brothers | pull up a chair

November 16, 2007

teaching to see

he rolled out of bed the way he usually does: somersault off the pillow to sprawled on his back at the end of the mattress, head dangling, flopping like some sort of upside-down rag doll, not too far from the ground. a perfect inverted perch, he decided, for keeping watch out the window.

that’s when he called me. “papa is out on the roof. he’s hopping around. i think maybe he’s looking for breakfast.”

papa, for those who’ve not hung in this house maybe so long, is not the little one’s name for the tall guy with tortoise-rimmed glasses. it was not he who was hopping around on the roof, although i too would have come running for that. rather, it was the red bird, papa cardinal, a character here who goes by only one name.

after broadcasting every breath papa was taking, out there on the roof that juts just below the window through which he was watching, the little one reached for the ledge. or maybe i reached there first. the point was, one of us reached for and grabbed the binoculars.

suddenly, the boy hanging there with his curls topsy-turvy, wanted to learn how to look through the little glass circles that, through the wizardry of optics alone, bring the world as close as the end of your nose.

as i tried–it’s clumsier than you would imagine, believe me–to line up the circles, tried to narrow then widen the space in between so it fit the very same space on the face that is his, as he attempted to make it all clear, and not blurry, not too close, not too far, not staring down at the gutter, but trying to get that ol’ bird in his lens, i realized really i was teaching the boy how to see.

how to regard. how to watch. how to take in the world without any words.

how to notice the pinhole there on the side of papa’s small beak. how to study the feathers he fluffs when it’s cold. how to see the ballet of the leaves in the trees as they shudder there in the november wind.

he was, for a while, finding it hard. the bird was nowhere in sight. all he saw were the nail heads there on the shingles.

not quite the subject of choice for intro to looking, a beginner’s class in the fine art of things to do with your eyes.

ah, but once he got papa there in the cross hairs, he didn’t move. didn’t flinch. just froze like a boy with a bird in the palm of his hand. which, almost, it was.

he might still be there now, only the clock nudged us on, the clock and the notion that school had a bell that soon would be ringing.

but, like clockwork, each morning since, he somersaults off the end of the bed, grabs the looking lens from there on the ledge, and begins again to scan the sky, and the trees, and whoever decides to land on the roof.

he’s even tried it at night. though it’s a little bit hard to make out a star with a mere binocular lens. i explained that’s where the telescope comes to the rescue, but that would be the next class in the series, and we’re only just fumbling with this.

last night, drying off from the bath, he explained that really he’d like to see clear to africa. he was hoping perhaps he could raise the lens to his eyes and see faraway.

far, faraway, he explained. he’d like to see maybe a lion or cheetah. and surely a tiger.

“and some day, when i’m 7 or 8,” he informed, “i’m gonna get real binoculars and try to find any sorta kinda nest. so i can look at a fox’s nest, or a bird’s nest, or a squirrel’s nest.

“i would really like it,” he went on, sliding a leg into his red flannel pajamas, “if papa cardinal would just stand there, and didn’t move completely.”

it needn’t be exotic, i’m thinking he knows, for what you see through your lens to be utterly gripping.

i couldn’t be more tickled that he’s taking so deep a fancy to a sense that can take him so far, a sense that will bring more wisdom and glory than he or i or any of us, really, can ever imagine.

to see is to know, is to understand, is to absorb.

to see is to take in, from the thinnest strand of a spider’s web laden with dew to the last dying ember of a star as it streaks through the cosmos, the whole of God’s breath.

and i mean that without the d. although the breadth and the breath aren’t far from the same. but if we consider the whole of creation one deep exhale from the in and the out of something like lungs wholly divine, then really it’s all, well, supremely breathtaking.

and it is not every day that any one of us gets a chance to instruct in using the eyes for all that they’re meant to take in: the way someone fidgets a spoon while making a point at the table. the color of sky as the last beams of the day paint it a pink you’ll never forget. the glint of the moonlight on a pine branch heavy with snow. the gleam in the eye of someone you love.

and, oh, what of the things we can’t teach, the ones we only can pray they learn on their own: how not to miss the twinge of the hurt deep in the heart; the sparkle of love blooming; the look of intent, of paying attention; how to notice a soul draining toward empty.

really so much of it is only just seeing by feeling. it’s braille, after all. so much of the seeing that matters. it comes through the gift of the eyes, but also the touch of the skin and the skip of the heart.

but, alas, in these mornings of teaching to see, i realize i am bound, i am tethered to only the lens bobbing there on the end of the cord that slips over his head.

the rest of the teaching to see i will teach without lenses. i will teach, day after day, for as long as i’m here. i will teach my children to look and look closely.

i will teach them the glory of God is there through the lens. but they must open their hearts, as well as their eyes, to soak in the sights.

it is the often unnoticed to which i must teach them to pay the closest attention.

the five senses, most of the time, come already installed. but not always, and in the absence thereof we notice how much of the world we get or we miss through the eyes and the ears, the palate, the skin and the nose. and even in cases where all senses are up and running, still there is refining and learning sure to be done. if we pay close attention. far as i know, it’s a lifelong dedication. did someone or something teach you, unforgettably, the fine art of seeing, of watching, of looking quite closely? what are some of the fine points of life you’d so miss if not for the grace of your eyes in the first place?

today is the day of the birthday of my sweet cousin julie. and tomorrow, my mother, the one who i realize, so many mornings as i sit to start typing, has informed so much of the way i see through my lenses onto the world. to both, i send the deepest of blessings and prayers for a year just ahead that is filled with great sights. and the knowing, deep in both of their hearts, that you are so loved. happy day of your birth. be full of joy.

