Brooke Toczylowski

Artwork by Shekinah Eliassen

Lars came into this world for three short weeks and taught me to feel and breathe and listen to my heart. Throughout those three weeks, and now, I’ve wanted to put words to my reflections, but sometimes feelings are formless and language isn’t good enough. Here, I try.

I am grateful. I am in awe. I am in love.

I am grateful.

Even when my baby Max has been screaming without end or waking up every hour during the night to drain me of myself. Even when I wonder if I have anything left to give. Even when there are tears and fights and even when I know I have nothing left, I am grateful.

My baby boy’s lungs are in the here and now and he is using them. My baby boy’s hands are grabbing, his lips are sucking, and his feet are kicking. His eyes show his adoring affection and dependent love.

No matter the projects, the dishes, this silly ol’ blog to make myself feel productive. I have been damn productive, producing a human being. Lars, in his quick life, has taught me to slow down. He asked me to bask in Max’s love and laughter and enjoy every minute of it. Because parenthood is crazy. You are literally jumping off a cliff of responsibility; they might throw shit in your face and you have to take it.

I am grateful for today. I am grateful for this moment. I am grateful for Max’s peaceful napping noises.

I am in awe.

Let me tell you about Lars’ mom, Shekinah. She has been my friend for 13 years and I can say that she has always been strong and wise and curious. But these three weeks have deepened her soul, revealing new layers of rock hidden deep in her earthly core. Imagine. Birthing a being and then having the strength to let it go. Imagine. Carrying the courage of a thousand lions to comfort those around you. Imagine. Choosing to see the joy wrapped up in all the hurt. Shekinah is full of light, full of love. I am in awe of this glorious mama.

I am in love.

With the water, the sky, the blank page, the red curtains. It is all so beautiful, all so real. But since my feelings are formless I search to make sense. I search for connection. I search to know that my baby M and baby L are connected. Since words are not my craft I lean on others. At our wedding Ian and I walked into Roaring Brook and we read from Siddhartha:

“Siddhartha listened…He had often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. He could no longer distinguish the different voices—the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other…they were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life…Siddhartha listened attentively to this song of a thousand voices…” ~ Herman Hesse, pp. 110-11

Baby Max’s middle name is River. It connects him to Lars. And when I went to visit Lars in hospice at the George Mark House, I sang him “Listen to the Water,” my new favorite lullaby.

Shekinah couldn’t remember the words after I’d gone, but she adapted it to:

Listen to the water
Listen to the water
It’s calling you back home.

To further deepen the river metaphor, at the top is a piece of artwork made by Shekinah at my baby shower, when she was around 6 months pregnant. I am in love with this river.

Below are images from my sketchbook, as I searched to make sense of Lars’ life.

This past Tuesday I returned to the White Noise Collective, a group that looks at the intersection of race and gender. These gatherings are always inspiring and remind me of my passion for anti-racist work. The last meeting I attended, in December, raised the question of child-rearing and white mothering. It occurred to me for the first time that I was about to take on the responsibility of raising a white child. And what if it was a boy? How does one raise a socially conscious, empathetic white male? Now that Max is out in the world, and attending anti-racist meetings, I plan on finding out!

I hope to avoid creating for my son what I—and most white people—experience: the trauma of privilege. Yes, this sounds crazy. But it is the trauma of ignoring the suffering and oppression of others. We are cultured away from being caring, empathetic human beings and are instead told to embrace our privilege. Vanissar Tarakali, a somatic therapist, says that we white people create armor for ourselves that protects us from those memories of helplessness. It wasn’t until I was well into my college years that I started unraveling this armor. And it didn’t really click until I went and worked abroad, in Guatemala, where I was forced to face my own paternalism and colonialism. Racism is an ugly disease, and so of course we hide it away and pretend it doesn’t exist. What, me? Racist? No way! But in order to fight it we must face it head-on. As painful as it is, we must acknowledge our racist tendencies and unravel the mess.

Recently I found this artwork in my old portfolio. Immediately I noticed the anger and sarcasm, both of which are part of the intimate process of discovering that your world is a great big lie. I don’t want Max’s life to be filled with lies, ones that he will later on have to make sense of. I don’t want him to have to ignore the suffering of others and feel the trauma of racism. But can good parenting overcome a culture that pushes my son to be racist?

Please, send along your resources on this topic!