Graduation

I'm getting older too

It was a weird juxtaposition—my daughter graduating from high school “where legends begin” with all her hopes/fears and corded flair and Earth-saving intention decorating her white robe/mortar board, in the company of our special wizened wounded-warrior guest: my newly wheelchaired old friend, forever lipsticked and black-clad, funny and fierce, just minus one leg.

Bitter & sweet, as they say.

Some other parent floating in the emotional dichotomies of this moment like I was (with his son graduating, but never really, as he is severely autistic and will probably stick around indefinitely) summed it up as:

“both wedding and funeral.”

In recent weeks I wrote about my friend who has suffered a series of unfortunate events to rival fiction—discovering her blind mother after she had fallen to her death out of her 9th story window, to then getting run over on her bicycle by a full-size tractor-trailer on the mean streets of midtown. The big city has not been kind to her, yet she couldn’t possibly exist anywhere else. She has since undergone a number of surgeries where first they removed her lower leg, then higher, higher again until where she is now, above her knee. Before she gets a prosthetic, unlikely until autumn, she will require yet another surgery(ies) to prep the area. Unfortunately this involves the sort of awful manipulation you might expect from a root canal where they have to file your tooth into a point so a new device might have something to latch onto. Sorry for the graphic details, but same with what will have to happen with her stumped bone being the attachment point, since with all her complications from the accident she’s not a good candidate for the simple exterior addition of a new fake leg.

Meanwhile, Zofia, not sleeping well, in pain phantom or otherwise, suffering PTSD, trying to keep her newly opened bar afloat and money coming (hie thee to her Hideout if you’re anywhere near the Upper East Side), is still surprisingly game for anything. When I told her my eldest daughter was graduating from high school, without hesitation or even being invited, she said instantly, I’m coming!

The odd contrast of having a kid reaching the pinnacle of her kid life about to turn 18, get her license, vote!, and launch into all that college possibility alongside my friend who has been gnashed and spat but remains enthusiastic made the whole event that much more powerful. More than I could bear. When the robed throng started to process onto the field (via the track) toward us the eager audience, with my friend and I enjoying our front row VIP access in the handicapped area, I was immediately in tears.

Leading up to this moment I got to dabble second-hand for a few hours in the stressful, awkward education of what it’s like to try to navigate the sidewalks, trunks, and train platforms as a newly disabled person. No problem for Zofia solo to zip through Manhattan on her electric wheelchair, wait for a bus for 20 minutes, speed through Grand Central to catch her train on time. A conductor was on the look-out and directed her to the special car where he got a ramp for her to easily ascend. It was the suburbs that were trouble.

In her hurry to leave her friend’s apartment on time (where she squats on the couch to save money for medical bills), Zofia forgot the pair of crutches she usually gerry rigs with velcro straps to the back of her wheelchair for short trips, like getting up a few steps or the several feet from here to there. Once she landed at the Tarrytown station and I picked her up in my car, every little excursion from one door to another required either hopping on one leg and holding onto everything nearby, or getting the heavy wheelchair in and out of the car. I got yelled at for waiting for her in the no-standing area meant for busses when the other parts were full. By the time she arrived, she had to find me across the street from a ramp that didn’t even connect to the crosswalk.

Simon Cohen

We struggled every time to compact and lift the 65 pound chair into the car trunk, her balancing and holding a light post so I wouldn’t have to go it alone. When a nice elderly man came along to help this misfit duo, he hit his head on the edge of my trunk in the struggle. “Am I bleeding?” he asked my friend, looking worried. “No, you’re ok,” she said, but he kept rubbing his forehead to make sure. My trunk is treacherous. I always bash my head on just that very bit he hit when it hasn’t automatically extended to its full height. And apparently the bag of tools I had stowed in my car (as you do when you are always repairing sheds and RV toilets in the Catskills) had a Sawzall blade poking out that perhaps could be the natural culprit for the mystery of who sliced through the foam on the fancy wheelchair armrest on one of these in-and-outs. Oopsie. I realized as the kind old man was walking away, still rubbing his noggin, that he was the grandfather of a boy graduating with my daughter in an hour. “Oh, I’ll see you soon! Congratulations! Big day!”

I hate small talk, but what else to say; it was indeed a very big day. The biggest. I’ve always hurried each phase to get to these milestones, and here I am wishing it would please slow down.

It all felt so loaded. I kept feeling like I was going to cry just in anticipation of crying later. If you really want to let it rip, just have the student chorus sing “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac from 1975. “Landslide?” I asked Zofia. We shrugged. Until we realized that these lyrics, so familiar through the years we never really listened, we’re perfect.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Mm

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too
Oh, I’m gettin’ older, too

Ah, take my love, take it down
Oh, climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
Oh, the landslide will bring it down

Finally, it was over and I hadn’t cried since that song. Just feeling my way through, the sunset over the field, the smell of the handcut roses I brought from our garden, and taking in the messages that repeated between the speeches from both students and adults alike to enjoy the journey, be present. It was a theme that success might not resemble what you imagined, that life would be nothing if not a shape-shifting surprise. It might not be measured by jobs, awards, or money but rather kindness. It might be sitting here in this golden hour with an longtime friend who found it important enough to make this difficult journey for a kid she watched at an intermittent distance grow from bald baby, for me and the loyalty, and for herself.

We’re only ever getting older.

I was done crying so it never occurred to me that my daughter might take over carrying that wet torch. I was startled and moved when she came rushing towards us sobbing on the field after they had all tossed their mortar boards and then grappled to retrieve them wherever they landed. Then she struggled to find her friends and family in the chaos, and released her tears into the hugs.

