Christmas morning came and I stood at the bottom of the steps holding the kids back, trying to get them to keep still for some photos. It wasn’t easy/ they get jittery. But I manage somehow. I got them to hang there on the landing as I popped away with my iPhone 13, taking what amounts to the same photo over and over again until I realized that I was doing just that. Looking back now though, I get what was happening. I was stalling the inevitable. I was purposefully taking up time so that I could linger in this shrinking space/ this dilating pin dot in time. Between this moment here, before the gifts and the music and the smiles and the brief show of family love that will soon be swallowed whole by a return to basic personalities living basic lives, and this other moment waiting in the wings, in which magic pummels down upon us with the force and the quickness, I found myself trying to do what everyone tries to do at times. And fails.
I tried to lay down in a particular instant of my life. I tried to soak it in as if it might be drawn out that way, stretched a distance beyond it’s destined length. Of course I fuck that up. I mean, of course I do. No one can challenge these ever-changing tides. No one can pause these silhouettes on the stage. And no one, especially someone as doltish as me, is ever going to be able to convince a charming moment to last any longer than it damn well wishes to last. Or needs to, I suppose.
However, I am beginning to think that real mindfulness, that devoted intention towards witnessing and appreciating as much life going down in real time as is humanly possible, isn’t this complicated approach towards some higher consciousness or whatever. In fact, I don’t believe it’s nearly that complex at all.
Because when I finally mumbled the words “OK, come down!” to my five kids on Christmas morning, it was apparent to me that I need only stand in the proverbial dust of their rampaging down the stairs in order to bask in the mindful lift that is both possible and probable at such times if you are open to it. As the youngest led the oldest, a thundering herd of bison coming down off a plateau, I was entirely aware of their grins and their squeals and their socks and their bare feet and their hands on the banisters with the garland and the lights as their eyes remained fixed on a point in front of their faces, never peeking to the right/ at the tree in the other room and the slew of presents beneath it. They were focused on each other/ road bikes inches away from disaster/ yet graceful in their navigations/ in their near misses.
And I was nothing but a road sign/ a metal rickety sign announcing some distant village 10 miles to my left. I was entirely ignored; I was entirely missed and avoided by younger fresher eyes as I stood there, still as a stone, watching these five characters stumbling in slow motion now/ towards a reward they’d managed to finagle for themselves despite their often less-than-stellar behavior over the past year. In noticing them not noticing me, I was sewn fast to the side of a flashing in time that will never ever happen, as it happens, again.
This is how we manage to find wisdom.
This is how I manage to supersize my soul.
On the living room floor, we go gift by gift at my request (command). To not instill this simple rule into the morning is to invite anarchy and utter lawlessness to abound. Modern kids like mine will hurl themselves into a pile of presents and everything will be ripped open and revealed before anyone in the room even knows what the hell is happening. So a few years ago I told them all: that’s it. To hell with that bullshit. Now we takes turns, one by one. If you don’t want to watch someone else open a present, then close your eyes. Because that’s what’s happening.
This gives me and Arle the chance to slip ourselves into the various un-wrappings that occur because of our extreme efforts. Why would we want to miss any of that? What kind of reward is in it for us if we don’t even get to see a kid open a thing we couldn’t wait to see them open, you know? This is the only way, the way we do it. It works now, too.
I watch as each kid is handed a gift by a different kid (or by me or Arle when things start getting out of hand). It’s an exercise in patience on the other’s behalf but it is also a chance for anyone who wants to get mindful with things to do so. And I do. I talk to myself/ I say stuff like: Ok, now watch Milo open this/ I mean, really watch their eyes and their face and their hands. See the light if you can. It’s just another goddamn Amazon item but still… try to notice if they seem happy at all. It’s always so hard to know how to make them smile, to understand what I can do to make them feel happy. So if it takes a gift, then a gift it is. But just gimme some kind of sign.
They unwrap the gift and it’s a scarf like the one Gru wears in the Despicable Me films. Milo loves Gru/ feels a deep overt connection to him in ways no one else might even understand. So they don’t really bother trying to explain the situation. They dig Gru. That’s enough for any dad to know. After that: details are reserved for the few trusted friends out there in the world. And although I’d give anything to be included, I ain’t one of them.
I do detect a blast of innocence though as they lift the scarf up out of the flimsy shirt box and hold it out in front of their body, which is perched sidelong on the arm of the torn-up leather couch. Their face tries to not smile but it’s useless. A grin breaks out where there wasn’t one a second ago and although they desperately try to wrestle it back into the skin it slipped out of, they can’t manage. The smile dissipates a bit, then comes back even fuller. Wider. More certain than before.
“You like that?,” I ask them in my killer Gru German accent.
At once they cancel their smile and glare at me murderously.
“I told you no impressions!” they shout.
I should have known. In fact, I did know they’d say this but I didn’t care. I sometimes fight back at them for being so removed from our moments together by trying to piss them off. Is that wrong? On some levels, yes it is. A dad should never intentionally try to get a rise out of a kid simply because he has little emotional voids that need filled. But at the same time, yes he should. He absolutely should, in fact.
You see how the radical juxtaposition of two historically different outcomes can sometimes fool the mindfulness warrior?
On the one hand, I can apologize for doing my spot-on Gru impression and promise not to do it again because I know it makes them cringe. In that scenario, I understand that the effect of cringe on my neuro-divergent teenager is one that can cause me trouble if I insist on doing it… even if I don’t truly believe that it could be doing much damage at all.
On the other hand though, there is this other option. And it is an option that seemingly only comes around now when I am standing there at the cliffs overlooking a vast mindful moment. The decision, it must be said, is a spontaneous one, even if I cannot lie about the fact that I am certainly aware of how my Gru will almost surely cause said moment to feel a shift in its timbre, if not it’s overall mood, per se.
Yet the truly mindful, I submit to you, rarely move back from risk in order to satisfy preferred outcome. Does that make sense to you like it does to me?
You see, in that fleeting instant in time, when I am faced, quite suddenly (but with the advantage of wisdom from experience as my guide) with the choice between placating another’s request in the name of their version of peace OR insisting that my own version be considered against their said desires, I am, in fact, not being an asshole… as many of you may be thinking at this juncture. Instead, what I am entertaining, I would say, is this notion that each wobbly reaction/ every cross-eyed shade dart thrown at me from someone I love during my own deep dives for mindful connection, however brief they may appear to be, is a heartfelt attempt at unearthing feelings that have remained bottled up for far too long. Good, bad, ugly, be they what they may: when Milo sees the Gru scarf they are lifted. When they hear their Dad’s embarrassing Gru accent they are hobbled by shame. When they demand it be stopped they are attempting power-for-strength once again. But when Dad remains steadfast in his refusal to abide, there is a reckoning that must occur.
Words between hearts must lead to battle.
Or they must lead to peace.
One way or the other, they must lead us both together.
Slinking, both of us, Wrapped in the mindful chains I seek.
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
