Post by Rhonda on May 3, 2009 6:59:46 GMT -5
Marissa
By T. J. Banks
Marissa From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Like Mother, Like Daughter
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
~Dag Hammarskjöld
Marissa sat on the carousel horse, and I stood alongside her, my arms bracing her little long-legged body against the painted saddle. I glanced over at the crowd and saw my husband Tim watching us. And for a reason I didn't understand, I felt a terrible yearning, a need to freeze-frame the moment and etch every detail of him into my brain, from his pale and lightly-freckled face and intent blue-green eyes to his blue denim jacket.
Two weeks later, he was dead. And there I was, a thirty-four-year-old widow with a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a slew of people throwing advice at me. Some of it was good - a lot of it wasn't - and all of it said more about the folks hurling it at me than it did about me and my particular situation. One woman, however, sounded a note that proved to be just as prophetic as the yearning I'd felt on the carousel that cool June evening. "That little girl," she told me emphatically, "is going to be your salvation."
I rejected the notion. It's not fair to expect her to be all that, I remember thinking. I have to get through this on my own. And I set about trying to hammer out a new world from the debris of our old predictable one. I put Marissa in preschool three days a week, found a counselor I felt comfortable working with and forced myself to start writing again.
All of which were good, necessary things to do. But I was so intent on showing people - and myself - that I could handle, by myself, what life had thrown at me, that I had become more of an automaton than a person and a parent. I didn't neglect Marissa: I looked after her, gave her more toys than she needed and more animals than we both needed (our cat population shot up past the "sufficient" mark, and we acquired bunnies and even, for twenty-four hours, a pygmy hedgehog who loathed us). But my heart-spring was broken, and I couldn't respond to Marissa fully - then I would have to feel, and I wasn't ready to do that yet.
I resented having to be a two-in-one parent carrying the burden of all the responsibilities, while well-meaning friends and relatives got to take Marissa places and do all the fun stuff with her. I got tired, too, of feeling like I couldn't even have the luxury of being sick. I mean, if I did give into a sinus infection or a twenty-four-hour virus, wouldn't this Popsicle-stick-and-masking-tape world of ours simply fall apart?
"Oh, I know just how you feel," some of my friends in rocky marriages would say. "I'm like a single parent myself."
You're not! I always wanted to scream back. Your children's fathers are living and breathing. They might not help much, but they're there. It's not the same.
I was having an aggravated case of feeling sorry for myself. It was only natural, I suppose, but it wasn't getting us anywhere. So, as the numbness slowly receded, I made a conscious effort at being me again. Or, rather, a me who'd gone through a war and had the scars to prove it, but who was also tougher and more willing to try new things, both for Marissa and myself.
I'd been telling her ever since she was old enough to understand that "it's just the two of us now - we have to be a team." Well, now we truly started being one. I'd never been that wild about traveling - and I was more than a little daunted by the prospect of going it alone with my daughter - but now, I made a point of it. I'd never ridden a bike or been good at sports, but I bought Marissa a bike and pushed her along till she was ready to solo. We went horseback riding together for a year or so, then went on to doing Tae Kwon Do together. We dressed up for Halloween together, and she was on my business cards as my official partner when I was breeding Abyssinian cats. The secret, as I learned, was in focusing not on what we had lost but on what we still had: each other.
We no longer breed Abyssinians, and Marissa now prefers me to be a non-costumed, sensible mom on Halloween. But we play Scrabble, go for hikes, and watch Gilmore Girls together. I help her with her homework and her butterfly garden; she has introduced me to Harry Potter and Nintendo, and occasionally lets me hang out with her and play horses. We discuss my dates and her friends, and she sometimes contributes titles or suggestions for my stories and essays.
There are fights and tantrums - on both our parts - but there's a lot of clowning around and laughter, too. And when she won a tiny red and white cloth bear (known as Scarlett) at the carnival recently, she insisted on putting it in my room, saying it would be "our bear."
Sometimes when I look at her, I catch glimpses of the person she is becoming: a funny, intuitive, astute young woman with all her dad's directness. There's a reason that Gilmore Girls is one of our favorite shows: the playful verbal sparring and camaraderie between single mom Lorelei Gilmore and daughter Rory mirrors our own, uncannily. Marissa is my companion, my joy, my partner-in-crime and my comforter when I am down or sick. There's still a terrible yearning when I think back on that night on the carousel and what followed, but there is also Marissa. In short, that little girl has indeed been my salvation.
