Making Joy
By Dawn Wink
Suddenly, 3-year-old Luke looked up directly into my eyes. "Do you make joy,
Mommy?"
The hair raised on my arms. I gazed down at his clear blue eyes peering up at me
from under blonde lashes that glistened in the sun. He regarded me levelly, awaiting
my answer.
"What, Lukie?" "Are you making joy?" He stared at
me.
Stories and memories, like yarn of varying shades and textures, create the tapestry
of my life. Strands dyed by the experiences and memories of the years I was home
with my babies form the weave of a small but significant section. Despair and magic,
hopelessness and triumph, were all part of this time. I’m proud of its crafting,
for while other others’ hands wove much of my life's tapestry, this is my own handiwork.
Certain parts remain intricately knotted; no human hands can ever untangle them.
I have learned, if not to love these knots that represent sad times and mistakes,
at least to look upon them with a tender sadness and acceptance. They are as much
of a part of me as the more finely woven areas I try to present to the world.
I would never want to relive these experiences, but from them I became stronger,
more whole and open to joy. They compose the cloth of this story, which begins, innocently
enough, with the birth of my first baby, Wyatt. Two years later, Luke arrived. And
17 months after that came Wynn, who was born screaming and didn’t stop for the first
three and a half years of her life. One friend described Wynn like this: "It's
as though her huge spirit never got used to being in that tiny little body and was
just pissed off at the world." During this time my husband, Michael, accepted
a position as a software consultant that required constant travel. For five years
he traveled to different countries and states, with only brief stays at home. I now
refer to this time as "the travelin' years."
I stopped working outside the home to be with my babies. The despair snuck up on
me. I never expected to experience a soul-wrenching depression. The possibility had
really never entered my head. You can imagine my surprise at finding myself curled
into the fetal position, hiding behind the clothes in my closet several times a week.
I responded to my increasing hopelessness and rage by creating a shell around my
babies and myself. I devoted every ounce of strength I could muster to getting through
the day. I didn't feel I had enough to spare on anybody but my children — not friends,
not myself, and certainly not anything as frivolous as joy.
What I remember most from those years revolves around being alone—holding a screaming
baby on my hip while two toddlers cried and clung to my legs. I awoke every morning,
my mouth tasting of emptiness and bitterness, and my first thought was always, How
in the hell am I going to make it through today? I learned to cope by disengaging
myself from my surroundings. I lived on autopilot, a walking, talking, hollow shell.
This continued for years, until sadness and bitterness pushed away all other emotions
and consumed me.
In her marvelous book, Expecting Adam, Martha Beck writes, "One of the
great myths of our society is that when women are left with small children, they
are not alone. The truth is that a mother left with babies is far more alone than
she would be without them; every bit of energy, attention, protectiveness, and care
she might use to meet her own needs must first be directed toward the needs of her
children. That's why the Bible always laments the fate of those who are with child
and those who give suck in the middle of war and disaster. The authors of the Good
Book knew perfectly well that a woman alone can run, fight, or hide, but a woman
with babies is toast."
I was, most definitely, toast.
Above my writing desk now hangs a framed batik that a dear friend brought me from
Nepal. It depicts the profile of a woman carrying upon her back an enormous basket
made of sticks. A long cord wraps around the back of the basket, and the front loops
up and around the woman’s forehead. The woman walks, bent at the waist, both hands
steadying the cord on either side of her forehead. The basket, used to carry heavy
loads, is called a doko. Symbolically, the woman’s husband, children, kitchen,
cattle and in-laws ride in the basket. They are joined there with her tasks — tilling
the land, fetching water, and collecting firewood — along with all of her social
and moral obligations. This batik is the symbol of a woman’s burden. My friend gave
it to me saying, "So you remember, Dawn, how strong we women are."
Life continued to dump heavy objects into my doko. Trying to cope with the
weight, I developed an unconscious habit involving my daughter’s dollhouse. Every
time I walked past it, I gingerly picked up the mommy doll from wherever she lay
and placed her gently into the little toy bathtub, by herself, with her tiny, wide-brimmed,
pink sunhat covering her face.
