pull up a chair

there are four of them, the brothers in my life. and, mostly, back in the early days, it seems, we made like some sort of appendaged amoeba. i mean there were skinny arms and banged-up knees sticking out from wherever we were tumbling. but we were mostly one.

into the station wagon we fell, en masse. an elbow, maybe poking someone in the eye. a knee in someone’s rib. but little bottoms all lined up and squishing for a piece of seat.

same thing at lunch: into the bench we plopped to slurp our chicken noodle soup. and church, definitely in the pews at church, we were wiggly, squirmy, big-eyed bunch, a single serpentine.

i always was, still am, the only girl. i had my own terrain to struggle through. had no one in the house to learn the girlie ways from. once walked across a frozen tundra–or so it seemed that subzero afternoon, the wind against my neck–to sneak home my first palette of every-color shadow for my lids. then locked the door, up in my room, and tried to figure, just what the heck to do, and not get caught with baby blue smeared above my eyeballs.

the boys, though, were as much a part of me as my curly hair. even though i wasn’t oldest, i was, in ways, the big sister. i made mistakes before the others. i stirred some dust, slammed doors. i took care of them, sometimes. i cooked and made them little menus. when they were really little i dressed them up in all the baby clothes. i rocked the littlest one, once he came, didn’t want to lay him down. held his hand, the night my papa died. sealed our hearts forever.

as we grew, we’ve grown to scatter all across the country. and in other ways as well. we’ve got red states, blue states. one who flies a plane, and one who plays piano. one who soaks up everything he reads, and one who seems to master anything he touches.

he’s the little one above, the one i’m holding by the hand. the one i’m standing there beside, believing in him wholly.

he’s the one right now i am feeling mighty proud of. he is, you see, the one who’s always found his muse in making beauty with his hands: he paints, he drums, he cooks, he gardens. he sculpts, and crafts with wood. he also makes outrageous beauty with the words he puts upon the page.

it was right here, at this blessed table, that we read him many mornings. people asked me, who is that? who writes such lovely missives? who pierces all our souls with the way he cobbles thought, sculpts words into lasting pictures?

my little brother, now a man with sturdy hands, strong heart, he sat down to a keyboard, and wrote a tale of building me a bench. it was wise and clear and pure. it was rife with wit, like he is. and precise in every word–he wrote that the bentwood arm is made of cherry shaved in razor-thin slices “like prosciutto,” an image i will never lose.

it seems the world looked up and noticed. put his name high above his words, on the front page of a whole section of the newspaper. and readers by the dozens have been writing in, saying, oh, what blessed beauty.

i am the big sister who once held his hand, and tried to keep his toddling self from listing to the ground. he, along with all the brothers, once swept me down the wedding aisle, the wings to my great flight.

i believe now i am standing, looking up. my little brother, now a man, is off the ground, and soaring.

i couldn’t be more proud.

i am, after all these years, the big sister long believin’. only i am not alone. whole lot of folks now see what i saw. and i am, still, big sister beamin’.

do you have a brother, or two or three, or seven, who lift you off the ground? who make you laugh like no one else? who know you deep and deeper? or, do you have a big sister? did she, does she, believe in you? or is there someone else who’s taken on the task of reminding you when you teeter that you are something rather gorgeous?

if you’d like to read my brother’s story, i saved it here for you. it’s paired with one that i wrote, that you first read right here on the chair. bless all of you who found us in the paper, where a shining light beamed down on the big-eyed, beautiful boy i call my brother.

i just had to put up that scrumptious photo because it melts my heart. the tribune cut out our little heads and floated each of us inside our essays. but the whole picture was missing there, and it just seems essential.

sweet david, what a flight…..go now, my love, and write your way, past sun and moon and stars, the heavens and beyond are yours…

it is elusive, this season that pulls and tugs on us, tells us it’s time to shed the woolen winter cloak, the pounds that have crept onto our laps, like children, who need to be nestled.
i’ve known for a while that it’s out there, teasing, taunting. i heard it in the birdsong one morning, as the snow was tumbling down. i laughed out loud, i did, the foolery of weather. thinking it can masquerade the turn of earth, the basking of our overpopulated island in the face of sun.
i can see it, too, in the white-blue light of march, beginning. i see it streaking in the windows, spilling on a bookshelf, shouting, “i am not the season you think i am.”
oh, never mind the ice, the snow.
it is out there, springtime is. it is contracting, deep beneath the icy-crusted soil, way beyond the stars where time ticks on, regardless of the swirling winds and piled-high precipitation.
the universe, yes, is deep in labor. spring is birthing, season churns from page to page. any week now, we’ll see the crowning of the springtime’s messy head, pushing through the cracks of winter finally stepping down, relenting.
if you look, hard enough, you can see it now.
on the tips of magnolia branches, where the velvet buds are clasped, in chilly prayer, awaiting one swift warm wind, and then, kapow, the whole of it, spring unbridled, will burst before our eyes.
you can spot it, if you watch the sparrows.
the ones i call my own are flitting in and out, already, of the little hole above my door, the one they call their home. the stoop is dumped with all the detritus of last year’s nesting fashion. this year, they seem to have a silken thread of royal blue hanging at their doorway.
the never-ending labors of the sparrows tickle me to no end. they chatter just outside my window, making quite a fuss, as she tells him, perhaps, to ditch the blue, go for something, hmm, a little softer on the eye.
i was in the woods the other day. squishing at every step. i was searching for those bravest wisps of woodsy carpet, the snowdrops, or the lime-green tight-wound clocksprings of the fiddlehead, a fern whose neck, perhaps, might be feeling pinched from all the hunching in a ball, deep beneath the loamy dappled floor, where all the winter’s work is done in dark seclusion.
there was not a tender shoot of promise to be found.
which made me think, of course. made me think how so much of life is just beyond our senses. but does that make it one breath less real, or only serve to exercise that muscle called Believing?
we can’t hear the words of those we’ve loved and lost, but does that mean they are no longer pulsing through our every blessed hour? we can’t see the unfolding of the dream we’re hoping for, but how do we know when the one who’ll make it happen is reaching for the telephone, or lining up the pieces to make the chessboard capture?
what if we learn–as the spinning of the earth and sun tries to teach, again and again–to trust that which we cannot see or hear? not yet, at least.
what if we take our cues in subtle ways–change of light, the lilt in cardinal’s morning song, barest wisp of green poking through the sodden gritty soil–and succumb to tug and pull of time?
what if, even when the cold winds blow in march, we believe that spring soon will be delivered?
it is, again, all about that thing called faith.
do we stalk the woods in search of spring, and walk out empty-hearted, or do we strip off our mittens, push back our hoods, and let the vernal-tipping sunlight sink deep into our marrow?

