On Letting Go

June 17, 2021June 22, 2021 / Martha Truxton Heller / 1 Comment

I’ve spent the last few weeks pouring over old journals and trying to remember what you were like back then—and what I was like—and trying to figure out just when it was that you first stopped needing me. This whole journey into and through motherhood is wholly rewarding and completely heartbreaking all at once.

I remember sitting in the hospital room, only 20 hours from becoming a mother for the first time, and already missing your presence. I was astounded at the ache I felt when you left the room. It was such a strange feeling…I had carried you in my belly for 9 months, talking to you, singing to you, feeling you move, and yet I didn’t know you. I had struggled to feel any kind of connection with you, a tiny life growing and changing and becoming inside of my own. I hadn’t seen you, hadn’t touched you, hadn’t begun to even imagine what it would be like… It was the moment they laid you on my chest for the first time that changed everything. I can’t possibly explain the relief I felt, all tangled up with joy and wonder. I knew in that instant that I loved you. That I had somehow always loved you. “Hi honey…” I whispered through my tears, smiling into your little face. Jon kissed my forehead, tears falling freely, overcome. He held you for hours that first night, gazing into your face, watching you sleep with such love in his eyes. I wish I could describe how beautiful you were to us—how fiercely precious. Your father and I would sit holding you, staring into your dark eyes, memorizing your cheeks, nose, lips, tiny toes and fingers… I wish I could describe the peace I felt when you cried after your first moments in the world and Jon touched your soft skin, whispered your name, and you were instantly quiet. You knew his voice, and somehow that made everything feel all right. You needed us so desperately back then. You needed to be held, to be fed, to be rocked to sleep, to be changed and reassured and sung to in the middle of the night…

Two weeks went quickly by, and my heart still leapt every time I looked at you. You had started opening your eyes more, looking around, taking everything in, and staring at all the faces. You listened intently whenever anyone would talk to you, like you were trying to memorize everything about them. Your eyes were so captivating and so deep…I loved those moments when I would hold you and you would stare up at my face, your dark eyes searching deep into mine. My world simply turned over every time. We spent every waking moment together, you and I! And every hour of the night you were snuggled by my side.

But then you were three. Your Welsch cheeks thinned out, your hair grew down past your shoulders, and you had the most contagious laugh! You were so smart, and so full of life and had so much to say. And then I dropped you off for your first day of preschool, and as I watched your teacher take your hand and lead you away, it was like watching a piece of my heart leave. I remember spending the morning with my thoughts muffled in a surreal fog, and then I stood in the church foyer waiting to pick you up, my heart dropping down into my stomach and my eyes clouding over and my soul just aching for you. You spent all morning without me—playing without me, learning without me, meeting people I didn’t yet know—having the beginnings of your own little life apart from me. As I waited to see your beautiful face round the corner, I missed you so terribly and I wanted to squeeze you and never let go ever…And then I saw you, and watched your eyes search the crowd for me, and watched the smile form on your beautiful lips when you found me, and I knew I couldn’t stop you from growing. It made me excited for you, thinking about all the things you would learn, and all of the life you would experience, but it wrecked me to realize how badly I wanted to be there for every second of it. It was already time to start loosening my grip, to open my mama’s arms and begin releasing you—moment by little moment—out into the world. And I wasn’t ready. I had no idea how to start letting you go.

I still don’t. So many years and so many moments have passed since those early years; one day tumbling after the next in a dizzying fog of joy and heartache. And once again I find myself standing in a surreal haze, watching you walk across that stage at Cumberland Valley High School in your cap and gown, with that beautiful smile on your face. You have grown into an astonishing young lady, with a smile that lights up every room, and those same brown eyes that search deep and listen long… I catch glimpses of you sometimes that spark memories of that 4-year-old that would throw her arms around me and say “oh, mommy, I just love you SOOO much. Let me give you a hug!” You would brush the tip of your nose against my cheek, and when I remember it my breath catches and my heart aches and I just don’t know where all of that time went. I was going to savor it; all of it. Every moment. I was going to breathe deep while the laughter was sweet and the cuddles were endless. But already some of the sweetest memories are fading, and it makes me so sad in the deepest parts of my heart to let them go. But in this bittersweet dance of motherhood, I look at you, sweet girl—beautiful, kindhearted, spirit filled you—and I am so thrilled to watch where you go from here. It has been my greatest joy to be your mama all of these tenderfooted years—whether you needed me or not. And in the years to come, there may still be a day when you need to be held, or reassured, or to hear daddy’s voice and know everything’s going to be all right. But for now, I’ll just stand here and watch as you go, completely heartbroken yet wholly rewarded.

