By Fern W. Cohen, Ph.D.
Some time in the fall, our youngest child Josh came home for his first weekend since we had left him, somewhat forlorn (both he and we), a freshman at college. For me, his departure had been the most poignant and difficult of three, heralding as it did an end to the period of mothering that had given me such a strong sense of self and fulfillment. Now Josh was back, casually dragging along a monstrous duffle stuffed with a two-week accumulation of laundry as he entered the apartment. This was not, he said, an unusual time span but one that he had determined would be manageable between washes, an idea he had floated the previous summer when he and I had shopped for clothing and necessaries for school. That he had even thought about that aspect of life away from home was quite in character with this most organized of our children, although I thought I might have detected a touch of sheepishness when he said it was quite by chance that the opportunity to do the wash had coincided with his first trip home.
At least seventy five pounds worth of opportunity.
For me.
And why did my heart surge with joy on this glorious Saturday morning at the prospect of beginning what looked like seven loads of laundry, possibly eight, if one carefully sorted the lights from the darks and kept the shirts separate from the rest? Certainly not because I had won out over our housekeeper whose responsibility the laundry usually was. Josh had not, in fact, asked me to do it. Yet it was mine for the choosing and I was shameless in seeking it out. Just the same, I found myself hoping that any omniscient feminist conscience-keepers would be involved with more serious matters than whether or not I did the laundry since I was sure that I was violating some major code, and with considerable glee at that.
Of course, our other two still occasionally brought their laundry home, most recently, our oldest Elizabeth. Several weekends before, she had brought four full shopping bags to our country home, while Seth, off to travel before starting law school, had left a mountain of clothing on the floor of his room that definitely was not suitable for Africa. He had pointed it out while packing and said he'd "get to it sometime in the late spring or early summer," whenever he returned. However, Elizabeth and Seth were then at different stages and we had dealt with their comings and goings around other matters and in other ways. Josh's duffle of laundry clearly had ancient roots.
To me, it was unmistakably a contemporary version of the soft, pink pillow that had originated with a purple velour bathrobe I had worn when Josh was small. A memory is vivid and poignant: Josh and I are in his room, he, a pudgy eighteen-month tornado suddenly run out of steam; he moves next to me, takes a fold of my robe, strokes it, puts his fingers in his mouth (always the two middle ones) and tugs me towards the crib, signaling that he is ready for a nap. This was a welcome moment, for with the other two children I had often had difficulty deciphering fatigue. But Josh's signals were unmistakable, and when I made him a small velvet pillow in lieu of my bathrobe, he adopted it immediately with intensity and devotion, labeling it at once his nice 'n' soft. And it was.
He used it sparingly and specifically, only when he was ready to take a nap, for from the moment he had learned to crawl, trucks and blocks and motion and noise had been Josh's style. Before that he had been a quiet and easy child whose first year had been a gentle settling in to the orchestration of a quite active and contrapuntal family where the older two had always fought sleep. But now when he became tired, Josh would stand solemnly and quietly by his crib, holding the bars with one hand, the nice 'n' soft between thumb and forefinger of the other, sucking the middle fingers until I came to lift him in. It was a feat of coordination, those hands and fingers signaling me, and impelling him to sleep.
Soon Josh fought it as well, quickly joining the other two in their night time rituals of books, back-tickles and drinks of water—a team of sleep dodgers with the goal of staving off the end of day. Even then, Josh retained his nice 'n' soft. The original had long since been worn to shreds, but, surprisingly, he had accepted replacements as long as they were more or less the same size and soft, pink velvet. Of that there was plenty, a remnant from the matching long skirts I had made for Elizabeth and me to wear at a party soon after Josh's birth, hardly offering the same comfort for her that his nice 'n' soft would give him. Perhaps there could be little or no comfort on the arrival of yet another sibling in her life.