do you believe it’s coming? what signs have stirred you into knowing something fine is just around the corner? are you going batty? is the seasonal affective disorder dragging you deep down into the muck of the winter that will not take the hint, pack its bags and leave?

if you meandered up the bluestone walk to my front door, if you peered through the panes of glass, pressed your nose maybe, you would see it.

if i swung wide the door, urged you to come in–here, please, sit down, take a load off your toes–you would see it. you would sit on it. unless of course you opted to plunk down on one of the steps of the creaky oak stairs.

it is, from here on in, the first thing you see when you walk in my house. it says, sit, please. it says, what unfolds in this house is simple, straight-forward, is bent in unending embrace. is authentic.

that’s a big load for a bench. but the bench, built by my faraway brother, can carry it. i know. i’ve known my brother for 40-some years. marveled at every last thing he’s put his well-muscled hands to. and his heart.

this bench, though, is something quite else. is enough to leave me groping for words.

here’s proof: we got it last week; you haven’t heard of it yet.

the bench, conceived and created in maine, rumbled up my snow-covered street in a truck the likes of which usually pulls down to a dock, at some industrial warehouse. not used to a lane where houses, like notes on a scale, mark out the meter of everyday life.

i paid off the driver, a 20 is all, just to help roll the bench in a box–135 pounds–up the snow mounds, down the snow-shoveled walk. then, the driver, he cartwheeled it up the front stoop, into the door. i tried not to look.

and there it sat, for hours. till the men of the house got home, got hammers and knives. had at it. unearthed it from layers and layers. first cardboard, then crate made of wood. then shrink-wrapped, heat-sealed green plastic, then paper, then pliable foam. more sheets of foam. eight layers in all before we finally, finally saw what the fuss was about.

oh my, is all i could say. all the rest came in gasps.

as i took in the cherry smoothed like the cheek of a pearl. caught a glance at the spindles, each one a work of true shaker-esque art. and patience. and love.

yes, my brother, a builder of chairs and dressers and tables in maine, my brother spent hours sanding and waxing and carving and fitting. not a nail on that bench. just wood easing for wood. wood yielding. wood behaving as wood under grace, wood revered, wood respected behaves. this wood was not banged. this wood was coaxed, cooed into place. this wood was crafted, disciplined, seduced into place.

my brother took cherry, took ash. whispered sweet somethings. told it the story, perhaps, of the house where it would spend its long life.

once trees in new england. now a bench not far from chicago, the city that works. the city with very broad shoulders. now a bench in a rather old house. a house on a street simply called maple. cherry meet maple. maple meet ash.

the bench is home now. it came with a letter. penned in brown ink on its underside, but typed and put onto paper besides.

the builder, my brother, wrote this, in part, on the bench:

“beside the doorway to your home, this bench will serve sometimes as a seat for two, but more often as a place for backpacks or grocery sacks, attaches or athletic gear, bundles of herbs or stacks of library books. over time the cherry will darken to its natural patina and nicks, scratches, dents and dings will appear to mark the comings and goings at maple avenue.”

not every bench comes with a story built in. not every bench comes carved from the hands of someone you love.

as my sweet husband said, gushing there on the phone, not long after the whole of the bench had been birthed from its eight-layered womb: “you love it, if you buy it. but you really love it if you know–and love–the person who made it.”

our home, it seems, is being filled with heirlooms in reverse. we do not have armoires and dressers from generations before us. no, we have living breathing heirlooms. heirlooms from the start. ours do not acquire their story after the fact. but rather, they start with a story, and journey from there.

the nicks, the scratches, the dents and the dings, those will be the notches that continue the story.

the story began something like this: far away, in a place where ocean waves crash, far away in the great woods of maine, an uncle and brother with hands that are sculpted, sat down with a pile of cherry and ash.

he carved and he glued, and he rasped, and he varnished. he sanded and sanded, then he rubbed it with wax. he imagined the boys and the bottoms that would make their way to the bench.

he packed it and shipped it off to them all. all those miles and miles and miles away. over rivers and mountains and plains. through star-studded nights and snow-blowing days. till it got to the place of the words and the numbers, scrawled on the side of the very big box.

his sister, then, welcomed it home.

she washed it with tears. she imagined the chapters in the whole of its life.

she would sit there perhaps when her boys went to college. she would sit there to listen the days they came home. there might be sweethearts spooned in that bench. there might be a baby, some day, laid down and wrapped in a soft tight papoose. some day, perhaps, an old lady with tired old bones will sit and drink in her house, and her life, and her very good fortune. some day, once again, the bench will be wrapped, and moved on to its next destination. one of those boys, surely, will make it a very good home. and it will sit, knicked, dented, and dinged, with quite a story to tell.

it’s what happens when someone you love builds you a bench that, at once, is a living, breathing 24-spindled story.

not everyone has a bench-building brother. but all of you might have a something tucked in a corner, something with a story to tell. what is the something? and what is the story? and by the way, if you’re looking this way, thank you, sweet david. it really is something, the bench with the story you built. xoxo

it is, of all the stretches here of days, the one that, like a testy child, pushes you pretty much to the urge to pack it up, move in to that there closet, turn out the lights and stew a while.

perhaps, like mr. ground hog, you’ll peek out from time to time, catch the gloomy sky, dart back to where the coats dangle, and the boots convene a convention of vacuum-bustin’ dust balls.