To the Seed of a Flame Tree

May 12, 2021July 31, 2022 / Martha Truxton Heller / Leave a comment

To the seed of a Flame Tree,

dropped long ago from the shaker-pods of the giant that overlooks the dry West African savannah; those towering, spreading branches that birth lace-like leaves, flame flowers, and shakers browning, opening, discarding seeds onto the earth…

Seeds heavy with memory

dropped onto the arid soil where my desperate fingers found them. I caressed each seed, sliding them against my fingertips. I enclosed them deep in my palm, begging time to stand still, and then released them to the clink of a glass bottle

and carried them over oceans.

You seeds lay in quiet slumber within my bottle now, this tiny glass vial, your forever-dwelling. Today I emptied you into my hand, begging you to stay awhile longer…stay, just as you are, for you carry so much of my life encased within the smoothness of your hard, striped shell…so much kept so safe in one small seed,

a desperate piece of home carried over oceans in a bottle.

I once had dreams of planting you somewhere; someplace I might stay, might stop and submerge my roots while you submerge yours,

Deep in the soil, rest,

off of the road for awhile…Somewhere to build a new home and take you from your bottle and make you grow and make you feed off the land, for I have tired of holding you, of merely looking at you, of carrying you

as if I could have possibly captured and encased my life and my dreams and all of my memories within your tiny womb…

But you will probably never grow.

I have carried you too long over oceans in a bottle.

Rhythm of Pavement

February 12, 2021February 20, 2021 / Martha Truxton Heller / Leave a comment

In these long, bleak days of the winter months, I feel the sadness deep in my bones. It’s always there—nestled just beneath—but something about the cold and the dark gives it life and it creeps ever up until I can barely breathe. Some days I manage to find the little things that bring just enough beauty and light to get me through the day. Other days I drown in it. I want to be anyone else but me. To be anywhere else but here…

It’s 1998. On a cold night in December, Kristie wants to go somewhere—anywhere—just away. Away from the college textbooks, the endless studying and the stifling country campus. When the hour slips past 9 pm, four of us jump in a car and begin the long drive to New York City.

The journey is quiet. We stare out our windows at the night rolling by, minds full and clouded, droning endlessly like the car engine and the scraping of the road as it moves beneath us. An hour slips by—trapped in our heads, rhythm of pavement, emptying—then a dim light from the back seat clicks on. We hear John shifting positions on his seat towards the light, and then his soft, deep voice begins, slowly penetrating the silence.

“Peyote Poem. ‘Clear—the senses bright—sitting in the black chair…’” His voice soothes, draws us away from the pavement. “‘The beautiful things are not of ourselves but I watch them…Writing the music of life in words.’” The road slips beneath. We listen to John’s voice, following Michael McClure through his peyote mind journey as the highway brings us ever further from our own familiar. Still the road slips beneath.

“‘I have lived out the phases of life from patterned opulence to stark unheeding…I KNOW ALL THAT THERE IS TO KNOW, feel all that there is to feel…Perfection.’”

Suddenly New York City stretches before us in a mass of lights and a rainforest of tall concrete, heightening the awe we feel at this moment for the written word and how it reaches deep in our bones. Perfection. We wander the city, listening to each other read Philip Lamantia, Diane DiPrima and Amiri Baraka, drinking in the energy of the city as it mingles with the beauty of the night. We watch the strikingly diverse people that pass us on the street and sit around us in cafes. We bathe in the music that flows from windows and doorways and jazz clubs. We drink our fill of the night as the city’s glow slowly shifts to dawn.

Soon it is 5 a.m. and we are back in the car, listening to the drone of the road once again. Our eyes fall for awhile, heavy with the weight of early morning, until the sun begins to rise above the city skyline that we have long since left behind. John hands his Beat Reader over to Kristie and her faint, tired voice seeps slowly into our skin. “Sunflower Sutra. By Allen Ginsberg. ‘I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock…’” Her voice guides us back through the dirt and the chaos as the road continues to slip beneath. Rhythm of pavement. Emptying. Reminding me that there is always beauty to be found. Always. Even in the cold and the dark. “‘We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all golden sunflowers inside.’”

