Friday Dispatch: It’s entirely possible that none of this makes any sense

(The heart can't tell time.)

May 31, 2024

Friday greetings,

It didn’t hit me til late in the day how sore I was. Holy cow, was I sore! Also, I got the most wicked sunburn I can remember, and I’m embarrassed to say I’d forgotten to put sunscreen on my upper back yesterday. I did slather up my arms, face, and chest, so that’s good, but oh my lord, my back. Not good!

I groaned every time I stood up or sat down or walked across the room. “I feel like I ran a marathon,” I told M.J., who pointed out that I might feel less sore if I had, since running is at least a movement my body knows. What my body is not familiar with is assembling raised garden beds, lifting and emptying bag after bag of soil, and planting little rows of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, calendula, lavender, swiss chard, and dahlias.

I sent my parents a photo of our fledgling new garden after about five hours of building, hauling, and watering on Wednesday afternoon. My Dad’s comment – bear in mind that I could not tell you a time I recall him saying something was “cute” – delighted me: “This is the cutest garden! Looks like you're growing cups of coffee! Can't wait to see what emerges.” He was referring to the fact that our starts were all in little biodegradable containers that did, come to think of it, resemble small to-go cups.

Also come to think of it… I just realized something. As I think back on the assembling part of the day, I must have done a hundred squats!! A-ha! It’s no wonder I can barely walk.

Now here we are at the end of another week. I am so tired I could curl up and sleep right now at 8:43pm, but I want to write something to send out to you in the morning. This week has been extra lifey, i.e. a mixed bag of highs and lows, many of which aren’t mine to share.

I don’t think I told you here that we had some major Mama Bear energy in the backyard a couple of weeks ago. I sat stock-still behind glass sliding doors and watched for a good half-hour as four or five tiny cubs and one protective mama hung out in a tree in our backyard (not the yard where we just made the new garden, but the one in the house we’re currently renting).

It was such an extraordinary experience to witness her watching and waiting for a safe moment to usher them down. When she finally did descend, they spread out at the base of the tree and stayed there for another good while before the babies finally scrambled down and the whole family paraded back into the woods, like living drawings from a real-life storybook.

If you’d like to watch, here’s some video (click on the image):

jenaschwartz

A post shared by @jenaschwartz

The thing with being a human mama is that, well, I am not a bear.

Tell my heart that, though.

My mama heart thinks I am a bear. My mama heart thinks my babies are actually still babies, when in fact they are both launching into new chapters, new places, schools, jobs, people, discoveries. It is the absolute best-case scenario; I mean, all those years anticipating this time. Like everything else about parenting, nothing prepares you.

But I will tell you this – the weekend Aviva and I spent in NYC and shared a bed at the Airbnb, I woke before her and got to just look at her face, a face I rarely see now when she’s asleep, a face I watched sleeping for years and years and years, and I swear she didn’t look a day over four. Like, really. How is that possible? I mean, when she Facetimed me after a recent job interview, the blue of her linen shirt making her blue eyes even bluer, the blue eyes I wrote poems and songs about when she was small, her gold earrings and necklaces against her beautiful skin, she looked so lovely and so professional and so ready and so… wow! I sometimes can’t help myself and just exclaim to her how pretty she is! That morning though, for a beat, it was like some weird time trick, one I didn’t even try to figure out.

Funnily enough, I had a similar experience this week with Pearl; I was sitting on the edge of his bed – again, something I have done thousands of times – stroking his hair as he tried to fall asleep, and I looked at his face and told myself, “He is 18. He is graduating from high school in a week. He is heading to college in August.” But my heart was like, “Nah, that can’t be right. He is obviously a wee baby animal and we are bears and this is our den and we will fight anyone who so much as gets too close and takes his photo.” (To back up, I should tell you that the neighbors did this very thing – they drove right up to that tree with the bears and they took pictures, while that poor mama swiped at the air and branches trying to get them to leave.)

So, my heart is a bear and I’m moving in a week and my kids are both moving to new places at the end of the summer and I feel like I ran a marathon, though that might be less sore, and I am shamefully sunburn, and I’m driving back and forth between the old and the new, and appreciating how friendly everyone has been in our new town. And I’m pretty much just shaking my head because… life.

I suppose I did run some kind of marathon, the marathon of raising kids, best marathon ever, every last fucking bit of it, the literal blood, sweat, and tears of it. And now some great current is carrying me and us forward, and I’m switching metaphors mid-sentence so now I’m in my little blow-up raft yelling, “Over here!” and you’re in yours, waving, and I always look forward to the times when we will all end up on some big warm rocks for some rest and snacks.

It’s entirely possible that none of this makes any sense. I’m aware. I’m writing without trying to make it make sense, because I find that sometimes that’s the surest way to get to the heart itself, and maybe I am living this way, too, no longer trying so hard to make it all fit together but accepting more widely that the point is not necessarily sense but change and flow and devotion and courage and all of the other things that seem to show up as friends when I relax my nervous system enough to recognize the blessings that are literally everywhere.

The blessing of the bear.
The blessing of the body that can build things.
The blessing of the daughter.
The blessing of the son.
The blessing of expressing love.
The blessing of being a daughter, a sister, a wife.
The blessing of the backyards.
The blessing of the bad news that could be worse and the good news that couldn’t be better.
The blessing of the heart that can’t tell time.
The blessing of time.

5/29/24
Last night, I dreamed about prayer. I was in a sanctuary of some kind, and I don't remember what prayer it was, but our singing grew more and more enlivened until we spontaneously began clapping. It was very joyful and alive, and the memory of it surprised me as I drove south on the highway to our new house – the house I wrote about in "Soon Be Home," a short personal essay that has been accepted for publication by Emerge Literary Journal. I'm outside on the little back deck, listening to the birds chirp and enjoying a rare second cup of coffee. I hear the train whistling to the west on its way to the City, the morning traffic out front, an occasional car door closing. I've texted both of my kids to say good morning. I talked to my mom briefly on the phone; she reminded me to sit quietly for a few minutes throughout the day, and I am all too happy to heed her advice. M.J. is on their way here, as we're building our raised garden beds this morning.

I'm taking in the red roses and purple irises, the gentle shimmer of the green trees, and the cloudless blue sky. We will have planted our veggie starts in rich soil a few hours from now. May this be a place of growing, nurturing, and peace.

Shabbat Shalom and so much love,

Jena