pull up a chair

we sat stretched out in the window, my firstborn and i, our stockinged feet just barely touching, our hearts clearly entwined.

we sat stretched out in the window in the hours of darkness on the afternoon of the day we call good friday. but really it is shadowed friday. friday of dappled afternoon, dark and light, playing as it did on the pages of the words he allowed me to read aloud.

i invited him in, my jewish-souled child, invited him into my room, where always on this very deep friday, i grow quiet, honor the story with my silence and prayer. insist, in a very old way, that the whole house be shrouded, be deep, be filled with silent prayer.

i’ve never been one to push what i believe. rather i offer it out, a wisp, a seed, at a time. gauge the winds, see if it catches.

this friday though, as the hand of the clock swept past twelve, ticked toward three, the hours when the nuns and my mother taught me, so deeply they did, to keep watch on the skies, to watch the darkness roll in, eclipse the sun, remember the sorrow, i started to read.

these words did i read, as i made my way through the way of the cross, the trail of so many tears from the moment jesus is condemned to his death, to his crucifixion, at last to the laying of his body into the tomb:

the first station: jesus is condemned to death

“lord, that i may see!”
give me faith to recognize You in those under my own roof;
in those who are with me, day after day, on the way of the cross,
let me recognize You, not only in saints and martyrs,
in the innocence of children,
in the patience of old people waiting quietly for death,
in the splendor of those who die for others;
but let me also discern Your beauty
through the ugliness of suffering for sin that You have taken upon yourself,
let us know You in those who are outcast, humiliated, ridiculed, shamed;
in the sinner who weeps for sins committed.
let me see You, jesus, condemned to death,
in myself, and in all who are condemned to die.*

it was then, after reading those words, that i realized i wanted to invite him, my firstborn, into my chamber of prayer.

it was then, realizing the whole of my life view was held up in these stanzas and lines–the notion that the Divine dwells within every last one of us, if only we take the time and heart to see, truly to see–that i thought i might cast one of my seeds, see if it caught, if it mattered.

for two nights now we’ve told and re-told the exodus story. i listened, asked questions, paid attention when one wise friend spoke of the power of myth. how verifiable fact isn’t the point, but truth is.

and how myth in the end is all about truth, all about passing on kernels and seeds and endosperm truths. and praying, somehow, maybe it takes, sends out its own tender shoot.

i thought as she spoke of my own dappled years, years of shadow and light, of doubt and belief, of knowing and not.

i thought as i read through these words, warm in the light of the sun pouring in, soft against the pillows and blankets, that these words truly feed me.

and that’s when i thought: let me give him a taste, my child who once asked who tucked in God at the end of the day, when it was time for sleep to come to all who’d toiled all day?

i called to him, invited him in. can i read you the stations, i asked? can i read you the way of the cross, unspooled in modern-day terms?

“oh, sure, i’d love that,” he answered quite quickly.

i admit to a skip in my heart.

and then we sat, he and i, warm under blankets, our toes just barely touching, as page after page, i read this modern and moving interpretation of the way of the cross.

considered how jesus fell three times under the weight of the cross-thatched timbers, considered him stopping to talk to the women along the side of the road, considered veronica wiping his face, read these words from the text:

“drive me by the strength of your tenderness to come close to human pain. give me your hands to tend to the wounds of the body and the wounds of the mind. give me your eyes to discern the beauty of your face, hidden under the world’s sorrow. give me the grace to be a veronica: to wipe away the ugliness of sin from the human face….”

my firstborn listened as i read, and then, when i started to cry, reading the words of jesus’ third fall, considering all the falls of my own, the stumblings, he looked quietly up, compassionate, touching my face with his gaze.

he sighed as i sighed.

and then, after i’d read of the dying on the cross, and the laying in the tomb, we both sat in the dappled light, the shadows crossing the sky, the sky ever-so-faintly turning to gray.

he fell asleep, my firstborn.

and i lay there, praying and wondering, wondering and praying.

that is how i spent the hours of dappled shadow, the hours of knowing that in light and in darkness, i’d found a truth and scattered the seed.

and maybe, just maybe, it took.

* text for prayers by caryll houselander, the way of the cross, st. nicholas church, evanston, illinois

God bless you this holy friday. more overtly religious than usual, this meandering up above, but sometimes it feels like the right thing to do. you’ll understand, i’m sure of that. this is my holy day of days. and these are the holy days for so much of the world, as we wait and watch the laborings of winter’s deep sleep give birth to the soft green newness of a planet bursting to breathe life again.
i wait as i type for that baby who, miles and miles away, is beginning to stir in her mama’s womb, who any day now will fill the arms of my brother and becca, whose sounds will travel the wires, across the miles, and who i will know for the very first time.
i think of these things this good friday.
and what about you?

we all sat in a circle, two moms, the teacher and 20-some second graders.

we were there, i began, to talk about something very important. and there was no one more important to talk about it, i told them, than the little one sitting next to me, one for whom the depth of the story will likely spill out in bits and gushes for the rest of his life.

