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Category: motherhood

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
July 10, 2007

when the phone rings in the night

nowhere in the manual, the one they forgot to send home from the baby hospital, does it mention that 5-year-olds on a road trip for the very first time might wake up in the middle of the night, in some faraway motel room, and start breathing in short little puff-puff-puffs that further in the manual might be diagnosed as hyperventilating.
well, children don’t follow manuals, forgotten or otherwise.
children, when they’re non-fictional, toss and turn, according to the one who dialed the phone in the middle of the night last night, until finally they call out in the darkness, proclaim that their head is hot, and their tummy rumbly, and they want to talk to their mommy.
and so, at 2:38 a.m., the phone rings.
your dream, in which you are chasing baby chickens around your city-girl friend’s apartment–hmm, paging dr. freud, paging dr. freud–is interrupted.
you are, in those murky first few seconds of a middle-of-a-dream phone call, scrambling the synapses in your brain like some combination bicycle lock where the numbers must line up in just the right sequence, trying to figure out, of all the possible things that could be wrong, just what one it is that is precipitating someone to call you when the clock quite clearly is flashing 2-3-8, with a colon there between the 2 and the 3.
then, you hear it. you hear the pathetic little whimpering, muffled through the static of a cell phone, a cell phone far away.
but you are the mother of that whimper, and you’d know it anywhere. you know it now. even in the dark. even bounced from earth to heaven, back to earth, or however it is those dang phones get the whimper to your ear.
you get a minute or two of explaining, deep background from the dialer, and then the whimperer takes phone in hand and holds it back no longer.
suddenly it is 2:42 a.m. and you are hearing no words really, just the sound of sadness. supreme sadness. supreme i-feel-crummy-and-i-am-in-a-comfort-suite-in-the-middle-of-south-bend-indiana.
and you, now wide awake like a mama bear who hears a rustle outside her cave, you are ministering to what ails him, but really you are talking to a silver plastic box, a box with little holes punched in it.
you are not cheek-to-soft-pink-cheek with the little one you love. you are not stroking his brow, the way you always do, the way your mother did to you.
you are doing the very best you can but there are two hours, at least, of city and cornfields between you and the so-sad boy.
and even if you could, even if you jumped in the car right then and there, it would be nuts to head out for the motel just off the interstate, in the middle of a strip mall with a starbucks planted right next door.
so you pretend you are right there. you use your words to fill in the empty space between you and the phone and him. you are clear, and you are full of promise. you get him to slow his breathing, to get a little sleep, and then come home. he whimpers yes, to all of the above.
but, like waves of tummy flipping that will not be quelled, the calls keep coming. updates from there at the faraway sickbed. 2:53, they are moving to the couch. 3:07, it was better now it’s worse.
then, at last, at 3:19, a call comes, telling you the little guy is fast asleep. on the couch. wet washcloth to his head.
and you too, the caller says, should try to sleep.
but you’re a mother, and you’ve been roused, and it might not be so easy to get back to chasing chickens there in your dreams.
the last thing you expected when you laid your head on that old pillow was that you’d be shaken from your sleep by a little boy all knotted in his sheets 110 miles away.
but, really, that’s the part of being a mama that takes your breath away. it is a roller coaster ride without a seat belt. it’s full of yelps and whoops, and heaven only knows what’s around the bend.
it’s messy business. it is groping in the dark. fumbling for the phone. it is, since it comes without instructions, making it up as you go. bumping into walls, but somehow putting one foot in front of the other. at least on a good day.
and the whole time, we are led by one fat muscle that will not stop. will not stop its lub-dub squeezing, letting go.
we mother by heart. and whatever graces are stocked in the pantry by the MotherGod who keeps us from running out of what we need, before we can get back to the store where they sell these things.
we mother, too, with history. lying there, fully awake, i begin to connect the dots. i think of just a week ago, in a tent in the woods, the same little guy was crying for his room. i remember how the summer before first grade can be a little bumpy.
i know, because this is a bend i’ve been around before, that there will be bumps. and even a little guy who, by day, can play a sword-wielding super hero, by night can put down the shield, can bare his tender side.
i think back to all the nights when, as a baby, he went to sleep nestled between his mama and his papa. i think that world will always be the safest, surest thing to his little tiny soul.
and i understand how his world feels topsy-turvy when he’s with his papa but not his mama. and he’s in some air-conditioned motel room. and not the little room at the top of the stairs where the lake breeze blows in.
and so i wait for the sound of the car pulling up to the curb, so i can wrap him in. so i can hold him in my arms and make his world not so wobbly anymore.
is that not the most amazing super power? and i can do it without a sword.
that’s what happens when the phone rings before the light comes.

