​I followed a link from someone's Facebook feed (I can't remember whose now!) to this article this morning, and it's been driving me crazy ever since. She makes some important, true points, especially about it being OK to tell the truth about motherhood not always being easy. We all need to be gentle with each other and take care of instead of criticizing each other.

But as the "be grateful for this time" isn't a criticism, it also triggered my "yeah, but" reflex.

I know it's A Thing. I did it once and was swiftly rebuked and I haven't done it again. It's just not cool, as the mom of teenagers (when did I get this old?), to tell a mom of young kids that she should be grateful for her experiences, or that she should savor the time she has with her little kids, even when she's covered in poop and as thoroughly exhausted as she could ever imagine being. Who would be grateful for those days when your kids are little, and you feel like all you do is change diapers and nurse the baby while you're playing with Fisher Price toys with the toddler and the preschooler is drawing flowers on the kitchen wall with metallic Sharpies? When there are no adults around except you, and no possibilities of a break, and yes, even when you do get to bed there's often a little body already there, one who takes up an impossible amount of space for all its seeming tininess. When days are long and downright boring sometimes, and if you have to have one more tea party where you sip imaginary tea and eat imaginary cookies you might just lose your marbles.

And then some stupid old mother, with all of her kids at school all day, tells you you should be grateful? Have all of the old mothers forgotten just how hard it is, taking care of a bunch of little ones? Have their memories of tinies been filtered of the hard, exhausting, boring, repetitive details, leaving only the blissful ones, when the baby is clean and sleeping, and the top of her downy little head is the softest and most heavenly thing imaginable?

Of course we didn't forget.

Because here's a truth: being a mother is always hard. We didn't forget how hard those days were. We just know that harder things are coming. Not the early school years—those, in general, are pretty good. I'm talking about the universal truth you don't learn until it's too late: you didn't have a baby. You just had a premature teenager.

Changing diapers all day long is hard. Never feeling like you can leave that nursing baby who refuses to take a bottle is hard. Mothering little ones is hard, hard work. But I promise: you meet an entirely new kind of hard when you start raising a teenager. Because then it's not just poop. It's shit. The difficult parts of raising teenagers are life changing. If they don't keep their grades up their chance at a scholarship will be ruined. If they don't figure out why their best friend suddenly hates them, they'll feel like a social pariah. If they don't dress right, have the right hair or make-up or clothes or car or shoes or cell phone or ___________ (insert whatever is currently popular) they feel like freaks. There is heartache and backstabbing and pissy teachers and overwhelming amounts of homework, the Amazonian piranha nightmare that is junior high and high school. Plus acne and boobs and armpit hair and what the hell is my body doing.

As a mother of teenagers, you still don't get any sleep. Sure, no one crawls into bed with you anymore. And yeah, they sleep through the night. Sort of—if you count staying up till 1:45 a.m. finishing a homework project and then getting up at 5:00 because it takes time to look this good as "sleeping through the night." But you don't, because of worrying. And there are a million different worries. Are they smoking pot in secret? Are they having sex with their girl/boyfriends? Are they looking at porn despite all your best filtering efforts? Are they drinkers or bulimics or cutters, are they depressed or manic or just normal adolescents? Is their social life proof you raised a Mean Girl? Is the _____ sports team too much or not enough? How will their current choices help them in the future that's rapidly smacking them in the face?

When toddlers make a mistake, you have to reach for some paper towels or the vacuum or sometimes even the phone to call the doctor. When teenagers make a mistake it changes their lives.

And those are just the things you worry about. There's also the way you look at them and your heart still, fifteen years later, does that fluttery thing when you can't believe that such a person as this amazing creature exists, and you helped to create him—and then he looks at you with the deepest contempt, or annoyance, or superiority. When every question is answered with a half-grunt, or a shoulder shrug, or a body language that is screaming silent epithets at you. Or you finally have to realize that the little girl who used to adore drinking imaginary tea with you would rather have her fingernails pulled off—her hair shorn—her cell phone taken away than spend any actual, real time with you. (Unless the mall is involved, but then only because you have the credit card.)

And that is why, dear young moms, we old moms tell you to be grateful. To savor. It's because sometimes we'd like to trade our hard for yours. It's because you cannot know until it happens: the little days don't last forever. That is both a blessing and a devastation. Yes, it is nice to be on the other side, the diaper-bag-free, everyone-is-potty-trained-and-can-feed-their-own-damn-selves side. But it isn't easier. It's just hard in a different way.

