pull up a chair

could be, it’s one of the seemingly endless parade of tricks up his sleeve. his pajama sleeve, in particular.

this is, after all, a boy who’s been known to go hunting for cheetah in the deep of the post-bedtime hour. who routinely, for a while there, was hauling a whole artillery–light saber, batting helmet, frankinstein flashlight, did i mention the butterfly net–up to his mattress. a boy who thinks of 901 must-ask, can’t-wait, deep-thinking matters once the lights are flicked off. for instance: mommy, is tomorrow the hot dogs that bounce? (meaning, of course, the lunch lady’s un-bite-able excuse for stuffed sausage.)

or maybe it’s just that he’s grown fond of studying their faces, putting name to visage, ticking off his good nights in layers of history, layers of time, that’s not quite the same in the dark, under the covers.

but the latest wrinkle in our decidedly lengthening litany of things-to-be-done on the long road to bed is what he calls: “g’night faces.”

yes, there hanging at the near-top of the stairs, at the landing two-thirds of the way, at the spot where some day i’ll huff and i’ll puff and i’ll steady my old weary bones, there hang the four generations who preceded him on this lonely planet.

one by black-and-white one, he tells them g’night. it is all, now, a part of his bedtime prayer.

there is the hatmaker from philly looking, well, hattish, with a wide-brimmed number she deserves to be proud of.

there is a slew of great grandmamas, the one looking severe, and ever so proper, from cincinnati, and the other one, animated, wrinkled, the one whose nose he is pinching in a not-so-long-ago snapshot from silver springs, maryland.

and then there’s the one neither of us knew, the one who looks rather like me. she’s looking soft, looking shy, looking sepia, looking markedly lacy in the clothes from her first holy communion.

then there’s the grandma, the grandpa, the grammy he knows inside and out. but here on the wall, they’re mere children.

there is his grammy, the one who mostly wears jeans and shoes for the woods, and there she is, a dimple-kneed child dressed to the nines, with a big floppy bow in her hair, and impeccable, hand-tailored clothes on her and her brothers and sister. it’s a picture that makes me wonder, where is the chocolatey mess? how could five children and their non-smiling mother possibly be so starched, so without rumples or spills?

and there is his new jersey grandma, romping with both of her parents, there on one’s shoulder, and there in one’s arms. and there she is, again, maybe just out of college, looking out at the world with eyes that, i’ve got a hunch, saw far more than most in wherever that room was.

then come the grandpas, both sides. one, scribbling notes, raising a pen, just to the right of ol’ ronny reagan, at some talk at the white house (yes, to the manchild’s dismay, the republican presidential poster boy hangs just to the left of his bedroom).

and the other grandpa, the one he’s not ever known except for the stories i tell and i tell, there he is, hmm, feeding a kangaroo down in australia, and there he is with a big bunch of leafy-topped carrots, and again tickling accordion keys.

his mama and papa aren’t there on the wall at the top of the stairs, they’re just to the west on a littler wall. but it’s merely a hop and a jump, and he can get glimpses of us growing up.

there’s his papa at the side of a plane, lined up with his heroes from baseball, tom seaver, and some other guy i should know, but i don’t. there’s even a charcoal drawing of my little one’s daddy. and of me, there’s a whole page of proofs from when i was four, and my brother was two, and we’d buried our noses in giant chrysanthemums, for the front page of the cincinnati enquirer. there is me, too, crying, looking shocked as i was, when they called out my name as homecoming queen, the first non-beauty queen ever, back at my high school.

in black-and-white rectangles, then, the story is told. the once-upon-a-time comes to life, in ways that names without faces cannot.

no wonder he takes to the wall. no wonder there’s no going to bed, anymore, without the g’night to the faces.

each night, i imagine, he notices, as do i, one more bit of the picture. a nuance, a shadow there in the eyes.

we study old pictures, we urge them to tell us a truth we’ll not really hear, no matter how long we stand there and stare.

but my little one is six. he’s the last one, it seems, of his generation. there are many before him whose lives he must sift through, to come to a deep knowing of just where he stands in his place in the line.

as long as my boys have been going to bed, there’s a prayer that we pray every night. we thank God for all of their parts, their eyes and their ears and their nose, right down to their back and their tummy. then, 14-some years now, we tick off each of the ones that they love, each of the ones who love them right back. we start with grandma and grandpa, we blow kisses to ones up in heaven.

and now, now that the g’night faces are part of the nightly equation, the prayer, he tells me, has come right to life.