“the idea,” he began, “is that since my sister died we’re having a fundraiser for all the kids who are sick. you can walk or run. and there’ll be t-shirts and artists and even a band.”

he said he thought maybe the money we were trying to raise would pay for the artists and the band and the t-shirts.
i asked a few questions, and then, when he was all finished, when at last he let out a sigh, and i asked if there was anything else important to say, he shook his head no, and those big soulful eyes of his started to smile.

he had the attention of every one of us in the circle, and he’d gotten to speak from that tender, proud place tucked in his heart.

then it was my turn: i added that what was really beautiful about the family’s idea, this idea to hold a walk-a-thon named for the sister, kira, who died, was that the money was going to pay for an art therapist–someone who draws or does papier mache with sick kids, i explained–someone who would work with the children with cancer at children’s memorial, the place where kira once had been so very sick, and the place where i once had been a nurse with those same kids with cancer.

an art therapist, i told them, is very important when you are a kid who’s sick in a hospital. and pictures and paint and scissors and glue, sometimes, are better than words when you’re sick and afraid and feeling all kinds of very big feelings.

that’s when i looked over and saw the girl in the purple shirt crying. her mama just died in the autumn. her mama had cancer too.

because the teacher in this circle is one of those masterful ones, she’d known, before the talking even began, to slide herself in right next to the girl.

and as the tears slid down the little girl’s cheeks, as her face turned from pink to practically red, as she held in the sobs, so very bravely, the teacher ever so gracefully–in that way that masterful teachers or mamas or papas or any sort of comforting soul knows how to do–draped her arm right around the little one’s shoulders, and drew her in tight. wordlessly, she was the brace that got the heartbroken child through the tears, back to the unfolding circle.

my reason for being there was simple enough: to find out, from the children, what we might bake for the bake sale; what we might sell at the soccer concession stand.

i knew going in that because the brother was there, the brother of kira, the beautiful girl who two and a half years ago died of a tumor lodged in her brain, i knew it could be tight steering, picking just the right words so as not to stir pain for the one sitting just to my right, the one who was 5 when his big sister died.

so worried i was about him, i’d not zeroed in on the two other girls in the class, both of whom had once lost their mamas. and as soon as i saw the one’s tears, it was all i could do to keep on going.

we went on with our meeting, somehow, without even stumbling, the teacher tenderly handling the hard part, me merely taking ideas for what we might bake.

the hands, and the suggestions, came swiftly: brownies, gingerbread, scones, a pie, cookies, cupcakes, muffins, cinnamon rolls.

i then said we might also sell bracelets. mentioned how purple was kira’s most favorite color. and then i asked her little brother, what color purple she liked best.

he answered, i noticed, in the present tense, in that tangle of tenses that so often occurs after a death when you start to swallow the truth that forever more the tense will be past.

“she likes light purple the best,” he informed us, sitting up straighter, more fully as he warmed to his role as the expert, the brother, the youngest of four.

and that was when a hand shot up, a girl who had to blurt out: “when you were talking about purple i had a brainstorm,” she said. “how ‘bout if we do cupcakes and make them purple?”

and then all at once the circle was spouting purple ideas. purple cookies, someone shouted. purple muffins, someone else thought. purple lemonade.

purple tie-dye t-shirts. purple hats. purple friendship bracelets.

we even changed the name of this fundraising team. we had been crowley’s clan; now we added a definitive clause. i explained how a colon is really a punctuation traffic sign that tells you something really important is coming, so i said, how ‘bout if we are crowley’s clan: the purple squad.

so that’s what we are. and that’s what we’ll do. daydream in purple. brainstorm in purple. come up with as many ideas as we can of ways to broadcast kira purple.

even the girl with the purple shirt, her tears now dried, her face back to palest of pink, she was waving her hand. she had an idea: purple cups.

purple napkins, someone else said.

then we voted on what we would bake. cookies won, 8 to 5 to 4, beating out cupcakes and brownies, though we’ll bake those too. purple muffins apparently weren’t too enticing; they got zero hands in the air.

all the while, as all the purple ideas were filling the air, i felt the boy next to me, kept watch on his eyes. he was sparkling now, the one whose sister was gone.

a whole room of children was working together, weaving ideas, stitching a patchwork of comfort.

i felt it, i swear, as his arms and his back and his shoulders were draped in the soft folds of its blanketing cloth.

by the time the meeting wrapped up, as i stood to gather my notes and walk out the door, i marveled again at the power of children. how they explode with ideas, if you give them an ear, how they comfort and care for each other.

how, if we let them, they teach us volumes and volumes about what it means to be our brother’s keeper.

God bless the children.

God bless them and bless them and bless them.

yet another quick little tale, a page snatched from the journal of daily living. some days it seems the most important moments unfold not as i’m doing my job, or chasing the long list of errands, but simply being alive to the very real stuff, the theology of being alive.

i’ll be back on friday, for good friday, the most somber of days, among the most deeply holy. tonight is the start of passover, the story of exodus told year after year. this year, it unfolds right on top of holy week, so in our jewish-catholic house we are steeped in religion and tradition.

what truths have you learned of late from our teachers, the children?

all it took, really, was a trip to the store, three eggs from the fridge, and a chance to play with my still-in-the-box old-fashioned hand mixer.

all i wanted, really, was to hold the real world at bay. buy one more day-pass before the return to non-fiction living.

a yellow cake, i figured, was enough of a ticket.