tell your middle-of-the-night phone-call stories. do you remember longing for your mama in the middle of the night in some faraway unknown bed? do you remember being longed for? how did you make it right? how did you set the world back to where it didn’t feel so wobbly?

and a most blessed birthday to the two girls who both were born to two of my dearest longest-lasting friends. sweet veronika and molly, happy happy happy. to the woods of vermont, and the wilds of chicago, i send the sweetest birthday wishes.

3 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
May 11, 2007

it’s all about the ing

birds nest

maybe a proclamation would be the thing. although that was done already. maybe just some common-sense yak, yak, yakking would do the trick.

it’s about a little problem i have with what’s coming sunday. far as i can tell there’s a missing syllable.

i would like to make the day not plain old mother’s day, a noun. which by my take is exclusive, too exclusive.

i would like to add an ing. and make it mothering day, a verb. a day for all who mother.

not just those who know what it is to push the burning bulge as if your life depended on it. which, of course, it did, as well as that of another one or two or three or, heaven help you, more heart-pounding little lives, depending on your wide-eyed obstetric state.

and not just those who’ve signed their name on someone’s dotted line. or stepped in without official papers.

all of that is fine. insanely, amazingly, awesomely, only-MotherGod-could-have-invented-this, so very fine.

but there is more—there are so, so many more.

yes, every last someone who has stroked a brow, wiped a tear, dabbed chocolate off a little cheek, fluffed a pillow, tucked in the covers, whispered bedtime prayers, set an extra place at the table, stretched a meatloaf, picked the peas out of the pasta salad, kissed a bloody knee, kept a retching belly from falling in the toilet bowl.

yes, every pair of arms that’s lifted a dead-weight child in the pool, played red rover till the cows came home, bent half-over to push a kid on training wheels around and round the block, turned the pages of good night moon so many times you find yourself chanting good night to the mittens when no one’s in the room.

you get the point.

i have for years squirmed and wriggled when it comes to setting aside a sunday, ordering up loaves and loaves of toast that will be cut in triangles, smeared with jam and honey and cinnamon with sugar, and delivered, teetering, on trays that stand a mighty chance of toppling off of bedsheet-shrouded knees.

not that i have anything against newspapers in bed, or violets clutched in sweaty little fists.

it’s just, gosh darn it, my world, for one, is highly populated with extraordinary motherers who have neither birthed, nor adopted, children of their own. and plenty who simply could not deliver, ever—they are men, for heaven’s sake.

i am all for honoring the art of mothering. and i would make a motion to amend the noun and bow down before the brand-new ending.

the ing, i argue, is where the emphasis should be. it’s a verb, active, pulsing, life-propelling verb.

back long ago, when julia ward howe, the activist who gave us “the battle hymn of the republic,” her anthem against slavery in 1862, back when she unfurled her original mother’s day proclamation it was all about women rising up and demanding end to war.

that i could get in a froth about.

especially the way she put it:

“our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. we women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

so wrote julia in 1870.

but, somewhere, the hallmarks of the world got in the way. the second sunday in may became less about the women of the world exerting their mother-ness on the global family, and more about fluffy slippers, hand-crayoned cards, and leaving whole chunks of the population to ache because, by accident of biology, they’ve not been able to get egg plus sperm to equal zygote, their unborn children never got to take a single breath, they’ve buried a child born from their own womb, laid a lifeless little body to rest, far, far too soon.

aches, all, that never go away. all aches the second sunday in may only serves to jab and pierce so stingingly i know women who barely make it through the day.

or they might be women who exercised their right to choose not to bring another soul into this blessed broken world. or men whose tender caring touch goes uncelebrated, lost in all the hubbub of the third sunday of june when to be a grill meister seems the height of all that matters.