“i look at the pictures and i just think i wish i could hear what they’re saying,” he told me last night. “sometimes i just wish i could go in those pictures. i wish i could see them in person–like grandpa geno,” who is my papa, who was gone 20 whole years before the little one came to the planet.

i know what it is to stand and stare at a picture. to wish you could will it to life. and maybe that’s part of the reason we hung them right by the stairs.

so that, in all of our comings and goings, our ups and our downs, the ones who came here before us, the ones whose noses we share, the ones whose brains we did or didn’t inherit, each one of them, all of them now hanging together, would come off the wall, and become a part of our everyday story.

and even our bedtime prayer.

g’night grandmas. g’night grandpas. see you in the morning.

do you have a place in your house where history comes to life? real history? your history? do you spend time thinking of those whose story unfolded long before yours? if you have children, do they love to look back at old pictures, to hear the stories that come with each 3-by-5, 5-by-7, or an even earlier sepia one that comes in odd measures?

speaking of story telling, a year of pull up a chair is days away from wrapping up. oh, we’ll go on pulling up, all right, but my everyday exercise in recording a year will be over. i will keep at this practice of searching for grace on the homefront, but not every day, i don’t think. you’ve heard more than enough. i’ll say more next week about this most blessed year, and look ahead to the next. i’ll be curious–very much so–to hear your thoughts, so i’ll ask. i just thought i’d mention today that come tuesday, i’ll have written for a whole year of mondays through fridays, december 12, 2006, through december 11, 2007. it’s a lot for me to think about, and i’m already pondering it now. until next week, then, have a most blessed weekend. and thank you for these last 51.5 weeks. love, the chair lady

i call today little christmas. but really it’s the feast of st. nick. the only saint–except for valentine, and i mostly forget that he’s saintly, what with all the chocolate and pink foil hearts, and all those lobster-and-steak coupon dinners, heck, even boxers besotted by heart-slinging cupids–the only saintly saint, then, that i stop to make much of a fuss over.
oh, but nick, he’s different. he and i go way back. i seem to recall something about shoes and oranges left by the door of my bedroom when i was little. it wasn’t an every year thing. although it might have planted a seed.
no, nick and i really got going when i, magically, woke up a mother one long-ago wintry morn.
okay, so maybe it wasn’t so magic, maybe there was a good dash of science, and a few thumb-twiddling months, besides. but, geez, this is the month of starry-eyed thinking, and today is a starry-eyed day. so excuse me for going starry-eyed there in the thick of my telling this tale.
really, the unstarry-eyed truth is that back early on in my mothering days i was groping my way through a woods i was finding enchanting, yes, but thick with trees and trails that zig-zagged in dizzying ways.
somehow though, pulled my heart, which always has been my best girl-scout compass, and lit by a few wise candleholders who held up their flickering flames, i found a way deep through a part of the forest that really isn’t too trampled.
it was a quiet meandering sort of a trail. it stopped to take in glimpses of magic, and all sorts of bits of enchantment. i don’t really know whose make-believe might have been more, mine or my curly-haired boy.
really, i was pretending i’d been born in an earlier century, and maybe a whole other continent.
i wanted little of the modern-day childhood, the one plugged-in and battery-charged.
blessedly, not far from my old city house, there sat a shop that fed my deepest enchantments. it was a place of fine books, and toys carved from wood, spun from the wool of a lamb, or maybe a cotton dyed with the oozings of petals and berries.
the door to the shop had a bell, so it tinkled whenever i or anyone else–especially a child–gave it a bit of a push. come december, that sweet little shop, a shop the size of a cottage, it spilled with christmasy magic. a squat pine, a real one, perched up on a table in the heart of the small little room. it was hung, always, with brown sugar cookies, cookies in shapes mostly of hearts, hearts tied with red ribbons.
baskets of wee tiny things lined the counter. and it was there, i am certain, that the magic of nick, the kind-hearted woodsman, the one who wandered from village to village, with his fat sack of oranges and treats, wholly bore its way into my heart.
i saw, there in the shop where the old-world felt present, felt possible, the one priceless gift i could offer my child: a christmas that tiptoed, not one that tromped and trampled and stomped on all of the wrappings, looking for more one minute after the last.
a christmas that worked its charm in small simple ways. in the magic of waking up to a shoe by the door, a shoe filled with an orange, a foil-wrapped snowman, maybe a cane of striped candy, or a bear the size of a little boy’s fist.
a christmas that unfolded on christmas itself with one extraordinary something–a gnome hut carved from a tree branch, perhaps, or a kaleidoscope that spilled with gem-colored stones, stones of ruby and sapphire and emerald–and, of course, a stocking quite stuffed. and that was more than enough.
and so, i learned from my shopkeeper friend, the beauty of the sixth of december.
it’s a day the world doesn’t much notice. you put out your shoes? people ask, a little bewildered. well, yes, as a matter of fact.
yes, it’s a day that unfolds with just enough of the magic and story to carry me and my boys through the ever-darkening days and lengthening nights, while we count down toward christmas.
it’s a day with just the right sprinkling of hop-out-of-bed, round-the-bend, go-find-a-something-that’s-otherwise-lost, even if that something comes with raggedy laces.
in my book, any occasion that adds ceremony to bedtime is one i wholly endorse. and every fifth of december, going on 13 years here, we go to bed only after picking just the right shoe to leave out in the hall, just to the side of the door to the bedroom.
once i finally hear the breathing of sleep, i tiptoe to off where my tucked-away bags are.
the delight for me begins, days earlier, when i mosey around to the sorts of shops that might have a bit of an old-world feel. i find candies, little ones, in wintry shapes. and peppermint sticks, and always, a clementine.
there is something, too, of keeping watch of the shoes, over the years, as they grow and they grow and they grow.
back when i started, the manchild was two. his shoes, were probably toddler 4. now his boots are solid 12-1/2s, “past noon,” as a shoe man on state street downtown once pointed out to the big-footed father of manchild.
no wonder his poor little brother left out a whole pair of his first-grader nikes last night. it’s hard to keep up with the shoes of a giant.
and so, as i type, as i wait for the sound of the feets that will run to the shoes, i sit here practically sparkling. there was barely a sound to this making of magic. just a shoe. and a hope that it would be filled, come the morning.
and it is that, the quiet that fills me with christmas, that i, most of all, count as the very best trail i ever did find there in the snow-covered woods.