Jane Kang Lawrence

The last time my daughter raced toward me crying wasn’t actually that long ago. Cue the hues that pivot from Sleepy Hollow horsemen red to icy Nordic blue.

In Iceland in February, we spent a day in the airport-adjacent town of Keflavik. It was small but not that small, so the walk to the Viking Museum on the other side of town was quite a hike. On the way back, my two girls, led by the younger more stubborn one, insisted on taking a turn to the left when I had already told them we would turn to the right. It seems a small thing, who cares, but I was frustrated by their rebellion since we had already decided to walk along the shore back to our lodging, because it was beautiful and unique to see the slate blue ocean alongside the lava black sand and I was tired of negotiating every damn thing we do. I was motioning them from afar to come this way please. And the younger shouted no, we’ll catch you later, and waved me off, I guess thinking we would soon intersect on the next block. The elder went along with her sister as she often does. But we didn’t connect up ahead. I immediately faced a parenting paradox when it occurred to me—as the lower path I took got further committed to its stance along the shore and the upper roadways and town buildings were going to be nowhere in sight for a long while—that I must either retreat and retrace my steps to find them (and possibly fail), or I continue on this route and hope for everyone’s common sense and navigation to prevail. I proceeded in stubborn determination down the prettier path.

My walk, instead of being as lovely as it should have been, was marred by the nagging of my conscience. Bad mom, bad mom, bad mom. They are going to be so mad at me, I thought. What if they can’t find their way. What if I never find them again? What will their dad say when I return empty-nested to New York? How long will this meandering ocean route take? Our AirB&B was on the other end of town. We had only loosely discussed that the end goal of the day was getting to this cave nearby to see this scene an artist created from a children’s story about a giantess. Would they remember the plan? Would they figure out how to get there? Or would they stop and fret and wait for me, trying to reach me, or try to find me somewhere and give up? I muscled through, my integrity/inertia and regret a great drain. It took about an hour to get to the other end of this shoreline, none of it fun, most of it with me grumbling “fuck.” Bad mom, bad mom, was the beat of every step.

At last, I was finally at the destination, though unclear if that was understood by both parties, so I zigzagged between the giantess’s cave out among the cliffs and our artsy place nearby. I wandered lost there for a while in this ceaseless limbo, when suddenly two shapes that appear to be—my daughters! One of them running toward me; Kaia was crying! We hugged like survivors. I well up as I write this, as she is 17 for only a few more weeks, grown, mostly, but still such a young girl, a child, an innocent. She was so grateful to see me again, as if she never would again. I felt the love, so rare yet coveted at this stage of parenting. (The younger teen sulked behind). She said they did stop within minutes by the next few blocks, and realizing they couldn’t see me or connect to the shore at this point, they hunkered down. They tried to find wifi and send messages I wouldn’t receive. They waited for me to return, and I didn’t. Eventually they set off walking, worried for their lack of innate direction, and they kept thinking they saw me everywhere, a frantic mom searching for them. They even thought they saw me driving the white mini-van of the lodging owner who had picked us up earlier from the airport. They thought I would have called the police and panicked. But I had just stayed my course and sworn. No turning back. They found their way eventually and we found each other. They thought I was going to be mad at them. Of course I wasn’t at all. But for crissake next time I motion this way to go through with plans I thought we already decided, you better come. I will always be your mom, like it or not.

Together we enjoyed the giant at last and how her oversized furniture and shoes made us feel small.

My little big girls.

For your literary pleasure and curiosity, a GuidetoIceland and the Giantess:

In a mysterious cave by the marina in Keflavík town lives a Giantess with a heart of gold. The Black Cave of the Giantess was opened on the 6th of September 2008 during the town festival Ljósanótt - Night of Lights.

On that day, the Giantess moved all the way from her mountain into the cave in SW-Iceland. She doesn’t have a name, as she has forgotten it, but is referred to as Giganta - Skessan in Icelandic.

The Giantess is a character in the story of Sigga and the Giantess, by the Icelandic author Herdís Egilsdóttir, from Húsavík in North Iceland, who wrote the first story of Sigga and the Giantess in 1959.

These stories are a very popular series of children’s books about the little girl Sigga and the Giantess (16 in all). The last book in the series describes her migration from the mountain into the cave in Keflavík.

The Giantess is a kind giantess with a big heart, so kids never have to fear her.

She has a postbox in her cave for kids to leave letters for her, just in case they want to tell her something or ask her a question.

Toddlers can also leave their pacifiers on a tree in the cave.

In quick summary, how the girl met the giant in the first book:

Before her 6th birthday, Sigga got lost in the mountains picking berries and lost a shoe. She crawled into what she thought was a flat wooden boat, which turned out to be the Giantess’s giant shoe.

Instead of being scared, the two laughed and became best friends. The Giantess began attending birthday parties, and occasionally saved villagers from the likes of avalanches and fires. (Landslide will bring it down.)

In one book, the Giantess learned how to swim, and a whaler caught her in their net, thinking that she was a big, strange whale!

The Giantess saved the children of the village from an avalanche, and she saved some Spanish tourists from certain death in the Icelandic environment when they had not shown the forces of nature enough respect.

In yet another book, the Giantess walks out onto the drift ice and finds a polar bear cub, which she thinks is a cat, and takes it back to her cave.

The mother of the polar bear cub followed them...

As a normal mother would.

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