It's not that we old moms think you young moms shouldn't feel what you feel. The hard parts are as real as the happy parts. It's not monstrous to feel what you feel. We just want you to see that the hard parts aren't the only parts. And sure: probably no one would ever tell the mom of teenagers to savor these days. To be grateful for them. To be happy that you're so mad at your kid you just threw a block of cheese at him. Except, you know...I tell myself that. Because for all of the hard things, there are still blissful moments. Like when you're driving down the road and a song comes on that you both love (which is a miracle in itself!) and you both sing along, loudly and badly, but with laughter. Or when your teenage son gets a glint in his eye and then tells you a joke that is maybe slightly off-color but not too much. Or when you find the right bit of advice to give your teenage daughter, and she tries it and it works and then she says thank you. When you find the perfect prom dress or the girl says yes to a date. When you see them fail but keep trying, when you see them succeed, when you see them begin to stride out into the world, wearing the identity you helped to shape—those are the best savoring moments.

But I also try to savor the hard times. Or perhaps savor is too strong a word. Just not lose myself in the utter misery of them, because there is also another worse thing: they leave. You think you will always have them with you (sometimes you think you will never be free of them) but you won't. You will always be the mother of your children but you won't always be actively mothering them. They grow and grow and grow, and then they are grown up. And they leave. This time, with whatever hardness it holds, is always worth savoring. It is always worth being grateful for. Because it will always, always pass by.

The suggestion of old mothers to young mothers that they savor, that they know they are blessed and lucky even in the hard moments, doesn't come from a place of condescension. It isn't because we've forgotten. It's not because we're know-it-all jerks who want to be the boss of you. It's not because we're unstable weirdos who want to cuddle our teenagers. (They're pretty smelly.) It's just because we're farther into this journey of motherhood and we know just how quickly the time passes, and how swiftly the end comes, and because we want you to be able to look back and know you felt, thoroughly and utterly felt, the moments you were given.

It's because we want that for ourselves, too. And because sometimes, eventually, it will be too late, and the moment—good, hard, blissful, boring, mundane, extraordinary—will be gone.

Our relationship with music is an intimate thing. I don't have much connection to classical music. I don't like country and I despise most top-40 pop music. I like songs with interesting lyrics and with rhythm, melodies, and movements that are unusual. I like a lot of different songs, but at the same time I'm fairly picky about what I like. And to find songs that I love requires a perfect meshing of lyrics, sound, and the emotional temperament of my life at the moment. 

I think this has been true since I was 14 or 15 and just becoming enthralled with alternative music. The music I was discovering then—Alphaville and Depeche Mode and Erasure, Xymox and The Church and Dead Can Dance, The Smiths and Bauhaus and The Cure—became so deeply embedded with my sense of self as to be inseparable. One of the music experiences I loved the most was finding lyrics that captured exactly what I was feeling, or explained in lovely worlds something I knew but didn't understand, or made me feel better about a thing that was hurting. 

At a certain point, this stopped happening so often. Partly because I discovered that poetry does the same thing, quite often. And because I grew up and started to know my identity better, and learned that it is based on many things, not only music. 

But I still love that experience: finding a song that resonates in an intimate way with something important in my life right now. It doesn't happen every day anymore, like it did when I was a teenager dressed all in black, sitting in front of my stereo as if it were an alter. But the rarity makes the experience mean that much more now, when it does happen.

Which makes me wonder why I haven't blogged about it. About songs that are influencing me right now. So I'm starting tonight with a song I only paid half-attention to, until I found myself driving and weeping and then thinking, wait, what made me cry? and then realizing oh, this song did.

The Song: "Trusty and True"

The Musician: Damien Rice

The Album: My Favourite Faded Fantasy

This song is about living with regret. About being kind to yourself as you live with regret, even. And about taking a deep breath and moving forward anyway.

And oh my, is this the center of my life right now. I find myself looking back at the choices I made as a parent and doubting so many things. Not sure how I could have done things differently, because if I pick a single decision, it is connected to so many other decisions and everything gets traced back to so many early, primal, life-changing choices that, if I question, make me doubt my entire adult life. There is only so much picking one can do over twenty years' worth of decisions before extreme heartsoreness kicks in.

So I was driving, home from the hospital in Salt Lake where my mom was recuperating from her surgery, and I had my phone plugged into the car's audio. I was driving and just thinking, in that easy way that driving by yourself brings on, and sort-of singing along to a song I only-sort-of knew.

Until I was crying.

So I restarted the song (aren't steering-wheel audio controls the best invention?) and really listened:

"We can't take back what is done, what is past, so let us start from here."