perhaps you’ll hear the snow fall, for the umpteen-millionth day in a row, and you’ll want to pull your hairs out.

or, perhaps, you’ll go on cold strike: saunter out to get the paper in just some skimpy little t-shirt, and shorts. forego the knee-high rubber wellies. do strappy sandals instead. show skin. and what you’re made of. give them neighbors ’bout as big a shock as hearts can handle in the month of gooey chocolates stuffed in frilly, foil, heart-shaped boxes.

you can grouse, from now till thaw, about the unrelenting march of spirit-beating weather.

like me when learning how to drive (a stick-shift on busy highway, but that’s a story for another day), the weather here is apt to lurch. might wrench your neck, jerking back and forth from all the scribbles, dots, and dashes on the weather map.

oh, lord, what’s that funnel running through the south? oh, no, what’s with ice in cincinnati, city of the seven hilly hills? and here, in sweet chicago, get your neck brace on: one day cold and snowy. the next day colder still. followed by rain that might as well come down in cubes, for the way it freezes, turns to sheets of call-the-orthopod, i-think-i-broke-my-tailbone.

or, you can still the protest, leave the grumpy room, you can, if you care to, join my club. it’s a club for contrarians. we like what no one else does. cloudy days? we’ll take ’em. thunderstorms? bring on the cracks of lightning, riveting the sky. stirring wonder in the way the trees show up like x-rays there against the stormy night.

i don’t even mind all this: the diamond-dusted world i just woke up to. the way the flakes caught bits of moonlight, shimmered like a thousand million stars, scattered on the folds and folds and mounds and mounds of white.

i don’t mind how papa cardinal, my red-bird joy especially in winter, i don’t mind one bit how he sticks out against the snow. how he catches my breath. fluffed up on branches, trying to beat the cold with his feathers perched at full attention. there he is just now, right outside my window, and the sun is barely up. he is the lone flash of pigment till the valentines begin. and when they’re tucked away, papa still will strut his scarlet, the very heartbeat of promise.

i dare you, i think i do, to catch the flight of fury-feathered cardinal in the thick of falling snow and not to whisper, “oh, dear, there’s the flight from heaven, sent to stir my soul.”

that bird to me is hope on wing. a laugh-out-loud reminder that we are not alone. it can be unrelenting cold and white, and that red of reds shatters the tableau. bursts through the hopelessness, shouts, there is life where you are doubting.

and that, i think, is why i love this month. it’s the month of nearly giving up. of thinking you cannot make it this one last time. the month of thinking you’ll be tied and wrapped before it ever ends.

but then the holy hallelujah comes. the red bird. the pure contentment of mere survival. the steaming bowl of soup when you come in from shoveling, you sisyphean fool.

you think, perhaps, the thinkers were not thinking when they made this month the shortest one? of course they were, they understood. although they were down in rome, where i doubt this month is much too awful. and don’t even pay attention to the fact that this leaping year, we get a one-day extra helping. oh, loathe, you might say.
but not me.

i say, bring it on, this lull when winter settles in, sinks deep, when february mucks around inside my very marrow. proves it’s the boss and we are merely mortals. mortals complete with goosebumps (hey, who took the feathers?).

i like a month that isn’t mamby-pamby. you wanna be a winter month? well, then, act like it.

i take my coffee undiluted. i fill my car with full-strength octane. i’ll take february just the same.

if we have half an ounce of courage, now’s the time to show it. go ahead, take a walk. fill your lungs with frozen air, a composition that defies mere physics.

not one ounce of living worth its weight in ice-devouring rock salt comes without extracting something. matters not if it’s a season’s change, or healing heartbreak. matters not if your long haul is pit-a-pat of feet clocking many miles. or believing in a hard-won dream.

if we long for warmer winds, we’ve two choices: stay locked in closet waiting out the thaw, or step outside, and drink in what the shortest month has to offer–the chance to be wholly wide-awake to sparkling snow, rosy cheeks, and papa cardinal landed on your windowsill. oh my. i’ll take my february.

on ice, if you can spare some.

all right, all right, i understand. some of you just need to get it off your chest. “why i long for april,” a list. get started, you who can’t resist. however, if you, like me, are fine with february, then carry on. you tell us reasons why. and what you like to do when the second month is wholly up upon us……i think it’s black bean soup at our house tonight….hot and spicy and full of steam…

i snapped papa for you amid yesterday’s thick shaking out of snowy clouds. all day, three fine fellows, robed in red, and their mates, a little more in brown, kept me filled with joy, as they spent the hours, from dawn till almost dark, flitting to my bird-seed troughs….

it was a simple peanut-butter-and-banana on whole wheat. well, actually it was almond butter but that makes it sound more exotic than i want it to sound. the point is that it is practically standard school-lunch fare for nearly every first grader or beyond. and i just ate my first one in 33 years.

i got the taste for it when a friend, a week ago maybe, mentioned that she’d just been eating almond butter in the car, and she hoped the almond scent wasn’t billowing off her breath. i bought the almond butter, oh, maybe four or five months ago. it was sitting in the fridge waiting for the moment when i got brave.

it came out of nowhere, the urge to make it just yesterday afternoon. i thought, hmm, i could try that. almond butter on whole grain bread. sweetened maybe with slices of banana.

sounds simple, doesn’t it?

i only wish it was.

the long road back from eating disorder to disordered eating to eating that is, well, pure and simple and full of life, is, well, complicated. and hard as hell, besides.

it seems to take a courage and a faith deeper than any i’ve ever had, until maybe now.

i’ve never ever written about it before. only dabbled one big toe in waters here and there, once or twice before. not spelled it out. not so much anyway.

but if my goal here is to bring grace to the everyday, i think i’d better start to try to bring it to myself. in the simple triumph of putting something to my lips that i once thought might knock me over. might do one of two things: propel me to a binge that would not stop, until i fell into a stupor. or simply make me fat.

i’ve been stuck, you see, in both those grooves. so long i cannot remember how i ate before. only that i was always skinny, and, unlike all my friends, had never ever downed a Tab, and claimed it as my so-called diet. or had a pimple. or breasts, for that matter. the three seemed linked, and forever out of reach. i was just a smooth-skinned, flat-chested, skinny girl. unschooled in ways of girls who’d blossomed. stuck in training bras.

