motherhood | pull up a chair

March 25, 2008

get better box to the rescue

at last, he’s asked for it. that might mean–after a long stretch of nights on the bathroom floor, after middle-of-the-night calls to the doctor when his hot little body started to shake and could not be stopped, after two rounds of mean nasty medicines–he’s finally coming back with the living.

(i should mention right off that this has nothing to do with the ol’ easter story–that most recent mention around here of a return to the living; rather, this is simply the tale of a boy and a bug and a box that seems to hold magical powers.)

it’s the get better box, and it lives on a shelf in his bedroom. way up high, where only a mama on tippiest toes can get at it, where she’ll blow off the assemblies of dust, lay it down at the side of his bed, or the couch if that’s where he’s stretched.

it’s a box that comes out only on days when there’s nowhere to go, and not much to do, except maybe to gauge the rise and the fall of the mercury there on the stick your mama keeps shoving under your tongue.

it’s a box that in our house is the nearest thing to wizardry, imbued as it is with the pure healing powers of trinkets and bits and thingamajigs. like the doctor’s black bag of long long ago, whatever’s pulled out from its shadowy insides is certain to fix you, or at least to distract you till the fever retreats.

it is all part of the witchcraft of healing a child. four tablets of fever-fighters, washed down with the voodoo of playthings reserved for the sickbed.

whatever it takes, is the mantra of grownups charged with the curing of limp, pallid bodies. of mouths that won’t open even for ice cream, mouths that seem only to moan. of foreheads so hot you worry whatever’s inside will be singed.

why, we wring washcloths and lay them on heads. we draw baths at 2 in the morning. we soothe and we coo and we rub. and all that we get, often, is more of the groaning.

until, at last, at our house, at least, that box is unearthed from the highest of heights.

if you cracked open the lid, peeked just into the shaft of light you’ve let in, you would see there before you an inventory of the ordinary: stickers, and play-doh, and puppets to slip on the tips of your fingers. you would see pencils the size of a toothpick, in a rainbow of colors. and small slips of paper to fold, or to scribble upon. you would see a stone rubbed smooth at the edge of a lake. and a feather or two, plucked from the trees, where a disrobing bird might have left them behind.

what you would not see is the incandescence its contents bring to the face of the boy who, at long last, looks up from his pillow with the faint light of joy there in the black hole of his eye.

it is the first sign of hope, and it comes from the box, i swear on a Bible.

just now i hear humming, clear from the couch. where the boy is at play with a whole troupe of puppets. it’s been nearly a quarter of an hour since he last called my name, which given the most recent days in our house, is quite rather a miracle.

the idea was not mine, nor did i have such a cure-all when i was a child. a dear and wise mother i know, one whose charm was, in good measure, the make-believe world she built for her children, she gave me instructions long long ago, and assured me the powers the squat box would bring.

and then, leaning in, she whispered the part that mattered the most, she insisted.

“when your little one’s better you must, together, take it outside, lay each ingredient in the sun, and explain that the ills are escaping and pure healing sunlight is being absorbed. it is the ritual, as much as the rarity of the box, that makes it so special,” i remember her saying.

ever since, it’s as much a part of our sickdays, as is the rubberband on the glass of the afflicted, and the folded-up washcloth there on the brow.

i can hardly believe i once wore a nurse’s cap on my head, but never had heard of the get better box. only once admitted to the ranks of motherhood, did a mother i love whisper the surest cure in the books. one so certain to cure, it’s not written anywhere.

until now.

the sad truth of the get better box story is that the mother who first spelled out its magic is now nursing a daughter with very bad cancer. not all the get better boxes in the world seem to be working. so on this day, when her magic is casting its spell here at my house, i wish and pray i had something to offer to her. i send love. i send light. i send prayer. what healing rituals did you grow up with, or have you birthed for your little ones?

5 Comments

March 19, 2008

not too big

any day now, it’ll evaporate.

i’ll look out the window and not see the little boy bundled in snow suit and puffy snow pants, the one too little to know it’s quite little-boyish to pull up that hood, pull it so tight, so only his little boy cheeks, all rosy and round, poke out from the layers of puff upon puff. i won’t see, anymore, how he kicks that one chunk of snow all the way home, from bus stop to house, a 10-minute meander that has him winding and spinning and kicking and scooping and, yes, ykkh, licking that snow.

any day now, i won’t walk in his room to kiss him awake, only to find at the foot of his bed, an old cardboard box he’s made into a house for his little two rabbits, who he’s tucked into bed, maybe read them by flashlight a story, whispered their prayers, then kissed them goodnight.

any day now, he won’t fit on my hip, that perch of old bone that was built, i’m convinced, to hold up a child in tears, or in heartache, or, every once in a while, in deep cuddling mode.

any day now, his legs will get longer, his words will get less of a little-boy lisp. and the occasional lapse into pure make-believe will go poof, will vanish away, overnight.