2 Comments

October 10, 2007

the gospel of the pillow

the day had been long, had been wretched, had been draining in that way that day after day of worry can make it.

the task at hand, at least according to the books, was getting the little one into bed. the clock said so. the dark said so. only the little one seemed to dissent. he seemed wide awake for a few innings of baseball.

so it was me, the one who slid onto the sheets, curled in a ball, and lay there, eyes closed. just breathing. feeling the rise and the fall of my chest. hearing my heart. my heart that all day had felt like it was trudging a mountain. or cracking in half.

that’s when the boy who struggles with pencils spoke: “are you hurt? are you worried? are you tired?

“you need to sleep,” he said, touching my hair.

“grownups,” he told me matter-of-factly, “are more important than kids.

“you want your grownup to stay alive to keep you safe.”

he started to put his hands to the back of my nightgown. he made little circles where the angel wings might have started to sprout, back when God was deciding if we’d be the species with wings or without.

he was the putter-to-bed, this long achy night. it was my little one, with his hands and his words, who woke me up from my over-drained stupor. i didn’t move, didn’t flinch, but i tell you my spine tingled. had i not wanted to scare him i would have sat wholly up. his words pierced through to my heart.

i whispered them back, as if a refrain. “you want your grownup to stay alive to keep you safe.”

i realized that was his prayer. mine too. dear God, i whispered so no one could hear, give me strength. the sort of strength i’d needed before. the strength to get up a mountain. to look out from the top.

just earlier that very same evening, i’d been in a church listening to a very wise soul. a woman who’d once struggled with polio. she said, and she meant it, “you can survive anything. you have to decide to survive.”

i decided then and there that my weary old bones had nowhere to go, except to lie by the side of my lastborn. i let his hand circles and his words wash over me, fill me, soothe my twittering heart.

i asked him then about grownups, about why he thought they might be more important than kids (a point i would argue, if not in inquisitive mode).

“they make your food,” was his very first thought, one that came without pause. “they check it out at the store. and they make it, the farmers do.

“they’re good for the environment, the garbage people are,” he continued.

“they stop people from doing mean things,” was the last of his litany.

i lay there absorbing the gospel according to the one whose head shared the pillow. i lay there thinking how God speaks to us, some hours, in the voice of a 6-year-old boy.

i lay there feeling the tenderness, feeling the power of his wisdom. i marveled long and hard at the miracle of how the teacher speaks to the student at the hour of absolute need.

i marveled at the clairvoyancy of a child. how a child sees through the thick of a heart, through the tangle. how a child, as if a surgeon who works with micro-sized scalpels, can incise right to the core of the matter. can feed in the words that the heart needs to hear. can wake up even the sleepy.

i thought, as i reached out and stroked his soft curls, no, my sweet, the grownup is the one who desperately deeply needs the eyes and the voice of the child.

at my house last night, it was the child who was keeping the grownup so very safe.

there are many voices of God all around us, if only we listen. have you been struck lately by one voice that rises above all of the others? that comes out of the din, speaks straight to your heart, points the way toward the light? are you, like me, amazed at how often that voice is the voice of a child?

6 Comments

August 29, 2007

heart to heart

the little red heart is the size of a button. so is its twin, the other half of its whole.

when the sun peeks in his room, when he bounds out of bed and into his school clothes, he’ll slip his into his pocket. so will his mama. i promised i would.

a heart in your pocket is a very good thing. especially on the very first day, the very first long day, when the time between saying goodbye at the school door, and climbing off at the bus stop, way past lunch in a lunchroom, and scrambling all over at recess, way past standing in lines and marching through halls, past sitting in chairs and reaching in desks. way past finding your name on all sorts of supplies, and even a locker you barely know how to use.

a heart in your pocket is a very good thing.

you give it a squeeze when you need to. you give it a squeeze when you’re sad. or you’re wobbly. or lonesome. you give it a squeeze when you’re certain its powers will work like a cell phone, connect you in magical ways, without even dialing. and the heart on the other end of the line will be there, will know that you’re calling, really she will.

because hearts in the pocket are like that.

they connect you.

and when you are six, and going off in the world, for the very first time really. for the very first time where the lumps in your tummy, and the ones in your throat are so big you think they might choke you. or send you flying to the boys’ room, way, way down the hall, before it’s too late.

the need for a heart, the need for a something, became wholly apparent last night in the dark.

that’s when your heart’s bared. that’s when all that is hiding comes out of the shadows. that’s when your room and your bed get overly crowded. that’s when the things that behave all through the day come haunting. they decide in the nighttime, they want some air time. they want to romp in your head.

that’s when the feet came. tiptoeing down the stairs, around the corner, right to my side, that’s when the words came too: “mama, i need to talk to you about something really serious about school.”

and so, of course, i stopped what i’d thought was important, scooped him onto my lap, and i listened.

“ i think i’ll be homesick.”

that was round one. before it was ended we’d talked, re-climbed the stairs, re-tucked into bed, re-kissed that soft head.

then came round two.

again, feet shuffling.

this time i was not far from his room. this time the words came in whispers, barely audible whispers there at the top of the stairs, where i promptly sat down.