first of all, a big thank you to sandra, my shopkeeper teacher. and now a question or two. tell me, what are the ways you find quiet at christmas? and who were the ones who guided you through the woods, no matter what part of your life you found yourself a little bit all turned around?

in the beginning, i shed blood.
i was a young bride, then.
okay, so i was a bride. let’s leave it at that. we’ll just hop right over that modifier there. let’s say, simply, arithmetically, i was younger than i am now, ‘kay?
’kay.
so then, starting again: i was a younger bride then.
and, like many a babe at the pool, i dove into the deep end. yes, yes, i did. i admit to being a little starry-eyed about all my new jewish threads. from the 3,000 blessings a day, to the pure poetry of the prayer, to the roll-up-your-shirtsleeves-and-tell-God-in-plain-talk-just-what-you’re-thinkin’, i found it all, well, truly delicious.
to say nothing of all the novelty that hung from the end of my fork: the brisket, for starters, which to this day i see being lifted from a soft-sided suitcase that made the trip up from florida. boarded the plane in west palm beach, yes it did. got off at o’hare, still moist from the butcher. back in the day, obviously, before 3.5 ounces of mouthwash was the security limit. God only knows what sweet Grandma Syl coulda done to the pilots with six pounds of raw brisket there in her fists.
but that there is decidedly off-topic today, so i’ll just veer right back to where i was headed, which, ta-da, is the fact that today is the start of the eight-day veneration, holy adoration, and just plain lickin’ your lips of the sidekick to that ol’ plane-hoppin’ brisket.
it’s latke day, people. get up and get to your griddles.
but first, back to the story.
so, yes, i was taken in by my first bite of brisket. although really i think i was taken in by the 4-foot-something instructor who stood at the stove, cajoling that meat to do what she ordered, telling me stories as she stirred and she rubbed and she did it her way. whispering over her shoulder, every few minutes, she didn’t care what the other cooks did, she liked it best the opposite way.
i can’t say the same, can’t say i swooned, for the threesome that nearly pulls little Syl’s 6-foot-3 grandson to his knees, every time.
can’t say i was taken at all for the hebrew take on the trinity: the fishballs that swim in a jelly-filled jar that makes a rude noise if you try to extrude them; the herring that slithers in cream sauce; or, worst by a long-shot, the chopped livers of chicken that come in a lump the color of, hmmm, how to put it politely? oh, never mind.
ah, but the little cake of shredded potato, the one set to sizzle in gallons of oil, i saw an inroad there in the latke department for ol’ irish me.
potatoes, i know from.
apparently, graters i don’t. for that’s where the blood in the story comes in. but of course.
and if you are jewish you’re already laughing, aren’t you? you know already that no fool in his or her right-thinking mind would attempt to grate the stubborn potato, the potato whose skin will go up against yours, and, every time, dang it, the underground spud’ll come out the winner.
you, fool, will be yelping toward the bathroom, desperately searching for band-aids, with knuckles dripping in sacrifice to the almighty cake of shredded potato-and-skin. (oh, woops, that little secret i didn’t intend to spill. but now you know, so watch out for anyone trying to ply you with so-called scratch latkes. there might be some meat with that dairy.)
and that’s how it was back in the day, back as i stood at the counter, the bridal pink blush in my cheeks turning to red before draining to white, as i grated and grated, spilled blood, sprinkled flour, tried and i tried to make a hanukkah cake any bride from the shtetl would be proud of.
i even tried whispering hail marys, i tell you. any trick in my play book that might maybe lead me to the fine little cake of my interfaith dreams.
in the end, well, they were made of potatoes, and they did sizzle in oil. but other than that, you might not want to ask. i seem to remember a crunch on the edges, a crunch that might have been blackened–a nod to the cajun, or maybe just sorrow–and a middle of mostly uncooked potato.
only then, only after i’d endured the stinging rite of initiation, only after my O-positive had spiced up the batter, did someone pull me aside and tell me the one word i needed to know: manischewitz, sweetheart, manischewitz.
don’t say i never spared you a drop of the red stuff.
and now, as i glance at the box that, yup, i’ll pull out tonight, i notice this other little secret, as well: “quality since 1888,” it says right there in fine letters. hmmm. wonder why no one told me till, hmm, maybe the winter of at least ’92? and that would be 19-92, a whole 104 years after the box came to being.
ah well, that doesn’t matter now, does it?
what matters is this: come twilight, when the sky goes to murky and sun wraps up its rapid descent, i’ll spread out the newspapers all over the floor near the cookstove (a little trick i’m certain they used back in the old country), i’ll look over my shoulder to make certain no one is watching, then i’ll tiptoe into the pantry, haul down the little white boxes, and make like the bubbe i’m not.
there in the fry pan, my puddles of latke will sing, the song of the wesson a-sizzlin’. they’ll turn golden brown, maybe chestnut, the ones that i sizzle too long. we will douse them in sauce from a jar, and cream that’s gone sour on purpose.
i will offer them up with a nod to dear syl, who now sizzles on high, i am certain.
and i will know, yes i will, that an honorable deed i have done: i have now spread the truth for us goyim.
spare the knuckles, people. reach instead for ol’ manny schewitz.
here, then, the real bubbe’s guide to the latke:
1 box manischewitz potato pancake mix
2 large eggs
2-1/4 cups cold water
vegetable oil
large skillet
3 or 4 old newspaper sections
2 large band-aids, for effect (remember, i am the queen of the sugar-doused freezer-case pie)