there won’t be a bear with a name. we won’t set a place at the table for that wild-haired lion named leo. (a cat who insists, by the way, on rice chex topped with bananas, more milk, please; a diet eerily close to the one thing his trainer could eat–and does–morning, noon and most every night.)

any day now, he’ll be all gone, my sweet little boy.

he’ll be replaced by a model less likely, i’m supposing, to give me a rub on my back for no reason besides that he still loves the feel of my skin. he won’t want to climb in my bed and play 20 questions on saturday mornings. and i doubt he’ll hand me the phone and ask me to dial because all the numbers just mix him all up.

so, right now, and right here, i have every intention of cupping it all in the palm of my hand. like sweet and cool waters, there at the edge of the stream on a day that’s unbearably dry.

i’ll suck it all up, suck every last drop, before it slithers away, slips through my fingers and back to the stream, where it rushes away.

i won’t get it again. this water comes once, comes in a rush that at first feels too much, and too hard to swallow, even in gulps. but then as it goes, as it trickles away, down your wrists, down your arms, back to the stream, you feel, already, the parch in your throat.

of late, the pangs come often, come hard. i miss him already. i long for these days, and they’re not even gone yet.

it’s a trick of the brain, a trick of the heart. and it’s not just a trick for the mamas among us. all of us, each, every one, we know what it is to miss someone we love before they’re not here anymore.

i really don’t think i’ve some special equipment here in my brain, the gymnastic button that lets me leap forward in time, and somersault back. it’s all of us, i’m pretty sure, with that human capacity to long and to miss, before it’s the time.

it’s the thing, is it not, that churns deep in our soul, propels us to love and love deeper. to cherish. to know, in our blood, with the swirls of our fingertips even, that what’s in our midst is sacred, is holy, is never forever.

and so, i go through my day with one extra eye. it’s trained on the child growing before me. i reach out and grab when the moments are sweet, and then all the sweeter.

the boy with the bear. the boy who climbs, still, on my lap. takes my hand in a crowd, squeezes it tight. the boy who calls out my name in the night, and awakes curled in a ball in the morning, all flannel and cowboy pajamas, and rosy and toasty, and playing like a ’possum.

it is a hard thing in this world to know just how to ready a child for all that awaits, a planet of wars and digital overload. a world where too many children are bounding toward grown-up, skipping right over the parts that teach them tender is golden, is good, is–in my book–truly essential.

so i stick with the basics, with what i know best, and what i believe with all of my whole. and i let it all play in the slowest of slo-mo.

i relish the old cardboard box, and the chance to tuck in a bunny to bed. i aim for the winding way home. and a sweet little boy in no hurry to harden.

i’ll savor each drop of each day. and know, soon enough, i’ll be ever so thirsty. and my sweet little boy will be big. too big for my hip. but never, my heart. which grows right along with him.

if this old chair has brought me anything, it’s brought me a place to pour out my love affair with my little one. forgive me the days i get sappy. i can’t really help it. see, if nothing else, some day that child will have all these pages to pore over, to read once again how his mother, she loved him. not a bad thing to bequeath, so i’m penning it now, while it’s bright in my eyes. the other thing is that writing about him has made me savor him in ways that might escape me if i was only tangled up in his moments. to write is to step back, make sense, untangle, see clearly. feel the pang right there in the heart. and so it is, and so i write. and you, if you choose, if you care to, you read along.

do you have that gymnastics button in your brain, the one that makes you leap back and forth in time? the one that propels you to a deeper grasp of the fact that what’s before you really is precious, really does deserve your fullest attention? how does it work for you?

and oh, by the way, that ol’ lazy susan is spinning afresh. not quite spring. but fresh, none the less. give it a click.

5 Comments

February 8, 2008

when words spill, finally, from lips

it was the very last thing he told me the other night, as i hugged him extra tight after a flawless and dramatic flashlight reading–his reading, by the way, not mine–of that not-quite-classic “morris has a cold.”

i had tears before he even told me, just huddled there beside him, listening to his intonations, taking in his little asides–“this is really funny,” says he, offering his literary critique in whispers in my ear–hearing him growl when the bear talked in capital letters, shouting when an exclamation mark allowed, encouraged, insisted.

when he got to the end–the outline of a smile stretched from ear to ear across his face, half-lit in flashlight shadow– i couldn’t keep from burying him in arms and heart that couldn’t be contained. (a fine thing that comes with mamahood is, sometimes, you don’t have to keep your hands to yourself.)

i started to tell that blessed child that i knew, oh, boy, i knew, how steep that mountain climb had been, how i knew it was really, really hard to be the almost only one in all his class who could not get the letters to behave, to fall in line, who had not yet found the on-switch inside his brain to make the words spill from his lips.

i told him i was so, so proud because not once did he slam a book. not once did he burst into tears. he just kept trying. sound after sound. word after word. page after page. determination upon determination,
and look, sweetheart, i said, you made it to the mountain top. you are reading now. and you’re not only reading, you are telling me a story. you are making me see and hear that silly moose and goofy bear. you are making me laugh out loud.

