Claire Bidwell Smith

A week ago I said goodbye to these three and drove away from my little home in Santa Monica.

It was weirdly easy to do, an indication, I think, of just how much I needed to get away.

I think the most startling thing for me about being a parent, from the very first day, is how little time and energy I am able to devote to myself. And ten months into the existence of my second child, I’ve been feeling it more than ever. Most days I have time to do the very bare minimum in order to maintain my life. I respond to the emails that absolutely must be responded to, I get the dishes done, the kids fed and clothed and to school or playdates, I pay bills (not always on time) and make sure I’m on top of things when it comes to my work and private practice.

But that’s it. Our bathroom needed to be cleaned like two weeks ago. Half of our houseplants have died in the last six months, we’re out of milk right now, I haven’t posted a blog here in a week, I have four unlistened to voicemails, an absurd amount of email to respond to, and I could really use an update on my toenail polish.

Not to mention needing some time to just sit and be quiet with my thoughts.

So last week, with the aid of my husband who so amazingly agreed to take on the girls so I could do this, I hit the road.

To say it was exhilarating was an understatement.

My destination was the New Camoldi Hermitage, a Catholic monastery on a cliff in Big Sur, about five hours north of here. I first read about this place in Christina Haag’s memoir Come to the Edge, and have fantasized about going there ever since. The monastery offers silent retreats, as in meals taken in your room and a vow of silence while in residence. The thought both intimidated and utterly beguiled me.

I booked two nights, and planned three days of driving, reading, contemplation, and silence. I took with me 5 books of poetry, three boxes of old letters from three different people, two journals, and my Kindle which is filled with hundreds of books. There are some things I’ve been trying to get clear on in my life these days, and these things seemed like they might be helpful.

When I first set out I intended to drive straight up there so I could just get on with being quiet. But the moment that I was driving, windows down, sunroof open, music loud, I felt so wide open and free.

The coast was wild and beautiful and the road stretched out in front of me and I began to stop every thirty minutes or so, pretty much each time I saw a beautiful spot. I would park and get out of the car and I would stand at the edge of the land and breathe in the ocean air and remember what it felt like to just be me.

It had been so, so long since I’d been alone. At least alone with the knowledge that there was more alone time coming. Usually I’m alone with twenty minutes to spare, and a panicky feeling that the seconds are just bleeding out.

But not on Sunday. On Sunday, with two whole days laid out before me, I felt like I could breathe.

I arrived at the monastery in the late afternoon. It was a two mile drive up a mountain and this bench was half way there. Of course, I stopped.

In fact, I made a point of sitting on this bench at least twice a day for all three days. An experience I’ll probably never forget.

My room was plain, and it was perfect.

There was a private garden beyond those windows, that looked at the sea. And there were walls so tall that I had utter privacy, standing there looking out into the distance.

Inside I unpacked all of my things, my books and boxes of letters and journals, and then I stood there, just breathing. I had no cell reception and there was no wifi. I was truly cut off, disconnected from the world I know.

It was both unnerving, and calming.

Over the next two days I spent a lot of time in that room. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Journal entries, letters, a new book idea, and more letters.

I read too. I read through all the letters I brought. I read all five of those books of poetry. I read a couple of books on my Kindle. (Man, there are a lot of hours in the day when you’re not tending to children.)

I also went for a lot of walks, all around the monastery. I wish I could tell you how good the air smelled, wish I could send some of that right through this screen and into your world.

I took this photo in the early evening on my first night, on a walk around the grounds. The moon was high up in the sky and I was thinking about my friend Julie, and something she wrote in a letter to me a long time ago.

I took this one the next morning. I had woken to the bells ringing in the chapel and outside the fog kissed the dawn.

I took this one later in the day, the sky a resilient kind of blue. I thought about how Vera would have insisted that it was aqua, and how much she has changed the entire scope of my life.

I went for a drive on my second day and I walked on this beach for a long time. I felt wildly lonely, in a really important way.

The truth is that I could have stayed up there for  a week, maybe even longer. On the third day when I drove down that mountain, stopping at the bench for the last time, I felt like I was only just getting started. My second night there had been hard. I felt alone, and vulnerable, all of my defenses distractions stripped away, the real voices in my head louder than ever.

I could hear myself.

I guess that’s what it was.

I could hear myself.

Some of what I heard was exactly what I expected, some of it surprising. Some of it was heartbreaking and some of it was soothing. But it took a couple of days to even just get there, making me realize how little I hear myself back here in my regular life, my life filled with text messages and Instagram, with a thousand emails a day, with my kids pulling at my pant legs and school drop-offs and pick-ups to be on time to, with not enough sleep, and more than enough of everything else.

I came home knowing that I have to find that space more often. I have to work to create that space more often. We all do, us moms and dads. Parenthood can be blindsiding. It takes over before we even realize what’s happened. But the good thing, is that those voices within, the ones we used to be able to hear more clearly, those voices never really go away.

At least mine didn’t.

And even though my time away wasn’t long enough, it was. At least for these two.

