Close Your Eyes

In which moment do you live?

I will be thirty two years old this summer. Eleven of those years have seen me wearing the crown and bearing the cross of motherhood. My candle’s life-light flickering for a moment of eternity, set to give small radiance for a length of time only God can ordain. My children’s life-lights now shine around me, never having seen things that I’ve seen or known times that I’ve known.

As mothers, we settle into rhythms, around and around, day after week after season. We find ourselves in the same places, doing the same things, but the little faces around us are changing. Teeth sprout, eyes gain depth, shoulders meet shoulders one surprising morning. Once in awhile, the awareness surfaces that we ourselves are also changing, morphing into different women; wiser, calmer, more steady. She’s softer, but stronger. We’ve been here before. And we’ll be here again.

Sleeping Child by Gustav Klimt

And the days pass by so quickly. I’ve been told the days are long but the years are short. I’ve also been told that life is long if you give it away. Time speeds up, ever faster, leaving me scrambling to anchor myself in any point in time. A melancholic panic can infiltrate oneself with looking backwards and forwards in time. The root of much anxiety: to focus on the times in which our candle light does not shine, has not shone, may never illuminate. I’m trying to live in the moment. I really am. To feel each cheek resting on my shoulder. To notice the mulberries’ purple stain on bare feet. To allow the spring rain to speckle my skin and hold awareness of each drop.

I cling to each moment, and yet I find that when I strive to eschew the past and future in favor of the now, something else happens.

I will try to explain.

In my heart, time is not linear.

It’s spring again, and I gaze at the robins and cheery dandelions outside my window. They are familiar, yet as new each year to my wondering eyes. The sun makes patterns on the floor through the windows. As I recline on my sofa, I hear the giggling of little voices upstairs - a tinkling echo, that calls to mind the children of years past. But whose voices? Which spring is this? Have we gone around again?

I sit in my chair and nurse the baby, lightly brushing my fingertips against her sweet, blossoming cheeks. I trace the whorl on the back of her tiny skull, her red-gold hair luminous and curling in the sunlight. I hear her sigh contentedly as she swallows her milk. My heart beats against her body. I watch the soft place on top of her head pulsate gently. We merge with one another in a melded peace. Through the open window, I hear my other children playing on their bicycles outside, the sound of tires crunching gravel and happy yells, each calling the other’s name as they ride past at ever-closer quarters. Don’t skin your knee! I think. Are you wearing your shoes? If I close my eyes, I become a time traveler. Which child is this that I hold in my arms? Are the children on bikes my first two, newly pedaling on their own? Or are these the children who were more recently babies? They can’t be bicycling already…. They are all one, but all so different.

A Meadow of Flowers by Gustav Klimt

I traverse our small woods, searching for flowers to pick. I come across lily-of-the-valley and violets, many many violets, a veritable carpet of violets, and am I young or old as I stand here and breathe their fragrance? Am I the timid girl of five in my grandmother’s vast backyard, choosing violets to adorn her table in a tiny vase? Or am I a mother of many, reenacting a lifelong habit of looking, always looking for the violets? A curious thing - if I close my eyes, I feel the same inside. I was afraid of the woods as a little girl. Shrank from the mysterious closeness of the trees, ever turning my head back to glimpse my grandmother’s house, a cottage white relief in the distance. Now I do not fear the trees, or the sylvan depths which beckon with greater clusters of blooms. But still, I feel her presence - small Emily, with a fragile heart. I am she.

I look across at my husband as we drive together, and he looks different - but not really - from the time when we first began to be in love. His hair is the same, his face is the same; handsomer now, I think. The beauty that comes with wisdom. His face is emboldened by a flush of crackling lines caressing the eyes and secret corners around the mouth; his silhouette is more confident and manful. He holds my gaze with his gray-green eyes and smiles, and I feel that same thrilling rush inside me that I first experienced many years ago. Can it be? That so many years have already passed? Twelve years of marriage in a single breath. If I close my eyes, and I hold his hand, I feel the same as I did then. Behind us in the vehicle, the fruits of our love are buckled into their seats, ignorant of my travels in time. So we ride with cargo, precious baggage brought about by the stolen kisses of our teenage years and the emotional spats of our twenties. But if I close my eyes - all the same, I feel as though we are once more young and shiny. Carefree, utterly in love; our hands clasp comfortably.

