Peripheral Vision: On Longing
Dream On, Volume 9
I press play on the video again. My girl sits straight, parallel to the upright, walnut-stained piano, her feet wrapped in my black sandals, moving the pedal up and down. Her slender brown arms extend to the keys with tangerine painted fingertips finding chords. Then her voice comes—so sure in tone and pure in its expression of emotion. I see the glimmer of a power she is beginning to possess— a lump forms in my throat.
I send the video to our beloved friend, who held her as a baby, whose song my daughter is singing in the recital video. My friend and I exchange notes back and forth. Together we began to unravel the complexity of emotion we feel witnessing this child, this young woman, singing with maturity and grace. This friend and I have loved each other’s children since before they could walk, and as I share this simple, breathtaking moment I feel her company—navigating parenthood alongside me even though she is 3000 miles away. We share this moment of wonder. And we talk about the longing that rises up in these moments of seeing your child with clarity, in a new light. Longing for the past, longing for this moment to stay, and longing to see what unfolds in the future.
This complex experience of being human in relation to the passage of time is something I’ve always circled around, not always able to fully face it, as it reveals such vulnerability and depth of feeling. Recently my book publisher had me fill out an author questionnaire. In it, I was asked to name who I would be if I were a fictional character from literature. My mind went blank— shy, perhaps, or maybe it is just hard to see ourselves clearly in some particular ways. So I turned to my incredibly well read mother and another equally well read lady, an author and best pal.
I posed the question to them: “If I were a character in a book who would I be?”
My mom replied, “Hmmm….Anne of Green Gables—imaginative and kind, tender with animals, constantly curious.”
My friend responded, “A sort of modern-day Laura Ingalls Wilder— scrappy, adventurous, and full of yearning.” I clearly have a type.
I find the experience and contemplation of longing to be such a big part of my life and of many people that I come into contact with—patients, friends, family. Perhaps they open up to me about it because they sense my earnest inner Anne or Laura. Perhaps, it is because people often come to me to explore what matters to them, to find deeper meaning. And all this yearning is telling. It speaks to what we want more of, to what matters to us, to what we love and miss. It surfaces at the most important moments in our lives. It also reveals the deep ambivalence we hold around, well really most meaningful moments in our lives. So often we believe we must feel one way about something, when the reality is typically the contrary. We feel many ways at once— admiration, joy, bittersweet gratitude entangled with regret and grief.
I connect to longing often. I feel it this year as I recognize the sweet spot of parenting I am in — my children still small enough to be under my wing yet big enough to tend to themselves while I tend to myself. I feel it when I sit with my father recalling the songs we danced to in the living room of my girlhood. I empathize with the yearning I see in my teenage and young adult patients, on the brink of opening their lives up, ready for more of the world to hold space for all of them—their yearning mixed with fear that they will never arrive, mixed with the brazen belief that all is possible. It rises in me as I begin to wrap my head around a big creative endeavor that is new and equal parts intimidating and thrilling. But I feel it most often in raising my children, an endeavor that reminds us, we have no choice but to flow with time.
She plays our friend’s song on the piano in the dining room. I can hear it from the kitchen as I chop zucchini small enough to melt undetected into the soup. My husband asks if we could ever get an electric piano with headphones and I vote no. For me, I share with him, listening to the music— the painful learning of the notes, voices finding their pitch—makes me feel like our house is full of love. It connects me to my childhood which I often long for. I can track where a child is in the house without vigilance, something else I long for—the peace of just being with them. And I can hear them growing, almost like a form or peripheral vision, as I season the soup.
longing <3