they all mother, if not define themselves as mothers per se. if not their own children, then other people’s children. or the child who dwells in every single someone. have you not been deeply mothered by a friend?

you needn’t be with child, nor even be a woman, to mother, is my point.

i don’t mean to be a grouch. and i hate to throw cold water on all the blessed moments the day will surely bring.

i just feel intent on proclaiming one not-so-little matter: may it be mothering, the art of tender caring, coaxing life, leaving mercy in your wake, the art that knows no gender bounds, no census-taker’s definition, the art the world needs in mighty thronging masses, may it be mothering, and not just mothers, for whom we stand and shout, God bless you each and every motherer.

may the whole world reach out and wrap you in its blessed holy bosom. the very one that you so freely share, the very one in which we bury our tears, clutch our fears, and find the very milk of heaven here on earth. amen.

i’m done proclaiming. your turn to toss it back.

and p.s. a most blessed birthday to susan, who achingly, bravely walks through her first birthday without her mother. xoxox

and p.p.s. the nest above? one i came upon while tromping through a field in winter, during the winter of my aching couldn’t-have-a-baby years. it was lying in a brambles, right before my eyes, as if the universe wanted to remind me: i might be some day someone’s nest. the broken eggs, i collected too. off the ground, crushed. empty. thus, the nest, the eggs above, they tell the whispered story of our motherness. sometimes broken, crushed. but sometimes possibility, hiding in a thorny bush. it belongs to all who mother. with love and honor for all you do to make this world a little softer, a whole lot less thorny. xoxox

7 Comments
April 25, 2007

of lilacs and pillowcases and slow last breaths

the phone rang. through broken words i made out this: “my mom’s gonna die. in the next few days.”

it was my friend susan. it was my friend who has always counted her mother as pretty much her dearest, best-loved friend. except of course for her triplets and her larry. it was my friend who, for months, and especially in the last few weeks, has been inching ever closer to the inconceivable conclusion that i just heard her put to words—sputter, choke through, really—on the other end of the line.

her blessed, tiny mother, the one who, one week away from turning 79, still sold houses, still filled her calendar with lunches and theater and friends upon friends before the cancer, damn cancer, truly demanded center stage, her mother was, at last, unavoidably, in her final holy hours.

moved just the night before into intensive care to try to ease her gasping broken breathing, she was now, they had just decided, being moved out. moved out, said susan, to a room where she would die. untethered. except for the slow drip of morphine, liquid mercy doled out in fractions of a milliliter.

“she’s too brittle to move home,” said susan, who wished for that more than anything.

so did her mother.

“i just want to go home and drink a cold glass of water,” her mother said just the day before, one of the few lucid sentences she spoke the day she couldn’t, for the life of her, catch her breath.

susan, who has stayed dry-eyed and unwobbly through most of this long road, was without words for a heartbeat or two. i heard tears falling. “it’ll be okay. i’ll close the door. it’ll be quiet,” she whispered.

i suddenly saw lilacs.

get lilacs. fill the room. i said the words softly. the words came from my mouth, but really they came from somewhere else. i kept going. make it smell like heaven. get her pillow, a soft pillow. play music. hearing is the last earthly thread to go.

light a candle. no, strike that. oxygen and candles aren’t a good idea. combustion of this sort, you do not need. susan laughed. softly. she has room, bless her, in her heart for laughing.

make a soft nest.

i thought of the womb that carries us into life, the gentle soothing waters. the lub-dub of a mother’s heart. the way it must pound in all-enveloping waves through the almighty contraction that pulses one life through and out of another.

i thought of death. i thought of how i would want to be ushered out in the same soft womb of soothing waters. fill my room with springtime rushing in. lay my cheek on smooth white cotton, french knots and tiny forget-me-nots hand-stitched along the pillowcase’s edge. anoint me with lavender waters. put cold water to my lips. and make it sweet, while you’re at it.

if, that is, we are so blessed to know that we are headed heaven’s way. if we have a little notice. say an hour or a day.

susan whispered yes. yes to hyacinth. yes to going to her mother’s bed, her real one, not the one that’s making do in the ICU, and gathering the pillow that knows the contours of her mother’s cheeks and chin and forehead, the contours, too, of all her mother’s dreams. yes, lastly, to ipod—this is ’007, after all.

since i was already speaking from a place that doesn’t often see the light, i kept on going. there are times in life when all is scraped away, and there is time and room only for the essence. this was such a time.