until i wasn’t. until i gained a few pounds. got a tummy. and then, one afternoon when my papa held up a magazine, seventeen it was, with a white-on-black image of the classic anorexic, practically an x-ray, she was, what with all the skin and bones. and my papa said, that spring of 1975, don’t try this.

i heard a lightbulb click, so help me God. and i’ve no idea really why–believe me i’ve tried on every theory there ever was–i defied my papa’s wish: i did try, really hard, to be the best anorexic there ever was.

i did pretty good, if i might say so. ate less and less each day. swam more and more. tallied every calorie, down to fractions. lost 30 pounds or more, in maybe two months. landed in the hospital. screwed up my eating for the next few decades, at least.

it is achingly hard to be stumped by the most basic act of being alive, except for breathing, which really involves no deciding at all, so i’m not counting it.

no matter what, you need to eat. that means, every single day when you are someone trying to regain your footing in the world of food, you are faced with choices that catapult you off a cliff. or else you cling, until your knuckles turn to numb and white, dangling by a net of rules that only gets thinner and more frayed–and, oh, so very tired–with every passing year.

do you know how many birthday cakes i’ve pushed away? how many thanksgiving stuffings i’ve not tasted, not sure how to navigate the two breads, three fats, i’m sure would be inside, if i kept count the weight watchers’ way–a way i once knew inside out and upside down, a lifetime loser in the weigh-in club that ruled my every bite.

i’ve not taken trips for fear i would find nothing “safe” to eat. once, in paris, i walked from bistro to bistro, reading menus by the door, trying to find the one that fit my narrow definition of what i knew i could bring myself to swallow.

it long ago stopped being about defiance. it became a trap that was mine and mine alone. didn’t matter if i was surrounded by good friends, or alone locked in my apartment. in fact, i’d prefer to be alone; i could suffer my shame in private.

so why, now, lay it out for all the world to read? well, because i am groping toward a place i’ve dreamed of, more heartily and longingly than i even dreamed of becoming a mother–and if you know me, you know how wholly that dream consumed my heart.

i’ve made bargains up the wazoo: dear God, bring back my papa and i will toss aside my eating fears. dear God, i promise, you make my baby well and i will never again play games with foods that might as well be explosives.

i’ve closed my eyes and imagined eating what i feared. but then i’ve sat and ordered the same old thing. pushed fat to the rim of plate. heard a friend exclaim, “what is wrong with you?” when i passed up a bite of gooey buttered nuts. felt a whole table full of neighbors turn to gawk. wondered what else was said–or whispered–when i left the room.

i have shuddered in the dark. i have wretched when all alone. i have died the thousand deaths.

but, until this afternoon just past, i’ve not tasted almond butter. might i note that it was sweet like nothing i remember, delicious, and, oh yes, satisfying. i chased it down with coffee doused with milk. then sunk my teeth into an apple. ate it to the core, the way i always do.

it is not a triumph anyone would ever notice. not how i should be remembered.

but i know.

i know i felt a rushing in my chest as i lifted up the lid, and sank the knife in a bath of gritty almond bits. i know that i swan-dived off a ledge, as i bit through bread and felt the unknown almond sweetness swirl around my mouth.

i know that i now, at last, have one toe firmly planted in the mountainside, and i only need to plant another and another to make my ascent to a place i’ve had my eye on for a long, long time.

it is time, i think, before i run out of time. before i run out of days that i can say i lived without fear.

we each, every one of us, i think, have a fear that brings us down. or maybe something we can’t, for the life of us, untangle, let go of, kiss adios.

i doubt i’ll run soon into someone else who knows how hard it was to get that almond butter from the fridge. but once i did, once i cracked the door, reached back, took out the see-through plastic tub, the lifting to my lips wasn’t half as hard as i’d imagined. and now i know that i survived what for 33 years has been my definition of impossible, insurmountable, the one small step i couldn’t lift my foot to take.

i tell you this because maybe you too are bound by something awful. something you truly hate.

or maybe it isn’t you. but someone who you love.

i tell you because if i write the words, i turn on the light. and if the light is on, i won’t be groping in the dark.

where it is awful lonely. and i want for no one to be stuck there, whatever is the reason.
care for almond butter, anyone?

not a single sentence up above holds irony that escapes me. trust me, like a camera outside my head, i’ve watched every frame, wincing deep inside while it unfolded. paris, in search of lettuce? paris without a single croissant? the script though i couldn’t seem to escape. until now. and here. there is something graspable here, after all these years. i reach out a hand, you take it, gently. i can tell you, at the table, the story i kept locked inside. it is not a story i like to tell. and i tell it only after time and trust is layered here. i don’t mean for this to be self-help, a phrase diminished before it starts. i do though mean for this to be a place of truth, and trusting. and how can we spread our widest wings, if part of us is limping? i do not ask for you to share your locked-in stories. those come only when the time is ready. and only you know when. i only thank you, then, for absorbing mine in the spirit it was told. bless you. bless and multiply whatever courage you require, to spread your wings, and taste the wind.

somewhere out there, maybe you too have a mr. crouch.

my mr. crouch is the one teacher from high school i still carry in my heart. somehow i don’t think he’d be surprised to hear that, but i hope he hears it–once again–nonetheless.

mr. crouch, he with fat gold pinkie ring, and always buttoned navy blazer, he whose tassled loafers i can still hear click-clicking down the halls, coming round the corner on a twirl, brushing back that flop of hair that sometimes animated what he was saying.

oh, and he was animated, all right. sometimes shouted, sometimes dropped his voice down low in a practiced whisper that made you ache to hear the words.

when he shouted, most often it was this: “you north shore cream puffs!” he would yell and needle us, stir us up off our puffy bottoms, implore us to search deeper, think harder to come up with stellar answers to his probing questions.

he taught english, by the way. but he might have taught anything. it wasn’t what he taught but how he taught it that left the mark on me.