it was a two-layered salute to the end of so-called vacation, a sugar-tinged slide into the hard weeks ahead. and besides there’s little so dreary as a monday back home, when rain clouds and laundry are piled too high, not far enough in the offing.

thing is, though, given the fact that the mixer was many months old and had yet to see a speck of light from the kitchen, this, clearly, isn’t my forte. the two-step from batter bowl to oven isn’t one my feet know by heart.

i am not, sad to report, much of a baker.

oh, i dream of such things. wish sometimes that i had it in me, that gene that would make me long to be clouded in flour, my cheeks streaked with chocolatey smears, from yet another turn at the stove.

but, alas, i am merely pretender.

oh, if you opened my cupboards, you might see i’m amply equipped. why, i’ve got pans with bottoms that vanish and side-rails that spring. i’ve got cutters of cookies in so many shapes, from simple to odd to odder-than-odd, an architectural replica, among others, of the downtown tower where every tuesday i type. enough bent-metal skyscrapers, in fact, to cut out and bake a whole skyline.

i’ve got aprons, too. and a french wire basket filled to the brim with sugars in colors and all sorts of sizes of crystals, from silky like snowdrifts to chunky like hail. even a stash of those wee silver balls that look just like the beebee my brother once aimed and shot at a window, while my grandma stood back in stunned disbelief and i, truth be told, snickered.

sorry fact is: nearly every time i think about baking–be it a pie, or plain cookies, or surely a cake–well, i give up almost before i begin.

i get tired.

i get sweaty there in the palms.

i think of the mess.

i think of the cake going stale.

i think of the big old beater i used to have to haul off the shelf. how it pained my low back to lug it from pantry to counter. how i’d nearly once crushed the least of my toes–and that was only the bowl tumbling down.

yes, when it comes to the baking department, i am purely illusion. not much crumb to my cake.

and so, when, despite my deep disinclinations, i somehow manage to pull off two layers, with a blanket of fudge in between, well, i just can’t help but stand back and marvel.

can’t but think to myself, “i need to do this more often.”

who knew that cracking three shells, dumping oil and water, watching the twin set of whirly-bird blades whip round and round in two minutes of circles, who knew i could pour, slide, and crank on the timer, and then, poof, in a mere 35 minutes pull out two golden-topped coins that, at least for a moment there, made me appear the very model of domesticity?

why, the whole house let out a whoop, in the form of a cloud of sweet-scented, vanilla perfume.

by the time the little one bound in the door–shouted, he did, did you bake? (incredulously, i’m not too ashamed to admit)–i’d even gone mad with the chocolatey swirls.

as always, i like the frills as much as the substance so i practiced the TV-ready twirls of the knife that made for an ocean of waves all over the top, and right down the sides. then, leaving well enough not alone, i unwrapped a whole flock of kisses, hershey’s that is, and dotted them here and there on my mid-afternoon’s quick-rising escape.

ahh, the sweet holy triumph of a boy home from school staring in wonder at his mama’s hard-won confection.

it’s not every day that i witness such hero-like status. i mean, never before have i seen the boy–nor his big brother, as a matter of fact–stand in awe, drooling, at the way i pile a verb onto a whole string of nouns.

nope, never once has anyone marveled at the skill with which i ditch the drips on the toilet seat. nor the dust on the lampshades. nor how i clean and fluff and fold all the laundry.

not even how i stay up till late, late in the night some nights, sopping up tears, unknotting worries.

but the cake……oh, the cake. it’s two days later and still i am riding the wave of that yellow-crumbed glory.

sure, it’s all turned to hard-crusted bits there on the chocolate-smeared plate.

but i’ve not tossed it out, nor will i.

i’m thinking this kitchen alchemy is one i might want to return to. perhaps i’ll nudge myself a little more often. who knows, there might be a pie crust not far in my future.

it’s a simple truth that these days i ought to employ: in three easy steps, plus 350 degrees, i can bring joy to the table, slice into two-layered heart of the matter.

there is little in life that so simply begins, and so deliciously ends.

i am struck, frankly, by the tangible construction and completion of something utterly swallowable.

i wonder, perhaps, if in our quixotic attempts to bring calm to our homes, and peace to the planet, some of us–me, in particular–might have missed the undeniable dump-stir-’n’-pour virtue of such bliss in a box.

the chance to exercise whimsy, to deliver up double layers of plain ol’-fashioned goodness, i’m starting to realize, is as boundless as the stash of sweet morsels tucked on my shelf.

in these endless months of not knowing our place on the planet, on occasion doubting our worth, so often dreading the morning, it seems that to whip up a cake, perch it high on a pedestal, well, so sweet a triumph it is, maybe i shouldn’t let the ovens stay cold for so long a spell.

it’s rather quite simple, isn’t it then?

sometimes little more is required than the goo it takes to fill up two 8-inch round pans. and the pure honest knowing that what comes to your lips on a fork is, well, much more lasting than the pile of crumbs turned hard on the plate after merely two days.

never did read that on the back of a box of cake mix.

some things you take a while to gulp. but when you do, you grasp forever their infinite wisdom.

do you bake for the joy of it? do you find deep delight in the simple stirring and pouring, letting your imagination and your recipes run wild? what have you baked lately? or brought home from the bakery dept.?