“susan, death is beautiful. i don’t know if you’ve ever been right there when someone dies. but it will fill you with unimaginable peace. something rushes in the room. you are not afraid. you know that you are not alone. there is something full of grace that holds you.”

susan whispered yes.

and i went off to fill my arms with lilac and hyacinth and the sacred earthly incense that would carry my dear friend’s most blessed mother on her way to heaven.

the phone rang shortly after 3, just after i’d gotten home with hyacinths; too soon for lilacs. it was susan. the hospital had called before she could even get there. her mother died. susan had just gone out to gather hyacinths for her mother’s last slow breaths. “too late,” she said, voice cracking. not so, i pray. their sweet perfume, i’m sure, wrapped over her on her way.
————–
all night i have been listening to the pit-a-pat of rain against the roof, against the panes. is it earth weeping for the loss of yet another dear one? or is it heaven sending healing, blessed waters? shortly before dawn, the rain paused. the pit-a-pat gave way to robin trilling. i live miles north of susan, but i hope she too heard rain give way to robin. i hope she heard the day open up in song.

9 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.

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April 5, 2007

being e. bunn

when i signed up for this being-a-mama thing, there are many points i failed to adequately ponder.

(we’ll not dive, not today anyway, into some of those matters that i might wisely have run through the almighty thinker, that mass of cells between my ears, that might better have equipped me for this madre job. we’ll leave that for a less auspicious day. this, after all, is countdown week for judy garland belting song of easter bonnet and said parade.)

certainly, in days b.c. (before child, that would be), i never grasped the charm, the pure delight, of packing joy, delivering it, complete with jelly beans, in a straw-braided basket. the easter basket, of course.

the santa thing, i might have given thought. you know, some winter’s afternoon, as a pouty post-believing child, flung (with requisite drama) upon my bed, legs cocked at the knees and crossed, kicking foot up in the air. thinking: when i grow, i’m going to be one heck of a santa. i’ll not forget the china teaset, the one with tiny painted flowers.

but easter? who spent much time considering the occupational upside of mr. e. bunn, esq.?

the basket, while i do recall a spectacular sponge paint set when i was 5, was, in the house where i grew up, more pure sugar rush, ten grubby little hands racing to the pink-and-purple plastic baskets, inhaling beans, then dashing off to rest of resurrected morning.

i failed to grasp the paschal possibility.

i would say i rather stumbled into the rabbit hole, into the unexpected magic of tiptoeing through the night, leaving trail of cut-out bunny feets, and hiding the basket of just-hatched tenderness in a place that, come morning, little feets would have to find.

there is something, something far beyond charming, about slipping inside these make-believe, oversized, dispatchers of joy, be it the one with wiggly tail or the chap with jiggly belly.

there is something that almost takes your breath away when you realize, poof, you’re all grown up, and you now are the one who, with your brush of many hues, shades and colors the someday stories, the memories, of what it was to grow up in the house where you preside.

it’s up to you, you realize, you who tucks tenderness in a basket, to tenderize the hearts of those who traipse through the land where children romp. at least in your house.

but, indeed, i have discovered, and now, myself, i practically jiggle with the wonder that it brings, that nowadays i get to pack the baskets for those little sparkling eyes, the ones that, certainly, will be up and out from under covers, rubbing, shouting some early-morning merriment, as they stumble down the stairs and round the bend, ultra-sonic easter radar leading them without wrong turn straight to where the sugar, in several forms, awaits.

before we get too far on that sugar thought, let me toss this sad disclaimer, admit this thing that might make you sigh a sigh; say, phew, thank heaven i wasn’t born to that ol’ mama. here’s the sorry truth: i don’t do unending sugar at easter. it’s not about sugar in this house.

it’s about something far, far sweeter.

and that, i think, is why i love it so.