I don't remember when Josh relinquished his nice 'n' soft, but it must have been when toddlerhood yielded to boyhood. Of course, bedtime rituals remained, with each child retaining some unique form of protest. Josh's was (after the last book was read and the absolutely last tuck-in had occurred), "Come and check in fifteen minutes." Check what, I sometimes wondered: that he was still there and hadn't disappeared? show him that I hadn't? say one last good night? At odd moments, it seemed that "checking," though never defined, might be another expression of his developmental push and pull.
As Josh got older, I continued to find vestiges of his nice 'n' soft as well as other signs and verbalizations of his increasingly complex feelings about me and our relationship. While our other two had gone through similar stages, with Josh the signs were more apparent. He may have been more articulate or perhaps I was more attuned to his attachment and separation because he was, after all, the last of the three. He had been the child I had had to have, a surprising and insistent need despite my husband's practical concerns and reminders that we already had a girl and a boy in whom we delighted. But my wish for another had been beyond reason.
Thus it seems likely that my attunement to Josh's comings and goings was more acute or perhaps I looked for signs that confirmed the rightness and inevitability of having him. There are moments that "flash," stunningly accurate reflections of his developmental milestones. Had Josh read the book, I wondered, that told him how and what he was supposed to be going through?
Once, he and I, crossing a street, were holding hands in a moment of companionship. Seemingly from nowhere, he, a six- or seven-year-old asked, "Do you think the reason I love you just a little more than I love Daddy is because I grew inside you for nine months?" What to answer when I was blown away by a kaleidoscope of thought and feeling. Delight that he loved me even a little more, guilt that I was delighted, knowledge that Josh would have to relinquish me for someone else. . . .
And the sheer diplomacy of the little bit more love that he felt for me.
I can't remember what I said for it seemed impossible to articulate anything as succinct as his question that condensed the weighty theme and the issue of a small boy's place in the triangle with his mother and father. The nice 'n' soft was easy: that had to do with Josh and me; his question was complex and bittersweet. Along with my joy, it reminded me that I couldn't hold on to him, that I couldn't fix him in that place of loving me "just a little more than Daddy," for already entwined with expressions of closeness were his growing assertions of separation and independence.
One day, when I was taking him to school on the subway, we had started by sitting together. At the first stop however, Josh had moved to the far end of the car, clearly relegating me behind. I watched his serious face as he stood, holding a pole for balance, announcing with his entire body that he was an independent person traveling on his own, a person unaccompanied by anyone who might resemble a mother. But not quite. At eight years (more or less), the independence lasted for six stops. By then, the car had become crowded and I was lost to Josh's sight; he began, ever so slightly, to panic. So I moved just enough for him to notice me, a visual touch, and he, reassured, continued alone to our stop where we again became traveling companions, walking and talking our way to school.
For me, immersed in these moments, there was often the rueful awareness that they would become less frequent, more buried in the underground of Josh's passage through boyhood. By adolescence, I expected the vestiges of attachment to be well concealed, obscured by denial and declarations of independence along with assertions of difference. Indeed, despite the combined objections of my husband and me, Josh had determined to play football in high school. I, particularly, had no use for football, seeing in it a barbaric acting-out of aggression through brutal body contact, although, admittedly, it was in milder moments also a bonding of brothers in some odd mix of tenderness. Camaraderie notwithstanding, I particularly tried to take a firm stand because I feared its dangers. But Josh had been passionate and articulate in pleading his case and I could not, actually did not, have the courage to say no. After all, he was dedicated to it, willing to arrive early at school, to stay late and to cope with the pressures of juggling academics with the rigors of practice.
And he was very good. So good that weekends found us all cheering and wincing at Josh's and the team's progress or failure to win. In theory, I hated football; in practice, it had become that year's link in our relation to Josh who by now was well away from the gravitational pull of a pink velvet pillow and his mother as his favorite woman. He had a serious girlfriend and a life of his own that included withdrawal to his room after dinner for homework and talking on the phone away from the confines of family life. By high school, he was virtually an only child but at an age when that might have few or none of the advantages of parental availability. And that, Josh clearly kept at a minimum. Besides, we had long since passed the stage of tucking children into bed, and most evenings now found my husband and me nodding off by ten or ten thirty, at which time Josh might come in to say good night to us.