“i’m nervous about tomorrow. i’m afraid i might vomit.”

the child goes straight for the heart. cuts no corners. softens no blows.

in a word, he took me right back. took me back to the weeks, there were two of them, one in kindergarten, one in first grade, where i too got so sick, so dehydrated, they twice tossed me in the hospital. i remember it vividly. remember the little pink puppet they sent me home with. but i remember other things, too, that weren’t quite so nice. things that still give me shudders.

i know what it is to be so afraid, so rumbly inside that you can’t hear a word, and the room feels like it’s swirling.

i took my boy by the hand. we had us some digging to do.

“we need a heart,” i informed him, as i led him. as if i knew just how to fix this. as if i was a sorcerer and i held the potion that would cure whatever ailed him. sometimes even parents play pretend. because they have to. because sitting there falling apart would not help. would not do a thing.

so we pretend that we’ve all sorts of lotions and potions and balms. we dab cream on a cut, make it feel better. whip up concoctions to take out the sting. we do voodoo and rain dances, for crying out loud. whatever it takes to get over the bumps.

the bump last night called for a little red heart. or a little wee something. something he could slip in his pocket, and know i was there. not down the street, around the corner, four more blocks south.

we dug through my top drawer, the one where i stash all my treasures. there was a rock shaped like a heart, a tarnished old ring, a bunny the size of a quarter. and the two red see-through hearts.

we sifted and sorted. i let him decide. i told him how his big brother, too, used to go off in the world with me in his pocket. explained how it worked. how you give it a squeeze and you know that i’m there. that i’m thinking. and loving. and waiting. for the end of the day when he’ll be home again.

i told him i, too, have him in my pocket. how i too would carry a heart. give it a squeeze. send a signal. all day, back and forth, little hearts would be flying. would be defying all logic and sense, and even some science.

but they’d not ever quit. would not break. not run out of batteries. they are forever.

good thing when you’re six, you know things by heart. and you believe, most of all, the things that your mama, she tells you.

especially at night, especially past bedtime, when all of your insides come tumbling right out. when the house has no noise, and the moon guides your way down the stairs.

that is the hour that’s blessed. that is the hour that mamas and papas and all the people who love you pull out their needles and thread, and even their little red buttons, whatever it takes to stitch you and your heart all back together.

now go to sleep, sweetheart, and when the day comes, just give me a squeeze. and i’ll do the same. we’re as close as two hearts in a pocket.

that’s a promise i’ll keep. i promise.

any butterflies and rumbly tummies at your house? what magic spells and secret potions do you have to chase them away? do you remember your first long day away from home, tucked in a school desk, when you thought your heart would pound right through your chest, and the flip-flops in your tummy nearly did you in? did someone you love soothe you? make you believe you could get over the hump? do you still get butterflies? i do…..

8 Comments

June 4, 2007

monster fighter

the little one plays a never-ending game of dot-to-dot all day long. he changes socks, he drops them. he yanks off his shorts, he leaves them puddled on the rug. you could trace his every move, his every change of clothes and plaything, walking room to room, plucking from the floor, where he has deposited all the evidence.

we are trying to change that. we are in week three of pick-up therapy.

thus, when i wandered in his room the other night, en route to his least desired destination–bed–i was a.) not so surprised to see the detritus of a busy day strewn around the rug, and b.) insistent that it return to whence it came, the basement.

he truly is a good little boy, but this night my pointing down the stairs was met with unblinking resistance.

“it’s for fighting monsters,” he informed. “i’m wearing it to bed.”

it seems that while i was wiping out the sink one last time for the evening, tucking ice cream spoons away, he was carefully, premeditatedly, scouring the basement for the very tools i had thought were mere droppings from the day.

he had climbed up stairs with hockey stick and batting helmet, swimming goggles, and, of course, his trusty saber. the one that glows and makes a throaty roar. more like a gargle, really, but don’t tell that to a 5-year-old monster warrior.

and so, after brushing all those teeny-tiny baby teeth, not a one of which is even wiggly, he pulled off the ordinary clothes of ordinary mortal, and, like superman inside the phone booth, became the monster fighter boy.

the goggles went on first. “monsters poke your eyes out,” he once again informed, matter-of-factly, as if he’d been reading monster manuals and i had not.

step two, according to those manuals, i suppose, the batting helmet. backwards, apparently. giving the monster warrior a darth vader sort of style. perhaps he’d been preening before the mirror, trying it front and back. or perhaps these things just happen. perhaps little boys just know. what it takes to trounce a scary thing in bed.

the light saber, curiously, wisely, was tucked on the elastic waist of the undies he’d decided gave him maximum monster-battling maneuverability.

and then, the hockey stick. this, oddly (as if all the rest wasn’t odd enough), he threaded through the undies, on a fierce diagonal, wholly crossing his little body. he slid one end, the end that doesn’t slap the puck, down behind the waist band on the left, poked it out the leg hole on his right. hmm.

somehow, carefully, i assure you–boys, again, know instinctively to be careful of these parts–he climbed abed.

and there he lay, armed and very ready for whatever purple hairy, green-fanged thing dared to come across his threshold.