spread papers all over unsplattered floor. beat eggs with fork. add water. open and dump ol’ manny’s mix. whisper words of thanksgiving for the blood you’ll not shed. carry on. batter will thicken while you dash off your prayer. in 3 to 4 minutes, stir.
drop tablespoons of batter into 1/8th inch hot oil. brown on both sides.
while waiting for cakes to turn golden, apply band-aids to ring finger and pointer. either hand will do. look ashen as you carry the platter off to the table, where jarred apple sauce (again, i found out the hard way, no one authentic goes for the real stuff, apples cored, chopped and stewed) and sour cream, sprinkled with paprika–don’t ask me why, i just like how it looks–awaits your slaved-over, bled-for hanukkah cakes.
here’s to the festival of lights, and latkes cooked up with no sacrifice. at least not in the blood-letting department.

people, tell me your hanukkah truths. are you manny’s disciple? do your latkes come from a box? or maybe the freezer? or, old-fashioned soul, do you spill blood for the sake of the sizzling spud? any other secrets i oughta know. just spill ‘em. we’ve got eight days of latkes just up ahead…

oh, and by the way, today really is the feast day of st. babs (there was some confusion a couple months back, and i jumped the gun by two months). well it was her feast day, you see. poor thing was de-frocked, as it were. she’s no longer a saint, but she’s ours and we’ll sizzle a latky just for the joy of it all. if the catholics won’t have her, the jews just might adopt her. like at least a few did to me.

