Jaci Dawn

Something happened to my mood the last few days. Something melancholy and grey, and I am pretty certain it was not the weather (although weather can have that effect on me). It happened between reading a good friend’s blog post (a very poetic blog) and reflecting on my own life.

My own life has been of dreams deferred.

I got sort of lost on the deferred part there and went down the road of almost feeling sorry for myself.

I didn’t put my finger on the feeling until today when I took a long walk by myself. We had a break in the rain and the cold, so I walked with my jacket open and no hood over my head, enjoying the brisk air. The first half of the walk felt the same: grey and wintery and lost. Colors in winter are either muted or they stand out in stark contrast to the greys. The only leaves left on the ground around the park where I work are the simple brown ones that have fallen (late) off of the birch and oak trees. All the colorful leaves from the many varieties of maples and flowering cherries have been scooped up by the men with leaf-blowers.

The birch trees are bright white against the green of the lawn; everything else is in shades of grey. And then there are the leaves: dull against the grass and sharp against the asphalt.

I miss the words I had when I was younger. I once had command of a much larger vocabulary and could turn a metaphor with ease, but the memory of those words and metaphors are all I have now. I’ve been trying to figure out what happened.

What happened was that I had children. When I was young and contemplating all the dreams I had: art, writing, poetry, travel – when I still had command of syntax and words longer than three syllables, I never factored in becoming a mother. I had no mothering instinct. I liked kids, but at a distance. I certainly did not like children enough to want to spend 24 hours a day with them, day in and day out. I did not like children enough to contemplate homeschooling them.

Yet that is what happened. Once I was pregnant, all these mothering hormones came to life inside me. I was still missing the ability to create serotonin on my own (and my mothering skills reflected that singular lack), but I had very good mothering instincts after all. And I liked being around my children.

But motherhood robbed me of the ability to paint a picture with a few words. I fell back onto common metaphors and allegories. Originality was tucked away and replaced with journal entries about toddler-isms. And the more I tucked it away, the more words became dim memories and my vocabulary slowly died.

Before you comment about how wonderful motherhood is or how much you know I love my grandchildren, bear with me. I began to understand that today. I won’t say that I fully appreciate it – yet – but I understand that the gift I was given in those children far outweighs the gift of being able to paint an allegory of human suffering and triumph. I understand that on a very deep level.

On a very shallow level, I still want to be able to paint that allegory of suffering and triumph.

I come back to the dreams deferred part. I only set aside my dreams for the years when I was raising children. I set them aside to become a taxi driver, a scheduler, a cheer-leader – in short, a very normal and average person. Well, not entirely average: I also chose to homeschool my children and prolong the agony of being with them 24 hours a day/seven days a week. i know an awful lot of women who would rather die than do that.

And why? I loved being around my children. They kept me sharp. They stayed a step ahead of me. If I wanted to guide them somewhere I had to know how to get there, first. I learned that teaching a child how to write has less to do with diagramming sentences (sorry, Mr. Little and Mrs. Foster) than it does with allowing them to pick freely from titles at the library.

Now they are gone and I have only visitation rights with my grandchildren. I am learning an entire new vocabulary of toddler-speak.

The words I lost are still lost along with the metaphors and allegories and syntax and the denouement to the stories I want to tell. I lost the ability to write a poem (although I still feel poetry).

I hope those words – those dreams – are just deferred like a student loan can be deferred. I can come back to them in time.

I came home tonight and painted a base coat on several craft items I have been planning on painting for years. I may not sit down and write a poem tonight, but I feel like I can reclaim some of the dreams.

Tomorrow, the rains will be back. Water will coat everything. The leaves will be glued to the pavement by the force of the rain. A fine mist will walk across the Willamette Valley in waves. The sump pump will growl to life under the house.

And I will be here, working on reclamation of dreams deferred. And I will not regret a moment spent with my children or grandchildren.

dream on –