At some level, this clumsy gesture nurtured the sad, struggling mommy in both our
houses, as if I thought putting that mommy doll in that peaceful tub would somehow
lighten the load of my doko. It didn’t. The heaviness continued to increase
until finally I could hardly move.
During one of those times that the weight pinned me to the ground, Michael was off
to some far off location for work. My parents suggested that instead of staying by
myself with the kids, we come to be with my dad on our family's cattle ranch on the
prairies of South Dakota. At this point, making decisions was beyond me. I continued
to cope by remaining disengaged, periodically descending into bouts of pure rage
before ascending to a point far in the distance again. Thankfully, my parents made
this decision for me. The kids and I went to the ranch for a couple of weeks that
fall. It would be the first of many such trips. During this trip, though, Luke gave
me a glimpse into the future — into what I was meant to learn.
One day on the ranch I sat, numb and hollow, on the split rail fence surrounding
the ranch house watching my kids play with Tonka trucks in the sand. I vaguely felt
the coolness of the wind brushing my cheek and pushing strands of hair across my
face. A few random thoughts of how hopeless and empty I felt flitted occasionally
through my mind.
That's when Lukie looked up at me.
"Do you make joy, Mommy?"
In truth I did not. In truth a lot of questions had invaded my detached space — questions
about how my life had gotten so beyond my control and so very unhappy. But I certainly
wasn’t going to say that to him, so I smiled. "Yes, Luke; yes I do, Sweetie."
"Good. I making joy, too," he answered, the breeze swirling his strawberry-blonde
hair around his face, a small round study of innocence. He walked over to me, kicking
lightly at the sand with his cowboy boots, his tiny Wranglers rolled up at the cuffs,
and crawled up to sit on the fence beside me. We sat there in silence for a good
long while, his little dimpled hand resting lightly on my leg. Whatever inspired
him to ask that? I thought. I’ve never used that phrase before. He’s never
even heard that before.
A short time later, I hopped down off the fence to pick up Wynn and dust her off.
"Mommy, get back to making joy!" I heard Luke call out from the fence.
I turned and smiled at him, "Okay, Lukie. I'll make joy, Honey. I'll make joy."
And that's what those sad, seething years of depression ultimately gave me; they
taught me how to make joy. Not every minute of every day, of course, but in the broader
spectrum of life. They became my map, guiding me away from emptiness and toward a
soul-deep feeling of meaning and purpose in my life.
I alluded to some of my experiences in a letter to a friend, making a light reference
to the emotional breakdown I'd undergone before coming back up into the light. A
few weeks later, I received her response, "Breakdown? It sounds more like you
had a breakthrough!"
And indeed I did. That change in words reminds me that though it was the hardest
thing I've ever endured, it also had given me the greatest gift.
The experiences from those years continue to affect how I perceive and live in the
world. Only through them did I finally learn how to make joy. Last summer as I tiptoed
in to close the door to my sons’ bedroom, I heard Wyatt call out to me, "Will
you rub my back, Mommy?"
"Sure, Honey," I murmured as I walked to the side of the bunk bed and reached
up to rub his back softly.
"Don't you want to come up here so you can be more comfortable?" he said
softly in the dark.
"Absolutely, Wyatt." I smiled and came around to the end of the bed, climbed
up to the top bunk and lay down beside him. I began to rub his small, bare back,
feeling each little bone under skin that was still baby-soft even though he was one
week from entering first grade.
We made it, Wyatt, I breathed. We made it through the last five years — through
the crying and yelling, the desperation and hopelessness. We made it intact, Sweetie.
It was during those years that I learned that joy is a verb. It is something we create,
shimmering stitches, tangled knots, and all.Dawn Wink writes, presents workshops, and raises three children in Eldorado. "Making Joy" is published in the Winter 2004 edition of Tumbleweeds. |