shabbat had tiptoed in, as it always does, praise be to God who promised it.

without fail, no matter what the week has washed up on our shores, shabbat graces our table, graces the earth, as the globe is shadowed in darkness, as sunlight goes out, and candles, one by one, house by house, city by city, flicker on.

we’d lit our two candles, as always we do. we’d gobbled our fish, as the hand of the clock was sweeping toward half past the hour, and we’d not had plenty of time.

prayers would begin any minute at the church, yes, where our synagogue dwells. the cantor would lift up a minor-key chord, the rabbi would open the book. and all of us, the few of us, gathered there would begin.

only this friday night i wouldn’t be there.

i knew, deep in the place that knows all these things, that a room with walls and a roof, even a room with windows taller and wider than i’ll ever be, it wasn’t big enough for my prayers. not this friday night. not at the close of this very long week.

so, while the man who i love went to pray in that room, i went to the edge of the lake. i went to where the trees reach into the night, finger the darkness. where the dome scrapes the edge of infinity. where no prayer is too big.
i went to the place where, uncannily, eerily, that night, the lake made no sound. not a whimper of wave. nothing, but stillness.

then, from out of the black, out of the dense deep thickness that is night at the beach, i heard the lone cry of a night-flying goose. i couldn’t make out its wings, couldn’t see a wisp of its shadow.

all i know is i heard it, high overhead. calling, and crying, and breaking the night with a sorrowful mourning song, not unlike the one in my soul.

i sat there, on the sand in the cold, looking up into the moonless night. not even the moon made itself known that dark night at the edge of the lake.

somewhere, though, i knew, it was out there, the moon, round and white, absorbing, reflecting, the light of the number one star. but this night it wasn’t for me to see. not this night.

nor the V-string of geese, heading for home, riding the wind, steering straight for the polestar. only the night-shattering cry, haunting, calling, sending chills down my bones.

and so it passed on the moonless night at the beach. prayers spilling like waves that i couldn’t hear. floating out to the heavens that seemed to be cloaked wholly in blackness.

fitting, i thought, as i sat there unfurling each and every petition. i couldn’t see God. couldn’t hear waves. couldn’t even make out the moon.

but in none of those instances did my lack of sensation suggest absence of any kind, nor mean that nothing was there.

just because i couldn’t hear flapping of wings, didn’t mean the geese were not flying.

just because i couldn’t hear luffing of waves to the shore, didn’t mean the lake had gone dry.

and so with the God whose moon was lost behind clouds.

it all surrounded me, every last bit of creation. and, yes, too, creator.

faith is the thing that comes to you when you kneel in the dark on the sand in the night. and the lone goose calls to you, tells you it’s there up above.

wasn’t long, that dark night, till the first star crept out from the clouds.

i never did see the moon.

but, in time, i turned and headed for home.

my prayers had poured out from me, filled up the night sky. branched far and wide beyond the limbs of the tree. skipped past the lone shining star.

i headed for home, safe in the knowing that moon and rippling water were right where they needed to be.

and, likely, God, too.

even though all around me was darkness. even though i couldn’t see but one step in front of me.

prayer is like that sometimes. so is life, too.

do you sometimes feel as if your prayers can’t be contained in a room, or even your heart? do they need to spill out on a canvas without any edges? where do you like to go when your prayers are so very big?

it’s hardly a bothersome little bird, its wings outlined in blue, slate blue, really. its bill and its legs, etched in the same confederate blue.

fitting, the civil war suggestion, for that ol’ hungry bird, a whole flock of them, actually, seems to have set off, well, a bit of a domestic squabble.

war, of course, would be going too far. it’s more a divide of two minds, the sort played out with very few words.

it unfolded something like this:

door clunks open ’round about seven o’clock this fair eve. in walks the one from the train. the one who knows a thing about architecture. who has something to say, and says it, most all of the time, when the subject is the look or the feel or the function of places carved into space, inside or out. why, heavens, they pay him to spout his learned opinions. so spout them he does, for pay or for free.

me, i just go with my gut, and my eye. always did get along, managed just fine.

um, maybe not now, though.

back to the squabble, er, story.

the little one, keen to impending drama perhaps, takes the tall one by the hand.

“wanna see the bathroom,” he asks.

“it’s covered with birds,” he happens to mention.

now, mind you, before leaping into the heat here, let me back up. this bird thing comes as no surprise. it’s not as if i just opened the cage, snuck in a chirper, let loose the whole squawking flock.

this had all been agreed upon. well, grudgingly maybe. but there was a green light. a nod. a certain shrug of the shoulders and with it a shake of the head in affirmative motions.

yes, yes, we all know that in the world of haute architecture, wallpaper ranks just above vines. or plain old ivy, maybe it is.

and we all know what ivy is in the realm of angles and planes, in the raising of walls and the shaping of rooms, houses, towers. heck, even skyscrapers.

it’s the architect’s equivalent of the schmatte, the rag that’s tied ’round one’s head to hide a bad hair day.

ivy goes up where architects blunder. it covers the goofs. frank lloyd wright, i believe, even said so.

and somehow, it seems, paper covered with colors and prints, God forbid covered with birds nibbling berries, well, it seems it’s just as godawful as old creeping vines. maybe worse.