oh, he’s figured it out. he’s strapped on the skates, found his place on the ice, cut a few circles. sure, he wobbles a bit, every once in a while, but then he steadies himself. stands up tall. takes a breath, keeps gliding. around and around, he goes.
all of a sudden, like all the molecules just zapped into a line, one day he climbed on the couch with a very fat book, a book about something he loves dearly and deeply of late–a book about football, for crying out loud–and he started to plow.
one foot in front of the other, not so teetering. sound upon sound, syllable upon syllable.
but wait, this isn’t about a boy learning to read. this is about a mama learning to trust. learning to keep hold of faith. a mama believing, remembering, chill winds do pass. do blow through the trees. rustle the leaves. but then, calm comes.
the whistling through cracks in the windows, it stops.
all is well again.
not so many months ago i was worried. i saw a boy and a book and they were not getting along. the words on the page were scattered, like so many leaves on the lawn in november. they didn’t make sense. didn’t line up. the poor child was drowning, and i knew it. his teacher just told us, week before last, that many a day he was thisclose to tears. just barely keeping afloat.
she hadn’t told us till now, she said in a way that might be due to the fact that she herself is a mother, because it would have been rather too painful. devastating, was the word that she used. and i gulped when i heard it, even after the fact.
but back when it was, i didn’t need to be told. i knew. and i worried. and i leapt ahead in the story. looked back, too, tried to think what i might have done to lock up his brain. looked down the road, saw a kid hobbling. saw a kid who might stay behind. might never catch up. i pictured it all.
but i forgot to hold onto the one thing that’s certain to save me, every time: faith.
and i don’t mean faith as in the core of religion. i mean faith in the ebb and the flow of plain living. faith in the power of time to untangle the knots. faith that the wrinkles, the ones that matter at least, stand a rather good chance of unwrinkling. or at least being smoothed by the ticking of time.
but i’d dropped hold of that knowing. i succumbed to the worry that knows me too well.
how many times, i wonder, do i have to ride on those tracks? think, oh my God, we are going to crash. close my eyes. picture the scene. picture the carnage, the blood and the spill.
how many times do i have to go off the cliff, over the edge, worry and worry and worry some more?
think: we are so doomed.
before, suddenly, out of the blue, the calm comes. the worry is ended. fog lifts. problem resolved.
hmm.
seems to me parenthood–or simply being one who keeps track of the flowing of time, the turning of pages as story grabs hold of your throat, suspends all else, as you wait for the part where resolution undoes the knots–seems to me it’s a lifelong curriculum in practicing faith.
the compendium of worries will push you over the edge, early on, if you let it.
in my own personal cliff-dangling, there have been these now-laughable crises: the ultrasound that convinced me my baby did not have a brain (quick weekend call to a radiologist friend took care of that one), the fear that the lack of enough fat in my prenatal diet might have created a rare and unprecedented vitamin K deficiency (couldn’t even find a name for it, but i pieced together my theory through some rather intense reading, and that was back in the day before google could ride to the rescue).
you get the point.
but it didn’t stop with the birthing. oh, no.
mind if i tick off another? then i promise, i’ll stop.
whenever i strapped on the snugli, that soft-cloth contraption that allows you to basically wear your new baby, i was certain i’d fall down the stairs, or, worse, go splat on the curb of the sidewalk. either way, the baby hit first. and so would his soft little head.
sometimes i lurched, grabbed for the rail, as if the tumbling had already started.
but somehow, it didn’t keep me from walking. didn’t convince me to take to a chair and wait for the poor child to grow.
no, despite the rather overwhelming collection of bizarre brain waves that slither and slosh through my head, i am armed with a good dose of invincible faith in the pure act of living.
i keep breathing. keep lifting one foot, putting it down in front of the other.
of course, some days my knuckles are white. some days my belly is flopping. some days the stuff in my head is enough to stop all the presses, make it onto CNN’s five minutes of news you should know.
but then i take the next breath. then i take one step at a time. i wrestle my fears to the ground.
or, back to the case of the boy up above, the boy who was lost in a forest of letters and sounds, i simply pick up a book and a word ring–that is the teacher’s invention of every word a first grader should know, printed on cards, cut out, and slipped on a ring i could recite in impeccable order for all the times that i’ve flipped it of late, all the times i’ve sat at the table, on the edge of the bed, or the side of the tub, practicing, practicing, making the words make some sense.
and then i get back to the business of believing. it’s a lesson i’ve learned again and again. there are storms and they’ll pass, or they won’t. and worrying won’t dull the harsh winds.
a baby will crawl. a baby will walk. a pencil, some day, will be used to make letters, and not just to scribble what looks like a wasps’ nest. 2 + 2 will = 4. even the word lackadaisical will spill from a little boy’s lips. (i heard it this week.)
so why is it then, that in the moment of pure and utter suspense, i, like others i know, turn not to trust but to worry.
when will the switch go on in our own little heads, remind us again and again, to take a deep breath and believe.
life is, at its highest frequencies, crisis and crisis resolving. there is bad news. followed by news of cleaning up messes. putting out fires. getting back to the business of living.
look to the ocean for clues. waves come and they come and they come. look to sky. storm turns to rainbow. night to day. winter to spring.
all around, it appears, the world is trying to teach us, to teach me, at least: that that ices your belly, that that keeps you awake, it will, most of the time, move along. it will pass.
children will read. friends will be found. the girl who is being rather a drama queen, will give way to the one who is blushing, who is sending a message, in capital letters, that maybe she thinks your firstborn is smart. and rather delightfully funny.
the long faces there at the table, will erupt once again in pure laughter. the saturday nights won’t be empty forever.
it’s an act of pure faith, yes indeed. but sometimes it takes rote recitation: i believe, i believe, i believe.
and next time you catch me twitching and writhing in worry, just tap me soft on the shoulder. remind me the words of my father: this too shall pass.
oh, and remind me to breathe while you’re at it.
it’s hard to believe if you’re blue in the face. believe me.

all right, wise people, what worries have you put to rest in your time on this planet? maybe you’re not so inclined to worry at all. maybe you’re blessed with that worry-free gene. i’m not. and my life, it seems, is an exercise in learning to tuck it off in a corner. to keep it contained in a rather small box, if it refuses to leave altogether. how have you learned when to fret and when to let go? or if you’re the worry-free sort, would you mind spilling your secret?

totally changing the subject, i need to take a moment here to honor a friend who is making a rather brave move. she is a friend who oozes creativity and wisdom. her name is sandra, and i have spoken before of her here. i call her the midwife of pull up a chair. she is, as of today, launching a life of self-sustained creativity. she has been a shopkeeper for a very long time, finding one-of-a-kind, last-forever toys and books, and, recently, scandinavian marvels. now she will be making her own beautiful things, selling them from her etsy shop. she has a beautiful blog, called bricolagelife. bricolage means to make from what you have. my friend sandra makes beauty wherever she goes. keep an eye on her shop. you will find beautiful things there. i send you off, sweet sandra, onto your voyage with the brightest of lights in the window. and i thank you for all that you are.

