standing at the doorway of time

by bam

i found myself standing in a bedroom doorway the other day, staring. you might have thought i’d momentarily lapsed into freeze frame, but my mind was whirring wildly. it must be a sign of the times — my times, my where-did-the-years-go, i-remember-all-that-unfolded-in-this-storybook-room flash in time. 

i call it a kodak-carousel moment, a name in itself that dates me. as obsolete a term as there might be here in the age of slide shows on phones. no need to plunk in the slides, the film framed by cardboard, a portrait in miniature, and click-click-click to advance. 

the kodak carousel in my mind was playing and replaying the little boy room, the room where my miracle baby grew up. the room where we once stacked his baseball jersey and glove, his ballcap of his very first team, on the eve of his very first game. the room where a fallen-out wiggly tooth was laid to rest (in hope for the fairy) under the pillow. the room where night after night we prayed he would please fall asleep so we could tiptoe our escape without raising a plaintive cry. 

i suppose i’ve made something of a museum of that room. added a few paper-wrapped hand-me-downs tucked in a corner (a safe spot for storage) but otherwise it’s all as it was. the alphabet rug, where i taught two boys their ABCs. the four-poster bed where my grandma once slept, a bed where i too slept for years, and then both of our boys. and now whoever comes to visit. the bins of blocks and bears and hand puppets, too. a whole childhood frozen in time. 

and i won’t touch it. 

the drawers of the dresser are filled these days with extra sheets, and art project makings. no longer stuffed with little boy PJs, and shorts and T shirts, size small. but if you open the top drawer on the right you can still find a vial filled with the teeny-tiniest babies of teeth. i couldn’t bear ever to toss those. 

in time, an old house starts to show its cracks. and chips in the paint. and squeaks in the floorboards, and layers of impenetrable grease in the vent of the diner-grade six-burner cookstove. 

i fear i might be blind to the blemishes as the house crumbles around me. 

all i see is the room where i tucked into bed one reluctant sleeper, night after night, for sooo many years. where he learned how to read, and chased away night-prowling monsters. and another (the room at the bend in the stairs) where we brought home the boy with the broken neck. where he wrote his essays to get into college, and years and years later studied for LSATs. (and just a few weeks ago, home for easter, sat at the old desk and recorded a lecture for all of his first-year law students.)

i look at the pillows on the old four-poster bed, and remember the nights and the mornings we propped up against them, turning the pages of books that left us—both reader and readee—with tears soaking our cheeks. charlotte’s last web. or giggling at the antics of a big raspberry-hued rascal named Ted. or that little monkey named George. 

it seems a holy thing. to pause, to turn back in time. to anoint each moment, each memory, with the deepest form of thanksgiving. to soak in to the deepest fiber of your soul those hours you thought might never end. 

i hope, in that ephemeral fluidity of time, we can rewind the clock, even if only in our soul, to finger each hour, each grace, as if the bead of a rosary. to press it against the whole of who we are now. day by day each of us more graced. as we fill ourselves with accumulation of blessing we’ve lived. the boy who defied every odd of a very old singular ovary, the pregnancy that lasted all nine months, the chromosomes that aligned just as prescribed. the life that was given to me. the years upon years of joy, of undiluted wonder, that grew up in that room where i now stood. soaking it in. soaking and soaking. 

saying my prayers once again. 

yesterday was a glorious day in the life of the soul, and in the life of the church i was born into. it was a stunner of a moment as we listened, in italian, to the first then the middle name of the new Il Papa. in all the italian we didn’t yet know that for all of his life, he was just Bob. Bob the priest. Bob the cardinal. now Leo the Pope.

as i wrote to my boys in the flurry of texts that then punctuated the day, “i feel close as i’ve felt in a long time that God had an actual hand in worldly affairs. this world needs a voice unafraid to speak to worldly power, and proclaim the rule of God. it’s a paradigm the polar opposite of so much idolization in this world. peace and love are not vagaries. huge swaths of the world desperately need both.” 

there is much to learn and to listen to from this unlikely pope from chicago’s very own south side. a pope who roots for the sorry sorry white sox, a pope who loves an aurelio’s slice. a pope, we learn, with creole roots. a pope whose grandparents identified as black in a turn-of-the-century census from new orleans’ seventh ward. a pope who left for peru as a very young priest, to work with the poor. a pope with the courage to set straight those who misread Catholic theology—no matter their office, nor the power they wield. i have been praying with all my heart for a voice of true courage in this world. and this morning, i am thinking that in time the moral arc of the universe does sometimes bend toward justice.

what doorways to time have you found yourself staring into of late? and what stirred through your heart at the news of the new Il Papa?

happy blessed almost birthday to a most beloved chair who, around here, goes by the name lamcal. a wise woman of the highest order.

and happy mothering day to all. because, in my book, mother is a verb, and if you gather here you do it magnificently. xoxox love, bam