What a Visit to the Puye Cliff Dwellings Taught Me About Letting Go...

What's the hardest thing to let go of?

On top of the mesa of the Puye Cave Dwellings outside Santa Fe, New Mexico

If you’ve never seen it, the pottery made by the Santa Clara people who live just north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is exquisite. The artists still make their pottery the same way that their Pueblo Indian ancestors did hundreds – even a thousand – years ago. With their hands, they gently smooth the clay and etch symbols into the sides of red and black bowls so finely polished you can see your reflection. The pottery eventually finds its way into homes and museums around the country and the world.

In this, they are different from their ancestors.

The Pueblo Indians, who lived on the Pajarito Plateau between 900 and the mid-1500s, were a nomadic people. When they moved, as they did every fall, they could not take their pottery with them. Instead, they broke the beautiful pots and bowls, letting the clay forms return to the earth. Roaming the mesa with our guide on a recent trip to Santa Fe, my friend and I saw hundreds of the red and black shards scattered on the ground and laid out in impromptu mosaics on stone ledges. Remnants of pots that had once held food and water.

Shards of pottery from the Pueblo Indians who lived on the Pajarito Plateau

As a nomadic people, the Pueblo Indians were experts at letting go.

It’s an idea that has been touted so often in self-help books and blogs as to be a cliche. We talk about decluttering our homes, letting go of toxic relationships, and giving up on caring about what others think.

I’ve done all that.

A couple of years ago, in preparation to rent out our house and travel for a year, I went through a massive decluttering campaign. I sorted through belongings collected over thirty years of marriage: my grandmother’s china, his parents’ beer stein collection, a closet full of sports equipment, the unused waffle iron, and the second blender. Out it all went.

I let go of friendships where the chasm between us had grown too wide to cross.

I stopped apologizing for the offense of being myself.

Like the Pueblo Indians, once these bits had fallen away, it was easier to move freely and open my arms to what came next.

That was the easy stuff.

What doesn’t get talked about so much in those self-help books is the difficulty in letting go of the control and expectations we have for those closest to us, the people we most love: our children.

We try to ignore the visceral pain that grips us when texts go unanswered, plans get cancelled, and we realize that our kids actually prefer to spend hours in front of the computer rather than hiking in the woods with us.

We push away the sadness we feel when our children, who once clung to our knees and looked up to us with shining eyes, move across the country or halfway around the world. But then they come home for a week to visit, and there’s relief on both sides when they leave.

We hide our disappointment that their interests and values skew so differently from our own that the heart-to-heart talks we once imagined are more reminiscent of cocktail party small talk.

We pretend we’re not worried that even as they edge towards thirty, they still find adulting so overwhelming. Laundry? Bills? Cooking? We roll our eyes and wonder how those things can be considered complicated, while programming a phone is not.

We cringe at their habits: too much alcohol or drugs, not enough exercise and sleep.

Most of all, we never admit the sadness that the baby who came from our womb, and is of us, is not like us. At. All.

I know your kids are perfect. Good for you. Mine? Not so much.

If we’re honest, there’s a big bowl of disappointment and heartache that sometimes comes with parenting. Some of us hold tightly to these feelings. The fact that we don’t display them for others doesn’t mean we don’t polish them with the care of a Santa Clara potter.

As I listened to our guide, Loretta, talk about her ancestors as if they were aunts and uncles who’d shown up for Sunday dinner, I wondered if the Pueblo Indians had found it difficult to toss their pottery to the ground every fall and start anew. Because I’m having a hard time letting go.

Winding our way through the remains where 1,500 Pueblo Indians had lived and stored their food during the summer season, she explained how they built these rooms out of the soft, coral-colored volcanic tuff. How resourceful they were growing squash, beans, and corn, in hunting deer and rabbits. She showed us the Kiva where they held sacred ceremonies and the “reservoir” where they collected water on top of the mesa.

Then she led the group down a series of ladders to the Puye cliff dwellings. Using wooden tools, the Pueblo Indians carved rooms into the side of the mile-long cliff created by the eruption of the Jemez Caldera volcano a million years ago. Unlike the pottery, the cliff dwellings have stood for hundreds of years.

Photo by Wallace Bentt on Unsplash

The Pueblo Indians were experts at letting go. But they were also masters at knowing what was worth keeping.

As I walked the high mesa with its 360-degree view of the Jemez mountain range and endless New Mexican sky, I wondered what would be left if I could let the disappointment and heartache — which was really just judgment, loss of control, and unmet expectations —fall away?

Loretta stopped suddenly, and I stubbed my toe on an errant shard of pottery. Looking down, I noticed an army of ants, tiny earth movers, diligently pushing dung-colored earth away to reveal specks of turquoise stones that glistened in the midday sun. This, I thought, this is what would shine through: the desire to love my children for who they are, not who I wish they’d be. A desire to let them know that my love for them is as strong and long-lasting as the Puye cliff dwellings built from the soft volcanic tuff of the Pajarito Plateau.

Photo by Ian Talmacs on Unsplash