Spiraling.

I know the sensation so well. It can be set off by anything or nothing, and before you know it, the painful thoughts pile on top of one other until you are buried in your own worry and despair. At some point my peaceful bubble of yesterday popped and a profound sadness set in, hanging around my heart like a thick fog. I think it has something to do with the approach of Father’s Day, and the realization that Sami and I will both be without our dads on that day — mine due to death, almost 2 years ago, and his due to — reasons I still don’t know, and may never know.

I sit with the not knowing — not knowing why Sami’s dad has chosen not to be in his life, and not knowing why my dad died suddenly in the night at the age of 63. It’s good to sit with uncertainty, but do it too long and you start to feel a little nutso. I could see where all the mind stuff was going — it was headed down the “everything, and absolutely everything’s wrong, and it’s never gonna be right” rabbit hole. Wow, it feels so good that I can see that, hold that in awareness, and see that it’s not Truth, it’s not even lower-case truth, it’s just static in the old mind-space, it’s just a tired old pattern, driven by habit-energy. Patterns can change. I have the choice to change the channel blaring inside my brain.

Sometimes distraction is the most compassionate course of action. My experience is that we don’t have to go into everything and process it so deeply all the damn time. Sometimes we can give ourselves permission to back off the pain a little and revisit it later, if it is still there after the distraction is over.

After Sami’s nap, I convinced him to go to see Kung Fu Panda with me. Oh, was it funny. I laughed out loud so many times, and Sami just looked at “silly mommy” in wonder. Plus, the movie had some nice dharma chunks in it and a meditating monkey (which I found ironic, given the term “monkey mind” for the mental chatter that comes up when we try to meditate). Sami frickin’ loved the panda. After it was over, he demanded to see it again, and I promised him we’d go back another time. As we walked out of the theater, I thought about how much the movie reminded me of my ex, who shared my love of Kung Fu and martial arts movies. Then I had to stop thinking about that.

I took Sami to play around in the downtown Silver Spring fountain, but then he was expelled by a security officer for running, which is against the rules. He is still too young to understand about rules, except that we don’t hurt people and we hold mama’s hand in street. But the concept of no running is a totally foreign one to him. Why on earth would one not run, if one could? He was having so much fun playing with the blasts of water — just seeing the pure joy on his face was infectious and I found myself standing alone, watching him, laughing out loud, and probably looking like a slightly insane individual.

After his expulsion-induced tears died down, the night went on. Downtown Silver Spring was packed with the usual groups of teenagers and families. Breakdancers battled it out on the astroturf to old school beats. Sami and I kicked a ball around for quite a while, until his cheeks turned very pink and his curls were damp with sweat. Life went on around us, and I felt somewhat enlivened in turn. My son, my sweet son, helps me to keep my melodrama a “mellow drama” as Ram Dass so cutely put it. He keeps me from letting the grief swallow me whole. For us both, I try to practice a middle path: feeling the suffering without too much pushing away, without too much giving in to it.

A little distraction, some wallowing, and some sitting with. That is my formula for survival through these post-divorce blues. As a Daily Om sent by a friend reminded me today, this confusion and discomfort signals that something big is shifting, that that which has died is making way for something new. I hover, precariously, between the death of what was and rebirth of an unknown. Right here is the place where I stand, the center from which the spiral unfurls.