that’s when my little mountain climber–the one we always say is “the egg who wouldn’t take no for an answer”–that’s when he softly, proudly, said, “i’m not in reading group any more.”

which prompted a not-so-poetic “what?!” from me.

you see, he’s been pulled from class every morning of every school day to try to jumpstart those reading pistons. and it had not escaped him that it marked him as, in his eyes, “not so smart as all the other kids.”

said he, upon my yelping: “mrs. patrick took me in the hall today and we had a little talk. she told me i don’t need reading group anymore so i can stay in my classroom now and not miss morning tally.”

by the light of the flashlight beam i caught the glow coming from his smiling cheeks. he saw my face. he saw my tears and smiled even harder. he’d kept his big fat secret till the lights went out. maybe till the time when dreams click on in sleepy heads.

i was shrieking, calling for his daddy. and that’s when he asked, too, if i would get his brother. “i want to make an announcement.”

we all gathered, yes we did, and circled all around the little boy in bed. he was busy tracing arcs of light across his ceiling. and then, with just a moment’s pause for drama’s sake, he spilled the news.

which, considering just months ago i was wondering if maybe he’d repeat first grade, was, well, sweet and stunning all at once.

we whooped. we hollered. both brothers rolled–all arms and legs and sheets–and giggled. i galloped down the stairs to send a note to mrs. r., the amazing first-grade teacher, to find out if this was true, or simply wishful fiction.

upstairs, surrounded by morris (moose), boris (bear), and a beaming flashlight, the triumphant reader finally fell asleep. bushed, no doubt, from all the reading ruckus.

when morning came, so did word from his amazing teacher. it’s true, she wrote, he got to where he dreamed. he is reading, word for word, with all the rest.

to witness such determination is wholly rather humbling. just weeks ago when buttoning his pajamas, he looked up at me and told me kids often called him “stupid.” he told me more than twice that school was really, really hard.

but he was blessed, that child was, with one or two amazing teachers, both of whom stoked his little reading motor. kept him from being swallowed whole by a big bad sentence. or just a stubborn syllable.

mrs. r., i know, wrote him love notes, tucked them in his desk. pulled him to the side, whispered in his ear. reminded him, time and time again, that he was a hero for all the work, and mighty thinking, he was undertaking.

now, i know that he’s not the only one to whom she said these things. but i also know that hers is the gift of making each and every thinker think that her or his cogitation is rather something special.

and the greatest gift of all: someone, besides his mama and his papa, believed in him when he could have fallen down. she wouldn’t let him. she guarded the ledge. kept him climbing till he got to where the words came tumbling from his lips.

standing back and watching, sitting side by side, night after night, book after book, was to snare a front-row seat on the bumpy flight of a kid who wouldn’t be a quitter.

doesn’t matter to me if it’s a boy and a book, or a guy without a leg who rides a bike. there is, in all of us, the capacity to be inspired by those who won’t back down, won’t stop believing that through sheer determination, and a wingspread wide enough to catch the updraft, there’s no challenge that can’t be conquered.

i know my little boy who learned to read–who now tries to make his way through every word in sight; cereal box, passing street sign, names on back of football jerseys, doesn’t matter how or where the letters fall–i know what he taught me this week: don’t slam the book. don’t walk away. a world of never-ending story is just around the corner.

and it never hurts to have a most amazing teacher in your corner, either.

this one’s for my little one’s new jersey grandma, she who lives to teach to read. and kept close eye on all the chutes and ladders of this reading climb. it’s for his teachers too. the ones who worked one-on-one, nearly every single schoolday. and especially for the one named mrs. r, who never stopped believing that she could get him up the mountain, where he now sees the whole wide world of words. most of all, it’s for him himself. and for you who’ve read along, the saga of the struggling reader, i promise–at least i’ll try–no more reading stories. this is the end. and we’ll all turn pages, happily ever after.
sometimes though don’t you just wish you had a billboard to shout hallelujah when you watch a holy triumph? thank heaven, then, for that billboard called the blog. happy half birthday little reader, just in case you read this…..

20 Comments

January 30, 2008

mama hunger

still happens at least once a day. my baby boy, the one now tipping 50 pounds, climbs aboard. he sinks into my hip, grabs on tight around my neck, washes me in kisses, or simply leans his curly head right against my neck.

it’s often first thing in the morning, when he is drowsy still, hasn’t dusted off the sleepy eyes. but sometimes, like yesterday, as we waited for the snow to fly, it’s simply because we still get hungry for each other’s skin.

oh, goodness, that sentence almost sounds like something you would read someplace far from here. but i trust you know me well enough to know perhaps just what i mean.

it could not be cleaner, this hungriness for skin-to-skin. this mama hunger for the baby who once was. for the baby evaporating right before my eyes.

it will all be gone soon, i know, i know. but now, there are wisps of it around, and i am all but licking it from the spoon.

