Tiger Tale

Whoa. Tiger by the tail yesterday.

Started out writing at 5 am.
“Ah told Jesus it would be all right if he changed mah name.”
Famous old African American hymn about letting go.
I wrote about wanting to be simple, free, loved, and on a path, a journey
of believing together with other funny, kind and wounded people
affirming that life is finally good and we can create a better community
by our remembering one another, by our kindness and truth telling.

Got into old documents from Holden Village and other places
while looking for old familiar chants and stuff. Started to believe
that I had something to offer. It helps not to be distracted
by NPR and to save checking out the NYT headlines for later.

When Matteo called from bed at 7, I was writing stuff, and it took
five minutes to finish. I picked him up and wound his arms
around my neck for the climb up the stairs.

I don’t ask him anymore if he wants to see the dark morning sky,
I just take him out for a minute. It was plus 4 degrees.
The gibbous moon was as high as it gets, we had to walk
out into the frost beyond the long roof gable to see it,
mister 86% full and waning.

Coming back in, I brought our bowl of sand to the couch
and we lit candles in the darkness for Mama, Annika,
and Grandma Oranges in San Francisco.
We sang some songs. Participation was spotty.

“May there always be sunshine
may there always be blue sky
may there always be mama
may there always be me.”
(added papa, children, families).

And
“When we wake up we always have to say
Tomorrow’s now today, tomorrow’s now today. When we go to sleep we always have to say,
Today’s now yesterday, today’s now yesterday.
Round and round go the days and nights
up and down go the sun moon and starlight.”

And, a Papa song (St Francis' actually),
which usually gets less Matteo criticism
(because he doesn’t already know and “own” it):
“Lord make me an instrument of your peace
where there’s hatred let me sow love,
where there’s injury let me sow pardon,
discord let me sow union.
Where there’s doubt let me sow faith,
despair let me sow hope,
where there’s darkness let me sow light,
sadness let me sow joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love with all my heart.
For it is in giving that we receive,
in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are born
to a life without end.”

I was chanting that last one, and Teo said,
you’re singing too quiet. So I sang it again
this time paying more attention
to the sweet, truthful, challenging words.

He went to school, I checked incoming emails every little bit,
not much coming back in from stuff I’d sent to friends
earlier in the morning.

I have music, teaching guitar to four children and one mom
(3 lessons a week). I love to sing, I long to celebrate
the life we’re living as it takes wing and soars...
There’s family skiing, I’m teaching Teo to ice skate,
there’s writing, at least this week with Annika down in SF.
There’s reading, I just started John Haines after hearing him speak
down at the Library on Thursday...
There’s the moon, the candles, the exhilarating short short days,
the cold, the future, the life passing so fast,
not pausing an instant for me to get it right.

"He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise." William Blake

Maybe that explains the rest of the day.
It went down down down, I think.
Maybe I’ll change my mind as time passes.
You be the judge.

Picked up Teo at school at noon, and headed out to Birch Hill.
We saddled up the Chariot, but he was interested in skiing,
which is good.

(Note: if I were to share joys and sorrows
from the week before, the joy would have been Matteo
skiing on his own Saturday at the University trails for a good hour –
a first! – part of it being pulled on his skis behind the chariot strapped to me,
as if water skiing, and falling down, and laughing hysterically...
And the sorrow would have been trying to get him dressed
for that event, trying, trying, trying to be patient,
and finally utterly losing it with him, screaming at him dementedly,
causing in him the hiccoughing sobbing of one abandoned
in the earth, and then holding him for ten minutes apologizing
until we were able to move on...)

Yesterday, he skied well,
but refused to parallel with me down the set trails
instead zig zagging all over the place, smiling, watching me for reaction,
and I thought: erratic, but what the hay.
We went up the hill from the stadium
and I held him vertical as he skied down the hill in the set trail,
and then, boom,
he wanted to go home,
fifteen minutes in.

He howled “too squished, too squished”
as I put him into the chariot. I wasn’t sure.