so fierce he was, lying there, eyes like frog, head in turtle shell, sticks at the criss-crossed ready, any monster who came his way would simply have to be a fool.

this monster gear has been a part of bedtime for the whole last week. every night there is the slightest tweak in the armament. the helmet and the sticks, though: indispensable.

it didn’t take me long to connect the dots, to draw the line, between monster fighting nights and end of kindergarten days.

aha, i said, as i played assistant to the ever-delicate ascent to bed, a climb that could, with just a single sorry twist, impair his future. if you catch my drift.

of course i said in passing what i always say of monsters: they aren’t real, sweetheart. they are pretend. monsters live in books, and on the tv screen.

i said it sort of like a band-aid. sort of in the way a doctor used to say, take an aspirin, call me in the morning.

i did not press the point because surely there is something he thinks he needs to fight. and i’ll always honor that. honor the existence of whatever unnamed hairy monster lurks inside his head.

if only you and i could so simply fight our demons. if only sliding on a hard-shelled helmet, squeezing on the safety goggles could shield us from our fears.

i am thinking that the end of school is feeling a bit like walking off a cliff, or into a big dark cave. it is a darkness, an unknown, that we step into every day. but we aren’t 5. so we hide our safety goggles. keep the helmet under our hat.

when you’re 5, though, you hide little. you strut your safety gear. it’s just the monster outlines that remain a little fuzzy.

in fact, my monster fighter is not saying much about these monsters. he is keeping the enemy rather under wraps, close to the vest. a good monster warrior is like that. he can’t disclose too much about the enemy.

all we know is that the enemy is there. and the monster warrior is armed and ready. and being very brave. he’ll not slip blindly into the night. he is safe, i know and he knows, behind his sword and goggles.

whatever is the danger. whatever is the bother, he quite foxily figured out a plot to keep the upper hand.

i’ll not take that away. i will assist in any way the growing monster fighter who is figuring out a way to take on the evils of the world.

but i will, for now, always tiptoe back to make sure the little goggles are not squeezing his little sleeping eyeballs.

once again, i stand back and marvel at the growing human mind. little people’s ways are uncanny. have you a tale to tell of a little person who took on the shadows, armed in no uncertain terms? how did you learn to fend for yourself from what might be lurking ’round a corner? or are you, like me, still thick in the middle of the learning. and eager to try on the nearest batting helmet?

10 Comments

April 11, 2007

thinking in circles

last night, while i scrubbed the onion burn off the bottom of a pan, i dove in deep in conversation with a mind i have known since delivery, which i think was just the other year.

heck, i can close my eyes and see that brain unborn, an ultrasonic skull, white-on-black on screen, the fuzzy outlines of cerebrum, the big black space i once mistook for lack of brain. until the radiologist talked me off the ceiling. i’ve had my eye on that gray matter since way back, in the beginning.

only last night, suddenly flashed forward, we parsed evil versus harmful. evil, he pointed out, is big picture; harmful is far less sinister in scope. next, he told me why he worries about organized religion; he worries that too many are too judgmental. who do people think they are, he asked, judging other people? it simply makes no sense. the God he knows forgives.

then he tossed out this: “people say you’ve gotta be good because you’ll go to heaven. it’s not about heaven,” he said as if that’s plain as day. “it’s about how you’ll impact other people.
“oy!”

not a heartbeat later, he’d moved onto deep forgiveness and i’d moved onto the pan that steamed asparagus.

he circled the sink and me, the boy who’s walked in circles as he thinks ever since he started thinking, which might have been the original day he lifted foot from ground and placed it back again. nearly 13 years, he’s walked circles ’round me; now, i realized as i grabbed for towel to dab at dripping pan, he thinks circles ’round me too.

when all the pots were clean enough, he and i indulged in sweet dessert—even deeper conversation. we retired to the maple table, we pulled up chairs, an after-dishes tete-a-tete all too rare in the world of over-busy, overburdened children. a tete-a-tete that might be required should anyone ever think to license those who sign certificates of birth.

while he ticked through list of one to twelve, a ranking of degrees of evil, each culled from news reports of recent years, i couldn’t help but note how on the days the news had happened, i’d so fiercely blocked him, little thinker, from this very litany of horrors—columbine, timothy mcveigh, the east texas worse-than-lynching death of james byrd, jr., the black man tied behind a pickup truck and dragged down a country road (my thinker’s pick for evil no. 1), and of course 9-11, which unfolded just minutes after i’d put him, then third grader, on a 12-seat van, newborn in my arms, his first solo ride to school on the far side of the city, a ride that, torturously that september day, coursed him through the shadows of chicago’s tallest towers.

back then, not long ago, i’d not wanted him to know the world could hold such hell.

and now, just minutes later, he was almost-man equipped with mind that studied every shade and shadow of every real-life horror story, probed for what it meant well beyond the news. a mind, i couldn’t help but notice, i could drink like desert water for the rest of all my days.

i shook my head, although he didn’t see me shaking. how, i wondered, did we get to here so fast? how is it that all those bedtime prayers, and all those late-into-the-night conversations, the ones where tears were wiped, the ones where stories told and questions asked sometimes felt like brill-o to my heart, how is it that while i was keeping watch, i swear i was, he had unfolded from little thinker of big thoughts into this mind, this soul, who, as i watch, is sharpening that tool, the way a carver sharpens knives, so he can use it to try to rid the world of what he sees as evil and injustice.

