Seventeen

 

Dear son,

As I am writing these lines, 17 years ago, I was doing the final sprint in a labor that had started over 15 hours prior. A lot had happened that beautiful day of May in San Francisco, starting with the nocturnal rupture of membranes that led to a spectacular gush of your pool of 9 months (like we see in the movies). The contractions became immediately painful, as if the liquid was some kind of attenuator to the sharp burning pain. In the afternoon, in the tub, no back rubbing or breathing would do. Between two deep breaths, I begged for the epidural. A male resident came and started it. I think it was too strong because I couldn't even move my legs. I started being scared I would be paralyzed forever. The resident said nothing when I expressed my concern. But my worst fear was when the midwife turned me on my left side and injected my butt with a tocolytic agent to stop the labor. She did that based on what she thought were decelerations of your heart from the fetal cardiac monitoring. In retrospect, I think it was an inaccurate reading, and maybe it was my own heartbeat that was detected. It was chaos. Eventually I was allowed to push. But the epidural was so potent that I couldn't even feel my effort. When you came out, it was an expression of exhausted relief mixed with elation that sculpted my face. You were just perfect. You took the breast really well. Like the poem I wrote in your honor and your brothers', it was love at first sight. You slept a lot the day after day, you got us worried. I think you were recovering from that labor. Thankfully, you have been a very healthy, vigorous baby and toddler.

You probably don't feel like being sentimental right now. I have been told teenagers can't wait to grow up. But in the young man I see, I also see the cute toddler with a high-pitch, condensed and contagious laughter. I can't help but feel immense joy upon thinking that you once were young enough to seek regular protection from me, that I was moved beyond words to be your secure base, your mother. 

My role is different now. I get that. But I still like to be near you, admire you, draw you (I realized it was challenging to draw you as an Anime character since they don't typically have curly hair like you now have. But I appreciate the opportunity to move out of my comfort zone. You taught me that ! I had to be interested in train, tractors, hiking, gardening to follow your pace).

Like I did with your younger brother, I can't help but reminiscing over my own 17 years. I was about to graduate from high school. I was a radio announcer. I had signed up to study health sciences at our local community college to eventually go to medical school. I was working part-time at McDonald's and I hated that. But it was giving me some money to buy clothes or go to a 5-course dinner with my friends. I had asked my dad if I could go live with him before leaving for the big city two years later because I wanted to get to know him and since the divorce, I had lived mostly with my mother. It was important for me to rebalance the situation and this is something I never regretted. I also became closer to my sister as I offered support to her since she was unhappy in the public school she attended and wanted to come back to our high school. Otherwise, my life revolved around my textbooks and science lab experiment reports, which I typed using a typewriter (there was no available computer nor internet in the nineties). Oh, and I had a crush on a guy who was my classmate. Nothing more than friendship happened with him. I don't know if he ever guessed I was so infatuated with him. I had a network of good friends and it seemed easier than dating. I was in charge of girl scouts and we organized fun camps and excursions. On a more existential level, I had decided that God didn't exist, that it was a projection of human beings to comfort them when confronted with uncertainty. I discovered classical literature and enjoyed Voltaire.

There were disappointments and heartbreaks. At this age, my perspective was too narrow and I was quite focused on the outcome, or school grades and admission to university. With time, after many detours and things that didn't turn out the way I had planned, I learned to let that go. I think becoming a mother gave me perspective. I abandoned the self-abuse and the tyranny of perfectionism. You and your brothers reminded me of my truest and deepest nature that we also have in common: joy cultivation. Being in the moment, sharing the excitement of what is rather than apprehending the future is the only way to live well. And thoughts do not define us, and we should not identify with them, as they are limited, they are fabrications of our often skewed minds, and they tend to divide or create separatedness. We are not our thoughts. We are dynamic and evolving, and thoughts are just clouds passing through the skyscape of our awareness. 

I think that younger phase of my life happened as it should after all, just like it is unfolding for you. I might share wisdom but it might not resonate yet. For instance, the impermanence of all things. Or the need to think outside the confines of a structure, whether it is academia, or your family. I wish I had learned earlier to multiply the opportunities to find silence in me so that I can hear my own truth, shielded from the influence of louder egos around me. May you find silence within and discover your own truth and forge your own path. You will then meet your tribe. Your tribe won't be your family. It will be a chosen family. As much as I want to stay in your life, you are leaving the nest to start a different gestation, and not in my center of gravity this time. It is a gestation of the soul, where you will encounter challenging emotions, realities and dreams. May you realize this incredible intelligence you have. And I must agree with Krishanmurti on this: intelligence goes beyond the intellect. It must be balanced with the sensitivity or emotional experience. You have a sophisticated mind and a brave, kind, sensitive heart. You will do fine. As long as you remember to have faith in yourself, and in your intuition, because each of us is like an antenna or extension of the earth, like a sensor of wisdom that gets reported back to our Mother Earth to enlighten to collective consciousness. Be awake, be alert, be present, and above all, be honest with yourself. Awareness of your lived, inner sensations without running away from difficult emotions will help you know who you are, what you are meant to become, and only then can you be free to embrace what life offers you.

I have so much more to tell you. But this is a good start. I am there for you. I am grateful for so many fond memories and even cute quotations I kept in a document and that I will give you one day, when you are beyond this phase of your youth that is known to typically cringe in front of the parental sentimentalism.

Know that you have all the wisdom in the world within you, and that outside of what our regular senses perceive, there is also a subtle, invisible dimension that some call the G word but that I refer to as consciousness, light, source, compassion or love. No need to be religious to be spiritual. Being spiritual is about seeing us as divine beings that part of a bigger whole, like the planet, or the universe. It is about practicing gratitude, compassion, things you have been naturally good at since a young age. Let yourself decide what to believe and how to express your divine nature because, whether you agree with it or not, I see you as blissful, sacred and luminous.

Happy birthday ! With love,

Maman