i ache to think that someday not too far from now i will wake up and the baby will be gone, all gone. perhaps it’s that, that makes me so very hungry now. i am committing the baby bits of him to somewhere deep inside me. it’s a dream, perhaps, that i never want to wake from. but, of course, i know i will, and as i drift awake, as he gets big before my eyes, i hold on tight, i cannot get my fill of his deliciousness.

sometimes, i’m overtaken. i cannot keep my nose, my lips, from nuzzling in his baby cheek. cannot keep my hands from reaching out and swooping him to the hip that can barely keep from caving in under the oh-my-goodness growing weight of him.

oh, he is six, all right. very much a big boy. can’t tie his shoes, not quite yet. still stumbles over syllables, when they come one piled on another.

but if i nuzzle close enough, if i hoist him the way i used to do, pretend that he’s not 50 pounds with legs that dangle to beyond my knees, i can catch one last whiff of baby boy before he slips away.

more and more these days i catch myself drinking in the whole of him. i look down, i see legs still in little blue jeans. almost comical those elastic-waisted jeans, as if trying hard to make like big boy pants while winking at the truth.

i see puffy baby hands. not the muscled ones of big boys, or his papa. these hands, round with one fading dimple yet, still fumble with a fork sometimes. still can’t cut with scissors, not without looking as if a gerbil had at that paper, all ziggy and zaggy with dangling bits of cutting that would not succumb to safety blades.

and the cheek. the cheek, all rosy often. and soft and fuzzy still. not fuzzy like the manchild’s; in fact, i’d call that one prickly now, the cheek of he who puts a razor to it once a month or even twice.

no, this is soft like, well, yes, velvet rub of peach, or underside of kitten’s neck, or petal of a summer’s rose. this is soft, but even more, it is irresistible. once i start to sniff it, kiss it, rub my cheek against it, it takes everything i’ve got to stop and breathe again.

it is, i know because my other one’s a man now, a chapter that will pass me by, any day now. and i’m not ready yet. don’t know if any mama ever really gets her fill.

i think it’s how we’re wired. my baby-making years are gone. i look old and older when i look into the mirror. but still, there is someone soft and little in my house. it’s as if, if i taste the sweetness of his skin, if i memorize his weight against my weary bones, i’ll always have him somewhere deep inside. where, after all, a mama’s babe belongs.

do you hunger for your little one, or for the days when your big ones were little? were you mad for the soft spot at the nape of their neck? or was it their toes that sent you to the moon? do you have a nuzzler? did you? i’m not saying, not at all, that there are fewer merits in the ones who drop their stinky shirts and socks all over their sleeping pits, i’m just saying, of course, that as the little ones slip through our fingers, there stirs a hunger that’s hard to fill. how ‘bout you?

14 Comments

January 23, 2008

seed scatterer

somehow, the other night, i swallowed wholly one of the truest truths of growing a thinking child from scratch.

mighta been one of the hardest ones to swallow, too.

but in the end, i am convinced, i’m one inch closer to a place that’s wiser. even if the getting there was bumpy going down.

you see, somewhere deep inside my head i think i thought that passing on the flames you hold most deeply, dearly, was a matter simply of holding up the wick, turning to the ones we nurse, we diaper change, we spoon feed, we wipe off, bandage, and shuffle on their way. the ones whose ears we whisper into, the ones whose shoes we tie, the ones whose pencil grip we help to rearrange. the ones whose papers we are no longer asked to read, for they are thinking now wholly on their own.

to pass the flame, i thought, was merely this: we turn and touch our kindled wick to theirs. and, poof, the burning light continues.

only, the other night, deep in thought and conversation at the kitchen table, deep in one of those tete-a-tetes that starts out slow, builds, spirals and suddenly is way up high on some perch where air is thin, and grip is slipping, i realized that not all flames are so easily lit from soul to soul.

not when you have, all your life, raised your child to think, to ask, to sift through what he’s told, to make his own only what sinks deep down to a place where what fits is weighed, is looked at from all sides, is held up to the shadow-casting light.

the subject, more or less, was religion. and in this house that’s a subject that comes with many threads. we weave here. we are braiders. we sift for golden strands, we entwine. we understand that some are shared, and some are wholly different, depending on whose birth threads we are holding.

more than religious, though, i am of the spirit. i find God in the scarlet flash of papa cardinal in the snowy boughs. i feel the shiver of the holy spirit when i watch the moon shadow play upon the window panes, and spill onto the bedclothes that bundle up and over my baby boy.

i whisper the hail mary, but i brush away a tear when lost in prayer on yom kippur. i feel the breath divine in hebrew, latin, or plain-old sidewalk talk. i needn’t be in church to know that holiness is near.

and so, it was the burning flame of spirit that i assumed–no, i counted on–i’d pass to my firstborn.

as clearly as he got my curly hair, the dimple of his father’s cheek, i thought the one most precious breath i have, i’d turn and breathe easily, wholly, into my soulful child.

