Susan Senator

I’ve got to practice what I preach, which is that everyone has a right to the best possible life they can, and I am including myself. I have been working hard to feel good, even while processing this life-changing situation of Nat getting ready to move out. I can’t just wait on the shore and let the wave knock me down.

So tomorrow Ned and I are meeting with the school and residential faculty so that we can get more of our questions answered for Nat’s move. We want to get busy, do things, get this thing off the ground like superstars. This weekend, Ned and I are going to create a series of Tabblos for Nat to hang on his walls, of all of his favorite people and places. I am going to take a look at his new room and decide how to decorate it.

Decorating my children’s rooms has always been my initial way of connecting with their reality. I painted Nat’s nursery while he was a little lima bean sprouting inside me. I picked out the loveliest periwinkle blue and got a Laura Ashley border and a beautiful pastel-colored crib, and we found a dresser on a street and painted the drawers pink and the rest of it white. We did not know we were having a Natty Boy, so we used all pastel colors.

I just finished looking through an early photo album to find a pic of the room, and there were so many amazing Baby Nat photos I haven’t seen in so long. Oh, my aching heart.

So tonight I’m choreographing the most a propos of songs: Raul Ferrando’s “Yearning.” So lovely, haunting, sad, determined. I think I will begin on the floor, on my knees, one arm extended, moving with the strings. It will be a veil piece, because of its dramatic flourishes. I just practiced it while the boys finished dinner. Ben asked, “Why are you on the floor?”

Why not? Doesn’t he know his crazy mother by now?