there was, there is, i am certain still, a twinkle in his eye. and i, one who sometimes twinkles too, have always been drawn to that like moth to light.

my papa had it too. it was the thing, the meter in my life, that told me i was onto something, or maybe not.

to turn up the light in mr. crouch’s eye–or in my papa’s too–was maybe what it feels like to be a baseball-loving boy when he hits one toward the wall.

and since the playing field in mr. crouch’s class–and at my dinner table–was words and more words, was story, was thesis, was ironic twist, it was a sandlot in which i loved to romp. even when i walked in unequipped. which, in the case of junior english, meant i walked in, more often than i wish, without reading a single word of whatever was assigned. (i was busy in those days taking care of friends.)

oh, that didn’t stop me though from writing mighty essays. i could go on and on about the plot of, say, “zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance,” without a clue of what it was. in fact, some of my best first fiction, i know, was unspooled at mr. crouch’s expense.

he suffered no fools, dear lou crouch did not.

ah, but when i was on, i was very on. and mr. crouch was the first one–besides my papa–who made me understand that rubbing words together made for sparks that made for flames that could light the darkest corners.

mr. crouch, cajoling, jabbing, loving all the while, made me want to live to write.

oh, i took time out, went the way of nursing for a while, the other thing i loved with all my heart. but then, when my papa died, writing found me once again.

once i started writing for chicago’s morning paper, i got the call from mr. crouch year after year. he asked me back to light a fire under the latest batch of cream puffs. for five years, i whirled in that high school, told mr. crouch and all his creamy kids, just how very much i’d learned sitting in those squishy little chairs. and how very much it mattered.

then, mr. crouch retired. and we lost touch. oh, once in a while i’d hear that he was somewhere southwest. but only recently did i get a call from the now retired head of the english department. he was clipping and sending a story with my byline down to mr. crouch. for grading, he told me.

but then, he told me lou was ill. and gave me his address.

i wrote to mr. crouch, told him once again just how very much he meant. and, by the way, i wrote, get a load of these really funny cream puff stories, collected by my north shore manchild.

(my favorite is the one about the kid at lunch eating what my then-fourth grader–newly moved to the leafy shore from the city–thought was fried chicken. my boy, naive to north shore menus, asked if he could have a bite of chicken. the kid across the lunch table looked up, and said, without a note of irony, “it’s not fried chicken, it’s breaded pheasant.”)

in yesterday’s mail, came mr. crouch’s reply. same old handsome cursive, letters big and bold and full of sweep, just like mr. crouch. but then, at the very end, came the sentence i’ll not forget:

“i shall treasure this letter the rest of my life–which may not be too long.”

he signed it, “with love, lou.”

now, for a girl who never got a chance to tell her other writing coach–her papa–how very much he taught her, how she lived to see the light bulb blink on back there behind his eyes, these words are achingly sweet.

it’s not every day you get the chance–before it’s too late–to tell someone who matters how very much they do.

and it’s not every day that someone tells you back, that you spoke the words in the nick of time.

when my papa died before i could make it through the blizzard to his bedside, i made a promise deep inside: i would not let another soul i loved leave me before i’d said what needed to be said.

i told mr. crouch.

and mr. crouch had time to write me back. his is the letter that i will treasure till the very end of time.

and dear lou, too. i will forever treasure you.

with love, one ordinary cream puff

do you have a mr. crouch? a teacher from long ago who stirred you to great things, who propelled you outside the boundaries of your ordinary self? do you have someone in your life who slipped away before you got to tell him or her just how much they mattered? is there someone still who needs to know?

p.s. the collected works of eudora welty are up there on mr. crouch’s letter, because i was told the one thing mr. crouch distinctly remembered about me was that i was the only one in the class who found the story, “why i live at the p.o.” hysterically funny. well, fact is, i had no recollection of a.) the story, b.) reading it, or c.) finding it so very funny. so i pulled it out and re-read it. it is funny. the one who told me the story said it was at that moment, back in junior english, that mr. crouch knew i was destined to be a writer. hmm. glad i found it funny. or else all of this i’d be lacking.

p.s.s. we gots us a snow day here. oh, lordy, there’s at least a foot of puffy white stuff out my window, and far as i can see. i tapped the dozing manchild on the shoulder to give him the very good news, that school was canceled, and oh i wish i’d had a picture of the smile that crossed his face. happy snow day if you got one too. any one for pancakes, the long slow snowy way?