maybe it’s the cardboard box that serves as a trough. maybe it’s the papery napkins that dissolve into bits when you rub and you rub your greasy little mitts. hmm, maybe it’s simply the grease.
oh, excuse me, you caught me sitting here, wondering, what might it be that makes daddy dinners such a hit when mine are so, well, same, old and tired?
i do sprinkle with spices, really i do. but the little one, of course, would never know that, since he puts not a thing to his lips that’s not passed the committee.
the committee? you ask. oh, yes, that would be the international gathering of gustatory approval that meets under his sheets up there in the dark. takes on, at great length apparently, the virtues of, say, red sauce v. no sauce. and, dang, not once has the red stuff made it out of committee. the boy, er, the committee, distinctly has taste that tends toward the blanco.
their motto: if it ain’t white, don’t eat it.
which might in fact be part of the secret to last night’s daddy-brings-circus-to-dinner. that child inhaled those white-potato fries, yes, he did. and the bits of the chicken that were at least tending toward beige.
do not think that his fork moved anywhere near the RED beans and rice. nor the RED sauce that some at the table licked off their fingers. after dunking their chicken and all of their fries. and kept right on lickin’. didn’t mind one bit dangling the little sauce bucket off the ends of their tongues, as they proceeded to extract every last bit of circusy essence.
for the record, let me just mention: not in a whole year of chopping and dicing, and quickly defrosting, not in a whole year of chicken a la anything, have i noticed one of my dinners inspiring the wearing of sauce bucket at the tip of a tongue. mais non.
best i got was: good dinner, mom.
dang. so what is it with mr. i’ll-do-dinner-honey?
mister come-to-the-rescue sashays in two nights in a row, and two nights, bing bing bing, lights flash, bells ring, it’s a hit. it’s a hit. the children are eating.
so it goes in the meat-and-potatoes dept.
there’s moi–and maybe there’s you–going the distance. night after night, considering greens. trying out little grains that trace back to the aztecs, pack a powerful punch in the protein department. feeling all smug when i finally figure out how to plug in the crockpot.
and i get the same old, same old: gee mom, thanks. and the little one is squirming off of his chair. pretending he’s dropped all sorts of things (mostly his broccoli) under the table. and not a whole lot of tongues are licking the plate. or even a fork. and i wouldn’t know from a sauce bucket, so that’s hardly an option.
but it’s what we do. we are, for the most part, the dinner committee. we are the ones who, for whatever alignment of planets, come up with the chicken variations. we are sensible. we are dependable (mostly. as long as you don’t suspend us for once again burning the broccoli). we are there at the stove night after night.
and then there’s what i would label the big-daddy-o factor.
mister fun does it again: steaks on the grill. steaks so big he needed a wheelbarrow. chicken from a joint that kindly throws slices of white bread down at the pit of the red-checkered box that makes like a trough (ol’ slice soaks up the grease, we decided, not quite sure what to make of the wonder buried there under the mountain o’ fries).
maybe it’s only at our house where the division of labor is so, um, divided. and where the division of comic relief so, um, noticeable.
it is all, for the most part, the beauty of family, the original pastiche of so many roles. from adam, with his disinclination toward apples, and eve, with her insistence on trying, the family, it seems works at its semi-functional best when everyone comes to the table with, well, particular strengths and, yes, remarkable softspots.
it’s all of one tree, the apple with gleam hangs beside apple with bumblebee bruises. until you look at the tree from some other angle, and suddenly it’s all in reverse.
as long as the orchard is sweet, as long as the branches are dripping, it’s just the yin and the yang of the harvest. it’s jack sprat and his missus. it’s bo peep and her sheeps.
but still, sometimes i think, sometimes i can’t help but wonder: should i rattle the tree just a bit?
maybe i oughta shake up the table. show up with grand paper bags spilling with grease. try joints that toss in gallons of cheap paper napkins.
but naaahhh, in the end there’s this one little matter: what would come of the quinoa that lingers there on the shelf in the pantry?
i dare not risk stirring the wrath of the aztec spirits who depend on me to keep them in business.

we don’t often look at the world through a distinct gender split around here. but has anyone noticed the frivolity, the joie de something that comes with the Y chromosome? what might we learn from throwing a little what-the-heck into the running of our sweet little lives? i am thinking there are distinct advantages to having a fun committee off in the wings. and i only wish mine took days off from work a little more often. trust me, the last two days were spillover from the days he didn’t take off–when he was slotted to–the week of thanksgiving. and, boy, was it nice to launch back into the after-turkeyday crunch with one of us still on vacation mode. what madcap ideas have you tried of late to shake things up at the dinner table?

