and your left hand will naturally fall to the floor in front of your heart. This is the moment when you seal your practice. You make it safe for your heart to go into the day as open as it has been in the safety of your practice. And so, your practice continues.
Lessons, of course, are best learned by testing our boundaries. Moving past our comfort zone. Challenging ourselves. So, need I say it, is yoga.
I offer urdhva danurasana here because it is not only a deep, deep heart opener, but it is also one where you have to be ready to feel vulnerable. You open your heart to the sky while your hands and feet remain grounded. You are, in a physical sense, unprotected, open. But, of course, the lesson of yoga is that you are, in the space where you practice your asanas, safe. And the safer you allow yourself the feel, the more deeply you can enter the pose and the more your heart can open.
If urdhva danurasana is still beyond where your body is ready to be, you can gain the same lessons and opening from setu bandha sarvangasana (bridge pose).
If you're feeling particularly balanced, try vrksasana (tree pose), a balancing pose, with your hands behind your back, palms together, fingers facing up. The key is to broaden across your collar bones and, yes, open your heart. If your palms don't meet behind your back, hold onto your elbows—right hand to left elbow and left hand to right elbow. Same heart opening applies.
And there's always the joy of adding a little heart-opening backbend to any standing pose. My favorite is a high lunge. Feel as if you are lifting your heart up and then letting the crown of your head open toward the back of the room. You are truly flying.
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