oh, he had it when he was little. looked up at me one night, when he was all of two, and asked, “who puts God to bed at night?”

he had it, just a year ago, when he stood on the bimah, proclaiming the words of the Torah at his bar mitzvah, brought down the house, i tell you, with his grown-up understanding that nearly made the rabbi’s pale.

but now, now he’s taken history for thinking children, he’s heard word of wars fought in the name of God. and philosophies that stretch his mind into interesting new shapes. he is, right now, in this interlude, not so certain anymore.

and as we talked, i ached as the words he spoke fell upon my ears, sifted down to where my soul does all its breathing.

i tell you, it hurt to swallow, and, yes, to breathe.

but he is mine, and that’s unshakable, and, besides, i believe i’ve glimpsed the outlines of that soul. even if, right now, he calls it something else.

late that night, tossing, turning, in the way a mother sometimes does, it came to me, the image of the seeds.

i realized that what we do, in the long, long years of planting, is we are merely sowers of the seed. we scatter all life long, the bits of truth, of hope, the few scant things we know.

we scatter as we turn the words, in conversation after conversation. we poke a fertile nugget deep into the soil as we take our children by the hand, show them places and faces unlike the ones they would otherwise know.

we sprinkle seed through the books we read them when we pull them on our lap, turn pages. and then, years later, leave tucked beneath their pillow, just in case they find a minute for inhaling thought before they fall to sleep.

and after all the sowing, i realized, we can only stand back. pray for rain and sunlight. keep watch on what’s out where we have laid our lifetime’s crops.

hmm, is that a little bit of green, poking through the loamy soil? is that a tendril, reaching for the sky?

we’ll not know the harvest for some time. but we will trust that all the planting, tending, praying, was not in vain.

some seasons, what comes up is rich, is plenty, fills the bins. some seasons, what you put into the ground, isn’t what comes up at all.

but there will be a reaping. and, God willing, it will be more than you had ever counted on.

that’s the way it is when it comes to growing a thinking child. we’ve no flame to simply light their way, only seeds to scatter on their path, and wait–and hope–for blossoming to come.

what hard lessons has parenting brought your way? what, in life, did you set out thinking would be a cinch, only to find it was not the way you’d naively imagined? how have you made peace when the lessons you hoped to teach didn’t sprout in quite the way you’d planted? for those of you who’ve forged this trail already what were moments when you knew, oh you knew, that raising a thinking child held glories all its own. even when their wisdom caught you by surprise?

and by the by, today’s the blessed day of our resident mountain bird, the one who sings as if a warble-throated mama bird. here’s to sweetness, pure light and heart-melting goodness. in song, in deed. happy blessed day, pjv-az.

13 Comments

January 16, 2008

lysol’s got nothin’ on st. babs in a can

i know, i know, now you think i’ve been holding out on you, keeping all my secrets shrouded in the back hall closet. back behind the moldy tennis rackets, and the shoes that lost their strings.

you’ve been wondering–for months and months, i’ll bet–why everything–oh, excuse me, i seem to be coughing–runs so smoothly–no, i’m surely choking–here in the world i call my house. how come the broccoli never burns. and the children never pout.

well, i figured today’s as good as any to pull out all the stops. and while i’m at it, i might as well let you in on my supernatural* domestic secret.

you see, upstairs right now, there is a 6-foot-something creature who is trying hard to sleep. but he’s got finals any hour now, and he is moaning in his dreams. i am not thinking these would be the moans of growing child rolling in whipped cream. these seem to be the utterances of a pupil in distress.

then, over in the next room, the only one with heat, the one that feels a bit like sleeping in an anteroom of hades, is a little one who went to bed last night in tears. he nearly water-logged his pillow telling me that of all the children in his class, he’s the “unsmartest one.” in every single thing.

oh, lord, God almighty. where did i tuck the all-purpose house-protecting spray? it seems i’ve not been keeping up with all the troubles seeping in the cracks.

and, no, people, the spritz for which i grope is not some hyperallergenic thing that will keep away the microbes. phht, on little germs. i’ve no cares for them.

it’s the woopsy-daisy vibes that i intend to spray away.

you thought, perhaps, that all it took was hours on your knees. and perhaps a hundred dollars to the nearest voodoo doc. mais, non, i have an angel friend who came riding to my rescue.

who knew that you could buy a saint and tuck her in a can? complete with aerosol spitzer, no less.

this one, the one in pink who’s pirouetting up above, well, she came to me, as if in a fevered dream. she came to me just as i was blowing out the candles on my latest birthday cake. (51 candles, thank you, is as close to fevered dream as i’m inclined to get.)

so really i’ve not been holding out on you for all that long at all. in fact, i’ve only really just begun to understand her powers*.

what, you ask, is with all the little asterisks, the floating stars every time i mention all her super*celestial magic tricks?

