I don’t know where I first heard about it, the notion of the killing season. It only would have even occurred to me as a thing once I moved to Upstate New York, but here the feeling of that thing has seeped into my bones.
We— the wasband, our son, and I— moved to a farm on an Upstate country road when Otto was thirteen months old. I was still under the illusion then that I could fold myself into my husband’s dreams for himself, like some sort of origami woman that would fit easily into his pocket to go where he went.
He was going to be an organic farmer, despite knowing nothing more about farming than the fun of playing in the hay maw at his uncle’s dairy farm as a kid and watching the big tractors turn on a dime. I was going to be his happy helpmeet— cook the food, clean the house, tend the garden, and raise the children.
That first winter I had to call and beg the neighbor to come and plow our driveway if I wanted to leave the property because we had moved to a house with a 50-yard gravel drive and nothing but a snow shovel. It was humiliating, but desperation won out over humiliation because so much had to get done.
One day, having made it to town, I came home with our son. While the two of us had been gone the drifts had obscured the driveway again and I could only get far enough in to get the ass-end of our truck out of the road. Then I had to try and pull the sleeping child out of his car seat without waking him and trudge through knee-deep snow to get to the house, only to find that the lock on the house door had frozen shut.
I knelt there on the icy concrete cradling the stiff, snow-suited bundle of him awkwardly into the crook of my neck with my left arm, while I cupped my right hand around the decrepit door lock and blew hot breaths into the hole over and over again. Eventually, I wrenched the key enough to let us in out of the windy cold, but the feeling that I had nothing but my two hands and the breath in my body and it might not be enough nearly broke me.
You’d think after that kind of winter, spring would be some kind of lovely miracle— sun breaking through, buds bursting open, and everything awash in newness. But when they’re describing the four temperate seasons in school they skip the long slog of early spring. The killing season, traditionally, was when winter stores had begun to run out and nothing new was growing up through the lingering patches of snow. Everyone was lean, hungry, and prone to sickness as the damp cold set in.
Maybe lots of folks died then, or maybe in some cases, brutal choices got made about who wasn’t likely to make it anyway so might as well be put down. Or maybe it’s all just a mythology to explain the feeling that comes on at this time of year in colder places, that you would maybe kill someone who you’ve been cooped up with all winter because you just don’t think you’re all going to make it.
I am feeling that desperate, will-it-ever-really-come itch under my skin, though luckily I no longer want to kill anyone in my family. The spring fever that’s starting to boil up doesn’t make me aggressive anymore; it just makes me pensive about how long I lived an ill-fitting life, and how many people I love that I hurt in the process of peeling it off.
I was driving with Otto this weekend through the weak, March sunshine. Somehow we wound our way around in our conversation to the early years immediately following my separation from his dad. He described times when, in my emotional flailing, I lashed out at him because I couldn’t reach his dad and made him feel responsible for things that were so far beyond his control.
He wasn’t accusatory. He wasn’t even angry. He was just deeply, lingeringly sad.
I found myself getting defensive, trying to explain how wrecked I was in those years, how battered and lost. I wanted him to understand. The woman in that picture with him and his sister, four months after we moved out of the house I thought I was going to die in? Everyone said she had gotten gorgeous, but she weighed thirty-five pounds less than I do now because she couldn’t keep food down. She was living on vodka, grapefruit juice, cigarettes, borrowed money, food stamps, and child support. She only slept through the night through the good grace of Klonopin. She was barely caring for herself. How could anyone expect her to take care of children?
And yet, he was one of those children. He had a right to be taken care of, and there’s no getting around the fact that during those years I didn’t do a very good job of it some of the time. No amount of explaining fixes that; it simply again puts responsibility for me on his shoulders, which is wrong. The right thing is to hear his sadness, accept responsibility for my part in seeding it, and say I’m sorry. I did a little bit of both, unfortunately.
When we reached our destination I let him out of the car, and then spent the next couple of days worrying at it all like a loose tooth, trying to find some way to position myself to make the whole situation less painful to bear. Being out of my integrity with other people is one thing. Being out of integrity with my kids? That hurts. It’s everything I told myself I would never do as a parent, and then I went and did it.
In the dark before morning I woke and remembered: I haven’t learned the deepest truths about myself, or how I want to bring that deep truth to the world, by doing everything right. I learned almost everything by doing the wrong thing, making the bad choice, and then sitting with the (sometimes painful) consequences.
Achingly slowly I’m learning how to manage my own emotional baggage without inflicting it on other people. I’m unhooking my projections from those around me and taking back all the pieces of myself I gave away because they just seemed too much to carry. I’m learning to bear my own weight.
From this vantage point, it’s tempting to look back with regret and some measure of shame and think, “I should have known better.” Except, I didn’t and I couldn’t have. Measuring myself against what I know now instead of what I knew then is like giving myself the test before taking the class. No one learns that way.
I will confess I think this whole trial-and-so-much-error thing is a design flaw in this business of being human, but it also seems to be the only path to grace or mercy. I mean, if the people who have every right not to continue to love us, then who are we not to return the favor— to them and to ourselves?
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I get this. Totally get this. You were strong and still are. Perfect title. So pleased you are not there now.
So hard. The human condition some days seems untenable; i have made so many many errors in my trials, and I find hope in my path when I read of yours