I’m sick today, and I lie in bed, listening to the sounds downstairs of my family going about their day. I hear my boys having an argument, which thankfully ends quickly. I hear the little ones playing at blocks, and the baby talking her babble. I hear my husband’s quick, strong voice amongst them all, reassuring, correcting, laughing. These are sounds I cannot relate directly to the past. If I close my eyes, I remember what it was like to be a little girl in bed, listening to the noises of my parents and siblings elsewhere in the house, about their business. But I also ponder that this gives me a foretaste of times to come, when I am perhaps outside the main action of the family, but listening in. I will hear their voices, older than they are now, hopefully all still here. And I will remember this moment.

Another instance of feeling simultaneously within and without. I arrive home in the evening from being away, when the sun has gone down but the lights of the house shine out through the windows. I pull into the driveway, glancing into our dining room and see my smiling children eating dinner with their father. Awaiting my return, yes, but happy in themselves; a settled world. I feel my heart beat strongly, suddenly, with the outside glimpse of my own life. I feel a pang of sudden knowing what my family might look like without my presence. Could that lie in my future? Yet if I close my eyes, I remember a similar experience years ago pulling into the driveway and seeing just two children at the table with their father. The other blessings had not arrived yet.

I’m driving the truck with my daughter next to me, chattering away with her girlish voice about something funny. I become aware of the scent of rubber and worry that the brakes are seizing up again. This old truck. So much like the one my grandfather used to drive, with little me in the back seat, listening to Randy Travis as we made our way to the horse barn. The kind with hand crank windows and only a tape deck, no CD player. I was so small then, and terrified of horses. Then I recognize the smell as the pungent odor of new jelly sandals on my daughter’s feet, and I smile. I loved my pair of similar sandals as a girl. But who is wearing the shoes? Is it me? Who is the adult and who is the child?

The Three Ages of Woman by Gustav Klimt

I regard my son reading a book, and as I look at him, I see a sudden flash of his adult self. His jaw more square, his eyes holding a greater privacy and the tenderness that comes with knowledge and age. Twice the size of his younger self. This only happens at certain times, and it’s entirely unpredictable. But when it does, I feel the tears come to my eyes in thankfulness for this gift; as for a moment to be able to see what the Omnipotent sees. How we are held all in one, in each version of ourselves, like flowers in every stage of growth.

I feel the labor pains surge through my body. The breeze is blowing, I hear a lawn mower buzzing somewhere outside, and my husband is steadfast in letting me lean on him, sway, squeeze his hands as I move through this liminal space. He smells the same as he always has, and I bury my face in his neck. I close my eyes, and am reunited with past - maybe future - iterations of this same moment, this expectation of new life.

If I am given the blessing of old age and someday have only my memories to sustain me through their remembrance, will I feel as though those events circle within me concurrently? I imagine myself as an elderly woman, rocking on my front porch, eyes closed, hearing the sounds of my children’s laughter fluttering up to my ears across the dewy grass. They’re racing again - I hope they don’t leave their little brother too far behind. Don’t forget to wipe their feet before they go to bed. Their dad will be home from work soon. Then I open my eyes and, seeing my wrinkled hands, realize that the moment I was living has passed long ago.

I’ve dreamt of events before they’ve happened. Different than the feeling of déjà vu, when it seems you’ve already experienced an event that you’re currently living. I’ve dreamt about a certain situation and upon waking, marveled at its clarity and precision. The details seem unusually specific to belong to a dream. And then, days or years afterward, find myself in a moment and realize with a flash that I know what’s going to happen next. And happen it does.

You cannot tell me that time is linear. It’s simply isn’t. It moves like a wheel, like a carousel, like a book whose pages are ever flipping back-and-forth. We catch glimpses, now and then, of times past and times future. It’s as if we are looking into a pond full of shimmering Koi, and a fish suddenly surfaces that you haven’t seen before, but it looks so familiar. As you continue watching, the fish goes down again, disappearing, and another fish rises to the surface which you recognize right away. But the fish continue to swim, and rise, and sink, and you can view them all simultaneously.

A synchronous effect of living in the moment is that I do not only live in this moment, but all the ones that have come before, with a taste of those to come. I am living in every moment. From the first breath we take at the moment of birth, to the exhale of this current respiration - all are one.

I am living. I live. I am.