Let it go

Idina Menzel's "Let it go" from Frozen is clearly going to be the anthem of Clara's childhood.  She sings it endlessly, and has memorized the complicated lyrics with their sometimes counter-intuitive phrasing.  She's not alone.  I stood on Roland Avenue the other day hearing young girls singing it without being able to see exactly where their voices were coming from.  In the pool changing room?  Likewise: a young swim team of female voices attempting to "turn away and slam the door," Broadway-style.  It's pretty cool, actually, to watch zeitgeist happen and take hold.

As a grown-up, it feels like perhaps Clara, or all these young girls, are unconsciously tapping in to the anxiety and fear of change welling up in their mothers.  (Tell me, how many people, how many mothers, do you know who do not feel like recent months or years have resulted in a "swirling storm inside"?  Exactly.  None, right?)

It feels like things are changing in this world, land is sliding, buildings are falling, rain is coming, tides are roaring: Menzel voices the possibility of elation arising from chilling catastrophe. Who doesn't need the relief of that possibility?

Winton broke his arm this year, coinciding with my workplace downgrading our health insurance so that we now have medical bills for "deductibles" not covered by the insurer.  Taxes are due, and they were approximately triple what I was expecting.  Yesterday the house was burgled.

Let it go: certainly there's no holding on to material aspirations as the money streams away.

There is so much I want to cling tight to.  So tight.
I want to cling to my children and to the ways of being with them I have enjoyed in past years.  I want to cling to that and I want things to change, to move beyond this transitional time.

I feel like I am treading water in a canal lock: deep, cold, black-looking water.  The surface is deceptively still, but water is pouring out under the canal gates.  Hard to say whether hypothermia or the undertow will get me first.

There should be a clear plan or resolve to go forwards with . . .

My best hope is that it is possible that "home" and "good mother" can be made from my cupping of a child's chin in my hand and looking love at them, of an unexpectedly successful joke lightening the work of a mundane moment, of a moment of play that arises unexpectedly in the midst of whatever fresh angst the world has offered up, of a good meal, a warm blanket, a calming heart.  These I aspire to.