there are not, it seems, too many moments when you freeze the frame, see what’s taking shape before your very eyes. not on-stage moments. not graduations. not holding up a torah, or taking first communion. but right there, at the kitchen sink and just beyond, at the same maple table where you once set your elbows and launched a life of asking big fat questions.

there are a million moments along the road to that maple table and the parsing of degrees of evil that are, simply put, not a lot of fun.

there were fevers when the mercury shot to 105. and back at the beginning, weeks of rocking him beside the tub with the water running hard, something about the rushing sound that soothed (hmm, wonder if that’s why he now takes showers that could go on for hours).

there were schooldays when i heard all about how he’d stood alone on the playground, or perched on the roof of the climbing house, keeping watch on all the other children playing games without him.

and then we up and moved in the middle of fourth grade, and he endured a whole semester as the new kid from the city, the kid who in a town where baseball truly mattered, barely ever got on base, and swung at nearly every ball.

but sitting at that table, watching how he thinks, realizing that i was talking to a soul i couldn’t have designed to be more nourishing to my own soul, i couldn’t stop the warming down my spine: i’d do it all, all over again. in a blink, please sign me up.

it is perhaps the sweetest after-dinner morsel i’ve tasted in a long, long time: half an hour being circled by my firstborn child.

might i mention that it is exceedingly hard to write about how you love your growing-up child. i groped my way through the dark just now. i do it not to say how wonderful he is–that’s not the point at all. i do it to hold up the fact that here we are, some of us, in the very blessed front-row seat, watching the spectacle of true creation. it is almost unspoken, shared perhaps in pillow talk, the truth that what we’re watching takes our breath away. this is, i hope and pray, a place where we can whisper out loud the things not spoken often elsewhere. it is majesty, in rawest form. and though it’s hard as heck to put words to God’s most divine creation, i thought it worth a take. this, after all, is life in roughest draft. as always, i pull in close, i would love to hear your thoughts…

and while you’re at it, please, keep my blessed friend susan and her mama in your prayers. they could use a few today.

4 Comments

March 22, 2007

questions without answers

hands loosely on the wheel, old blue wagon gliding to a stop, i was blankly looking through the rain-splotched windshield when the little voice behind me shot me this:

“mama, when we die, what will happen? will the world start again?”

he barely gave me time to gulp, time to gather thought, compose an honest answer, when the rat-a-tat continued.

“well, will i die?

“will you?

“when will dada die?”

i could not keep my eyes on the road. i turned and locked on his. he was looking up, looking my way, searching me for answers.

i gave him my best shot. told him straight. yes. yes. and, oh, honey, we don’t know.

all three appended with this attempt at reassuring: not for a long, long time.

then i launched into heaven 101.

praying as i went.

how, i ask you, in the middle of a ho-hum drive to home from hockey, did the most essential questions come popping from his mouth? why not something simple, like, mama, can i have macaroni for my lunch?

macaroni, i could handle. knock that sucker, kaboom, clear out of the park.

camus and sartre, hiding under hockey jersey, i could only fumble, hands barely groped at bat.

it is, i swear, the deepest privilege of being a mama or a papa, or a someone who breathes in sync with little people. being the first pair of ears to hear these questions as they leap from child’s soul. to witness from front row the human mind expand, go deeper, gather goods to last a lifetime.

it is self, unedited. it is child’s quintessential work, exploring the unknown. making sense of everything from how the dandelion blows to what happens when i am no longer. asking giant questions of the universe, and aiming them, first shot out, at the original sounding board of life.

in the case of my little boy, that would most often be me, the one who birthed him, nursed him, rocked him through his early, howling bedtime hours. as i’m still the one he’s with the most hours of the day, i’m pretty much the moving target on which he throws his thinking-child darts.

out of the blue, left field, in the middle of a meatloaf, the questions, they come hurling. there is no agenda in a child’s mind, no timetable for when a question comes. in the seamlessness of mind and soul, the question’s posed in the midst of its creation.

you never have a clue, never get a notice, that your very breath might soon be sucked away by the tender beauty, the monumental power, of the unexpected puzzle of the hour.

it is, for all of us who spend the day in striking distance of a child’s heart, the often-unrepeated script. the lost dialogue you can never seize again. it unspools so suddenly, so without ceremony, you can sometimes only hope that you’ll remember. but then the business of the day shoves the thought aside, and no matter how you try, you can’t retrieve the words, or the magic of the moment.

sure, we sometimes hear the silly lines. used to find them tucked in the pages of the reader’s digest. nowadays, they come in fwd emails, alleged collections of the darnedest things that children say. i often laugh then hit delete.

but what about when the script comes tumbling forth in real time, and you’re the only one who hears. you’re the one who gets to fill in blanks, connect the dots, pick a or b or c, all of the above. take a stab at the deepest truths known to humankind.

because the job i do each day, the job besides the ones i do at home, is to scribble madly, gather quotes, listen closely to each and every word and how it’s said, i have a rather unstoppable inclination to reach for pen whenever quotes unfurl.

especially ones that nearly make me wreck the car (although you might argue that scribbling while trying to hold the wheel only enhances the chance of body shop in my offing).

of all the wise souls i have quoted, and i have quoted many, i don’t think that any lines have done as much for stealing breath as the ones i’ve caught while stirring, steering, scrubbing curly hair.

the jottings that i jot, long ago from thinker 1 and now from thinker 2, are in fact a first-hand record of the unfolding of a child’s soul, even when the questions are hard to hear, the answers hard to come by.

lest you misguidedly surmise that all are thick and dense and heavy, here’s the one he lobbed my way, just yesterday, just an hour after heaven 101, spooning—yes, it’s true—macaroni in his hungry mouth.