The sunrise paints our faces orange at that moment and we sit back to hold our memories there—hold them in that beautiful light of new day—before we return completely to where we came from.

And forget.

Hope in the Dark

November 27, 2020February 20, 2021 / Martha Truxton Heller / Leave a comment

Sometimes it’s hard to find the things to be thankful for. Like, really hard. I try to tell my kids “there’s always always something to be grateful for. Even when it feels like there isn’t.” But I will admit, it’s been a struggle to find even the tiniest of things lately. The last few years we’ve been buried in the deep lonely places of parenting, the places where no matter what you do or how much you love, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. It’s a deeply discouraging place to be. And yes, it’s hard to find the good things there. Yesterday felt like any other day, trying to stay positive, repeating the silent prayers again and again: help me find the good… It was later in the day, as the sunlight faded through the trees outside my in-laws house, when I sat reading over the scrawling on their Thanksgiving tablecloth; the “I am thankful for’s” that we write every year when we gather. Many were the usual: family, home, pets…but then I stumbled on a note written in red earlier that day by my child who has been fighting in silence for so long: “I’m thankful for parents who are patient with me.” I stared at it for a minute, hardly believing what I saw, letting the hope flood into the empty spaces in my heart. It felt like her hand was reaching out for mine in the dark, squeezing my fingers in that silent rhythm like we used to… I. Love. You. What sweetest of gifts, to be reminded just when it feels like we are failing hopelessly at this parenting thing, that maybe—just maybe—we are doing okay. The good things are there, friends. They might be buried deep, and it might take awhile to find them, especially if the world around you feels dark and hopeless. But keep looking…there’s always always something to be thankful for. And once you find it, I promise the hope will follow.

Bayley Girl

November 27, 2020July 19, 2023 / Martha Truxton Heller / Leave a comment

Midnight, while everyone sleeps, the tightening begins. I pull my aching body into bed, heavy with child and desperate for sleep.

Wait, baby girl. Mama is tired.

3 am, deep night, the tightening comes harder, faster. I can no longer lay still. I rise, I lay back down. I rise, I lay back down. …

Wait, baby girl. The hour is too early.

5:30, quiet dark of early morning, the tightening becomes unbearable. I wake my companion, and we begin our journey on the dark, deserted road. The tightening again, the urge to bear down…

Wait, baby girl. We’re not there yet.

It’s almost dawn when they send me–alone and weary–to an empty back room.

Wait, baby girl. Please wait. It’s almost time.

Dawn breaks at that moment, and you are desperate to come. The sharpness of the tightening, the bearing down without will, the scream for help…

WAIT, BABY GIRL! I can’t do this alone!

Water breaks as your head pushes through. Shaking violently with adrenaline and hot tears, I am blinded by my fear, but I reach down, grab your arms and pull your body from my own.

Oh, baby girl…breathe. Please breathe.

It’s going to be okay.

“Mama’s here,” I whisper into your cheek as your cries fill the small room. I hold you close, still trembling. My tears fall fast, mingling with yours on your tiny face.

Sweet baby girl, I’m here. You are fierce, you are beautiful, and I will hold you forever.

It’s sixteen years later when you enter the room. You are tall, and you are lovely, and you are stronger than you know. The tightening grasps my heart, deeper, richer.

Wait, baby girl. Please wait.

Our time is passing too quickly…

The Lightning Storm

January 25, 2020May 12, 2021 / Martha Truxton Heller / 1 Comment

photo by Jon Heller

If there is one thing I love, it is the bush sky. Lately I’ve been haunted by my memories of it…of standing beneath the mountain in one of the remote villages of Kabara. It swallows me. I remember staring up at the mountain, listening to the sounds of the village echo across the sky and gently fade as the night descended. I remember the deepness of the dark…the sheer heaviness of its quiet as the drums faded from the village and left nothing in its place. Nothing. The night is so very deep. I have returned here in my mind so often these past weeks as my heart feels the weight of just too much dark. I have cried countless nights; helpless, hopeless. “I lift up my eyes to the hills…Where does my help come from?” I have often found peace and solace when I retreat to the things of the soil, of the air…the things that breathe with the rhythm of my Creator. But even the hills are dark and silent lately, and my mama’s heart doesn’t know where to turn.