back to the tale: so there in the nook of our stairs, where the steps take a turn, head from due east to due north, someone long, long ago, thought to tuck in a petite salle de bain. a powder room. a little spit of a joint jammed right in the corner.

when we moved here, till just at the dawn of this year, it was, well, aqua–bright aqua–down on the floor, and right ’round the bend up the start of the wall. we’d never quite managed to ditch all the pool-bottom blue. and didn’t do much with anything else in the wee tiny room.

until right after christmas, at the start of this year.

why not leap into a recession by redoing the bath?

so redo it, we did.

and then came the walls.

i, of course, being unschooled in these matters, had stumbled across a canadian place that sells quite lovely wall coverings. will morris wall coverings. quite a wall coverer, will.

only not so if you think like an architect.

which, i’ve mentioned, i don’t.

but the tall one does.

so, despite some willingness to back down from the plan, i did manage to leave will’s wall sample lying around, till one sunny day, when the tall one, he softened. said, oh, go ahead, it’ll be fine.

so i did, and, well, it isn’t.

a nice man came this morning, slathered the walls, cut strips of bird-upon-bird. i yelped i liked it so much. so did the man who slathered it on.

only he’s not an architect. he’s a wall slathering sort of a fellow.

he left hours before the little one took the tall one by the hand, said, here, come meet the birds.

all i heard next was: “oh God.”

then i heard nothing.

do you hate it, i called?

nothing.

more nothing.

finally: “i’ll get used to it.”

then dinner was served.

so was more silence.

could have cut that silence with the side of my spoon.

at moments like this i feel the full weight of the little glass prism, a chunk if ever there was, that sits on his desk. he once won what a young friend at the time referred to as “the polish surprise.”

it means to all the world that he knows of which he opines. it means to me, on occasions like this, that i’m cooked.

how can i, wobbling on the mere perch of my avian affections, stand up, in any survivable way, to the weight of that see-through chunk that, if it fell on your toes, would make you yelp, ouch, in very loud howls?

alas, i cannot.

the little one didn’t much help. says he: “i can’t go to the bathroom anymore. the birds are all watching me.”

so far, little else has been said.

but i did notice this: the bathroom door is sealed shut. i don’t think that happened by chance.

i still rather like it. in fact, i like it a lot.

i do think that’s a good thing. because i think from now till forever, the bathroom is mine. and so are the birds. mine, only mine.

it’ll be private, all right, the cage where i and the birds now trill to our hearts’ deepest content.

while outside the cage, the discontent growls like a bird-spitting cat.

or is that simply the grrrr of my own personal architect?

ahh, why not write to make yourself chuckle, especially when you’ve reasons to cry? i ask this night for most special prayers for a very dear friend and her 17-year-old. she’s a fireball, the girl, a junior in high school, who on monday spent hours and hours in surgery, as the doctors removed a malignant tumor from her liver. nearly the size of a football, but it’s gone now. the lymph nodes too are now gone. but they had traces of cancer, so a long saga begins. and it’s not the first for this family. already, there’s a boy we once prayed for here at the table, the little brother, who still fights leukemia, and who long ago lost a good half of his cerebrum, the front lobe of the brain. one family, four children, two cancers, one child bound to a life in a wheelchair.

suddenly our worries are nothing. i look to katie, my friend, the mama above, to learn grace in action, to know what it means to walk into battle unwilling to lose. she can’t lose. God willing, she won’t.

one other prayer tonight. brave jcv, whose little girl hears only with what she calls “the hearing maids,” wrote the text that became a bill that just today went before the illinois state senate’s insurance committee, in hopes that all hearing-impaired children in illinois would be afforded hearing maids of their very own. brave jcv, who doesn’t like doing so, got up and argued on behalf of her bill, said for crying out loud can we not make certain children have the means to hear birdsong, their mother’s voices, the wind rushing through trees? or words to that effect.

jcv, too, is unwilling to lose. and we salute once again the courage of mothers who won’t back down from the battlefronts where they are so needed, and so indispensable. amen to all of you, this night. and love, too. xoxo

no use keepin’ this to myself. that’d be stingy, wouldn’t it be?

nope, this is for sharing. hanging up on the wall. maybe i should rent out a billboard. slap up some glue. stick it there, on the side of the road.

maybe if every good soul in the world, every one that was hungry or hurting or split right in half, maybe if this swell paper heart, all zigzag and scribble and pink-upon-pink, got pulled out of all the old packs in the world, maybe then we’d not be so aching inside.

only hours ago, this appeared.

at the end of a day, at the end of a spell, when most all around, it was dreary, and grey-upon-grey.

mighty sad too.

i didn’t hear it. but gunshots rang out, not far from here. not far from where i spent the saturday typing away. police didn’t come, though, till just yesterday. knocked down the door. brought in the s.w.a.t. team.

that’s not supposed to happen. not here where the streets are cobbled in brick, and the trees, gnarled, maybe arthritic. i do think they groan, at least on blustery days, limbs centuries old, the poor hobbled trees.

they’ve seen too much now, those trees.

my little one doesn’t know. he’s not heard a word.

blessedly, somehow, he’s been nestled right by my side. sick with a bug that’s kept him at home. away from the news trucks. away from the street where the bright yellow tape squares off the sorrow.

