WHEN GRIEF STOPS TIME
and how to keep it moving for the kids
I drove Olive to school this morning but if it weren’t for my commitment to a neighborhood carpool I might not have been able to. As it was I woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee but could not move myself out of the bed to the bathroom until 6am. I kept going back and forth between two feelings: the heaviness of the election results,, and the lightness of the possibility that it had gone the other way. Either way, there is an eight year old that’s looking to me to see how I react. You don’t want to weigh them down with your feelings, right? But you also don’t want anyone pretending that feelings don’t matter. This morning I stuck to the script from the day before to create some continuity: It’s picture day, I reminded Olive and she brushed her hair before we got out the door.
She also wore a special outfit: a shirt with a dreidel on it, a shimmery skirt, and a white belt with hearts cut out of it between the two. Then she put on red cowboy boots that were hand-me-downs and are now two sizes too small. The look was complete.
On our carpool kid’s steps there were still a few pumpkins on the stoop and they were rotting, their insides having been cut open by children and their surfaces marked by black sharpies. The fifth grader came out. I saw that her mom had just pulled up at the curb (she drives her younger kid to a different school at an earlier time). I decided to look at the kid coming out of the house first. When I turned around at the top of the steps her mom was coming up. Her arms were open.
We embraced, her arms above mine. I’m sorry, she said quietly. I wondered at first why she was apologizing to me until I realized that it wasn’t for me at all. I was holding space for what she would say to her kids. I let the words land and then I started to cry. Thank you, me too, I said and then we let go.
The pair had a quick chat about strategies for emotional regulation while still on the stoop and I made a quick bee-line to the front seat wondering how I was going to get us up all there without falling apart.
Olive is younger and knows most of the basics about the election including who won. The 5th grader is older and knows a bit more: devastating facts like by the time there is another election she’ll be in high school. But hopeful timelines too: that in two more cycles she’ll be old enough to vote.
Let’s each pick a song and I’ll play it, I suggested.
The fifth grader wasn’t interested in choosing. I chose a song from the list of rhythm and motion songs — a dance class in San Francisco I had planned to go to later that day. Be with your people Gloria had said a few weeks ago and the people in this class are some of them.
I have this on my playlist, the fifth grader said, as I put on “HandClap,” a song by Fitz and The Tantrums, and I put my hand into the back seat to high-five her. Of like…200 songs, she said, not moving her hand up at all.
Ok ok I said, and then said well ok one of 200.
I looked back to see if Olive was playing along, and she was–clapping her hands during the moments that the song instructed.
When it was Olive’s turn she couldn’t think of a song to pick probably because I’m too controlling and fearful and she doesn’t have a media station of her own.
Should I just put on a song from the funny kids playlist that we listened to the other day? I asked and she agreed.
The first one was about how a good tip for having a good day is to start it by wearing your favorite underpants.
I don’t have a favorite, said the fifth grader, they are all different colors of the same thing.
But do you have any in your favorite color? I asked and she laughed. She LAUGHED.
We went with this for a while until I said something inappropriate about how I bet Kamala Harris has a lot of great underwear; given her unbridled joy. I don’t think they picked up on the weirdness of this statement but I did actually find pleasure in the idea of her having a collection of really nice lingerie. I wanted to maintain this feeling of her being deserving that she so steadfastly held onto — even if it was in one small and personal way.
That’s what this art monster situation is really—a pair of nice underwear to start the day off well. Nothing more nothing less. It’s also just what I have. Not nice underwear, but both first desire and now the ability to make something even when it seems like it won’t make a difference.
They both loved the underwear song and then the 5th grader finally named a song she was excited to hear. It was “I’m a Banana” by Onision: a very aggressive electronic song with the lyrics: I’m a banana LOOK AT ME MOVE (sung / spoken with a scream). Some of the lyrics are incomprehensible. At some point we drove past the Kamala Harris sign close to school that they had previously talked about every day prior, and I looked at them in the back to gauge their reactions. I only noticed the fifth grader who was dancing in her seat while wearing her seatbelt and still: she was still really able to capture the song.
After that song the next one was called Lazy Cat. I sunk into it, feeling whatever I could feel of that energy: some way to tenderly lick myself while lying belly up in the sun.