Five Years

A Guest Post by Clare Gupta

Five years ago, I was watching YouTube videos on how to effectively wipe down groceries with Clorox wipes. Five years ago, my husband took to his bed thinking he had coronavirus, while I wondered if he was just trying to get out of his parental duties. Five years ago, our newly arrived au pair from Argentina wondered how long she’d be trapped with us. Five years ago, we put on our masks and walked Bear around the park, yanking him away from any other dogs that appeared to be approaching, in case the virus could be spread through animals. Five years ago, I had just turned thirty-eight. Five years ago, I set my preschooler up on Zoom, where he sang songs and played virtual games with his class until he got bored and “signed off” by unceremoniously slamming my laptop shut. Five years ago, my parents would drive up and wave to us from behind the wrought-iron gate, wishing they could hug us and hold their new grandson. Five years ago, I read blogs with titles like “The Messy Toddler” and inadvertently purchased enough pipe cleaners and colored feathers to supply a small nation-state (I had failed to notice I had ordered in bulk from a school supply website). Five years ago, upon waking, I reached for my phone and checked the death count. Five years ago, I held my breath each time my dad went for his weekly chemo infusion. Five years ago, we had a baby, a two-year-old and a four-year-old and nowhere to go. Five years ago, I think it is fair to say, we were in deep shit.

Five years ago, I also knew that despite everything going south, I would also look back and wish for those days again. Not the virus, not being trapped in the house, but the feeling of being drenched in oxytocin, snuggling with a baby as sweet and new as a fresh bloom, and full of love for my baby chicks, my brood. It wasn’t so different from the feeling I had felt the night before giving birth to each of them—that the singular experience of being so intimately connected to my child was only going to last for so long, and would soon shape-shift into something new. I would miss feeling like a mother hen, rounding up her young and knowing that she had no other purpose in life than to keep them safe from the outside world, the unknown. The coop doors could be shut tight, and everything would be contained.

Now five years later, the doors are wide open. More often than not, we are scattered across the familiar landscape of school, home, work engagements, overnights at friends’ houses, sports games, weekend getaways, and visits to grandparents in various locations. This is normal of course, and to be expected as my children grow and expand their horizons, stretching beyond mother and father towards new people, and their own interests. But it is still a little sad, still something that feels akin to a kind of paradise lost. I think this is why I love a family movie night so much—all of us bundled up on the couch under blankets, transported somewhere together. It is reminiscent of those pandemic days, when we would clear out the living room furniture and dance our hearts out, the kids jumping into my arms, the baby waving his chubby legs in the air and kicking to the beat. Our own self-contained disco, our own movie theater: we get to be an island unto ourselves, if only for an evening.

Without my children to ground my every waking moment, I am having to find my own way. Like this morning, when I woke to a quiet and still house, save for our dog Bear’s heavy slumberous sighs and Greta’s nails tap-tap-tapping across her pen. The big kids are away skiing with their dad, D; A is having a sleepover at Grandma’s. What will I do with the day stretching in front of me? I thought. In years past, a blank slate of a day meant coming up with ways to entertain my children, but now here I am, with only myself to think of on a sunny, blue sky Saturday.

The question felt luxurious and slightly scary, like standing at the edge of a magnificent, daunting cliff. I made milky tea, drank it slowly while eating buttered toast and reading the New Yorker. This isn’t so bad; this is actually pretty nice, I thought. I took Bear for a walk, read some more, brushed my teeth and got dressed. I filled up Greta’s water dish before heading out the front door and hopping on my bike, all in such a calm and orderly fashion that it felt like a rehearsed act, a scene from a quotidian play. I rode down Page St, the street I take to get to the kids’ elementary school, but today, a Saturday, I stopped at a stately brick building on a steep corner, only a block up from where my sister-in-law and her family used to live. Two women in dark robes stood outside conversing, and I locked my bike next to a little sign that said Zen Center Bookstore.

The Dharma talk at the San Francisco Zen Center started at 10am. I passed this space for years, always wanting to visit, never having the time. Here I finally was. I entered, took off my shoes, and followed the corridors to the bright airy room just off the right side of the foyer, where I had spotted a cluster of Zafu pillows and scattering of individuals sitting in repose. Unlike my experience as a child at church, where noisy chatter filled the space until service began, here, it was quiet. There was the murmuring of a few soft voices but most made their way to their chairs or pillows in silence.

A serene Buddha face gazed down at me, and I thought for not the first time how incredible it is that a carved piece of stone can convey such feelings of peace and tranquility. It took about ten minutes for everyone to enter the room and get seated, and in that time, I thought that regardless of the Dharma talk that was to come, I had already found something I’d been looking for. A place for learning and curiosity, for new thoughts and old wisdom, a space to think about what it might be like to be a person both inside and outside of motherhood. I had wondered on occasion if what I was searching for was a return to a time that was, and could only ever have been, fleeting. But this was not paradise lost; I would not be going back to those cocooning days of early motherhood and tiny humans and pandemic hunkering; instead I had arrived somewhere not yet familiar yet still comforting and warm. I took a slow breath in, a long breath out and cupped my hands together. There was still so much to come.

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Clare Gupta is a writer who recently found her way to creative nonfiction after a career in academia as a professor of human ecology. She writes about motherhood, grief, and what it means to be a parent, a child, and a sentient human rooted in community and the natural world. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, three young-ish children, senior mutt and rescue bunny. You can find some of her writing on her Substack, The buena vista.