Maitri (Loving Kindess)

 

Gradually, we become more aware about what causes happiness as well as what causes distress.  Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

 

 

My daughter is recovering well after surgery.  In the days after, and after years of a debilitating illness, she began to feel energy, hope, and purpose again.  Her skin has an alabaster luster, her curly chestnut hair a rich sheen.  In the week after surgery, she bought new clothes, art magazines, red lipstick, and cream for her alabaster skin.  She has started running again, “just around the block” and gets up early to write her passions.  She is an explosion of freedom and creativity long tucked away in her illness.  She has begun to speak to me about how sick she was and what it has been like to be young and disabled.  She scheduled the second surgery as soon as possible so she can return to school and then head off into the world, into her own adventurous life.  It is all that my heart desires for her. 

 

For the many years she was ill, I kept my hopes in check. We didn't know if medicines would work, if health could be restored.  I told her we would help her to find a way to wellness even though I did not know what was possible.  Over the years, she didn’t tell me how difficult it was for her but I could see from my perch in the distance how many things were put on hold.  I was afraid when she came to us this summer wanting the surgery.  I was afraid for her pain and fear, for the outcomes.  I do not know how to express what this recovery is like for me.  To see my daughter coming into health, hope, and joy after a very long time of darkness is hard to articulate.  It could have turned out differently.  

 

I am thinking of other parents who have sick children.  Children who will not survive their illness or who will not have health and well-being.  And I wonder what it might take to hold that in a heart that only wants joy, happiness, and freedom for the child.  Days after the surgery, I was walking downtown with my daughter looking for the perfect red lipstick, the jasmine incense, the cream for the alabaster skin.  From the outside, we looked like an everyday mother and daughter walking together, shopping, and talking.  You could not see how on the inside I was bursting with the joy of her alabaster skin, her ease, her joy.  We passed by another mother of a child my daughter played with as a child who was lost to suicide only months before.  There are too many mothers and fathers in our small town who have lost children to suicide. There are many others who are holding in their hearts children who are ill, undergoing treatments that may or may not work, bodies that are disabled. 

 

Even without the masks and the necessary physical distancing, I did not know how to speak to the mother on the street.  I keep her and her lovely daughter in my heart.  They make my heart tender.  She and her daughter remind me how precious and fragile all of our lives are, how we need each other’s prayers always, how kindness is the only way to be with each other.