letting go of a birthday, watching the clock tick toward the end of the one day that, all these years later, still feels wrapped with a ribbon and tied with a bow, well, letting go of all of that still makes me gulp, feel a bit of a woops down in my belly.
but there’s only so much hallelujah you can pour into one 24-hour slice of the cake, only so fine a day you can absorb before thinking your insides might burst in a cloud of pure confetti.
so, as the clock undeniably inches toward 12, both hands clasped in tight prayer at the top of the dial, i know–i’m a big girl now, i’m now, yipes, in the latter half of a century–i know, it’s time to step down. time to take turns, go to the back of the line, let all the others have their huff-’n’-puff at the wobbly candles.
before it’s a wrap, though, before i turn out the lights, shuffle off to my pillow–cinderella back with the mice and the pumpkin–i do need to curl up here, and whisper what amounts to a birthday benediction.
there is much, so much, that fills me to bustin’.
bless the crescent moon, once again, that shone on my awaking, that hung there in the southern sky, that winked at me, when i went out to greet the dawn, to feed my winged friends before the black of night gave way to frozen white of day.
bless the man i married who rose from bed not long after i did, so he could make like a boy scout and figure out a way to rustle a fire from whatever sticks and bits of house he could scrounge into a meager pile out in the garage.
bless the little boy who used all his might, and all his heart, to spell the words and draw the curly-haired mama whom he proclaimed best hugger kisser, and well, that was my blue box from tiffany, all right.
bless the manchild whose eye to the core of my soul never ceases to infuse me. this time in a finely-framed photograph of two outstretched hands–mine and the little one’s, each offering the other a tiny glass heart, and, of course, the unseen promise to hold each other’s real true pulsing heart tenderly, closely through forever.
blown up big and black-and-white, it’s a picture i could hang on every wall of every room in this old house, it touches me so deeply. (you might recall the story behind the hearts, the one of the little school boy trying mightily to net the butterflies that would not let him sleep the night before he shuffled off to first grade, and then found solace in the little heart slipped into his pocket.)
and, since no day–not even a birthday–should be a day without a little drama, bless the cat who chose this day to toss his little kitty cookies all over the blue-and-white-checked couch, at the very moment the little one stormed out of the room, proclaiming boredom through his almost tears, and i was left to unload the groceries, clean the couch, roll my eyes at the dramatic little feets stomping up the stairs, all while mr. boy scout slept off his early-morning fire-starting triumphs.
bless the phone that rang and rang, carrying voices i’ve not heard in quite a while and some i hear each day.
bless the boxes that tumbled through the u.s. postal blender, and somehow landed on the very stoop for which they were intended.
bless the two fine friends who came to keep me company while i cooked the things i love for the people i so love, since not a restaurant in town cares to cook on the third day of the brand-new year. not even for my most beloved peoples.
and, of course, always essential in a litany that spills from the fact of your very existence: bless the mama and the papa, and the breath of pure true light that started me off in the first place. and, so far, have stuck with me all along this woopsy-daisy life of mine. (although one now does so from on high, where perhaps the pulling of the strings and general rooting on my behalf comes with just a tad more ease and more direct connection.)
bless the knowing, deep down in my heart, that this blessed day was really just like all the others. and that the greatest gift of all is stitching each and every hour as if it is a day i’ve waited all my life for.
which, actually, i have.
not a bad bit of wisdom to have unwrapped on this day of once-upon-a-birthing.
and now, past 12, it’s time to shuffle off to sleep. i’ve a whole new day awaiting. and i’ve got thread and needle at the ready. it’s my intent to stitch through all the year.
bless each and all of you who give me sewing lessons, every single brand-new day.

does ending your birthday day make you just a little sad? or am i the only baby in the house? i think of my wise friend sandra who celebrates all fine things in seasons, stretching out the joy and celebration. lifting a whole motherlode of days into something even grander. and, by the way, i rather liked the existential challenge of seeing if i could rise above the momentary angst of messy couch, pouting child, dozing mate who slept right through it all. i like a day that’s got its share of messiness. it made the sweetness of the song and little cakes at dinner, all the sweeter.

glory be the cat that meowed an hour or so after the new year breathed its first full lungs of breath.

glory be the mama’s feets that shuffled the stairs, that rounded the bend, that came upon what appeared–through groggy eyes that, of course, had taken in the toll of the midnight bells, and thus had been sleeping not more than an hour when all the cat ruckus occurred–glory be what appeared to be a bush all aglow. a bush with a halo.

a bush with a message to tell: be still. illumination awaits you.

and so i breathed for a while there. stood at the window. breathed in the blanketed birth of the new year. marveled at all of the stillness. the gift of the snow and the absolute silence. not a bird’s wing quivered. not even the wind moved.

only my cat, prancing. lifting paw through the snow drift, headed out for adventure. determined to take in the new year, one deep plunge at a time.

i, well, i tucked a bookmark there in the night, and i tootled back up the stairs to my bed.

i didn’t stay long, though. just long enough.

and then, when a toss or a turn shook me back to my preferred state of being–the state of being wide-eyed awake–i weighed my options: sleep, or savor the dawn.

dawn won, as it always does.

particularly here on a morn when inches of white had transformed the world, had draped a tableau that as long as there have been poets and ice crystals fallen from clouds has made for breath inhaled, held, and let out in long lines of glory.

i tiptoed back down, back to the place i’d left off, there in the deep of the night. same bush, still aglow. but washed now with the blue light of dawn creeping in from the east.

glory be the first footstep laid in the snow, glory be especially when it cuts a straight path to the trough where the birds come. where the birds know the seed will be poured, in abundance.

“g’morning world,” i called out. to whoever was listening. and whoever wasn’t, as well.

glory be the gift of the morning. glory be the newborn year, the chance to begin again.

something inside me stirred me to steep in the wholeness. every pore cried out for attention. i wanted to taste, to smell, to see, to hear, to feel the crisp, full, delectable launch of the day and the year.

i’d plugged in the tree, so two bushes glowed now. one in, and one out.

i’d fed the birds and my four-legged friends; truly, i make like i’m some sort of make-believe farmer, slopping the seed, pouring fresh water all around, outside and in. out, where the birds and the squirrels, even the possum, soothe their parched wintry throats. in, where sometimes the midnight cat slurps.

now it was time to feed my sweet children, the ones dreaming up in their beds, the ones who i hungered to greet with all that was sweet, that was good, that was soft, that would lighten their hearts on the dawn of the blessed fresh start.

i spotted a whole braided bread in the corner. considered milk and butter and eggs. considered cinnamon. eyed a big bowl of apples. considered slicing and sizzling in butter and sugar and spice. cranked up the old oven.

the original mother’s-milk bath–3 cups of milk, half a stick butter, half a cup sugar, pinch salt, a good douse of cinnamon clear from the streets of saigon–steamed in a pot on the stove. the bread i tore into bits, considering wholly the gift of the moment at hand.

tucked in the oven–the bread in the bath of the milk and the eggs and the cinnamon apples and raisins–a wholesome new-year pudding now on the horizon, i slipped on my knee-high wobbly rubber boots, the ones the color of school buses. and i returned to the place of the snow and the silence.

i walked before even a soul had preceded me. the snow was all mine, and if i kept my eye only in front of me, didn’t notice the damage i’d done–the foot step left in the snow–i scored the gift of treading where no one had trod.
and so it was on the glorious dawn of this year so ripe with infinite hope, and a good measure of oh-lord, brace-me for whatever will come.

and so on this start of a new year’s adventure, i thank the maker of snow, and the bringer-on of the sunlight. i thank the hands that kneaded the dough that became the bread that i tore into bits for my boys. i thank the one who spins the words from my head with the prayers of my soul and puts them forth in the snippets i call my word-breathing.