That was good. That was such a tidy summation of something someone needed to tell me. That I needed to hear someone else say so that I could say it to myself. But then the song got to the part that brought on those tears.  The song isn't built in a traditional way, with verses and a chorus. Instead the verses build up to the last stanza (I know, that's a poetry term, but I can't think of a better way to explain it), which is a sort of plea to someone who is "not all you desire," and then it asks that person to come along:

come with fears, come with love,
come however you are 
come with fear, come with love
Come however you are
Just come, come alone
Come with friends, come with foes
Come however you are
Just come, come alone
Come with me, then let go
Come however you are
Just come, come alone
Come so carefully closed
Come however you are
Just come…
Come, come along
Come with sorrows and songs
Come however you are
Just come, come along
Come, let yourself be wrong
Come however you are
Just come…

A book I finished reading last week, called Etta and Otto and Russell and James, has this idea in it, written in a letter by one of the characters who is fighting in World War II, back home to his girlfriend:

I started to run again and ran and ran and the thought that pulsed in my head was Write It Down, Write it Down and I knew that if I kept that thought in front of all the other thoughts then I would have to be okay because I’d have to stay safe in my body and mind long enough to get back to my pen and paper, to this.

I haven’t been in a war. I haven’t been shooting anyone, or trying to run to safety, or hiding from the enemy.

It hasn’t quite been a war.

But it’s been a dark time. A dark place. A battle with lots of demons. Running away and hiding. Ever since Christmas. And I have been thinking like Otto was thinking: I’ll write this down. If I can just write it down, I’ll be OK.

Except, I haven’t written it down. Not here. Not in my journal. Not anywhere.

Part of the not-writing has been sheer busyness. I have cleaned out cupboards and storage rooms and drawers. I reorganized my bookshelves. I did a deep de-stashing of my scrapbook room and got rid of a ton of stuff. I went to as many of Nathan’s basketball games as I could. I bound two quilts, made a baby quilt, and pieced the back to a quilt a friend and I are making for a gift; plus I’ve almost finished another queen-sized quilt top. My mom had an intense back surgery (almost her entire spine fused) and there has been a lot of driving back and forth to Salt Lake City and sitting by her side. I did the prep for a writing conference I was asked to present at. I made 15 or so scrapbook layouts.

But most of the busyness was just to keep my mind off of it. To trick myself into not knowing I was in my dark place.

I haven’t written much because writing means looking around at the darkness. Writing means figuring it out, maybe. But it also means searching and prodding and digging into spidery corners. And I haven’t done it because this dark place is new territory. Maybe the corners hold something more terrifying than spiders. I don’t know what to expect from it and the hurt is entirely unexperienced. Regret. Mistakes. This feeling that I was always doomed to fail because I tried so hard but I wasn’t successful. A heartache that is large and suffocating and sometimes soft and sometimes so sharp I have to set down whatever I am holding just so I can clench my hands against it.

All of which is vague because really: what I am trying to write about isn’t something I can really blog about. Because it isn’t my story. It’s just something I am witnessing but can’t seem to influence.

So I haven’t been blogging. Or even writing.

But I also know: I’ll never get out of this dark place. Not without two things: running and writing. And my hamstrings are not getting better (in fact, I think the tension and the sadness are making it worse), so there is no running in my future. So I’m going to try—to write more. To figure this out. And probably most of that won’t be on my blog, but I also want to start blogging again. To start thinking through things with words. To think about something else. In the past six weeks, I’ve blogged nine times. That is not very much for me. But I am paying attention to the universe, trying to hear what it is telling me. And what it has been saying (even though I have been pretending not to hear the whisper, or just placating it by thinking yes, someday soon) is write it down. Write It Down. Not someday soon, but now.

In the LDS church, we have a scripture that says “Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy.”

(Adam and Eve, by Marc Chagall)

I love this scripture for its simple, succinct summary of the Christian viewpoint.

But it’s also always bothered me a bit, because really: Eve fell. She chose to partake of the fruit first. I suppose the traditional view is to see her as the person who let evil into the world. But I don’t see it like that. I think that Eve fell that choice might enter the world, and the power to choose is the power to create our own joy.

(Not as snappy as the scripture, I know.)

Think about the fruit she chose to pluck off of the tree: the knowledge of good and evil. Think of where she existed, in Eden, where all was peaceful. There have been many times in my life when I have longed to visit Eden. To not always be buffeted by regret, by fear that I am not a good enough mother or wife or Christian, to feel only absolute love and acceptance because that is all I’d ever known. But I don’t think I would want to live there. In truth, I imagine Eden as a somewhat sleepy place. (Really, quite a bit like the wood between the worlds.) But there Eve is, in Eden. In peace, and never having known anything other than peace, she makes a choice: to act.