i’m not sure when i realized, but somewhere along the line, i figured out that i breathed not with my lungs, but with my heart. and in turn, with the tips of my fingers. these days, pushing little blocks on a keyboard. once, pushing a pen, or, long long ago, a pencil.
i write to breathe, to untangle my heart. i write with the undying belief that we all are a story, have a story to tell. and if we say what dwells in our hearts, in our breathing places, well, then, maybe we’re not so alone anymore. i am, more than anything, seeking communion. but not in a loud, boisterous, come-to-my-party, sort of a way.
far more quietly. far more full of the truth. far more kitchen-table.
i say, sometimes when i write, shhh. listen in here. this is the truth, the whole truth. this is the shadow and this is the light.
i think sometimes, for some people, it’s probably too much. oh my gosh, she wrote that, they might maybe say. i cannot believe that she said that, said it out loud, spelled it out.
i am not–despite what i wish with all of my heart–emily or toni or one of the annies (there are two i adore), or any one of the writers whose work breathes to me like oxygen itself.
i am just a girl who was born to put words in places all over, to lay them like stones that cross over a brook. they guide me. they give me wings.
i can’t really dance. and i know i can’t sing. but i’ve got the heart and the soul to wish very much i could do either or both.
instead, i write.
i feel like the wind propels me sometimes. i hear something, feel something, see something, and i can’t wholly know it, till i’ve wrapped it in words, till i’ve put it on paper.
for nearly a year now, i’ve risen each morning before all the birds. i’ve crept into a room in the dark with a very big window. i keep watch here. watch the light of the day spill ever so slowly. i listen for birdsong. i listen for footsteps above.
i putter, often, before i sit down to write. i tidy the kitchen, put out seed for the birds. i make the coffee, dump the oatmeal into the pot. sometimes i forget that it’s gurgling away. oops. i’ve cleaned a few bottoms of pots this past year.
but once i come here to the place where the words come, i just sometimes forget. i get lost finding my way here.
some days, it feels like standing naked in front of my window. some days i wince, think, i said too much. but i keep writing anyway.
i have only one editor here, and its name is the truth. that would be, by the way, a capital T. the rare one.
i believe in the truth and the telling of stories because i think for the most part too few are listening through all of the noise. no one is hearing the shadows and soft spots. no one gives voice to the inklings, the thoughts that whisper and scurry like so many clouds on a blustery day.
the point here is to net them. to catch all those thoughts before they float off in the distance. to catch them like great-winged fritillaries, to hold them up to the light, to take in their beauty, decide if maybe they’re thoughts we want to hold onto, or merely let go.
the point here is to say out loud, this matters to me. this way of making a home, or feeding my children. this way of noticing the thumbprint of the most holy divine. this way of peeling open my heart, letting in the cool waters that quench it. if i’ve not said it, then you can’t–or might not–respond. you can’t shake your head, add to the voices, say, oh i think so too. or, i think not.
there are parts of all of us–certainly of me–that i’ve begun to understand as i lay down the words. like bricks in a wall, i build who i am, what i believe, one truth at a time.
this has been, all of it, an exercise in writing straight from the heart. it has been a practice of saying it out loud. sifting through the everyday, seeking the sacred. finding it. holding it up. finding souls who see the same glimmer. who notice its beauty. who come back again.
joining hearts.
it is how i’ve been all my life, and will, i’m certain, continue to be. from when i was little, i would sit in my room. make sense through the end of a pencil. i would write very long letters and stuff them under the door. leave them there on the pillow. put them in places where they could not be missed.
it is, all these years later, the only way i know how to breathe. it is, as well, how i pray.
for a very long time now, i’ve sat down to write as if in the cell of a monk. it’s my before-writing habit. most writers have one.
as if clearing the throat, before tapping the fingers, some writers walk. others take showers. some stare out a window. i bow my head, whisper a prayer. i ask to channel a thought, tell a story, straight from the heavens to my head to my heart and on through my fingers.
dear God, i’m here as your pencil.
Lord, make me an instrument of your truth, is the prayer that i pray. and let me write it, i ask, in the holiest voice that i know, the one that comes straight from the heart.

irony abounds. as i was pounding this out, this snippet of truth, the computer somehow went black. i lost whole passages. zip. zap. vanished. i quivered for a while there, racked my brain. now slightly recovered–only slightly–i see the humor in that unfortunate moment. so much for unedited truth telling…..
some of you, i know, are writers. some of you prefer only to read. but i’m thinking that if you come here at all, you value the telling of truth, straight from the heart. where do you find the wind for your wings? do you dance, do you sing, do you paint, do you sculpt? do you find it out in the woods, or on the walls of museums? do you find it deep in a book, or in the company of a very close friend? where do you make out the whispers of the most holy divine? do you like me find truth in the words you put on a page?

