LJ Idol- Prompt: Ambushcade

"I am large. I contain multitudes."
-Walt Whitman

She lives within me, all of them do, the Marias, present and past. And each day, honestly, sometimes each minute, they will take turns in the driver's seat.

Survival requires compromise, as well as diplomatic skill. Constantly leading by brute force is ineffective. Everyone needs rest, and it's better to allow each their time rather than be ambushed, deposed, and tied up while those Marias who are oppressed rule with abandon. As I learn and grow, I can't always push aside the child Marias. The older ones can comfort and nurture the children, so they don't wreak havoc on days when adult priorities need tending.

Denial seems to only make the less desirable sides stronger. Life is compromise and within each Maria is strength, weakness, lessons, memory, and sometimes pain. Only by acknowledging that all exist is it easier to modulate them into a whole.

I cannot solve the world's problems, but if you try to roadblock something my family needs, my determined survivor Maria will drive for awhile, and is often successful. She takes a lot of energy and isn't the friendliest sort, (too little desire to people-please,) so she doesn't get a large share of the driving time.

I think we humans all seek wholeness, but at times, if you look, you can see the tantruming child lurching out within the bodies of grown adults at service desks and in long lines, ready to burst, and fuss, and scream that yes, yes, they matter. They have waited long enough why, why doesn't anyone care about their comfort? Why doesn't someone care? Does anyone care?

For many of us, I feel some ghosts of our pasts live within certain songs. I'll be pushing a cart in a grocery store and, boom, without warning, notes are tinkling down from the ceiling, and a sentimental Maria suddenly controls both my memories and my tear ducts. I don't think of certain memories often, but notes can quickly call forth: a heartache, a striving, a fading good-bye.

I used to subscribe to the idea that sudden emotional triggers indicate unfinished business. Now, I mostly feel that they represent the length of life. If you live long enough, there will be colors and smells, tastes and foods, feelings and hair cuts that become doorways and windows to the people that once inhabited your daily life. Because we change, oh my gosh, we change! And that is the glory and the sorrow of being human.

The toys we longed for as children still live in the shelves of our minds. And the good-byes never said, the co-worker who changed jobs, the classmate who moved over the summer, these ghost and memories pile up. The first ones feel like stabbing pains. Over time, we realize that each moment exists only for now. We don't always get to say good-bye. But we had that one summer, those lunches on a Friday, those smiles over a dinner with mutual friends. Perhaps that will be all there was. But it was something, and I'm allowed treasure the brief and transient. Not everything is forever. Worth and longevity aren't always equal units of measure, at least in the laboratory of my life.

Inside my mind, I do try to redecorate. I can't trash all the boxes of the past, but I can try to shift the floating giggle balloons a little closer to the front. I try to open the curtains of possibility even when my eyes are tired of the light. I used to feel glued into depression's couch, but now I try to practice movement, stumble down the hallways into something else, anything else. When in doubt, sometimes a book is an out, but I try to pick books with characters I can live with for awhile.

And onward and upward, and out to try again. I'm trying to encourage Adventurous Maria more. She got beat up too often in years past so it's hard to tempt her out. Unlike some of the others, she has to be coaxed into the driver's seat of my life, but I'm trying.

Who knew that life is actually a group project after all?

LJ Prompt: A Nail Is Driven Out by Another Nail

"I definitely think you should..." Why, after so many years, does that phrase rise so easily to my lips? Only now, more often than not, I need to bit them back. No one is asking what they should do very often, and, honestly, honestly that could be a good sign. Do I know what they should do?

All I know is that once upon a time, there were three children and a mother who loved them very much.

At the time, I did not foresee the changes in store for that mother and those children. For now, I find myself living in "Once upon a time there were three adults and a mother who loved them very much."

This second story is one with less guidebooks. In the child version, you have certain criteria, such as:

1. Keep them safe.
2. Keep them fed.
3. Everyone needs sleep.

Now everything is much more topsy-turvy. Now it's:

1. They should choose to be safe and what degree of risk to tolerate.
2. They decide what keeps them fed.
3. Everyone needs sleep, but how, where, and when is mostly out of your control.

If I continue to be the same mother I was to children, I will smother away the adults who my three children are growing up to be.

So I try to listen even more. I am no longer a guide and a revealer of what the world is and how they should move in it. For they have entered other worlds: other jobs, other schools, and now, now they are the experts, growing close to people I may never know.

At best, I can listen (if they choose to share their experiences and plans. I do mention ideas of safety "stay in a group, buddy up" when my teen talks of heading to public Halloween parties. But their safety? That's up to them now.

It's a struggle. Sometimes I fight the instinct to gather them up and lock the door. Even thinking it, I realize the absolute impossibility of that idea. They are all bigger and stronger than me. I tried to raise them without a cage of fear and disapproval, which means, unfettered, they are exploring and dreaming, seeing which part of life is a place to make their home.

I don't want to hold them back. I hope they live their whole life with wings. Birds don't always fly, but without clipped wings, any place can be a joyful choice rather than a dreary prison.

I didn't realize how much their growing meant that I, too, need to grow. I need to grow into a love that is given with an open hand. I seek to rejoice in their joys even when I do not understand them, even when they are not the choices I might have made.

I try to more often use the phrases, "What do you feel you are drawn to? I'm proud that you accomplished that. You worked hard."

Their lives are not for my glory. They are earning their accomplishments. My role is to stand in the sidelines and clap. To often hugs, soup, and blankets, and then, yet again, an open door.

Yes, I'm sending them into that great, big scary world full of bad people. But there's good people out there too and maybe, just maybe, if I'm one of those lucky parents, maybe my kids will be some of those good people that others find. Good people to work with, to have fun with, and no one knows what might happen next.

I hope I get to hear about it.