It’s so hard to know how to act when you have a backlog of evidence
that you often don’t get reliable information from someone
who screams bloody murder as he presents his demands.

Do you empower their exaggeration with your compassion,
and give up a perfectly fine afternoon in the woods?
Or do you wait and see if it extinguishes?

I chose the latter this time.
Boy cried wolf, I do believe.
After an hour of skiing out White Bear trail and back,
he was asleep, and it was snowing,
and I was exhausted and sort of relieved,
with an overlay of tense consternation.

I had set up a care giver for later in the day
so I could go to a Chalice Circle meeting at 6 pm,
but it was snowing, but I had promised...
so I started dinner early.
I made a slaw for me, brought out Teo’s requested (demanded!)
carrot apple raisin yoghurt and syriap (his word for maple syrup) salad
from the night before, and set out the (if I must say so myself) awesome
Joy-of-Cooking scalloped potatoes (with hot dogs my mom’s signature).
No thank you on the salad. No way on the potatoes.

I ate. He played with trains.
My mood plummeted as I tried to phone people
about tomorrow’s guitar class, and about Chalice Circle,
and the three calls went on a little,
and he demanded his salad from the refrigerator,
and, picking out the raisins to eat, managed to both wipe and
deposit creamy carrot and apple worms all over himself
and the table. I tried a couple of strategies
to help him get raisins on his fork without the chaos,
one-handed while on the phone with Marin because I wasn’t going to be home
for her call later in the evening from San Francisco,
and of course she reached her conclusions about paternal malfeasance
as she heard him take to howling in the background.
Though she (the good parent) did manage
to talk to him a little on speaker phone,
and he was instantly happy, which also raised my suspicions.
If I remember correctly, the deal-breaker was
that he felt entitled to ice cream,
though he didn’t eat any supper.

Couldn’t see us leaving the house at that point.
Canceled on Chalice Circle. Washed the dishes.
Read him some books, to settle us down a little.
Then he played some more with the elaborate train setup
we have been constructing together on the floor
(not a possibility anymore when Annika’s here),
when I mis-stepped and announced at 7:30
that it was time for a bath.

“No, it’s time for a video!” he countered.
I explained that we’d had this conversation before,
that we were going to get all ready for bed,
take a bath brush our teeth and watch
a nice video, so let’s go downstairs...

“NO, VIDEO, NOW!” He was adamant, furious, scolding.
“O-kay. Then there’s no video at all.” I announced.

The usual howling descent into weeping, it’s his signature
in the past few months, I can never tell if it’s actual despair
or just what he does when things don’t work out
for him. But when I followed him down for the bath,
he was in the process of repeatedly slamming the door,
loudly barricading himself in the bedroom/ cry room.

Noise-trigger. I bulldozed the door open,
hoisted him into my face, and did my overreaction thing,
and he went into his overreaction thing.
Deposited in the bath tub, he continued to sob.
It was the stuff of heart wrenching, hand-wringing,
soul searching mutual desperation.

By the time we were in bed, what triggered the spent tears
was simply his “how about a video?” request
followed by the reminder
that there wasn’t going to be a video tonight.

The issue didn’t seem to be that I had lost it, and frightened him.
Maybe I hadn’t frightened him at all. I sure frightened myself.

To his “tell me a story” I told about an Alaskan pig
who discovered the advantages of snowshoes. My brain was mush.
Teo threatened not to go to sleep unless we went back upstairs.
I waited him out. Interestingly, he slept like a baby.
At 4:30 am, I realigned him and held him for a half hour
in a full on hug.

We started again this morning with me carrying him up the stairs,
a little walk outside to hello the moon, lighting candles, and singing songs.
He sang Baby Beluga over me with amusement as I sang our other songs.
I sat him in my lap, and apologized for getting so angry,
which he interrupted and told me he loved me, I reciprocated,
but still insisted that we try harder today,
maybe I was talking mostly to myself,
I also laid out some of what we’d be doing...

Then to change the subject
he put out the candles
all by himself.