it took eight years. it took eight years of wanting, and wishing, and prayers on my knees. it took burying an unborn babe. and shots and more shots in my belly. it took, finally, making peace with the way that it was.
“we’re a tiny family, but we’re a wonderful tiny family,” the wise man i love finally said. he said it when it came time to quit. time to quit trying. time to quit making all kinds of bargains with those whom you bargain with when there’s one thing in the world that you want but you can’t make it happen. time to quit when my much rattled body nearly completely could not go on.
so peace we made.
the very last time it didn’t work, the very last time the doctor’s receptionist called, said matter-of-factly, you’re not pregnant, the numbers are bad, i cried and i cried. i rode my bike down to the lake, i rode and i cried.
i let go of dreams. i let go of the gaggle of children i’d always seen in my head. the ones i’d make tall stacks of flapjacks. the ones who’d be nestled all snug in their beds, the ones i would kiss forehead to forehead like back on the waltons. the ones who’d require milk by the gallons. three times a week.
i gave it all up and relished completely my one and my only. i marveled that given the odds stacked against me, we’d gotten him, so very easily.
but for years, it was my own private aching. when i saw two kids in a line at the movies, two kids who looked like they fell from the same genes, maybe the same whorl in their hair, or freckles spilled ’cross their nose. when i watched a big brother reach out a hand to a baby sister, pull her out of a sandbox where she was stuck.
when my own brother sat with me at the side of my mother, waking up from a surgery, still tethered in tubes, it wrenched me.
wrenched me and my heart in the same way i know it wrenched his.
he told me only once, but that was all i needed to hear. i was taking him out of the tub, wrapping him in a long white towel. he was three, maybe four.
“why can’t God hear,” he asked me, one of those questions children sling with no warning. we might have been talking about soap one minute and suddenly the channel had changed and now it was God of whom we were speaking.
what do you mean, i asked back, not sure quite what woods we were tiptoeing into.
“well, i keep asking him for a brother or sister, but God isn’t listening. i think maybe God can’t hear.”
and so i wrapped him tighter than ever that night. i wiped my tears with that towel. but all the tears, and all the unanswered questions got us no closer to a brother or sister for that sweet blessed all-alone boy.
then, one night i had a dream. a dream that a woman in a dark blue sweater looked at me and said, “you are pregnant.” and i was. at 43, almost 44. just about now, only seven years ago.
it turned out to be true. it turned out, despite the odds, despite the fact that every doctor who’d looked at me, in me, through me, turned out to be wrong.
God musta been listening after all.
we used to like to tell the story of the day we told the one and only. how we sat down to lunch, how the father there at the table said, most fatherly, “we have something important to tell you,” and then i leapt in and blurted it out, not at all restrained, or guarded, or considering the chance that this wouldn’t be. “we’re having a baby,” i said, already crying. and how he, then seven and a half, then used to a table with only three chairs, how he slapped himself upside the head, said, “this is a dream. i must be dreaming.”
only soon, my belly started to swell. and then there was kicking. and then one night in the shaft of a light, that baby came. his big brother was right there, watching. taking it in, every last drop.
and for the whole first year, every time i looked at that baby, i couldn’t not think of the fact, feel the chill down my spine, that sometimes dreams really do come true.
and it all came rushing back to me, as often it does, when i was walking in the woods the other day, and i looked up, and there were two boys, entwined. the way i always dreamed it would be. only better.
because i hear the things the big one teaches the little one. and i saw the way the little one couldn’t breathe, couldn’t bear it, when his big brother was hurt, so very hurt, the day he fell off his bike and moaned and asked if maybe he was going to die.
because i still don’t make flapjacks for dozens. but i do make them for two. and i do listen to the little one practice subtraction, asking when the big one is 70, how old will he be? and i know when i help him figure it out, all the take-away-8s, that way way down the bend, when i’m gone most likely, i will still have two boys who still have each other.
and long long ago, when i was aching but nobody knew it, that was the one unanswered prayer i could not put to rest.
but, thing is, God listened. God, after all, has very big ears.
just like both of my boys, matter of fact. i think maybe my boys spill from that very same gene pool. as a matter of fact, of that i am certain.
and i know that you know that’s not bragging. it’s just being in love. and that is a very fine thing for a mama. a mama of two, most especially.

tell me your sibling stories. i certainly spent eight years realizing the virtues of having only one child. i tried all those years to raise him in a virtual extended family. he had uncles who were really big brothers, still are. we had friends, some of whom were similarly singular, and we shared holidays and sunday dinners. had saturday sleepovers. tried as hard as we could to never allow him to think he was one and only in ways that might not be so good for a kid. but the times i catch the snippets of brotherly love, in the midst of brotherly squabbles, i melt. big time. tell me your tales of brotherly-sisterly being there for each other, in ways no one else could ever, would ever, understand….

speaking of brotherly, sisterly love, i tell you proud like a sister, that one of the chair puller-uppers, one you know and love for her wisdom and poetry as jcv, well, she is a writer who until yesterday had not seen her name in a newspaper. yesterday that all changed. in a very big way. she wrote a magnificent story that ran smack dab all over the perspective section of the chicago tribune. we like to think of it as the thinkingest section of the paper. and our very own jcv, and her beautiful beautiful story of her little girl and her “hearing maids,” made everyone think. about the power of hearing. about a world with no sound. about insurance companies who won’t pay for hearing aids for a child. i would love you to read it, if you’ve not had a chance. here it is, click to this link.

and happy week after turkeys.