Raising Children, Raising Adults: The Landscape of Re-membering

I convinced myself early Monday morning that I would take my children to the beach instead of spending our morning time with math, reading, and writing. In order for us to get to the beach, we had to work on fitting all our bikes on the back of our very small compact car, drive 8 miles on curving, winding roads, to where the farmlands open up to tall Scottish pine trees that skirt from land to sea. All the way to the dunes, there are pines. Tall pines that reach up to the beautifully painted blue sky, tall pines that echo our voices when we call out, "hello," to no one in particular.

It is just under 2 miles to get to the seal beach from the carpark on the gravel road. We call this seal beach because when the tide is in, the seals come close to shore, within ten feet of us. And because we journey long, by road, then bike, then feet as we clamber through the dunes, spotting seals is magical. And when they seem to want to see us, it feels unique.

But this morning the tide was way out. So far out that when we finally made it to the beach, I thought I was in the desert in Egypt. Water seemed so far away, the sand hard and firm from the last tide, and the seals were dots on the horizon.

Big, wide open spaces where land meets sea, or land meets sand, are places of
re-membering. That is what life feels like lately. Re-membering. Like this Scottish seascape so full of sand calling me to remember the dunes of the Western Desert so close to Libya, my children call me to remember places and experiences and feelings long stored away, dots on the horizon.

The more time I spend with my children, the more they grow into individuals, and the more I walk next to them as they struggle, I remember my own struggles. Struggles that fall so deep and long and wide.

Seeing oneself in a child can be both scary and liberating. When my child comes to me anxiety-ridden, worried about this or that, or when my child and I have an intense argument, particularly when we both try to outmatch each other's emotions, I realize that I have been given this particular relationship to make me more whole. I don't often think this in the moment, but I am trying to remember this when I feel my emotions rising.

My children are raising me, lifting me up, taking me to the edge of the big wide sea, where land meets sky, and pines call the seals, to the place where the physical landscape is no different from my emotional one.

My children, their daily chatter, their arguments, their struggles, in a strange way re-members me, calling me to bring together once again all of who I really am, to rejoin all the parts of me that make me whole: the land, the sky, the sea, my emotions, my brokenness, all the abundance, and me.

I may feel like a dot on the horizon, but at least I have my little seals with me.