for Griffin

I stand at the door, eyes locked
on the ceiling, eyes of a stranger,
and then she cries...
Oh my God, help me!
Where a child would have cried Mama!
Where a child would have believed Mama!
she bit the towel and called on God
and I saw her life stretch out...
I saw her torn in childbirth,
and I saw her, at that moment,
in her own death and I knew that she knew.
--Anne Sexton, "Pain for a Daughter"

In Sexton’s poem, she writes about her daughter who has lost her pony to distemper and, in her loss, consoles herself by visiting the neighbors’ thoroughbred. He inadvertently stands on her foot, and she limps home having lost three toenails, her riding boot filling with blood. She sits on the toilet as her father attempts to clean and disinfect her wounds. At the end of the poem, Sexton, the mother, stands helplessly in the doorway watching the entire ordeal. Clearly, she witnesses genuine pain as her daughter cries out to God for help. But the real pain, she knows, will come later as her child-daughter becomes an adult who will bear a child and ultimately face death. The fact that she sees this very adult awareness in her daughter’s eyes is, perhaps, the most painful moment of all.

The first time I taught this poem in an introductory literature course, I could barely read the final lines aloud. Sexton’s words had literally sucked the life from me. As the young mother of an infant daughter, I hadn’t yet imagined her as a mother and woman who would experience the pain and loss of life. And truthfully, I didn’t want to. Better to think of her swaddled in the pink blanket her grandmother had given her, safe in her crib. Better to believe that, armed with a regulation carseat and up-to-date immunization records, I could protect her from the world at large. Better to believe that I could take her adult pain away as efficiently as I could apply Bandaids and administer teaspoons of Tylenol.

In the season of Advent, I often find myself thinking about what Mary really knew about the life and death of the child she would bear. She may not have known that her son would be scourged and crucified, but she did know that he would be both fully human and fully divine, both her son and God’s. She had to know that the world’s eyes would eventually be on him and that his heavenly father would ask great things of him. This awareness alone is daunting. And as she watched Jesus grow into a full understanding of who he was and what he was destined to do, she must have had moments–like any mother–during which she cried out, “If only I spare him this pain!”

Last week, Griffin and I were working on his daily math lesson. It was a new concept and a challenging one, at that. Finally in desperation, he dropped his pencil and said, “This is too hard! And I know 3rd grade math will be even harder!” Tears had formed in the corners of his eyes, and he blinked hard. So did I. Because in that moment, I knew that he knew. I could see his life stretch out before him, the boy-child becoming a man, the days when all things seemed possible–the world at his fingertips–growing increasingly more tarnished by the realities of the adulthood. I could see that the boy who dressed and talked like a rodeo circuit bull-rider would soon see that this was just a childhood fantasy, the death of which would leave a real and painful scar. It was a small thing, this tough math problem. Still, it took on larger, more significant proportions as we both considered it.

Generally speaking, we look forward to the future, to better days ahead. 2021 has got to be better than 2020, we think. Certainly, we’ll leave the coronavirus behind eventually, and life will return to some kind of normal. And in those moments when we see that pandemic-free future, we rest assured that better days glow brightly along the horizon. Still, as adults, we know what the world knows: that we’ll ultimately immunize the world, open up restaurants, schools, and workplaces, and live maskless days–until the next virus or war or environmental disaster. We know that we know.

This awareness could bury us, or it could be yet another reminder of how broken our world is and how desperately we need a a savior. Sexton hears her daughter cry out to God, when, in the past, she would’ve cried out to her. As Griffin struggled with two-digit subtraction, I could imagine the times when he, too, will cry out to God, for his pain will be greater than that which his mom or grandma can remedy. Today, we cry out to scientists and politicians, to policy makers and academics. We raise our collective voices to the world and hope for better days ahead.

But we would do well to cry out to God. First and foremost, we would do well to remember that we’ll only have days of earthly respite. We need a savior whose comfort and peace offer so much more than this. In this season of Advent, we can see the light of Christ emerging from the darkness. And yet, we know that this light will ultimately be extinguished. We can see Christ’s life and death stretch out before him.

The promise of Advent, however, is the promise of return: the light that reemerges, the resurrection of hope. We know that we know. And this makes all the difference.