i bow before all the greatness above and before me. i drop to my knees, and beg for the grace and the might to carry on through this mountain called life.

i breathe in in prayer. i breathe out, whispering incantation, sprinkling glory-be wherever i go.

blessed God, fill me so that i might fill those in my path. no matter how steep, no matter how close to the edge, there where the precipice is. there where we inch ever so slowly, hold on for dear life.

for just ’round the next bend, just maybe, you see, there will be sights–and moments, indeed–that will carry our hearts straight up to the heavens. i’m certain.

arm-in-arm, or alone, it’s a path best taken in strides. best taken with lungs teeming with spirited prayer. it’s a path paved in glories, for those daring to see. blessed God, open my eyes. let me breathe in all of your glories, swallow your sorrows. carry on, in ascent ever lasting. most holy amen.

what is your prayer this new year? how did you meet the moment of wonder as the fresh start washed over you? blessed beginning again……

i am, after all these bedtimes and all the tender kisses on someones’ heads, and all the litany of thank-you prayers, and all the one more drinks of water, all the questions that could not wait till morning, all the tucking in of sheets and smoothing blankets, all the one last peeks from there at the doorway before i too turn in, give in to sleepy eyes and sleepier limbs, i am rather practiced in the art of letting go one slice of time, waiting for the morrow.

and so it is with this sweet year, the one now toddling off to sleep, to be forever tucked away up high in the closet full of rememberings.

before, though, we bid it off, i felt inclined to curl up here for one more bedtime story hour. to look back on all the days and all the nights, to sift through time, to hold it close while its hours still are warm, still are beating with a waning pulse.

good night, sweet year, good night.

good night to year of boy turned six, and boy turned four plus ten. good night to year i myself ticked across mid- century. good night to year one boy lost a baby tooth, and the other lathered for a shave. a first for both, same august weekend.

good night to year we thought we lost the spring, the year the snow and ice came tumbling down–in april. but hallelujah, resurrection came. in the form of sprightly daffodils who would not be put under.

good night to year we kept a watch on papa sparrow and the missus, watched them flit from here to there with bits of sheets and string, even squares of calico, to build a nest, lay an egg or three, and give a fateful flying lesson. which landed, oops, a bit abruptly, and rather not-so-softly, on the bluestone stoop that might not have been considered in the sparrow flight plan.

good night to year in which we practiced paying attention–kept an eye on molasses light, listened to a summer’s rain, considered the march to death of the 17-year cicada.

too, it was the year in which we listened–to the unfiltered questions that pour from five year olds, the bedtime fears and butterflies on the brink of going off to school.

we listened, too, to the sound of breaking hearts when the news beyond our walls came rushing in, and wasn’t pretty. not at all, at all. and not today, especially.

we held the hands of friends, held them as their mothers died, their fathers fell, and marriages collapsed.

we held our breath as well. held our breath as children couldn’t make it up a mountain, and fell and skinned a knee. again and again. but managed, somehow, to get back up, keep climbing, showing what they’re really made of.

we lost sleep over worries we could not fix. and fears that wouldn’t slink to the back of the closet. where we wish they’d curl up and fade away. and not come out again some rainy gloomy day.

but somehow, somewhere–maybe in the quiet of the winter’s first thick snowfall, or in the dawn after dawn when only the pit-a-pat of the typing keys broke the morning’s silence, maybe then–we discovered bits and pieces of our selves, and our soul, that had been lost for quite a while.

i, for one, found myself not being quite so filled with shame and fear at the mention of my long confounding struggle, the one in which i’ve come to understand that to feed myself–feed myself well, mind you, not stingily and wrapped with make-believe rules–is not only necessary but rather like dancing with the divine, three times a day. or at least it can be.

and speaking of the divine, i believe i found again my mooring in a foggy harbor. the mists are lifting now. i know what i know, and i’ve come to understand the power of a story, and a hero who has stood the test of time and centuries upon centuries. never mind the hierarchy–and history–that, God forgive, got in his way.

i found here–right here at this table–a community of true friends. ones who’ve heard my ups and downs and sideways, and still they come, pull up a chair. sit a spell. spill their stories upon my story. and at least we know that we are not alone. we might be the only one on our block, or in our little town, who thinks and feels the way we do, but somewhere out there, somewhere where this table reaches, there is, thank God, a someone else.

a someone who believes in home and heart. someone who believes that what unfolds at the kitchen table matters deeply. someone who keeps an eye out for the divine in the every day. in the scarlet flash of the cardinal just outside the kitchen window. in the full moon rising, or the crescent moon hung low.

all in all, i’d say, ‘twas rather a full year. and fully it was lived.

no wonder it is time for bed. and the year–and i, as well–seems rather sleepy. here, let me take you up the stairs. time for prayers. and then, lights out.

g’night, sweet year. and thank you. bless you for these sacred holy hours. and all the joy, the sorrow even, that they brought our way. can’t imagine having missed a single minute of the story. life itself, would be the thing we’d lost. and that, i’m not willing to surrender.

not a minute, not a second. not a single snippet of this sweet year, now settling into slumber, on its way to dreamland.

sleep tight, sweet year, g’night.

we’ve all weekend, and all of monday, to whisper our goodbyes and thank yous. what, most of all, comes spinning through your mind when you think back on all of ‘007? we’ll look ahead soon enough. for now, i’m wondering what of this blessed year you will forever carry with you?

just the other night, i lifted baby jesus out of his tangle of old, old shredded papers. mary, too. and joseph, who carries a lantern the size of a fat grain of basmati.

for all the commotion of what it took to get to them–the ladder that falls from the attic had to be pulled, which meant all the boxes in the hall upstairs had to be moved, then i needed the tall one to help haul down the big cardboard box, the one marked “bam merry christmas,” and while i was at it, i noticed the attic needed some shuffling of stuff, which meant that by the time i climbed down the creaky stiff ladder, the one with the joint that might be arthritic, what with its resistance to bending and the complaining it does, i was chilled to the bone–anyway, for all that preamble, i have to admit my holy little family just might be a bit, um, underwhelming. a bit easy to miss.