well, i am only being fair, only being forthcoming, for the little tiny print running up the seam of that pink paper label spells out, in no uncertain terms, the limits of her contents: “does not have supernatural powers,” it says, in teensy-weensy caution. just in case you thought maybe you could turn the family frog into something altogether else.

oh, darn. it’s right there, in black-on-pink. my jewish husband saw it, the disclaiming, right away. (hmm, do we think it odd that the back-pedaling had escaped me, little catholic me, completely?)

ah well, the label then informs me–and i, in turn, am informing you, lest we get some lawsuit; what, the saints on high will come down and haul me off to court?–that there is nothing truly sacred about the piney mist that comes splurting from the nozzle.

ha. that’s what they think. unbeknownst to fellow inhabitants of this house (they just thought the christmas tree had gotten old and redolent), i have been unleashing little clouds of holy mist for the past few days, in hopes of keeping bad, bad karma out of doors where it belongs, where it stands a chance of going up in most unholy smoke.

but, given the elevated state of dread around here this morning, i intend to up the ante of my holy showers.

heck, i will spray until we’re in a rainy forest here, if that’s what it takes to rid these walls of all the angst of children up against the rigors of the blackboard.

i have no idea why such a godsend is so hard to find. i’ve no clue why it’s not there on the highest shelf of every single grocery. you would think the world would clamor for sanctified and pressurized protection.

praise God, then, that i’ve got allies with divine connections.

my blessed angel friend, the one whose wings, i swear, are tucked beneath her sweater, she rode miles and miles to drum up my new-year supply of saint babs’ artillery. the spray promises “peace in the home,” the candle is all-purpose, and the parfum i’m guessing is for the girl on the go, just a dab behind the ears and you are covered till you take a shower.

i’m told it all comes in a few saintly flavors: besides ol’ babs (who, by the way, was debunked of her saintliness nearly 40 years ago, but don’t tell the fine souls who make these aromatic vapors), there’s chris (yet another debunked saint–hmm, maybe after all this is the dumping ground for saints no longer). and i’m pretty sure there’s dearest saint theresa, who is forever the little flower.

so, dang, if you don’t find your holy patron among those three, just ask, and i will let you borrow mine.

but first i need to go see if i can shush the nasty smells coming from the boot tray.

bet you didn’t realize you could find such housekeeping secrets here. come back again, and i’ll let you in on how i keep my oven bright and shining. anyone else have a trick divine up their blessed sleeve?

1 Comment

January 11, 2008

always, an open door

it is, of all the parts of this old house, the one that might just matter the most. it’s the one, surely, that sends the loudest message.

it is the door, the front door. and at our house it is mostly glass, so you can see what bubbles on the inside, and i can see out. so life pulses through the glass.

there is not, decidedly not, one of those little signs the village passes out: no solicitors invited.

oh, it’s not that i like talking about magazine subscriptions that just might send a kid to college. and it’s not that i like it when the doorbell rings just as i am stirring dinner.

but i refuse to have the first thing you see at my door be the sound of words slamming in your face. go away, not interested in strangers. hardly the tone i care to broadcast before you even ring the bell.

and, besides, i do like talking to strangers. especially kids who have ventured beyond the streets that they know well, and are maybe scared to shaking walking here where doors are always slamming.

but the open door i’m thinking about today is the one that is extended far beyond the front stoop. it’s the open door that means i am always at the ready for whoever comes this way, for whoever has a tale to tell, and needs someone to listen.

it is, i think, the highest calling of a house. to be a place of utter comfort. to be a place that oozes, “sit here, tell me all your troubles.”

it is why, in the first place, we stack the logs, put out pillows, make sure that there’s the softest, warmest blanket we can find. it’s why the pantry holds a basket full of teas, and the clementines are plenty.

first and foremost, a house brings peace to those who dwell there. but if that door is never open, if we don’t usher in a stranger, then a house is merely shelter. and not a place of holy respite.

it is the invitation that never ends. my house is your house. without the two of us to dance, the heartbeat fades away, evaporates to lonely.

just today, any hour now, there will be a woman at that door. a woman i barely know. i’ve only met her once. but her heart broke and cracked and shattered recently, and she’s trying to gather up the pieces.

she was pregnant with a baby girl just this summer past. and when they did an ultrasound, the kind they always do, not in search of any trouble, they found that baby girl had a hole where her diaphragm should be. so all her insides, the ones that should be in the belly, were pushed up by her lungs.

the baby girl was born, fighting just to breathe. and one month later, the baby girl died, right before thanksgiving.

her mama, strong and gentle all at once, survived the holidays. she has two little boys, so her hands, she says, are always busy.

but her heart can barely contain the bleeding that comes from burying a baby.

and so she comes, quite simply, to unspool her unending sorrow. she comes to try to ease the clenching in her chest.

it is in the telling of our stories, often, that the healing begins to come. it is in looking up through tears and seeing another face. a pair of eyes, a heart, absorbing all there is to be absorbed.

sometimes we are called upon to be a human swab for all the ache that cannot be bound inside one single heart.

sometimes we need only listen.

sometimes what is shared across a tear-splashed kitchen table is the very blessed act of kindling just a single wick of light where there’d been only darkness.

but if the door is sometimes closed, then how can sorrow enter, and begin to ease toward healing?

the open door, i’m convinced, is most essential for a house to be a holy place where hearts are stitched with hope, and two heartbeats rise in sacred echo–one promising the other that peace will come again.

do you find yourself sometimes across the table from someone who needs to tell their story? do you find it easy to forget that the purpose of a door is to be opened? what rites and rituals do you make a part of your home to make the stranger–or the friend–feel wholly welcome?