But before I can imagine her making that choice, what I wonder about is God Himself, placing the tree of knowledge into the Garden of Eden in the first place. He knew that eventually, Adam and Eve would pick the fruit. He didn’t hide it from them. He knew they would choose; He knew the consequences. He didn’t have to put the tree there—He didn’t have to offer them that choice. But He did, because without choosing to learn, Eve and Adam could not move forward.

What I wonder, though, is how God could bear it. How could he bear giving them the freedom to make choices that would bring them sorrow?

But He did, of course. And Eve chose knowledge, and let choice loose into the world. Do you think she regretted her choice? I don’t think she did. Despite weeds and noxious plants, despite eating her bread by the sweat of her brow. I think even if she had known the sorrows her choice would bring to her, she would still chose.

This is because of two things. First is that in the Garden of Eden, in her constant state of peacefulness, it would be impossible to know, to truly understand, what joy feels like. Without the contrast of sorrow, joy is nothing but another green hue in a garden. We have to know sadness to understand happiness.

But I don’t think it’s only that. I think this is also true: knowledge gained by experience is valuable. What could Eve learn in Eden? God could tell her about having children and becoming a parent. But until she held the newborn Cain in her arms, she would never really know that terrifying joy of being a parent. Until she learned of his mistakes, she couldn’t imagine the sorrow a beloved child could bring to her. Until she experienced the results of her own choices, she could never know anything.

What I would like to ask Eve is this: was it worth it? Was the knowledge of both good and evil worth sharing the power of choice with the world? And once you know, is there ever again any real peace to be had?

I picture Eve, standing before the tree, in her last moments of innocence. Did she hesitate? Or was she certain that the knowledge would be worth it?

Then I picture myself, and the many times I have stood in front of the tree. The many times I have devoured the fruit of knowledge of both good and evil. When it has dripped from my chin and my elbows, and sometimes it has been sweetness, but quite often it has been bitter.

I think about what I have learned from those moments of gaining knowledge. If I could go back and change the bitter ones, I would not. I value too highly the knowledge I have gained.

But now I see my children. They are old enough to stand in front of the tree themselves. The can reach whatever forbidden fruit they choose to curve their hands around. They can tug it from its stem and lift it to their chins, and only when they have bitten will they know for certain if it is sweet or bitter fruit.

And this is the great conundrum of choice: I don’t want them to find the bitter fruit. I don’t want them to know that feeling of sorrow dripping from your fingertips. Even though I wouldn’t take back my own bad choices. Even though I value beyond bitterness or sorrow what my difficult experiences have taught me, I don’t want them to feel it. What I want is to be like God, simply telling Adam and Eve about the world.

What I want is to keep them safe in Eden.

Even though I know they can’t stay there. Even though I know they have to gain the knowledge they will obtain. Even though I know that sorrow will make them understand joy. I don’t want them to suffer. Instead, what I want is for my knowledge to be a thing I could give them. A stone talisman that they could always keep in their pockets, to rub with their thumb and receive knowledge without agony.

Of course it doesn’t work that way. And that is the bitter fruit I am eating right now: I cannot do it for them. Eve didn’t just give me the power to choose. She gave it to them, too. And oh, how I want them to choose correctly. How I want them to know that they create themselves by the power of choice. They choose their sorrows and their joys, and as they grow they get to wield that power with more and more independence, until the time when I am no longer an influence on what they choose, when I will also no longer be responsible for the consequences.

One of my edgy Mormon friends told me that he thinks the thing that God values most is agency. It is within God’s power to make us choose something different, but in nearly all cases, He does not. He always lets us choose, even knowing that our choices will bring us sorrow, suffering, darkness, or pain. I think my friend has a point, but I also think he is missing an equally important thing: the atonement. Through Eve’s choice, God gave us the power to choose. Through Christ’s choice, He gives us the ability to be forgiven when we choose incorrectly. Without one, neither would have any meaning. Forgiveness doesn’t always take away the consequences of our choices (I think, in fact, that it almost never does). But it does let us have a little piece of Eden within us, to go along with the salt of knowing.

What extraordinary power Eve unleashed on the world. What extraordinary opportunity. We are all, I am learning—me, and you, and my children as they grow, and yours—also Eves. Standing in front of the tree of knowledge. Plucking the fruit. Savoring. Grimacing. Shaping our lives. The only thing I can do to help my kids, as they stand and pluck, and pluck and reach and grab and have placed in their hands, is to teach, and to tell stories, and to hope that what I have taught will be enough to help them find the sweetness and endure the bitterness and not, in the end, be changed utterly by the knowledge they gain.