as if it could be contained.

as if, when the big yellow bus rumbles by, packed thick with schoolkids, they wouldn’t turn to look out the windows, press noses to glass. ask questions. ask lots.

as if.

if he knew, he’d be calling me now, calling my name. “mommy,” he’d holler, from up where the sleep hasn’t yet come, “can i ask you a question?”

then he’d want to know more. want to know things i’d not want to tell him. how the man took the gun, a civil war musket, shot the boy, shot the mother. then a whole day, and 40 pages of diatribe later, he went and shot his sorry old self.

i’d not want to tell that tale to my little one. or my older one, either. but he already knows.

it’s hard to shake off, this sort of neighborhood news.

it’s one thing when a house is knocked down, or an odd-seeming one goes up in its place. it’s one thing when a coyote is spotted, or even a cougar.

but when the headline news comes from a house you pass every day. one where you walk with your mama, holding her hand, skipping along, well then, that’s a story that’s hard to take in big gulps.

so you do what you can.

you rock your sweet child. you rub his hot head. you squeeze honey on ice. you sing him a lullabye.

all the while, of course, you are thinking of a child not too far away. a child who’s gone now. through no fault of his own.

and then, there’s a knock at the door. a sweet little girl has brought home a pile of work for your child who’s sick.
so you pull out the papers. and there is the heart. the heart and the hand. the red and the scribbles in blue.

“that’s your heart, mommy.

“i’m holding it.”

that’s what he said.

and that’s what he does, all right.

the boy with my heart in his hand.

i tucked it there long, long ago.

it’s been safe ever since.

we all could use a little heart holding right in here. i know i could. this is for all of us, whoever we are, who are feeling the doldrums of winter and worry.

happy half century to a brother i love. mem, you’re mr. sunshine, all right. happy square root day. 3.3.09.xox

had to jump the clock a little tonight, as tomorrow, writing wednesday, will find me far from this keyboard, typing away down in the city. the little one’s headed back to school. God willing, he’ll be kept from the shadows that fall from the very sad house, too close to the school.

what’s brightened your heart in these blustery days?

just in time. just in the sweet holy nick of time.

just when you think the sides of your ribs are going to cave in, what with the hollow feeling inside. just when the gray-upon-gray gets to be downright bleak and not just moody, you walk out the door, maybe for some innocent, nearly archaic little chore–say, plucking the newspaper from down by the curb; who knew how suddenly that would seem quaint, going the way of the milkman, the knife sharpener, the man who sold brushes right at your door?

so there you are, minding your mind, traipsing along, trying to steer the toe of your slipper out of the way of the crash-course of mush that once was snow but now is all crusty and dingy and rather the hue of a staid banker’s trousers.

it’s then, somewhere mid-step, when suddenly the bright morning light is utterly shattered.

it’s papa, the bright crimson cardinal, the savior of so many graces. he is on high, and he’s warbling, all right and almighty.

he is belting out his sweet hallelujah, letting the notes land and melt on your near-frozen heart.

what he’s doing, in fact, is yodeling for chicks. uh-huh, that’s just what it is. it’s high time for hormones out there in the bird world, and just the same as if he was down at a corner on chicago’s boul mich, or smack dab in the thick of new york’s times square, and instead of a placard, front and back, “calling all girls,” he struts out his stuff with the cords in his throat.

he sings, darn it.

he sings so loud and so clear, and so stunningly vernally, you can’t help but spin on your spongey old slippers, and turn your eyes to the highest of heights.

he’s up there somewhere you know. you can hear him, all right. he’s waking the dead, for heavenly sake. or surely the tired, the ones who like you are just about run out of steam, who think just as you did the winter before that the spring never will come.

heck, you’re starting to think even the daffodil is folly, the figment of some fictional mind, and this year perhaps it might not come true, might not break through the crust of the earth after all. merely the stuff of fairy tales and make believe and frogs that turn into princes.

but you hear that bird, darn it. he is speaking to you, as much if not more than to all of the girl birds up in the limbs.

he is shouting down from wherever he is: do not despair, lady. yo, you in the fuzzy, coffee-stained slippers, there is reason for hope. don’t abandon your life raft.

you, the one with the duly-splotched fuzzies, you stand there, not minding one bit that your knees are now knocking from cold, and your arms are covered in goosebumps so big and so juicy it looks like you just stepped out of the pluckery, the place where the feathers are plucked from the hens that would be.

you stand there, you do, letting each one of his high notes, his song of the launch of the season, sink into each of your over-plumped pores.

the cardinal, you know, answers to a much higher light. he’s tied to the slant of the sun, yes he is. and he knows, way before you do, that just beyond this snow-crusted horizon, there is hope rising.

hope in the form of grass that’ll turn easter-grass green again. bulbs underground that’ll shove through the mud, reach for the clouds. maybe even unfurl, spread their petals, for crying out loud.

papa knows all that.

so you, the one who needs once again to remember, you stand there, rapt, paying attention.

you drink up his high notes, his middle notes and any old note in between.

he’s up there–you’ve spotted him now, on the highest darn branch in the landscape–he’s up there announcing the news: all is not this. faith, be not abandoned. you can’t see it at all, but good news is pulling out of the shed, hitchin’ the wagon. any old week now, you might start to feel zippier.