2 Comments

December 26, 2007

dear santa

i know, i know, it’s not standard practice to send off a missive the day after christmas. but, geez, santa, i have been known to make my boys sit down and scribble their oh-my-gosh thank yous to you and the elves, and, well, this year, seems i too felt a bit of the great oh-my-gosh.

i had every intention, on christmas itself, of tiptoeing down at the crack of the dawn, of plugging the tree in, shaking the cinnamon into my coffee, pulling a chair up to this old french pine table here where i do all my typing, penning some thoughts and sending them off to the pole.

ah, but then in the stillness, in the part of the story where ol’ clement c. moore writes, “not a creature was stirring…” well, there was a stirring, all right. more like a clomping, right outa bed, onto the creakiest floor board in this creaky old house.

the little one was up, was ready to dash down the stairs. but the big one, the one who at 14 is a little less–but only a little, i assure you–eager to rise in the dark, grope under the tree to see what maybe you dropped from your lumpy red sack. well, he couldn’t be stirred from deep in his forest of slumber.

and around here, there’s an unspoken code: it’s all or none in the lunge for the tree, come christmas morn.

so i had my hands full for an hour or so. read every book we could find to try to distract the little one. (by the way, speaking of dear mr. moore, the early riser refused to let me read for the 98th time this season, “the night before christmas,” saying it was no longer the night before, and he had no patience for a tale whose prime had expired.)

then, poor thing, sated with stories and turning of pages, he just stood at the door outside the bathroom while the big one took a shower, brushed his teeth, did everything ‘cept slap on the aftershave to draw out the minutes into nearly half of an hour.

the poor little one drummed his fingers, he did. so did his papa. it was an exercise in delayed gratification, yes it was, and the child managed, just barely, to make it.

at last, both boys, their buffalo footsteps in tandem, tore down the stairs, shook the old timbers, and wasted no time exploring their respective small mounds.

well, let me just say, santa, that the child was bowled over by your goodness. he must have said 85 times, “that santa is the sweetest best person in the whole world.”

and, well, as the whole sparkle-filled day kept unfolding, as the shoulder pads that he’d asked for were squeezed over his head, as the big one clicked the new lens for his camera, as all of us reveled in the day that finally had come, the day of going nowhere, doing nothing but reveling in the completion of yet another cycle of waiting, preparing, occasionally running like mad, well, i couldn’t help but think that the whole notion of santa really is paving the way for a knowing the God who is good, who is full of surprises, who delights, who draws wonder, who gives what isn’t even thought to be asked for.

and well, that really is reason for me to believe in the believing in santa. to watch little eyes light up. to see a six-year-old swirling in smiles.

oh, i know christmas isn’t about santa. i know you’re just an add-on to the main event. i know, i know.

but watching the little one bathe in a warm tub of wishes-come-true, i couldn’t help but feel blessed that he knows what it is to believe in invisible goodness.

to believe in the power of someone who comes in the cloak of the nighttime, who leaves not a trace, except for the white filmy rim there in the milk glass, and the crumbs on a plate where, just before bedtime, cookies had been plucked from the tin with serious thought and a level of care that managed to push back the climb into bed by at least five or 10 minutes.

it’s not a bad start for a life of believing in things we can’t see. in a goodness that, time and again, will bring us our wildest dreams. and then some.

not a bad start for knowing that out in the beyond there is a someone who’s there whether we’re looking or not. who is there to tap on our shoulder, to put a hand to the small of our back. to reach out a hand–even two if we need it–to drag us up from the depth of our depths.

not a bad start, and not a bad middle.

here i am, here at my mid-century mark, and once again, all over again, i am marveling, believing in the jolly old elf with the belly that wiggles like a bowl full of jelly.

merry christmas, ol’ elf. merry merry.

i know i didn’t write you a letter this year, didn’t ask for even one thing. but you delivered, you did. what you brought came plain on the face of a boy with eyes all aglow, and heart all atwitter. ‘twas breathtaking, my friend. and thank you is all i wanted to say.

so, thank you, dear santa. thank you so very much.