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By T. J. Banks
Marissa From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Like Mother, Like Daughter
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
~Dag Hammarskjöld
Marissa sat on the carousel horse, and I stood alongside her, my arms bracing her little long-legged body against the painted saddle. I glanced over at the crowd and saw my husband Tim watching us. And for a reason I didn't understand, I felt a terrible yearning, a need to freeze-frame the moment and etch every detail of him into my brain, from his pale and lightly-freckled face and intent blue-green eyes to his blue denim jacket.
Two weeks later, he was dead. And there I was, a thirty-four-year-old widow with a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a slew of people throwing advice at me. Some of it was good - a lot of it wasn't - and all of it said more about the folks hurling it at me than it did about me and my particular situation. One woman, however, sounded a note that proved to be just as prophetic as the yearning I'd felt on the carousel that cool June evening. "That little girl," she told me emphatically, "is going to be your salvation."
I rejected the notion. It's not fair to expect her to be all that, I remember thinking. I have to get through this on my own. And I set about trying to hammer out a new world from the debris of our old predictable one. I put Marissa in preschool three days a week, found a counselor I felt comfortable working with and forced myself to start writing again.
All of which were good, necessary things to do. But I was so intent on showing people - and myself - that I could handle, by myself, what life had thrown at me, that I had become more of an automaton than a person and a parent. I didn't neglect Marissa: I looked after her, gave her more toys than she needed and more animals than we both needed (our cat population shot up past the "sufficient" mark, and we acquired bunnies and even, for twenty-four hours, a pygmy hedgehog who loathed us). But my heart-spring was broken, and I couldn't respond to Marissa fully - then I would have to feel, and I wasn't ready to do that yet.
I resented having to be a two-in-one parent carrying the burden of all the responsibilities, while well-meaning friends and relatives got to take Marissa places and do all the fun stuff with her. I got tired, too, of feeling like I couldn't even have the luxury of being sick. I mean, if I did give into a sinus infection or a twenty-four-hour virus, wouldn't this Popsicle-stick-and-masking-tape world of ours simply fall apart?
"Oh, I know just how you feel," some of my friends in rocky marriages would say. "I'm like a single parent myself."
You're not! I always wanted to scream back. Your children's fathers are living and breathing. They might not help much, but they're there. It's not the same.
I was having an aggravated case of feeling sorry for myself. It was only natural, I suppose, but it wasn't getting us anywhere. So, as the numbness slowly receded, I made a conscious effort at being me again. Or, rather, a me who'd gone through a war and had the scars to prove it, but who was also tougher and more willing to try new things, both for Marissa and myself.
I'd been telling her ever since she was old enough to understand that "it's just the two of us now - we have to be a team." Well, now we truly started being one. I'd never been that wild about traveling - and I was more than a little daunted by the prospect of going it alone with my daughter - but now, I made a point of it. I'd never ridden a bike or been good at sports, but I bought Marissa a bike and pushed her along till she was ready to solo. We went horseback riding together for a year or so, then went on to doing Tae Kwon Do together. We dressed up for Halloween together, and she was on my business cards as my official partner when I was breeding Abyssinian cats. The secret, as I learned, was in focusing not on what we had lost but on what we still had: each other.
We no longer breed Abyssinians, and Marissa now prefers me to be a non-costumed, sensible mom on Halloween. But we play Scrabble, go for hikes, and watch Gilmore Girls together. I help her with her homework and her butterfly garden; she has introduced me to Harry Potter and Nintendo, and occasionally lets me hang out with her and play horses. We discuss my dates and her friends, and she sometimes contributes titles or suggestions for my stories and essays.
There are fights and tantrums - on both our parts - but there's a lot of clowning around and laughter, too. And when she won a tiny red and white cloth bear (known as Scarlett) at the carnival recently, she insisted on putting it in my room, saying it would be "our bear."
Sometimes when I look at her, I catch glimpses of the person she is becoming: a funny, intuitive, astute young woman with all her dad's directness. There's a reason that Gilmore Girls is one of our favorite shows: the playful verbal sparring and camaraderie between single mom Lorelei Gilmore and daughter Rory mirrors our own, uncannily. Marissa is my companion, my joy, my partner-in-crime and my comforter when I am down or sick. There's still a terrible yearning when I think back on that night on the carousel and what followed, but there is also Marissa. In short, that little girl has indeed been my salvation.
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