i have a someone, a sandra sweetpea, who taught me how to do easter. instructed me in easter basket 101. like many things she taught me, she hasn’t a clue, really, how deep the lessons she imparted. there was no hand-out. no quiz, or chapter review.

instead there was a little shop, a shop called sweetpea, a shop of natural toys and classic books, a shop where imagination unlocked the door and set the stories spinning. sandra was the shopkeeper. and if you studied the way she gathered things, the tender, earth-spun beauty she gathered in her shop, in baskets, on antique bookshelves, tucked in woodland scenes that you swore the fairies might have visited, then you learned a thing or ten about quietly offering a whole other sort of being a child.

being a child–or a mama or a papa or a someone with child heart–who listens to the rhythms of the season, who understands the gift in playing richly with simple child’s toys, who breathes in the magic of a beautifully spun storybook.

it was like a refuge and a respite from the worldly, that little shop on southport in chicago. i’d pull back the door, a bell would tinkle, and then, surely, sandra would appear from behind a curtain, all sparkling eye and wisdom. quietly, without words sometimes, she’d lead me by the hand to something full of beauty. she would laugh her marvelous grown-up-little-girl laugh, and i would see the magic. then she might spend a minute telling me about the marvelous soul who tromped the woods, carved the elfin house, spun the wool, dyed the cloth from flower petals or vegetable scrapings. i would stand there, spell-bound.

my children’s toy chests were never stuffed. but they were rich in things–an elf’s tree house, rows of books, simple blocks–that will last forever.

and so it was sandra who taught me easter baskets, too. to go to sweetpea for easter, my pilgrimage each holy week, was to come home with a finger-sized bunny so sweet i’d want to carry him to bed with me (or feed him itsy-bitsy carrots). a book or two, the pages splashed with springtime colors. some little pack of seeds, forget-me-not, or carrot. just enough to whisper, the earth is waking up from winter’s slumber. all life is new, rejoice.

and so it was the other day that i wandered back to where sandra now presides. the sweden shop, it’s called, but i like to think of it as the swede pea. for it seems she’s transplanted plenty of her magic there. (her sweetpea, sadly, closed.)

the little bunny smiling from above–sandra, who is quite something with thread and needle, made him. stuffed him first with lavender, real lavender, from someone’s garden. then she stitched him up. when you rub his belly, lightly, with just the press of your finger, the lavender wafts. i bought two. one has little button eyes and nose. of course, i bought a book. a book from green tiger press (collectors of breathtaking, knee-buckling illustrations from days past), a book called, “the truth about easter rabbits.” of course, i bought a pack of carrot seeds. and a big fat orange carrot stuffed with all orange jelly beans.

come saturday night, when all is clear (i can’t promise quiet, since my littlest rabbit has made quite a habit of hopping out of bed in recent weeks), i will make like e. bunny himself, and gather my new-life wares. i will tuck simple magic in a basket. i will smile all the while. it is hard not to melt when tucking easter in a basket.

i will make one basket for each boy in this house, and then i will tiptoe to a hiding place. when all is finally still, i will sprinkle pink construction-paper rabbit feet and baby carrots from edge of beds through the hall, down the stairs where the trail will then diverge, one branch south and one southwest. each boy is on his own to find what easter brings.

and i’ll stand off in a corner, softly soaking in the joy. no one told me how sweet it is to play the easter bunny. and that, perhaps, is the sweetest secret ever. one i’ll not stop, ever, believing wholly in.

oh, if only i could, i’d make a lovely basket for every one of you. the house would be so filled, there’d be lavender wafting everywhere. and plenty of old-fashioned carrot bunches, complete with carrot tops, those leafy greens that are, perhaps, the crowning glory of every bam-made easter basket.
do you, or you, or you, find joy in being a big invisible bunny? and do you have any secret things you always search for in a basket of your own making?

