Searching for my own elation
Or how I was reminded that you feel more than one emotion at a time
For four months, I’ve been playing school with Stella, my 4-year-old daughter. Usually this involves difficult homework that must be checked, a class pet that must be fed, and the teacher eventually adopting the student because her parents have disappeared. (The teacher was looking for a kid to live with her anyway, so it all works out.)
As such, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that on Monday, the first morning that we took Stella back to her little home-based preschool in real life, she was psyched. Maya, my six-year-old, helped Stella put on one of Maya’s old dresses--floral and pink, of course, but Stella made the outfit her own by topping it with her Spiderman ball cap. They packed a tiny backpack with the entire contents of her brand new Melissa & Doug smoothie maker. So she could make smoothies for her friends, naturally. (We had to leave this behind; no toys from home are allowed in covid-time preschool). We ate some oatmeal, fantasized about which old friends might be there and how much they might have grown, and then headed over.
Typical Stella vibes
As we drove, I noticed that she got quieter and quieter. She reminded me that I’d promised to take care of her kids back at home--Layla, Margaret, and Gigglish. They needed to take naps. They needed to eat lunch. I must not forget. I would not forget. We rode along in silence--both of us starting to feel the strangeness of this transition sink into our bodies.
When we got there, I unbuckled her and pulled her out of her carseat. She clung to me like a baby monkey. All of the giddy energy of breakfast long gone, or at least covered over by a palpable sense of terror. It had seemed like such a good idea. And now here, faced with the sight of her old teachers and her old friends--one who had new glasses, the other who had grown at least a few inches--she wanted to crawl back inside the strange cocoon of our family that we’ve been ungracefully weaving these five months of sheltering in. It’s claustrophobic in there. It’s filled with the groans of her sister, who is so sick of her breaking her Legos, and the frustration of her father--why must she always go up the carpeted stairs with her filthy feet? It’s lonely sometimes. It’s boring sometimes. But it’s hers. It’s ours.
Her teacher took her temperature at the gate, just as we’d discussed she would, and then skillfully led Stella by the hand, back into the fold of her little preschool. The six kids. The big world they freestyle together of PJ Mask rescues and doctor visits (so many viruses to cure) and baby dolls crying and the swingset (the swingset!). Now, they each get their own individual marker set. Now, they are comforted by people in masks. Now, they have learned to be together like this.
As I was driving home, I kept searching for my own elation. I was finally free--the yoke of parenting a frenetic three-year-old laid down for hours in a row. It was a moment I’d dreamed about often while taking a rage walk around the block or complaining about my lack of progress on the book to a friend. I needed time away from my child. She needed time with her peers. Where was my 159-day exhale?
And then I thought of Stella--the giddiness and the clinging, the exuberantly packed backpack and the quiet ride. We’re just like that, us humans. We can have more than one emotion at a time. In fact, as my daughter was reminding me, we mostly have more than one emotion at a time. Especially during times of transition and trauma. We are grateful to be free and weirdly miss our confinement. We are in love and filled with loathing. We are generous and selfish, independent and so needy, wise and dumb as a box of rocks. Growing and regressing, empowered and resentful, so brave and so scared. All at once.
Seeing her layered emotionality for what it was--normal and real--helped me be gentle with my own. I made some weird egg carton art with my six-year-old, who basked in my undivided attention. I, too, enjoyed that foreign feeling of being undivided. Ah, there it is, the relief next to the sadness of Stella’s absence. I’ve so longed not to feel torn in a thousand directions, satisfying no one fully--most profoundly, myself. This was different. We did a thing, and only that thing. And it made us both feel so edified, so fulfilled.
Aforementioned weird egg carton art
We researched when googly eyes were invented (1919!). We read Ramona and her Father (surprisingly heavy themes!). We wrapped our limbs around one another on the couch. We were very quiet--which is more our style than Stella’s. We luxuriated in that quiet. And when she came home, full of the noise of her day--They ate noodles! And had a talent show! And there’s a new girl!--we loved that, too.
I guess all I’m trying to say is life on the other side of anything is still just life, in all its duality. We aren’t on the other side of covid, but we will be someday, and it will still be multidimensional, easier in some ways and harder in others. I hope we will be wiser about some things (like investing in common goods, like public education and healthcare) and some people (like who we elect to lead us and tell us what’s dangerous and what’s safe). But we won’t have transcended the mess of who we are, alone or together. I was reminded of that this week, by my brave, scared girl.
I felt the baby-monkey cling in every fiber. How does that physical memory emerge so palpably when my own Stellas are 30 and 28 and 24? Talented writing + the quarantine ache, for sure. Thanks, Courtney.
Courtney, thank you for the reminder that we aren't an emotional either/or, but rather a yes/and.
(And I love the weird egg carton art!)
Peggy