The thing about the bush sky is that because it is so very dark, the stars are absolutely incredible. They feel like stardust softly falling on your skin. They paint the entire sky. All of it. The whole expanse as far as you can see. I remember staring up at the black, star-sprinkled sky under the mountain that night so many years ago and just breathing deep. The beauty of the Creator is just endless, and out there in that absolute stillness I could have drowned in it… And that’s when the lightning started. It crept through the silence, splashing above the savanna grasses, curling around treetops, illuminating and darkening the horizon. As it flashed across the sky, bursting behind massive clouds and turning their outlines a brilliant silver, I saw my Creator’s face. It was barely a moment, but it stole my breath and there was no doubt in my mind what I had just seen. All of the power and majesty of the living God, visiting me in the stillness.

Today my mind revisits that place, but I am drowning in the sorrow I have brought with me. The sorrow that feels so endless and so dark and so desperately without answers… How I yearn to truly return there, to the dark of that mountain village, to the beauty of the stars, to the certainty of His presence. I am overwhelmed with my fear. Yet in these moments where I can barely breathe between my tears, I lift my eyes to the hills. Again and again I lift them. To the Maker of heaven and of earth. And each time He reminds me that He showed me His face in the quiet of a lightning storm. And that I have only to be still.

Here’s to 2020

December 31, 2019February 11, 2023 / Martha Truxton Heller / Leave a comment

2019 has rolled through faster than any year before it. I have awoken each day, inhaled deep breaths, vowed to slow down and take one day at a time, and yet here we are. The year is drawing to a close, and I can only look back and wonder where it went. We had some really big changes in our family this year, and normally I would have had at least 3 major breakdowns at this point, but this year was different somehow. Normally I shut down. I curl up. I close off. I welcome the deep dark. But not this time. I don’t know if it has come easier with the dulling of years rolling by, or whether I’m just learning to embrace who I am…Maybe both? I’ve learned a lot about myself this year, and I guess I’m finally old enough to just admit it. I’m a mess. I’m an anxious, emotional wreck, and I probably always will be. I will never have a 10 step plan for a successful future, or model perfect values for my kids. I will probably never get an appropriate amount of sleep, or quit drinking coffee and eating sugar. But I guess the good part of finally being able to embrace that about myself is that I can stop comparing myself to everyone else that has it all together. And when I finally stop comparing, I can finally stop seeing myself as a failure. I can finally just be me. I’m a hot mess with no plan for my future and no idea how I’m going to make it through tomorrow, but you know what? I’m still married to the guy I fell in love with 20 years ago; my kids still love me despite my flaws, and we all still laugh together sometimes. So even though 2019 felt like a train wreck, I’ve decided to call it a win. We didn’t go on any family hikes or visit really cool places during this holiday break, but I did share a moment the other day with my youngest son as he tried Digestive biscuits for the first time. I told him stories of eating them after school when we would walk home in the warm West-African rain, and he smiled. It’s a sweet memory I wouldn’t trade for all the well-planned outings in the world. Here’s to 2020.

Boxes

November 7, 2019September 27, 2021 / Martha Truxton Heller

For the past two days, I’ve been washing and sorting boxes upon boxes of baby and toddler clothes to give away. These tiny fabrics enrobed my two daughters when they were tiny, when they were carefree, when they looked at me as though I were the very air they breathed. Oh the memories in each little sleeper I carefully fold…I can almost see their small sweet faces, giggling with each other while they play and grow and imagine how life would one day be … and now suddenly they are teenagers, desperately trying to find their place in this treacherously confusing life. God if it were only as simple as this again…as simple as feeding and changing diapers and just holding them until the crying stops…

I find myself setting aside certain items: the hat Kaela wore when her toddler toes ran through the Cape May sand, the polka dot dress Bayley used to love to wear with her striped tights… Soon my pile to keep is taller than my pile to give. But why am I keeping these? Their grown faces flash in front of me and I know I am desperately trying to hang on to the memories of joy at it’s simplest. But my girls won’t be babies again. They will never again be the carefree toddlers running through our yard and finding worms to bring home. They will never again line up their toy animals on the basement stairs…And it’s okay for me to mourn that. But rather than grasping at piles of old clothes—rather than holding their memories tight-fisted and melancholy—I decide in this moment to smile over who my girls once were, and find excitement in who they are becoming. And these clothes—these dresses, these sweaters and hats—they can enrobe new littles with a whole new set of sweet memories to be made. Just like mine.