love, year after year,

the little one’s mama

merry boxing day, anyone who’s taken a minute to make it over here to the table. i sure did mean to get out my merry christmas ahead of time, but well a strep germ rather got in the way. did you have a magical moment of believing at your house yesterday? did you see something in someone’s eyes that melted your heart?
as i lolligagged my way through probably the sweetest christmas i can remember, i realized that christmas is a day that bubbles up what’s deepest in our hearts, whether that’s grief or loneliness or–if we’re lucky, if we’re incredibly blessed–just pure joy. can’t say as i’ve ever had a christmas before that felt quite so full. christmas, for a very long time, has been one with a big gaping hole. something wonderful is filling in that empty space. maybe it’s a bit of what we’ve created together here at the place where the chairs are pulled up. for that, i say thank you to you and thank you on high. merry everything. love, the chair lady

3 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

September 28, 2007

a prayer for the grownups of children who struggle

this is communal. there is, far as i can tell, not a soul who doesn’t at one time or another come into the ranks. there is no corner, sadly, on this market. no me-me-me thinking you are the only one who knows what it is to lie deeply awake–and not that you’re counting the holes in the ceiling.

hardly.

you’re racking your heart and your soul and your brain, even your belly, trying to figure out, devise some plot, to push back the struggles that threaten to swallow your little one. or maybe your big one.

you are no less than moses at the red sea, i tell you. you and your rod, standing there, palms raised, as if.

as if you, who does not possess any magical powers, can reach into the brain of a very young person, reach in and straighten some wires. get synapses connected. make them see. make them hear. make them not be afraid. make the letters that spill on the page line up in some sort of sense. instead of backwards and jumbled and utterly, thoroughly awful. so misbehaved, that alphabet.

as if–oh, God, please–you could stand in the halls or the lunchroom, or off to the edge of the playground. make the mean kids go away. stop the big ones from picking on little ones. or the other way around. splinter the words being hurled, the ones that are ugly and poison and might sting forever.

it is hell and it’s lonely besides.

barely a soul is willing to advertise the truth of the matter: not a one of us is merrily sitting back, watching little people skitter through life. as if it’s a pond and they were on skates and they’re gliding. making true loopdy-loops.

nope, i am no researcher, or taker of census. i have not knocked on doors asked, excuse me, is there suffering here?

but chances are good to better than good, the answer is yes. very much so. why, thank you for asking.

in my own little world, in just the last week, for instance, i’ve heard all of this: a child who tried to jump out a window. twice. one who died. one who can’t hear very well and it’s making her mad. you would be too. if all day you struggled to make out the words on everyone’s lips. and the lips didn’t move very slowly. not at all.

i’m not done: a boy afraid to turn out the light. another who won’t. a child who cannot see the big picture and hold onto a small fragile thread. it’s one or the other. and sometimes you really need both.

there’s a girl who keeps having seizures; no one knows why. but do you think, for a minute, her mother rests easy, whenever she’s not in her sight, whenever the phone rings? there are two boys who are watching their lives rip in half, as their parents divorce and it’s not always pretty. and two girls i know who won’t eat. no more than an apple cut in very thin slices. and she’s the one making progress.

my point here is not to make you feel drowning. my point here is just to take a deep breath. whisper a prayer. maybe think twice when you next feel alone. when you happen to think you can’t bear it. when the waves of your worry, and your lack of solutions, pull you down under.

i got to this notion the way i usually do. i thought and i thought. i listened and looked and tucked away stories. i jimmied my heart to the wide-open valve.

and all week i rode the waves of a sea that’s not far from despair. there is a boy who i love who is utterly stumped by parts of the school day. the parts where the words and the pencils are. in first grade, as you might imagine, that is a fairly good chunk of the day.

it is, at this point, still a mystery. as if there’s a fog that isn’t yet lifted. we can’t quite make out the landscape. i asked him last night, when word after word was coming out backwards, what it felt like inside. he took his hands and scrambled them all through the air. i heard my heart crack then.

and i know that that crack is not only mine. i know it rises up from the houses, all over the towns, all over the hillsides and valleys below. all over the world.

it would be headlines, i suppose, if there were a house where never a worry there was. or maybe the grownups in charge are made of something other than my flimsy cloth.

i am not, however, one to cave in to worry. no, i find it a friend. an ally, in fact. it stirs me, propels me, gives me whatever it takes, to take on the very steep climb up the waters that will not be stilled.

the prayer that i pray then is this: that even in the depths of our darkest night shadows, when all that we fear comes out of the closets, leaps ‘round the bed, bangs on the pillows, we might picture each other. know the communion of trembling hands. hearts that will not surrender.

that whatever it is that haunts and plagues all of our children be kneaded away. by heads that are wise. and hearts that are deep and filled with infinite chambers.

that we don’t wrestle alone. that the great and tender hand of our God settles quite firmly at the small of our backs. fills our lungs, too, with the breath that it takes to blow back the winds that are chilling. settles the waters. gives us a chance, and a hope, of making the climb, to the crest of the wave.

where, if we’re so blessed, we can look out at a sea of children who have managed to swim. and are stroking and breathing. and making a magnificent splash.

that’s what i pray.

how about you?

13 Comments

Category: motherhood