This morning when I was driving Vera to school I rolled down the windows to let in the morning air. It’s spring in Los Angeles right now, which may not seem real to people in places who go through real winter, but it’s spring nonetheless. The trees and shrubs are bursting with blossoms, the light doesn’t edge out of the sky until past Vera’s bedtime, and the air in the morning shines with the silvery promise of a warm day ahead.

I used to visit California as a child. We’d come out once or twice a year to visit my grandmother and my aunt who lived on wide palm-lined boulevards in the sprawling subdivisions that make up Orange County, about an hour south of Los Angeles. What I remember most from those visits are my grandmother’s hands, the lines around her mouth, and the way she laughed. I remember my aunt’s avocado green couch that I slept on, her patio thick with bougainvillea, and our trips to Laguna Beach where I would walk along the cliffs with my mother, both of us lifting our faces to the cool salt air.

When I was in middle school and living in Florida I used to write stories about girls who ran away to California. We lived near the water then, and in my stories the girls always set out across the sea, hitchhiking from boat to boat. In my head California was on the other side of the ocean, instead of miles and miles away across flat plains of prairie land that I would eventually have to drive in order to finally get there.

In my early teenage years I used to dream about moving to Los Angeles one day. I would go to UCLA I decided, and I would live by the beach and I would wear a lot of white and pink, and I’d have a million pairs of sunglasses and date a surfer. But as my teenage years waned, so did my desire for the West Coast. Instead I began to feel a pull to the northeast, to cold and darkness, to small crowded towns, and cities. I forgot all about California and by the time I was nineteen I had landed myself in Manhattan where the buildings around me were so tall that it was sometimes hard to find the sky.

At the same time my father found himself drawn back to the west coast, to those same palm-lined boulevards we had visited so often in my childhood. His sister and his mother were long gone, but he made a home for himself there anyway and when he grew too sick to travel anymore I flew to visit him every few months, reaquainting myself with those old, familiar places. We took long drives, down the coast, through Laguna Niguel and San Juan Capistrano, and deeper towards Mexico where the edges of the continent grew more jagged and alluring.

We rolled down the windows and let in that silvery air and my father told stories and I stared out at the water lapping against the ends of the earth.

After a while it became difficult to return to New York, to go back to the darkness and the smoke stacks, the crowded buildings and tunnels. I missed the air and the light, the promise of something new.

I began to remember what it was that had made me want to run away here all those years earlier.

Now I’ve spent a total of seven years living in California. I’m used to it in a lot of ways. The strange plants and spindly palm trees, the flowers dripping down from every wall, the ocean mist and hazy fog, it’s become part of my landscape, in a deep, internal way.

But every once in a while, like this morning on the way to take Vera to school, I remember to roll down the windows and let in the cool, shimmering morning air. And when I do and when it hits me just right, then sometimes I remember those first impressions of this place, those first early yearnings to disappear into it all, to claim it as my own, to know it as my home, my forever here.

Dear Juliette,

You are nine months old now. You have officially lived outside of my body, just as long as you were inside of it.

There’s something about this nine month mark. I felt it with your sister too. There’s an independence that comes with it, an attachment that is less to me, and more to the world around you. You are here and you are part of it all, and this is something you have begun to grasp.

I already can’t quite remember a time when you weren’t part of my life. I mean, of course I can remember all those 33 years before you arrived, but what I mean is that I can’t imagine not knowing you. I can’t imagine not being your mama, not being a guide for your sweet little soul.

And Juliette? You are sweet. So incredibly sweet. You are a happy little thing. You laugh all the time, even when you’re uncomfortable. You just laugh. You are watchful and you are quick to smile. I’ve seen you look around a room, just waiting to catch someone’s eye so that the moment you do, you can give them one of your quiet little smiles.

Life has been complicated at home lately, your dad and I trying hard to figure out our careers and finances and the future. Things seem uncertain much of the time and sometimes the stress of it all makes me feel like I can’t breathe. But then I look at you and your sister and I find myself able to take another breath.

We could be anywhere, on an airplane, in our living room, in the car in the morning on the way to take Vera to school, and the two of you are looking at each other. Vera is making some weird face, with an even weirder noise to go along with it, and your eyes are on hers, riveted by whatever she is doing, a small smile edging across your lips. And I realize that no matter how sticky or stressful life may be, as long as it’s not that way for you or Vera, then everything will be okay.

That’s what parents do, I suppose. They shield us from the worries of the world, for as long as they can. And that’s why we, as adults, often bemoan how hard it is to be a grown-up. And it is hard. Oh, how I wish I could go back to being a kid, or even a teenager, when my biggest worries were what to wear to school, what boy to like, and which quiz not to study for. I mean, of course it all felt bigger than that at the time, but looking back? Those seem like simple things.

Life is big, my sweet girl. It’s bigger and longer and messier and more wonderful than you or I even really know. But here’s the thing. It’s also what you want it to be. Life is the story you tell yourself it is. It’s the dream you choose to believe is real. It’s the path you thought you shouldn’t take, but then did. It’s the heart, so full of love you’re blinded by it.

It’s you.

And me.

And everything that is to come.

Love,

Mom