When was the last time you looked up at the sky…fixed your eyes on the clouds…actually went up there in your mind? You see the clouds from below as you step outside and notice a shape or blue sky behind them. Maybe a colorful blend of pinks and wispy strings of white or billowing bunches of fluff. Children see them and say, “Mom, look at the clouds. Do you see the…?” They see things we don’t until they name them. We stare upward and cock our chins sideways to visualize what they see, so we can affirm them saying, “Yes, I see it” to whatever object they identify.
Sometimes, we see the clouds from above through the windows of airplanes. We are supposed to recognize their beauty while breathing a sigh of relief that we’ve packed enough for our trips, remembered our agenda items, made our flights. If we pause and look out the window and breathe…and disconnect…just for a minute…we feel the peace of their presence below us and allow their protection to envelope us.
I sing the song by Joni Mitchell, “Both Sides Now” that talks about clouds and their illusions, the feelings they evoke, the meaning we attach in the moment to things that will change from the way we wanted them to be. Perspectives change after we experience life. Ultimately, what we saw or thought we understood, what we counted on to be constant in our lives – like people we loved, what we understood would always be there – could change. We saw it in the clouds. If our look lingered, we would see the familiar shape change.
Erin watched clouds. When she got home from school in the afternoons, she would run straight from the car around the house to the backyard to the trampoline without closing the car door. We had a large trampoline on the backside of our yard that led to an open field and small grove of trees on the neighboring property of our academy house. It had the protective netting secured around its edges and a step stool beside the opening to hoist the girls easily into the rubber center. Erin would shed her jacket and shoes regardless of the temperature and jump…flip…literally, flip in the air without hands touching the trampoline…and yell…sing at the top of her lungs…laugh loudly…shredding every bit of pent-up anxiety and stress from her day…all the words she held together inside of herself after looks and verbal reminders to be nice and keep herself in check…released to the sky as she leapt and swung upward with her body knowing…feeling instinctively…how to land on her back or her feet.
That was Erin.
I would watch through the kitchen window, which offered a beautiful view of the backyard, and witness her process of decompression while I washed dishes and slipped back and forth from the kitchen to the laundry room to throw a load of laundry in the washer or pull out food to fix for dinner taking my eyes off of her for mere seconds before looking back to be sure she was safely contained. I’d open the window to hear her words and songs and would feel myself begin to relax along with her in the solitude of my home.
Solitude…something Erin needed for pure existence. Something that her mom needs as well to reset and regroup. It’s a place of reflection where life doesn’t seem as complicated as it once was or needs to be. It’s a place where we enter and exit differently. We enter solitude with weight and exit in freedom. It’s a place I observed under the clouds with Erin as I’d join her on the trampoline as dinner simmered and the afternoon laundry cycled. As she wound down and I unpacked my day and transitioned to evenings at home, we found each other side by side lying on the trampoline under the clouds. I’d join her there. I’d look from the clouds to her eyes focused on them and wonder what she was thinking. She’d say, “Mom, I don’t like elephants in the sky.” I’d look up hard trying to find the elephants in the shapes of the clouds. I’d think about the Sesame Street episode of the elephants in the sky. I’d look for them and think about her worrying about elephants falling on her. We’d lie still for a long time until the chill in the air made us shiver and the sun would dip down below the horizon. We’d listen to the quiet and look up at the clouds. I’d listen to her breathe until her pattern lengthened and I’d realize she had fallen asleep. I’d enjoy the brief respite between the day and the night…the time to move the day’s tasks to the left and center my attention on the family’s arrival home and the night’s tasks. As the clouds crept across the sky, our eyes and hearts crept back toward each other to the place of home where we wound down together and found peace and comfort… A place that made us one…
It’s now a place where I still look for her in quiet walks on weekends with Rob through our neighborhood listening to his “Erin” soundtrack on Spotify of all her favorite songs and ones that brought funny experiences with her. We walk and quietly talk about her while tearing up every now and then. We talk of what we remember and what we don’t want to forget. It’s where we walk and share what has changed in our lives since both changing jobs, changing neighbors, and all that was familiar to us for so many years. It’s a place where the trees hide the clouds but where we still find each other and a sense of her in that same place of solitude. It’s a place where we find perspective in the loss that takes a bit of our hearts each day within the life we now have.
It’s in that love we share for her and for all of our children and family and the history of having created it together that we voice our assurance that it is all good; and on the other side of loss, as we have experienced both sides now, we will never again look up or within without thinking of her, without feeling her in both small and powerful ways.
“Something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day.”
Sorting it Out... 