Still, amidst the disconcerting role reversals with a deep-voiced, bearded, six- foot quarterback virtually but not quite tucking us in, there were traces of the toddler who had waited for me to lift him into his crib, holding his nice 'n' soft. Or were they merely routines to which I wistfully attached my own resonant memories of the velvet pillow and my subway companion?
Sometimes, for example, Josh would appear late on a Sunday evening when I had just settled down to read with some task that required my time and efforts as well as his: a paper, barely started, due on Monday after the weekend crush. Among all the other activities, he simply hadn't had enough time. These usually included sleeping late on Sunday and waking up to a brunch of fresh orange juice, a concoction of scrambled eggs with bits of Swiss cheese and a hint of Parmesan, toasted bagels with cream cheese, all accompanied by the Sports section of The Times. The brunch had become a ritual, jokingly acknowledged by Josh and me as a vestige of things that mothers do for their children. We both relished this, he, the familiar comfort and I, feeling important and needed, especially since the balance of my life had so obviously shifted away from availability and doing-for. Finding the elusive mean between not-too-little and not-too-much was sometimes tricky, for instance when Josh would implore me to fine-tune those papers he had scarcely begun. His requirements for my editorial role were so exacting: I might make specific corrections or general suggestions but not the kinds that might require a major rewrite—certainly not the night before the paper was due.
Then there was the matter of the football uniforms that had lain sweaty and muddy on the floor of his room where he had dropped them after the game the previous day. It seemed quite straightforward: washing them was Josh's responsibility, for this pertained to his schedule of games and was not part of the family laundry.
So how come, when he was the starting quarterback on the high school team, how come Josh appeared at least two evenings a week and asked me to come check his laundry? Check what, I'd wonder? The amount of detergent or water, or the temperature? That he had mastered the art of measuring soap, turning knobs and pushing buttons I was certain since I had taught him myself several years before. Why did he persist in worrying about the heat of the water and which cycle of the dryer would best suit the various fabrics of his uniforms? This was the child, man really, who daily learned and executed complex football plays as Coach decreed, who could analyze subtle literary differences, who had rescued me countless times from the intricacies of the computer we shared. Under the circumstances, ordinary logic seemed irrelevant and the only logic I could bring to bear was that of bedtimes, our companionship and Josh's nice 'n' soft. So, it was mostly with pleasure and only mild annoyance that I would put down my reading and accompany Josh to "check," reassuring him that the permutations of water, soap and temperature were appropriate to the amounts of mud and sweat and the number of hours the uniforms had lain on the floor of his room. It was no small feat, all that checking, which I for one, would have been loath to pass up. Indeed, it was enough to make me wonder whether Josh's asking me to check was also his way of taking care of me.
Sometime in the fall of his sophomore year, we visited Josh in his new quarters, a spacious suite in which he and his college friends had proudly built a loft, a home away from home. What a far cry from the crowded double he had shared the first year with two strange freshmen, no traces of that forlorn child we had left then. Now Josh was grounded and confident while I felt on the periphery of his world. Even an afternoon of watching football and having Josh patiently explain the plays did little to alleviate the dislocation and sense of loss that at times threatened to overwhelm me.
Still, there was Sunday brunch. Before our homeward flight, my husband and I had arrived early at the popular campus restaurant where we had arranged to meet, Josh having forewarned us that we would undoubtedly have to wait on line. But ever the diplomat, he had taken care of that. When he showed up a few minutes later, it was with Sunday's New York Times under his arm. After handing the paper to my husband, Josh turned toward me, and with a somewhat sheepish smile, unfolded a faded blue wad. Taking care not to drop the small sewing kit and bandanna he had carefully tucked inside, he held up a pair of extremely torn and faded dungarees. "Would it be possible for you to patch these while we're waiting to eat? They don't have to be perfect but it will take me at least six months to break in my new pair." He hadn't brought a thimble, he added apologetically, but would I mind and could I manage? Any halfway decent patch would do.