“mama,” he began his latest theory, “i think when food goes down there’s like a theme park and it goes down a roller coaster.” uh huh, i utter, in the middle of my swallow.

“is there like an exit for the bad food,” he asks, pointing to his neck. “does it go this way or this way?” he wonders further, making motions east and west from just above that hockey jersey.

i am starting to think, now jotting my own thought, that perhaps the recent lack of sleep (see “the trouble with sleep,” 03.21.07) is doing wonders for my budding thinker.

what are the questions without answers at your house?

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March 21, 2007

the trouble with sleep

if we were in the tv listings, it’s not clear whether we’d be pegged as tragedy or comedy. let’s call it the tragi-comedy that wouldn’t quit.

it started, as many prime time episodes often do, innocently enough. the antagonist (that would be me) duly bathed, and read and prayed with sir protagonist (that’s him up above, but that’s getting way ahead of the script).

there was the usual kiss on the head, the “sleep tight,” as sheets were pulled and tucked one last time, the “see you in the morning,” tossed over the shoulder as mama antagonist sauntered out of the room, hit the hall light and thought she’d have, oh, maybe an hour to herself.

she had barely rounded the kitchen corner, barely wrapped her hands on the popcorn she’d be popping, when the first plaintive wail came wending down the stairs.

something about a back rub.

antagonist, being mean, shot back a simple: “go to sleep.”

back rub plea, repeated.

teetering between tenderness and needing to cork the noise, mean mama softens–nay, relents–and ascends for what at best might be termed a 15-second swish of palm to little back.

just enough time for little mastermind to toss his next attempt at barring sleep. this time something about being lonely. needing cheetah. mama rolls her eyes. in the dark, he must have missed that.

she retreats to office. he, apparently, set off to nighttime jungle, where, big hunter he, he procured the big cat of his desires. which is what you see above. the trophy moment, caught on film. marlin perkins couldn’t be more proud.

if memory serves me right (these nighttime dramas make me foggy-headed, they twist and go so long), there were these added bumps in the weary road to sleep: the cheetah, it seems, was not enough. soon all the friends were needed. which, then, precipitated the problem of needing sleeping room for entire mattress menagerie.

at quarter ’til eleven–egad, if i believed in caps, those last three words would have been big and raised–his animals apparently lined neatly in a row, stretched from one end of the bed to the other, young sir protagonist tiptoed in the dark to where i sat typing. he sidled up quite softly, whispered in my ear, so sweet he took my breath away: “i have a little problem. i have a pillow for all my friends, but now there’s no pillow for me.” dropping his whisper even lower, he offered his solution: “i’ll grab a little couch pillow.”

as he wandered out for pillow fetching, he turned to ask me this: “what does cardinal start with? what does st. louis cardinals start with?” the boy is learning letters, and apparently at that late hour, all barricades are lifted, and thoughts just flow like cars cruising late-night streets.

yes, yes, at last, the house was quiet. (but not before two music boxes crashed onto the ground at an hour i won’t disclose, promptly–i assure you–propelling me off my chair and up the stairs to see what the bleep was the matter. what in heaven’s name? was he cranking lullabyes for pillow-hogging critters? alas, i did not ask. i had firm tucking to attend to.)

yes, yes, with that crescendo, our little drama ends. the late night rambler, cat in arms, finally quelled his rambling soles deep beneath the covers.

i never did get mad. it was all too charming, a charm perhaps only a mother could love.

i can hear you shrieking. i might hear you dialing dcfs, the folks in illinois who protect little ones, god bless them deeply.

but before the sirens blare, before they cart me off, might we pause and ponder just why the dark abyss of sleep feels so deep and bottomless to a child who clings to light in any form? why some nights is the settling to bed so agitated an exercise that all are worn and wounded before it winds to its hushed-at-last conclusion?

in my house, both boys come by disdain for sleep, well, rather honestly. naturally, in fact. i would be one who, if she could, would round the clock with nary but a nap. i love early morning. i love late night. that leaves little room for dozing in the middle.

the trouble with sleep, as i see it, is you get so little done. i find every hour has its charms. deep down, i think, i hate to miss a minute of this blessed thing called life.

and so, my little children just might think the same. no wonder i was charmed by the litany of pleas that kept the cheetah hunter prowling deep into the dark of night.

and thank heaven for kindergarten in the afternoon. while he sleeps off his prowl, i get the morning to myself.

pssst….it’s not always so drawn out. this particular protracted bedtime was truly made for tv. sometimes these episodes simply shout to be recorded. and you can always change the channel. though, of course, i hope you’ll stay tuned. in fact, i know there are other bedtime dramas out there. any takers in the fine art of telling bedtime tales?

