The Vault

The best advice I received (in addition to “take more pictures than you think is sane” and “get as much help as you can afford”) when we became new parents was about The Vault. The Vault is the place where all thoughts, words, and deeds that happen when you are insane with fatigue - that is where they live.

The door of The Vault is sealed with your faith. Faith in the choices you made when you were still a human capable of decision making and empathy towards yourself and your fellow man. All thoughts or discussions of a snarky, less than helpful nature go into The Vault. The “why didn’t you buy more diapers before the store closed and now we are all covered in poop you idiot,” or the “I don’t know if she is crying because I ate chocolate, we all ate the damn chocolate,” or the cranky 3 am snipe fest “fine, you show me how to swaddle this baby so she doesn’t stab herself in the eye with her talon nails,” all of that and more goes into The Vault. And it all stays there. Never to be thought or dragged up again the next morning/day/week. The strength of The Vault is trusting, nay knowing, that a part of you, the sane part, the part that once slept and didn’t cry at commercials, really wanted this baby/marriage/life circumstance.

The strength of The Vault is built upon your trusting your earlier self - a self sane, capable of visioning, and able to think beyond the next feeding. The trust that your life choices were made by a version of yourself currently dormant under burp clothes and breastmilk but in existence nonetheless and a beacon of hope as a result.

The Vault is very helpful as a new parent because eventually, around month 4 or 5, life does calm down and it becomes less necessary to invoke The Vault. However, the concept of The Vault can live on and be applied to many other circumstances.

We are in one now, methinks.

I don’t know about how life is in your house… but many of the people in our pod and with whom I am interacting in public seem to be solidly in their cranky monster. It is incredibly understandable. There are white sharks eating people off the coast of New England. Parents have no idea what to do about school in 5 weeks. Federal troops flaunting habeus corpus. An election happening where both sides feel it will be the END OF AMERICA if they don’t win. Et Cetera, et cetera … That is the stuff happening outside the house.

There is also all of how that all filters inside the home and touches our daily life. Every time my children are playing and one of them yells “I can’t breathe!” my heart catches and I say a prayer for George Floyd. We bring masks with us to pick blueberries and I can taste the hand sanitizer when I munch the berries on the way home.

It feels as though everyone’s skin in a little thin, which brings me back to The Vault. God is Love and that energy is real. That is the door of The Vault. The cranky, thin skinned, emotional eruptions that are evident everywhere feel like they need to be carefully held and seen through the eyes of compassion and love. To take the extra moment and breathe when confronted by someone who is obviously stressed out and not in their best space (outside the house).

As for inside the house, never before has it been more important for me to do my daily practice (currently obsessed with The Class)… if I miss a day or two the wheels not only fall off the bus of the family but the bus explodes and leaves a residue of tears, yelling, snarks, aggravations, trigger responses, and meanness… for me and the children.

It is obvious many fissures in our society are being laid bare. The cracks are showing in our national identity. Holding space for our national crankiness is important. Being extra kind to everyone we meet because the fabric of everyone’s life is fraying is important. However, unlike The Vault of parenthood, just because someone is cranky about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be addressed.

We have the signposts, Emma Lazarus wrote this 140 years ago.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

As John Lewis wrote, “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.” Cheers to necessary trouble while holding space for our national crankiness.