Advice from the Clouds

The first time I found myself face to face with a cloud, I tried to punch it. I figured that was the correct course of action after being plucked so unceremoniously, it seemed to me, from the platitude of normal life. It turns out though, as I discovered that first time, that clouds cannot be satisfactorily punched. Not that I would know precisely how it felt to satisfactorily punch a thing, having never previously punched anything, but still I expected some resistance on its part to being walloped. It wasn’t the cloud’s fault, of course, but it seems infinitely more difficult to slug the wind. And unlike the wind, the cloud has face, or if not a face exactly, at least a something at which to throw a punch. Also, it turns out that one doesn’t actually throw a punch. It remains tenaciously attached to the end of one’s arm, most especially when one is trying to throw it at a cloud. Clouds are, even the fierce ones, stubbornly uninterested in catching any punches we have chosen to throw at them.

I did not know all of this, however, the first time I found myself face to face with a cloud. We have since become quite accustomed to one another, the clouds and I, without subsequent acts of violence. You might think that in my advanced age, I would have concrete knowledge of the impotence of violence, but all I will say to that is: you’ll see.

I find myself saying that with some frequency from my vantage point here among the clouds. To be sure, just the other day, I observed my own daughter, who came from my womb, and was raised in my home, argue vociferously against my granddaughter’s choice of prom date. She is correct, of course, in her assessment that said prom date is, in fact, a shady character (you’d be surprised how much one can see from up here). However, my own daughter ought to know that sort of thing will just push her daughter right into that hoodlum’s arms. Had I been there to do so, I would have elaborated on the innate rebelliousness of youth. I would have suggested a better strategy of full embracement of the hooligan which would lead, in turn, to my granddaughter’s thorough rejection of him. But from here, all I say is you’ll see.

And then last week, my son, who came from my womb and was raised in my home, allowed his grandson to stay home from school for some nebulous reason that I could see meant he wished to play video games instead of be educated, on which I have opinions that favor the latter (education being the most important advantage one can give their children). But my son, so gentle in his disposition,  often confuses want for need, and I think, you’ll see.

There’s a whole lot of truth in you’ll see. I could have saved them a whole lot of heartbreak, but blue in the face was never my color and the untethering is like the way those fellas on TV garble on about sea level rise. You don’t notice it at all until you’re up here trying to punch a cloud. I’ve apologized for that, by the way, lest you think me a complete brute. I never hit those kids either, even when I was sorely tempted. Those big eyes full of trust and need-you just can’t bear to replace that with even an ounce of fear, so you fold your anger in and wait until it settles into you with shaky little breaths like a toddler post-tantrum. You lean into their need as hard as you can until it swallows you like Jonas’s whale, although if it had spit me out whole onto dry land, I most assuredly would not be drifting up here.

I never even realized I had been living inside that whale of demand. It’s not something you rhapsodize about. It’s just what mothers do. There’s no curriculum, no official advisory council, no initiation ceremony, although as I recall in hazy detail (this is not a censure of my memory, as I find my memory perfectly intact, thank you, it’s just that you’re plunged forthwith into your child’s urgent needs that your own are promptly forgotten), the process of birthing a child is quite the rite. Why, I’m exhausted just remembering it!

Right there in the hospital (because that’s how we did things back then), you are swallowed up by your own infinite love. The rest of the world dissolves outside the belly of that whale. It’s not a decision, there’s no preamble, no forethought, we don’t even think to warn our own daughters, it just is. As sudden as the earthquake that shatters the mirror of what we once were, a grotesque ecstasy effaces us.

It is never with regret, as I’m drifting about the clouds, my attention listing from thing to thing, that I occasionally land on memory. At the end of the day, which comes pretty early these days, although not yet with the sunset, when I slide my feet into crisp, clean sheets tucked in with hospital corners (because that’s the way we did things back then), it is with a sigh of something like satisfaction but which I cannot quite delineate. Like the clouds I linger amongst, I am no longer able to hold onto emotions, even the milder ones like satisfaction. I am stubbornly uninterested in catching their punches and thus, they simply percolate through the particles of me-the unassimilated atoms light enough for the wind to carry up here.

My grown children will, perhaps, step out of the rushing river of their lives tomorrow, to gaze upon the hologram of myself that lingers there while I waft about up here as I am wont to do. Their lives yet demand of them wholeness. They are still tethered. They are lodged in the belly of their children’s needs, impervious to my insight. Not that I would deign to answer these unasked questions. Like I said, blue in the face was never my color. Leave that to the them. They’ll see.