you might be here in my house, say, for a christmasy moment, and you might walk right past the three little people, time after time. mary herself is no bigger than the tip of my pinkie. the babe in the bed, maybe as big as one orzo pasta. no longer or wider.

it’s odd, then, perhaps, that i so deeply needed them hauled from the attic. it’s not like they’re commanding whole stretches of real estate. not like the mantle is theirs and theirs only.

as a matter of fact, they are tucked right on the ledge of a bird house i hauled home from a farm just last summer. tossed it in the back of a pickup, watched it bounce down a long country road. it’s a birdhouse built to look like the church on the top of the hill in that sweet farmer town, and i think, now, it’ll be the perch for my holiest littlest family.

i was practically hungry, you might say, for the three tiny folk to get out of the box where i lay them each year, come january, when it’s time to put away christmas.

i was hungry in that way when your soul is silently growling. like a tummy needs soup, only your soul needs sustenance too.

now that little manger, for something 99 folks out of 100 would walk right past, not notice, is, like all symbol in life, packed with a wallop of meaning to me.

it is my whole christmas distilled. it is, eensy as it is, the essence of a very long journey. and this year, i’m thinking, i’ve made it back home.

what i mean is it tells a story, the story of how a catholic, one who once saw the hand of God everywhere, one who once watched, through spread fingers and tears, as the face of Jesus up on a cross in a faraway chapel kept changing and changing right before my eyes—a Kodak slide show, i called it, a miracle really i thought, of all kinds of faces, black and brown, wrinkled and gray, a dozen or so, a true tour of the world, all in faces, a miracle that spoke to me in the certainest words: find God in each face–it tells the story of how that catholic married a jew.

a jew, by the way, who is deeply observant, who bore his own heartache at the fact that he married outside of the tribe. outside of the lines, he colored his life.

the question that’s posed, and answered, in that small wood-carved trio is this: how in a home–how in the sacred space you build only on trust, and faith in each other’s capacity to move beyond what you’ve known all your lives–how do you weave the christmas that means everything with the one that always was cast as a threat to your people, your race, and religion?

well, i started small. i started on tiptoes.

there is no place in my heart or my home for bombast or noise. certainly not trickery. i am appalled when i read–as i did just a week or two back in the new york times–of interfaith families who use christmas and hanukkah as some sort of weapons, a tug-of-war rope to see whose holiday is left standing, and whose falls.

oh, lord, no. i did not marry a man i love, i did not nosedive out of the safe zone to whittle away my life playing holiday games.

and so, amid a whole carton of hand-me-down wooden carved angels and shepherds and even a platoon of brass-playing penguins, long long ago, i moved back the tangle of old paper shreds, and there lay baby jesus, a toppled joseph and upturned mary, as well.

i remember catching my breath, gasping, and staring at the sweet little family. i lifted each one in my palm.

i knew then, that very first christmas, that i had a creche i could softly, quietly, tuck off to the side. wouldn’t ruffle a feather. wouldn’t stir, not even a mouse.

the fact of the interfaith journey is that–if you are paying attention, if you are listening closely to what many on both sides are saying–it can be a long arid road. you might spend a few years in the desert. you might fall on your knees, night after night, praying one thing: dear God, keep the pilot light lit. don’t let it snuff out.

the fact of the interfaith christmas is you need to be gentle. need to listen with very big ears to the layers of history. you need to know that a tree isn’t only a tree. a tree was, likely, the one thing that separated you from all of your neighbors. you were proud of that fact. it meant, you believed, you were the people God chose. it meant, too, you were the people painfully persecuted. by the catholic church as well as the nazis. at separate times, in separate ways, but persecuted nonetheless.

never once have we not gotten a tree. my husband, God bless him, has joyfully carried one home, year after year. last year, he grabbed the fattest one on the lot. frasier fir, too, the best that there is in the christmas tree business.

a creche, though, i feared, might be pushing a little too far. so i joyfully settled my heart into the littlest one that came in the box.

it’s always been my own little christmas. my devotion was quiet, was whispered, was in the deep of the night. or when everyone else in the house had magically vanished, and i was alone.

it carried me through years of not knowing. for a few years there, i listened intently to all the talk of the historical jesus. my ironclad knowing that Gospel was Gospel had been shaken, and shattered. i was left holding little but shards.

christmas came all those years. and i clung to my littlest manger. my manger that didn’t get in the way, that no one needed to notice. but that held me, rapt.

this year, not long ago, i somehow, without even feeling the climb, got to the summit. i realized the power of story, regardless of provable fact.

i don’t need to know if someone far, far away and long long ago can prove the steps and the words of a man we say was born in a manger.

in the utterly simple, deeply profound truth of the matter, i took in the whole christmas story for the power of its infinite metaphor: a babe born in a barn; the unlikely virgin mother; the carpenter guardian; the chorus of barnyard critters; the innkeepers who hadn’t a room; the bright shining light in the heavens; the shepherds and journeying kings.

for a minute there i thought maybe i needed to go get a creche bigger than the tips of my fingers. thought really it’s time to not tiptoe.

but then, i lifted my littlest manger from out of the box. and i realized how perfect it is for a christmas i believe in with all of my heart: it is christmas condensed to its delicious, delectable best.

it is christmas in whispers. it is a babe born in the night. it is a savior whose very first cry was let out in the straw of a barn. it is the lord, greeted by shepherds.

and that is a story i am blessed to call mine.

do you have a something you lift, every year, from a box? a something that brings back all the whispers and echoes of christmases past? do you find that each year, as you retell the story, it takes on new layers of meaning? it grows as you grow? i do understand that not every house melds such layers and strands, and i do try to make this a table with places for all. but maybe in some thread of this story you heard, or you felt, a bit of your own. your musings this christmas, if you don’t mind….

i’m still feeling my way here, in terms of when i meander. i do think i’ll be back with a blessing for christmas. stop by here, whenever you’ve time. the words–and my heart–will be waiting.