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March 1, 2007

all through the night

let’s see, doctors in med school do it. fire fighters do it. airplane pilots, if they’re flying ’round the world, do it. but, no, i think they get breaks. i’m pretty sure some federal regulator decided it’s not a good idea to fly a locomotive with wings on two winks of sleep.

but mamas do do it. papas too, plenty of times. work through the night. forgo the pillow they so long for because someone who’s little is crying, is whimpering, is making bold proclamations such as the one that bounced into my ear at 4:38 this morning: “mama, my tummy is gurgling. should we go to the bathroom? because i may throw up.”

that was merely crescendo to what had been building for hours. started with a hot body, hot like a rock left in the oven, tucked in the sheets beside me, a true furnace for my always-cold toes. the hot body needed bubble-gum fever-killer. the hot body needed cold washcloth, pressed to head, just like my mama used to press to my own. the hot body left his bed, was airlifted by papa, to our bed. that was at 1 something. the hours between are a blur. sort of like the type on this screen through my eyes with no sleep. (you’ll understand, you’ll forgive, if verbs they are missing this morning; they would be found, i assure you, under the pillow i did not get to use during the night of the hot body beside me.)

it’s certainly a scene i’ve played before. not a one of us who signs up for this gig, this parenting gig, gets a free ride, an escape-from-the-night-on-the-bathroom-floor clause. but lying there, counting the sides of the hexagon tiles, over and over and over again–snapping just the one picture above because this is photojournalism, darn it, and my bathroom floor was a war zone and we wanted you to have a feel for the mood there in the trenches–lying there in between gurgles i had plenty of time to ponder.

to ponder the infinite power of the pull between mother and child as you groggily push away sleep, push away every note in your brain calling you back to the bed, because you are ministering to a sick little child, one who in the dark and the black of the night calls out your name, not anyone else’s name, because you are the one chance he’s got to make it all better. the child has powers invested in you. he believes in you. and you, darn it, had better come through.

so lying there together, we fumble. we try rubbing that tummy. re-wetting the cloth. we sing lullabies. and we both moan together. it’s all voodoo really. but it’s the voodoo of love. i know there’s a virus in there running amok. took enough physiology to know a silly old washcloth will not make a dent. but i grab that cloth anyway, crank the faucet to cold, but not too cold, drape it over his brow. i wonder if my mother’s mother did the same. i wonder if the cold cloth on the head is buried deep within my maternal wiring. or if it’s deep in all mothers, all women, all humans.

i lie there on the floor ’til the whimpering stops, ’til the gurgle stops gurgling. then slowly we rise, grope through the dark back to the bed. the light out the window is shifting. not far away it is dawn. the hot body, still hot, climbs in first; i climb beside him, entwine.

slowly his body goes still, his breathing is steady and soft. i, too, drift off for maybe a quarter of an hour. then, blaring, the alarm tells me nighttime is over. it’s time to get up and get moving. it’s morning, and i, like the doctor, the firefighter, but not the pilot who’s federally regulated, i am on 24/24ths of the day. unlike the doctor, the firefighter, all of whom get to go home, i am 24/7. this is home. this is my job that won’t stop.

yup, it’s a job that leaves you, me, all of us, plenty exhausted. but not for the life of me would i not want to be the one counting the tiles at 4:38 in the morning.

i close my eyes and still feel my mama’s thick hand on my brow, bracing my shoulders as my little gut wrenches. forty-some years down the road, my little guy might close his eyes; i want my hand on his brow to be the thing he remembers. it’s my prize for endlessly counting the tiles.

and your tales of mothering all through the night? you, or your very own mama?

3 Comments

February 23, 2007

slippers for david

at our house today our hearts are skipping. if you hear a thump in my typing today it’s because my heart it is thumping.

david is coming home. david is coming to our house. david is, pretty much, christmas and new years and birthday and fourth of july, all rolled into one.

david is uncle everything.

he’s the big box under the tree, the confetti, the cake with the candles, the fireworks that light up the night.

he is, to my boys and to me, essential. if oxygen is 02, david is 01. david is the stuff that we breathe. david is life.

and he’s coming home. coming back from his new life in maine, where chairs are the thing that he builds. but a new life is the thing that he’s carving, he and his love, sweet rebecca.

this is the longest he’s been away, and for my boys it’s felt like a lifetime. since he’s been gone, one broke a neck and had a bar mitzvah. the other went off to kindergarten, and learned to pick up a pencil.

we keep in touch, close touch, through the incredible phalanx of options that define ’007.

but still the absence is aching. you can’t feel the rough of his fingers through an email. can’t watch the light dance in his eyes over the phone. can’t inhale how he fills up a room with his remarkable mix of genius and joy. not when you’re 1000-some miles away.

and so, we put out the slippers.

david asked for a day that is given form by the slippers. a day of no strictures, no schedules, no plans, no great expectations.

a day just to be. to be with the boys. to cook. and to eat. to pull up to the table. a day to lie on the floor and stare up at the ceiling. together. a day to tell stories. to laugh. to make silly noises. a day to look for the moon. to marvel at stars. a day to pull out the pillows, make a camp on the floor.

a day for just slippers.

so, of course, we put out our very best slippers. the ones you see up above, waiting just by the door. nothing but the best for our beloved sweet david.

for two weeks now, the little one has been counting as close to backwards as he is able. he asks, fifteen times a day, mama, how long ’til uncle david?

at long last the answer is zero. today is the day that david is coming.

and, boy oh boy, will we ever be ready.

soon as the little one rubs the sleep from his eyes, he’ll be right by the door. waiting. with the slippers.