it is these nearly-missed moments, the folded-up notes tucked and dropped on the way, the treasure hunt that is the living of life, gretel’s crumbs in the woods, these are the things that keep us on course.

if we pause. pay attention. drink in the cups that are offered.

we can live by the squawks from the box. or the words on the pages that land on our stoop.

or, if we choose, we can align our ships with a whole other north star.

we can live by sunlight streaming in at a particular angle, little shoots poking through the tired old earth. or papa belting it out from on high.

papa who tells us in so many words: fill your lungs with my song, folks. it’s the song of the season to come. it’s the song that’ll carry you home.

some dreary mornings, it’s a bird on a branch who makes all the difference.

some days writing comes in fits and starts. some days i think it’s time to throw in the towel, take up auto mechanic-ing, maybe. or maybe get a job swirling the foam in someone’s grande skim latte. but then, i wander over here, and roll up my sleeves, and play games on the keyboard. i don’t worry too much ‘bout spinning in circles or darting in and out of the point. if to write is to roll up your pant legs and splash in the puddles, well, then i just got all sloppy wet again. by the day i feel more and more obsolete. just yesterday i sat in a meeting where a very young someone extolled the virtues of a new form of “writing.” well, no one called it writing, and it’s not really. you’re only allowed 140 strokes of the keys. then time’s up. your twitter is done. this, we were told, is the future. and i sat there feeling quite old. obsolete. heck, whatever happened to whole sentences, remember those ones that we’d diagram, with all the chutes and the ladders? so maybe my hours are numbered. maybe the paragraph is a thing of the past. thank you then, if you’ve stopped for a visit, for going along with the future of obsolescence. thank you for reading the winding road of a soul who has always found words the surest cure for what ails me, the only way i know how to pray. thanks for stopping by, here on the day of the red bird’s new song.

have you felt the stirrings of hope on the horizon? do tell.

seems time, people. for all of us to pull up our chairs, circle in tight, make room for whoever’s there to your left. seems time, people, for an economic summit of the chair kind.

news everywhere we turn is getting drearier, bleaker, less inclined to offer us the reprieve of sweet dreams in the night. why, as one of the smart newsfolk in my newsroom said just yesterday, “it’s like your arm is getting cut off and you have to figure out how to keep on going.”

that sad statement in reference to the 20 fine souls–some of them legends in chicago journalism, which long has been the stuff of legend, of course–summarily fired, out of the blue, late last week. told to turn in their badges and be gone from the building by 5 the next day. oh, and no more insurance besides.

in times like these it seems to me the only thing that’s going to ensure our survival is the one thing i’ve not heard enough of, though i know, yes i know, it’s happening under the radar.

what we need, people, is to begin thinking outside of the box. we need to search for and exercise random and unspoken acts of pure kindness. we need to be each other’s safety net, when the net that’s out there is pocked full of holes.

this, then, is a call to kindness. to get up off our couches, the ones that sop up our sorrows and the runaway kernels of popcorn besides. we need to immunize each other with booster shots of no-reason-really acts of outrageousness. or even just simple delights.

see someone standing there in the rain at the bus stop? pull over. give ‘em a ride. what, you think you’ll get mugged, there in your leafy small town? and for you who dwell in the big bad cities, well, give ‘em a once-over, use your brain, then pull over as long as you don’t smell trouble.

or, perhaps it’s simply that someone you know is extremely down in the dumps. maybe what you need to do is get in your car, steer over there, right now, and knock on the door. and then, just sit there and listen. or bring over a movie. an A-number-one tear-jerker, and then the two of you can sit there, sobbing and blowing your nose, and by the end, by the time the credits are rolling, you’ll feel, oh, 10 pounds lighter, at least. unless of course you brought along milk duds and you look down and see that the box is, hmm, somehow all empty. oh, well.

far as i can tell, we need to start this stimulus right here at the kitchen table. we need to be bold. we need to be daring. we need, most of all, to remember that we too can be the solution. or at least a little smidge of it.

know someone out of a job?

know anyone who might maybe be able to in some way employ that someone? well, then: ask. write a letter. put in a good word. and, heck, maybe a plea. while you’re at it, go back to the someone and remind him or her just how splendid they are. trust me, they’re not feeling so splendid these days.

maybe that out-of-work someone, or anyone else, could use a big fat care package. tucked full of things you sure wouldn’t buy if you were counting out your very last nickels and dimes. i’d put in bubble bath. for certain. and maybe a long skinny vanilla bean. because who doesn’t feel a whole lot better inhaling the tropical pod? i might toss in a sleeve of saltines, because around here lately they’ve been curing all sorts of ails. campbell’s soup, come to think of it, wouldn’t be a bad idea either. chicken noodle’s great for the slurps, and tomato is known to calm a bad tummy.

what i’m thinking–and remember i’m no engineer, haven’t a clue really what makes a car pull out of the alley–is that it’s all about momentum. we rev up the engine, do our one little random act of pure goodness, next thing we know there’s combustion.

my good thing inspires your good thing. my one thing leads to two things. suddenly, we take off the ground. we’re humming here. good things are flying like rockets.

before long, we expect that that’s the way the world works.