So I carefully refold each item and place them back in the boxes to be given away. With each fold I pray for new blessings, new babies, new memories—wherever these precious fabrics may end up. And as for me and my daughters, well, maybe they do still giggle together from time to time, and dream of how life will one day be. And maybe—just maybe—it’s still sometimes as simple as just holding them until the crying stops.

Finding Grace

July 23, 2019January 17, 2021 / Martha Truxton Heller / Leave a comment

Today was one of those days…when the negative thoughts weigh too heavy to shake off, when the words all tumble out wrong, patience is thin, and finding joy in my mundane-everyday seems pointless. I make myself “do the next thing” but the fog and its accompanying despair are relentless. Harsh words to my child cannot be taken back and though I hide behind a closed door, I can’t run from the shame of it. At long last the sun makes its way back towards the horizon, and the day is drawing to a close. The house is quiet and the lazy light of evening spills onto the kitchen counter. I find myself standing in front of our old coffee grinder as it sits in a slanted patch of evening light, and I pull it towards myself. I pour the coffee beans into the top, hearing them clink against the metal rim in protest. I grab the handle, and begin methodically turning it in circles. As my muscles tense to hold the grinder steady, my thoughts tumble down one after the other, spilling in amongst the roasted beans. I watch as they are pulled into the thick metal teeth and disappear. The crunch of hard shells split open, crushed…then the beautiful aroma released. I stop. I breathe deep of it in that moment, feeling the stir of memory and the gentle soothing of my spirit follow after. The simple memory of so many peaceful mornings saturated with that scent…the quiet sipping of a warm cup before the day begins its hurry…Grace. New every morning. The chance to begin again…I continue grinding slowly, steadily, until the very last of the beans crunch through the hard metal teeth, release their aromatic promise of a new tomorrow and disappear.

For the Ones Who Swim Over

September 2, 2018January 17, 2021 / Martha Truxton Heller / Leave a comment

I’ve thought a lot about drowning today. That final relenting to the oceans fury. That slipping beneath, gasping for air, lungs filling with water…

This present season of life has felt so very much like drowning. We fight for the shore, but the current pulls us further away. We keep struggling for air, but lungs fill with water and the light disappears. These are hard, hard days. Relentless days. Days that leave existence feeling pointless. Even in the very basic, daily battle of wills with our young ones, we are left feeling raw, and life feels so relentlessly brutal, and I feel so continuously inadequate.

And then today, I struggled helplessly against strong waves to reach my son who was being pulled out and under by the angry tide of the Jersey shore. I watched his aunt try to hold him up, and be pulled under too. I heard her calls for help and watched as his uncle tried to reach them and pull them forward…only to be dragged out again. Finally I am with them grabbing my son, trying to hold him above the surface, being dragged under…God, I am not strong enough….Then flash of red, and the lifeguard is there, pulling him to shore. To solid ground. Safety.

As I sit here, still reeling in my spirit from that feeling of powerlessness–of watching my loved ones being pulled beneath the water with no way to stop it–I know that this story could have ended very differently. And I cannot wrap my heart around that possibility. But they were there; the ones who swam over and fought when I couldn’t. And this season? This unforgiving struggle? I don’t see how it ends. I don’t see how long we keep fighting; how many more times we come up for air and get dragged back down. But I do know our story doesn’t end here. And just like I witnessed in the ocean today, we are not struggling alone. I am profoundly grateful for the people who swim over–again and again–and try to hold us above the angry waters. And so we keep swimming. We keep fighting against the pull of the sea, until the tide gives way or that flash of red appears to guide us out. And with this fresh reminder of how quickly the people we care for the most can be taken from us, with the dawning and the setting of each new day I will hold my beloveds a little tighter.

Drinking The Air

Remembering my past, breathing deep of my present.