Mind what, I thought? patching his dungarees? checking his laundry? accepting this newest version of his nice 'n' soft in the increasing distance as our last child was launched into his universe? No, I wouldn't mind and I did, sew on the patch, that is. When had I ever minded, except perhaps on a Sunday night?
Coda
It is now over ten years since Josh asked me to patch his dungarees or check his laundry, and while he still does occasionally bring a duffle of laundry to the country with his wife Ruth, clearly those days are long gone. Happily for me, in the intervening years, there have been three grandchildren and even a grand-dog to pick up the some of the slack. Attachments, it seems, are where you find them—sometimes, even at work—neither the same as the originals nor as vivid or unique, but if we are lucky, resonant enough.
Take Mrs. Harris, for instance, a patient of mine.
Quite some time ago, early on in a treatment that was to last over ten years, she had become increasingly agitated with the approach of our impending August break. Nevertheless, after weeks that bordered on panic, she was surprisingly calm when the inevitable last session arrived. About five minutes before the end, as the hour began to wind down, she abruptly sat up, clutched one of the small kilim pillows from the couch and asked, "Can I take this home for the month? It would make the separation much easier for me."
I was nonplused. Still in the early stages of analytic training, I was somewhat locked into the very abstinent classical rules of the first analysis I had had years before. At that juncture, I was also locked into believing that only if I could master and follow the rules of the over-idealized authorities who had gone before me could I ever learn to be a good-enough analyst. To give a pillow to Mrs. Harris would be perilously close to breaking a rule.
No one had ever asked me for a pillow or anything comparable before. Nor could I imagine that I could have asked my analyst for such a thing for myself, despite the fact that I had been similarly thrown by his independent comings and goings and power to send me away. The analyst's primary role, I believed, was to cure through unearthing conflicts, through analyzing the transference, through insight and words, not through action or acting out. To allow Mrs. Harris to take a pillow would mean to participate in acting out.
On the other hand, I had been working with her for several years, and it had taken quite some time for her to become less anxious and more grounded, in session or outside. At the beginning our work had been chaotic, with staccato material and sudden crescendos so disorganizing that, more often than not, I felt confused about what was going on in her life and mind.
Mrs. Harris had grown up a poor little rich girl in the vortex of a disorienting mother whose pursuit of her own life and pleasure had led her to ignore her daughter's needs or feelings at any age. For instance, regardless of the calendar, she would arbitrarily pull Mrs. Harris out of school in order to have a traveling companion, someone to whom she could complain when she was angry at Mrs. Harris's father, a passive, if pleasant man. Consequently, Mrs. Harris had grown up feeling not entitled to a life or possessions of her own, a characteristic that had led her to marry a self-centered and dominating man who perpetuated the pattern of her mother's neglect and abuse. She had even had to fight him to remain in treatment just as she had had to fight for just about everything else of value in her life.
Thus when Mrs. Harris asked for the pillow, it seemed that the abstinence imposed by a no would be at the least depriving and more likely cruel, while acceptance of her wish reflected the growing strength of her connection to me. Somehow I knew that I should accede to her request, although in the heat of the moment I could not have articulated why. Nodding my acquiescence, I motioned to Mrs. Harris that she might take whichever pillow she wanted. She did, and broadly smiling her gratitude, left with it tucked under her arm.
On the first day back in September, as if she had kept it there all summer, Mrs. Harris arrived with pillow under arm, thanked me for having loaned it to her and placed it back on the couch. "It was a great comfort to have it," she said, and then settled in to work. For several years into the treatment, she continued to battle her anxiety and distress about separations but she never requested a pillow again.
I can't say for sure, but often I have wondered whether I would have felt compelled to stick to my original version of the rules if Mrs. Harris's request for the pillow had not resonated so powerfully for me. I don't really know. Certainly I had read Winnicott. But why I let her take it, I believe, has to do with a pink velvet pillow and "checking," antidotes to the down side of love with its potential for separation and loss. None of us is immune. For a mother, at least this mother, coping with those can take shape as a seventy-five pound duffle full of laundry, however many loads it might take. And for an analyst, at least this analyst, it might mean letting a patient take a pillow home for the long summer break.
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