i know, i know. i’m still basically a cock-eyed optimist. thinking, like glinda the goodwitch, all it takes is the shake of a stick, and poof, frogs turn to princes.

well, maybe not quite.

but what’s the choice, people? we sit here wringing our hands, rubbing raw our knuckles with worry. we pace in circles. breathe so rapidly and shallowly we all start falling down on the ground, in sad little heaps?

or, we begin here a catalogue of kindness.

beware, it might be contagious, and it could spread without warning.

so, sign up below. fling forth ideas. each and every one is free for the taking. if you try one out, and it works, report back.

we’re looking to start a revolution here. be not afraid. timid, be not.

get goin’ people, think outa the box. think kindness. and don’t shy away from outrageous.

it’s the only sure thing.

this is a democratic society here. vote once, vote often. the more we catalog, the more chance of getting this off the ground and taking true flight.
your ideas, stories, dispatches…sign in below.

ah, yes, there it is, this miserable month at its most exposed: the whole topography of assaults, framed.

you see the snows retreating. the snows we thought would never ever stop. and thus, the detritus of winter, buried there, all those long weeks, is now–thanks to rare warm winds–revealed in all its gritty truths. peeled back. our winter sins laid bare.

my front yard, in fact, has unearthed a burying ground that suggests these things: someone in the neighborhood was havin’ hanky-panky, for they left their box of, um, supplies emptied at the border of my yard (i do not think the old stooped man who lives next door might have tossed it there); further, many, many folks did not think it necessary to scoop behind their pooch; and at least one someone was out there slicing bathroom tile into messy chalky bits (oh, wait, that was us). oops.

now, on top of all the dirt and soggy leaves and beat-up bird seed, there comes a february morning’s rain that’s gone from drizzle to downpour in just a few scant hours.

it is so unrelentingly dreary out there it makes me want to crawl under the bed and not come out till, hmm, how ’bout that far-off, fictive, balmy afternoon when the sun will be golden (not glaringly white, as it is when it dares to show nowadays) and easy like melted butter? when you’d have to be no longer breathing to not notice the uptick in the old earth’s pulse?

until that day that faith (and a little bit of globe-spinning science) tells us will come again, i think i’ll make like the groundhog and head back into my hole under the bushes.

what if we, like grizzlies and chipmunks and even spiders, were allowed to–heck, hard-wired to–spend our winter with our eyes sealed shut, and our snooze buttons scotch-taped temporarily into snooze position?

what if we weren’t expected to endure this annual misfortune, when our eyes want to turn inside out to keep from taking in the gloom? and our souls slink in line and take a number, hoping to be recycled, stuffed inside, say, a villager on the shores of lake batur, conveniently plunked down in the midst of paradisical bali?

instead, alas, we are left to do what we can to keep ourselves from getting pinned to the mat that is winter unrelieved.

now if all was snow and ice, i really don’t think i’d be complaining. i hold not a single grudge against white-on-white, the sin-less tableau. it’s this yanking back and forth, the sudden intrusion of mound-melting warmth that makes for climatological whiplash.

just get it over with, i say. do not dilly-dally here with days so warm the snow gets scared and shrinks into a puddle.

i’m not one to mind a day that’s gray. it’s when the ground is flecked with bits of mushy brown, and chards of black, and specks the color of a sooty chimney, that’s the equation that sets my skin to quivering. like a half-plucked hen, i am. cluckin’ mad and sassy in the henyard. scamperin’ here and there, looking for a hole to get me outa here.

ah, but there’s no escape.

so we are left to endure.

to make the most of these days in the month cut short, thanks to pompous emperor augustus, that roman show-off who highjacked a day from february to stick it onto august, the month so shamelessly named after him.

here’s a short survival list, in hopes we can hobble through till landscapes come in a color we can handle, white or green preferred.

eat strawberries.

or, in a pinch, merely stare at them. your friendly produce chap will sympathize if you simply whisper in his ear, let on as to how desperate you are for a vernal reprieve.

cut out paper valentines.

for extra fun, squiggle them with glue, then shake on glitter and watch it stick. this will get you through at least one long february afternoon.

stare out the window and wait for a plump red cardinal to land in a bush. on second thought, scratch that. you’ll notice the unrelenting gray-on-gray-on-gray and tumble deeply down in the dumps.

pour a fat cup of tea. steal away with the very most delicious book from the stack by your bed, the one that threatens to topple and knock you unconscious while you sleep. hmm, how do you know you’re unconscious when you are sleeping? see, february stirs such puzzles.

ditch it all and slink into the tub. don’t come out till your fingers look like raisins, a trick we love to play around here. anyone know the biochemistry of shriveled fingertips? just curious is all, and i have a little one who put that question to me just the other night.

sneak out to the store and buy a pot of daffodils. not the one-dollar bunch that will die in just days, but a pot–$2.99 at my grocery store–that’ll bloom like a teensy-weensy garden for at least a whole week, moving us that much closer to the next dreary month in the line-up.

pray for snow. but don’t tell your friends, because they might pummel you with snowballs once your wishes come true and it pours forth from the heavens.

lastly, move to new zealand, where february is the height of summer, veering toward autumn, the most flawless season that ever there was.

what gets you through the mucky month of winter exposed?