Tortoises and Hares

One thing I find hard right now is being so far from my kids. Elai is a governess in California for the summer, where she has adopted two stray kittens (of course, she has). Philip is working at an internship in Chicago picking up eighty pound bags of abrasive powders. I want to hear from them every day, hear every detail. But that can’t always happen. They have lives, too. Sigh. But I think of them. Like this:

When my Hippie-Child Daughter was born, and I held her, she would squirm those little shoulders that had made popping noises in the womb and sent me scrambling to the doctor (“No, I don’t think you can hear popping noises in the womb,” “Oh, yes, you can, Mr. Doctor, yes you can.”) to keep me from holding on too tight. And when she could sit up, it had to be facing out. In restaurants I would be cutting my enchilada and turn, and find Elai goo-gooing at the family at the other table. I had to watch for that. All the world was a stage for her, and anyone might walk up and introduce themselves to…her, “Oh let me hold her!” I should have known when teenage girls in Culiacan, Sinaloa, first saw me pregnant with her and came up to me to plead, “Please, can I just touch your belly; it’s good luck.” And there we adopted our first stray cat that insisted on curling up between us, and we let it. And she climbed the castillo, the rebar structure next door, wafting eight feet up into the air, at barely 2 years old, and scared us half to death, and we tried to talk her back down. Calmly. It was Bob who saw her (having come to visit when Philip was born), my scampering hare, off to anywhere new.

When Philip was born, he would take that curly blond head of his and squeeze it between my collar bone and my jaw, as tightly into my neck as he could get, and just snuggle there. Forever. And I would purr like the cat. And it never mattered how tight I held him to me: he was content. And in the mornings, when we got up before 5 to beat the heat and get study and jogging in before the sun slammed down on us, we could never get up too early for him. At the first stir, he was up and in my lap, just sitting, being quiet, and figuring out the lay of the day, making it safe to move into. And he was a fixture at the back of my skirt, his safe place, his harbor, when we went somewhere that involved lots of people looking back at him, and he would stand there, in his harbor behind me, his fist clamped fiercely onto my skirt, and his little blond curls peeking, then peeking some more, creating a bridge from him to all those eyes looking back, creating a safe way to come out and explore this new place.

This was my tortoise, content to stay in one place and move only slowly to new places the rest of his life, but who would find his flippers constantly landing on patch after patch of new ground. And it was this tortoise who taught his mom to love tortoises. Because up until this time, I had no use for tortoises. Why, if God needed evangelists and church planters, did he make me a tortoise, and a woman? That was all a mistake. My dad had confirmed this, saying, when I was a teenager, “You live too much inside your head. This is selfish. Try to change this.” (He has repented a thousand times. It takes a while to appreciate tortoises)

I realized that I had no need for my tortoise to be anything else but what he was. I loved him this way, and wanted no one ever to make him feel he needed to change to please them. I didn’t know back then how useful it was to be a tortoise, I just knew it was good. Because of my bridge-building, safety-creating Engineer Son. Today, I know these sorts are like rocks in the stream, safe havens to stand on and find your bearing. Tortoises see things. Emily Dickinson never left her room but saw out her window, in one day, more than some people see in a lifetime.

My Hippie Child Daughter is all mystery, and startling thought, and theatre and movement, and color, while my Chill Engineer Son is grounded, as reliable as the sun coming up each day. We offered once to use his air miles to take him with us on our 25^th anniversary trip to Europe (that hasn’t happened yet; we were planning early). He calmly and firmly refused: we weren’t dragging him over any vast stretches of ocean, thank you very much. Elai was waving her arms in the air over his head: take me; I want to go.  Someday this trip will happen, though not now.

My Chill Son grew up two years in one his last year in high school, and went to a very difficult college at 17, and finished his year of mechanical engineering, building 3D printers and electric guitars, and buckled down and passed just fine after we thought he might fail, and he used those frequent flyer miles to fly a special friend down to Texas to visit. And his father’s stubbornness and loyalty live in him, and there is no one you would want to trust more than this boy. And he always thinks things through first, looking out from some safe harbor, and engineering a bridge of safety before stepping out to play, and work, and live. And he never lacks for a few excellent friends, and he never lacks for integrity, and I have a spray-painted sign above the entrance to my kitchen that says LOVE in five colors that he made for Mother’s Day, and well, when words fail, as they often did that last year between tortoise Mom and teenage tortoise Son stepping out into the world on his own for the first time, and when I don’t hear from him on the days I wish to, then that sign says it all, doesn’t it.

As if on cue, he called tonight. We talked for an hour, and it hurt to hang up, but my heart slept warm.