I’ve been sitting on a review copy of Steph Catudal’s Radicle, or When the World Lived Inside Us for ages. I think I was afraid of reading the book, which explores motherhood and losing a parent, because of what it would open for me. I was right about the feelings. I was wrong to wait to read it, because the sensory detail and her gentle attention to the experience of being human make this book worth returning to again and again.
The Exquisite Beauty, Pain, and Hope of Watching a Child Grow
Parenting, especially in our modern isolation, is an on-all-the-time kind of thing. Which means it’s hard to slow down and see what’s happening as you go. Various apps send me snapshots of what we did on this day so many years ago, but I don’t slow down often enough to exist in and remember the moments as and when they are. Catudal perfectly captures this and the heartbreak of bringing a being that is perfect into an imperfect world in “The Starting Line.”
I thought I’d always remember
how precious it is
to breathe, to walk,
to wake with eyes wide open
but here I am now, unable to recall
the sweet desperation
reckoning with impermanence
can bring.
– from “The Starting Line” by Steph Catudal from Radicle
Later in the poem, Catudal brings us tight into one of these moments with a simple image that captures everything:
And then she reaches for the monarch
perched on milkweed,
her small hand yearning to hold
the brittleness of life.
– from “The Starting Line” by Steph Catudal from Radicle
Throughout the book, Catudal’s language is clean and clear with just the right amount of detail. She lets us see what is happening and feel alongside her as she parents her child and herself.
The Lessons We Don’t Want to Impart
In “New Moon,” Catudal writes of what we pass on to our children:
I give you my love and
I give you this anger,
embers of an untamed inheritance.How will it forge you?
– from “New Moon” by Steph Catudal from Radicle
It’s a gorgeous testament to that thing so many of us experience when we become parents despite not being fully forged ourselves (because we are human), the feeling of trying to heal for ourselves and more so for our children, for whom we want better, only and always. I thought of these words while stroking my 10-year-old’s forehead this morning. He still wants to be near me (when I let him), and that’s everything. And I see the ways I wish already that I could have been different for him.
What of my stuntedness will you carry?
What of my brokenness will break you, too?
– from “New Moon” by Steph Catudal from Radicle
Letting Our Elders Go
One of the quandaries of the sandwich generation is parenting yourself and your children while also offering care for your elders. While I am no longer the primary caretaker for my mother, and haven’t been for a long time, I still wrestle with how I am needed where and how much I can give to those who need me (including myself) at any time.
In Radicle, Catudal is very expressly present with her father at the end of his life. In “It’s Beautiful, It Hurts,” she writes of being “too young to know / how to comfort a giant / stripped bare.” This reveals so poignantly the ways that we are always the children of our parents. How difficult it is to shift the roles, even when it becomes necessary.
The poem that broke me, though, was “Some Things Are Not Meant to Be Fixed” as Catudal writes of falling through a board on a tree house, her father scooping her up, and all the feelings they both carried forever after. The poem captures in a few spare lines one moment that encapsulates a whole relationship, and it left me asking what it is I remember. I have not lost a parent, if I’m lucky that may be decades away, but I’ve been having to prepare to lose one for the last 35 years.
Catudal opened a door for me this morning, asking me to check in with my own memory. Which got me writing again, for the first time in weeks. And I am grateful.
If you want to check in with your own exquisite joy or pain, order Radicle, or When the World Lived Inside Us from Bookshop.org. If you use that link to purchase anything, you’re keeping indie bookstores in business and I receive a commission.
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