A Volcanic Existence

Guest Contributor: Dede (Manley) Wood

This beautiful, reflective post about parenthood is brought to you by a friend of mine named Dede (Manley) Wood. She and I have not spoken in person in decades, but by design, this website was created to connect humans. Her family is taking a gap year and traveling around the world together. She has the uncanny ability to put into words the feelings so many of us have experienced in parenthood, but also just in life.  Thank you, Dede, for sharing one of your many gifts with us. Safe travels. 

Here we are on Lombok, sitting on an active volcano, the second largest in Indonesia.  I didn’t realise this until we arrived.  Then we passed one, two, three, and then a dozen tsunami evacuation signs on the road from the airport to our villa AirB&B.  These stick-figure humans running uphill from a giant wave gave me a little pause.  One, because I was confronted by how little I know of this country.  (I’d planned to just learn on the fly.)  And two, because I sensed a kinship with those little stick-people, and I wasn’t exactly sure why.

I knew that this chain of islands spanning 1/8 of the equator was volcanic and that there was a crater hike here on Lombok, but I didn’t realize Mount Rinjani was defined as “active.”  I didn’t actually know what “active” meant in the volcanic sense until I recently looked it up.  An “active volcano,” according to Google’s AI synthesis, is one that “has erupted recently or is currently erupting or has the potential to erupt again.”  I read this definition again: “has erupted recently… is currently erupting… has potential to erupt again.”  I read it again.  And then again, with a growing gravity.  I felt the wry smile of the Universe staring back from my phone as I did.  I wasn’t having fearful visions of catastrophe.  The familiar ripple of significance was running down my spine.  

“You can look away from the mirror but not the truth of it.”

I realized with sad amusement that this volcanic description is undeniably familiar, a reflection in an unflattering mirror.  You can look away from the mirror but not the truth of it.  The fact is, these foreboding words intimately outline the curvature of my days, my present life as a mother.  Although I don’t like it at all, this definition precisely captures the atmosphere of my family at this stage in our story, part of this gap year instigation.  I realized in reading this triple-barreled, past-present-future definition that I needed to physically arrive on the shores of a volcano to confront the fact that I’ve been living a volcanic existence for a while.  A little wink-wink from the Universe.  Cute.

Reading this definition, the resemblance to our family was clear.  Overseeing various “active” diagnoses, we always have someone who “has recently erupted… is currently erupting or… has the potential to erupt again.”  I know many families are struggling with a similar pattern.  Even in the quiet moment, we know the next explosion is imminent.  There is a lot of breath-holding, a lot of hand-holding, and a lot of calls to “hold fire!” My partner and I have exchanged a million flabbergasted expressions over the years and commonly comment on the unlikeliness of having such a volatile chemistry among our kids.  It’s an ominous, tedious atmosphere we live in, certainly not what I imagined when we had an infant, a toddler, and a pre-schooler tumbling around all giggles and squirmy chub.  No, we’ve grown into something else.  And I keep checking my watch to see when we will grow out of it.

People who know us well have sensed the vibe.  “Volcanic” is probably quite right.  We get a tremor, a whiff of sulphur, and then suddenly there’s shaking, and it’s all melting down.  I am often either bracing for the aftershocks or looking out for the next vibrational warning. I know other families who are living a similar existence, living outburst to outburst, rushing recovery in the calms in between.  To remain grounded on earth that is quaking is taxing in ways I usually choose to ignore.  For survival purposes and for the sake of preserving energy for a dignified motherhood, some avoidance of reality is probably wise.  I’ve had my long-game face on for a while.  It’s self-preservation.  Parenting is for life.  Having kids is an unspoken, involuntary vow of “for better or worse” when none of us has any clue what’s to come or to whom we have made our vow.

Any belief that we have control in parenthood is an illusion, like living in the shadow of a volcano.  Go ahead and pretend you are master of your existence, but it’ll erupt if it’s going to no matter what you do.  Your kids are the ones in control.  Some families have the good fortune to experience only gentle rumbles of this volcanic truth, a sprinkling of ash, a puff of steam while others toil under threat of this eruptive reality throughout all of their days without intermission.  When your children are well-behaved, it’s nice to think it’s all due to your fine work.  When your children are crumbling, you see things a bit differently.  Despite putting in ten times the work, you look like a negligent failure when you are caretaker of an active volcano.  And it takes a very long time to realise you are not.  After a big, long fight with judgement (both imagined and real) and a good stent of daily punch-ups with self-ridicule, you realise that your children are not a reflection of your parenting, that none of this is within your control.  When you put in enough hours to grasp that truth, you level up.  You learn to love your kids and tell the rest of this clueless world to f*ck off.  Things get better after that.  You learn compassion.  You learn grace.  For yourself.  Then your kids.  And then for all other humans who are fighting fights you know nothing about.  These are the gifts of a volcanic existence, what this island is helping me to remember.   

I can see now upon writing what I am to learn from this likeness to our current volcanic home.  To confront, to articulate, to own, and to air the truth of our family challenges is a new step in the path of this shaky terrain.  It’s one I have not taken so openly before.  So many battles are fought without witness, without perspective, without support.  When no one sees, and no one talks about a struggle, it is somehow marginalised and minimised by our own privacy, our own silence, and our need to just get through the day and make dinner.  Perhaps just verbalising the oppressive nature of our struggle will somehow trigger some new shifting. Who knows?  One can hope.  It feels right to air it, anyway, like this volcano is urging me to set free the pressured steam and toxic gases of silence.  

We will carry on through the contractions of our struggle, keeping the lava clearing.  (As if we have a choice.)  Maybe we will find new versions of ourselves in the ashes of all this purifying heat one day soon.  Maybe we have much more molten emotion to toss around first.  But, surely, all “active” volcanoes eventually become “inactive,” right?  I’ll just keep checking my watch.   

And I’ll keep considering the tsunami stickperson, too. I like him. I think he has something to teach me. Perhaps it’s simple, just a flash of my own reflection in time, an awareness of this fleeting version of me.  Maybe I’m just in a stick-figure-running-uphill-from-a-giant-wave phase of life.  Maybe he’s here to show me that running for your life and running from your life can be one and the same.  An escape can be a quest.  You can have a great force of nature hot on your heels but also be graceful in your pursuit of a grand calling.  Running is always a dual act: a running away and a running towards.  It just depends on how you approach it, the intention with which you place one foot in front of the next. It depends on the runner.  Depends on the day.  Then again, maybe I don’t have to be the stickperson running uphill, at all.  Maybe I could be the mountain.  Or maybe I should be the wave.