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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 9, 2007

floor play

one snowy eve not so long ago, the risk got hauled from the game closet, from the near-cobwebs more likely. the little one brought it up by the fire. we all joined hands and sat in a circle (just kidding, just that that scene was starting to feel so walton-y, so little-home-on-the-prairie, i got carried away…).

actually, we spent close to an hour rolling the dice, positioning little men with their miniature weapons. covered the map, yes we did.

and then, for a coupla weeks practically, the men and their armies stood motionless. frozen on war fields. a board game that never took off, got shoved under a table. a board game turned still life turned dust pond.

drum roll…

i risk being banned from the playroom, and yet i confess.

it is, probably, my no. 1 downfall of parenting. the thing that cuts me off at the knees, every time. i am, when i catch myself squirming, up to my kneecaps in guilt over it. even alone, i wince at the shame of it.

it’s the down-on-your-knees part of parenting. the fumbling and fiddling and piecing together (fill in the blank here: lego, building blocks, board games, you name the vex on your knees) ’til you’re blue in the face. blurry eyed. cramped in the joints. weeping. dare i mention the b word? yes, bored.

there, i said it.

and so, so ashamed to report, you know what i do about it? pretty much nothing.

i am, it turns out, not terribly good at getting down on the ground, on the rug, on the cold basement floor and futzing with things. not even when a rich imagination—or just plain old fun–is the thing that’s at stake.

seems in my first go at this, when i was the mama only of boy no. 1, i was decent enough. concocted all sorts of plots–grocery stores out of old cartons and cans; a train, once, out of a box that stored copy paper; a school with stuffed animals filling each desk.

but now, now that i’m old enough to have been asked too many times if my little one is my grandbaby, i seem to have lost my knack—and my desire—for getting down on my hands and my knees.

it is a vexing conundrum. we live in an age of so many conveniences—instant mashed potatoes, e-z wash wipes, drive-thru lattes—but the one thing there isn’t (and shouldn’t be) is a condensed, abridged, add-water-and-stir version of pure, simple, child’s play.

time, uninterrupted.

focus, undistracted.

in the word of that great observer/analyzer/thinker of what makes creative types ooze with creation, mihaly csikszentmihalyi, there is not enough flow in the floor play.

not when i’m in the picture, there’s not.

and that is not, i assure you, something i’m proud of.

i look at the titles that pack one of my bookshelves. i have a whole row just on natural parenting.

i gulp, wondering if i might be something i’d dread if i’d ever before given it this thought: what if i’ve somehow become an armchair parent, one who guzzles and gulps whole chapters and verse on the virtues of childhood the old-fashioned way. without screens, without clickers, with free time to play for hours on end, fueled on imagination, and the occasional pretzel, alone.

but then, where the knees hit the rug, i’m dismally distracted, multi-tasking, two-steps-behind-and-fretting-every-step-of-the-way, ’til finally i push up from the ground, i surrender, i dash or i dial, i do anything really but stay on the floor with my child.

my mother, the wise one, tells me not to worry so much about the house, whether it’s clean, laundry folded, food on the table.

another wise woman i asked, quipped (and quickly): “that’s what playdates are for.”

but yet another wise friend, one who works hard at being a beautiful mother, made a pledge, for a month, to get on the floor with her kids. each one, an hour a day.

oh, lordy.

guilty as charged.

there are, i admit, some parts of this job, this mothering, that i do do quite well. i can talk and emote ’til you’d be red in the face. not me. i keep on.

and i’m certifiably silly.

but point to the toy closet, haul out a game, and i start getting itchy all over.

i am, in the end, mama erectus, a mama who’s best on her feet, mouth moving.

maybe it’s futile to kvetch and to worry. maybe this floor play isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. but, dear doctor freud, deliver me please from this guilt.

all i know is, thank god in our house there are four hands to carry this load. the man who i married, father of said boys, boy 1 and boy 2, is quite a bit good on his hands and his knees.

building with lego. making like frank lloyd wright with the blocks. racking up real estate, one green hotel at a time, in the wonderful world of monopoly, the wonderful world where you do not pass go, do not collect $200, instead go directly to jail.

which, sometimes is where i have dreams i’ll be sent, if the parent police ever catch me utterly absent when it comes to time on my knees.

i confess my sins here, wondering if you too find this—found this—a part of the job description where you come up—came up—short every time? or at least a whole lot of the time. for those of you who look back on floor play as a thing of the distant past, have you any wisdom to impart as you glance through the rear-view mirror? some of you might find deep solace on your knees. care to pass along your secret to kneecap nirvana?

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