you see, david was here from the get-go for that little guy. came to the hospital just hours after he was born, and he was born in the middle of night. but david came anyway. david held him. baptized him in a cascade of quiet tears. that little baby was not just a dream come true for me, but testament to many that you can, in the end, cradle your longest-held dream. and my little one came when david needed a dose of that truth. needed to press it close to his heart.

they’ve been joined at the heart ever since.

and my other one, the one i now call the man-child, well, david jumped in six months after delivery day. wasn’t in town ’til the midpoint of year no. 1 for boy no. 1. but when david jumps, stand back for the splashing.

from day numero uno of the days they locked eyes on each other, david gave the now-man-child the absolute whole of his heart.

the litany is long, the litany is rich. here are a few of the highlights: the night he stayed up ’til the dawn, making a life-size aquarium out of a refrigerator box, a work of art, of pastels and passion, if ever there was. the saturn cake he baked for his birthday, the ring of spun sugar, a forest of sparklers scaring the behoozies out of the 5-year-old boy. who loved it, after the sparklers went pfft. the day he showed up at the door with fare for the train, a compass, a map and a grease pencil. the two, uncle david, little man-child (then maybe 6 or 7), spent the day riding the rails, learning the city, but learning forever that you can get wherever you want in this world, and the path uncharted is the one that brings joy you never expected.

the curriculum according to david includes african drumming, purple heart wood, and sushi. victor wooten, the great jazz guitarist. riding a scooter six long blocks to the place that sells extra-choice hot dogs. stopping midway to lie on the grass, and look for shapes in the clouds. a larger-than-life papier-mache elephant head named omar, crafted by david and becca, inspired by a trip to the zoo.

and that’s just the beginning.

the list, i’m sure, will go on as long as there’s air in their lungs. the lessons more lasting the older they grow.

and that’s just the boys.

what he’s taught me is immense.

what he’s taught me the best is that a day rich in slippers is a day to be treasured for life.

may you all have a someone for whom the slippers are waiting. someone you love who fills your heart and your home. we are blessed and we know it. here’s to hearts who come home, and fill every inch of the slippers….

11 Comments

February 20, 2007

paper trail

tucked in the spine of m.f.k. fisher i find scribblings for how to make brisket. bedded down in virginia woolf i find a love heart once ripped from a reporter’s note pad and wedged onto my windshield. the biography of dorothy day, for some reason, contains a motherlode: a check, uncashed, from long long ago; a construction paper anniversary card, now faded along the edge that peeked from the pages; the fresh-faced first-grade school picture of my firstborn; and jottings that tell the tale of a heartbreak borne long long ago.

apparently, i leave my life scattered in bits, buried in bindings, waiting to be exhumed at the flip of a page.

it is the paper trail of my heart. the dots unconnected. the ephemera of a life recorded in scribbles.

i never know what i’ll unearth, or when i’ll stumble upon, say, the train schedule that captured the breathtaking quote my little one spewed about his new jersey grandpa as we rumbled home in the amtrak sleeper in the fall of ’98.
or, sorry about this, the surgical photos documenting the removal of the womb that carried my children, two born, three heartbreakingly not.

each scribble is a passage, a dispatch, that matters. whatever it is that i jotted, it moved me deeply enough that i grabbed for a pen and put pulse to paper. whatever i’ve tucked in the folds of a book is something i can’t bear to lose. even when it hurts.

maybe it’s because i write for a living. but really, i think, i write to keep breathing. if i put it in ink, some brain cell tells me, i hold onto this moment, this thought, this jumble of words in ways that otherwise would not hold. life slips away, i have learned. what’s once in your fingers is gone.

so i scribble. i tuck. i leave paper crumbs. i save the story in snippets.

one christmas, long long ago, i wrote a letter to my whole family. one of my early opuses. poured out my heart. my father, an irishman who kept feelings furled, said only this: “you have a real sense of history.”

that was the last letter i wrote to my father; ended up being the letter they read at his funeral. my father, as always, was right (though i did not understand at the time): i do have an eye locked on history. i do watch it unfold. it’s almost as if one eye lives in the present, the other dwells in the future when what’s now will be the past.

were it not for the notes that i scribble, i would not however know this:

that on september 26, 1997, when my now big boy was just four, he said this: “mommy, i have to tell you a little lesson. when you get a little huffy, you need to calm down. that’s what daddy’s talking about when he says, ‘freddy, calm down.’ you could say sweetly, ‘willie, i’m feeling huffy. could you go out of the room for a little while?’ because when you’re huffy, i say, what the heck. why is mommy huffy? did i not clean my room or something? it makes me feel like i live in a house with no friends.”

or, how on october 4, 1999, an autumn when the first-grade playground for him was a very lonely place, he said: “my heart is open but no one wants to come in.”

or, how after saying prayers on the night of january 19, 2000, he looked up and said: “God must love it at night. i bet he waits all day for it to be night to hear beautiful music.”

i think, given the scribbles, given the puzzle they’ll all put together, i’ll never give up writing my story in torn bits of paper, tucked in the hushed resting places that wait on the shelves of my heart.

do you keep your story in scribbles? do you go digging for how to make chocolate fudge cake, only to find a phone number from long long ago? do the bits that you tuck in your books, or your pockets, leap out and replay some story long past?

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Category: brothers