pull up a chair

the calendar months and months ago had been marked, “school’s out.” the plan, picnic at the beach, carved into our little heads.

workdays had been shuffled around, errands scratched.

it was the last day of school, dang it, a day that still stirs that once-in-a-lifetime gallump in your belly, that still can make even a mama feel lighter than air itself.

for weeks now, it’s been nothing but worries, making sure the 2d grader got the research project signed, sealed, delivered. getting the high schooler through exams, without crumbling into little bits of nerve-jangled angst.

last day of school is hardly just a picnic for the children. why, it’s hallelujah time for grownups too.

and so we weren’t about to let a little winter weather get in the way of our summer’s start.

never mind that winds were howling. and goosebumps, the skin covering of the day.

we would not be deterred.

fools we were, marching into the joint where hotdogs and gyros come drippingly (though not in trans-fats, the posters promise). we ordered up. grabbed our grease-dappled bag and set out to where the summer would begin: the beach.

the 50-degree, rain-splattered, wind-tousled beach.

hmm, seemed no need for that ol’ tattered quilt in the back of the wagon. it would not be spread across these soggy sands. maybe just around our shaky shoulders, there inside the comfort of our upholstered picnic grounds.

seemed our picnic–and thus our summer–would commence right there on seats A and B of the wagon. the dashboard, we found, made for a fine picnic table. as did the booster seat in back.

we sat, counted raindrops, nibbled on our non-trans-fats.

we were, except for the fellow steaming up the windows in the car next door, the only fools testing out the beach, taunting summer to begin, darn it. get started already.

sometimes you make do. you stick your fingers in the mound of greasy fries. you consider the fact that only summer lies ahead.

you make wishes on the raindrops, savor the immense weightlessness of that one glorious day that comes but a few times in any life: the day that all the worries of the world are lifted, and you are free, free of sitting in your desk, free of hauling lunch in lunch bags, free of filling in the nightly homework log.

those days aren’t mine any longer. long ago i lost the blessed, lung-filling magnificence of no-more-worries. that’s a gift for kids alone.

but once a year, when you’re a mama, you get to slip and slide into the dream, to pretend, until you reach the bottom of the bag of fries, that you too are let loose from all that ties you.

and, so, even when the rains splatters on your windshield, you steer toward the beach. you pour out your picnic fare. and you lick from your fingertips all that summer promises.

and you pay no mind to goosebumps.

people, what’s your wish list for summer? besides a little heat, please….

we said a prayer last night. for all the ones who didn’t make the team. the ones who tried out in pouring rain and chill winds, three nights running. the ones who laced up, hoped and dreamed. especially for the little one who held his father’s hand, hid behind a tree and never even made it on the field.

then yesterday, when the list went up, when the teams were all disclosed, when the cuts came clear and cold, spelled out in numbers on a list, some 20 of the 60 boys scanned and held their breath. looked high and low to find their number somewhere on the roster. didn’t find it.

my little one did. his number, there. right smack where he hoped it would be.

but all day long, and especially in the moments when we waited, before our eyes fell sharp and clear on the 1-1-8 that belonged to him, i couldn’t help but think of 7-year-olds and 8-year-olds finding out too soon perhaps that they didn’t measure up.

not by this measure anyway.

i struggle mightily with these sorts of measures, with any sort, i think. and i can’t wholly tell you why. only that i live and breathe to see the wholeness, the completeness, in each and every one of us. that, mightily, i pray that all of us could bathe and bask in the holiness of who we are.

maybe for too long i felt like i fell short.

maybe there’ve been too many nights of tears in my own kitchen, holding on, wishing more than anything that i could soothe the wounds, staunch the drip-drip-drip, of my own child who’d been told somehow he wasn’t fill-in-the-blank enough.

and here we are, in a world where winning seems to count for everything. where all the glory comes to those who charge the field, seize the goal, rise triumphant. where the stumbles, too often, go ignored.

where i wonder who is pausing now to consider all those broken hearts, the soccer dreams in shatters on the pillows in the houses all around this town, every town, everywhere.

i’ve no idea, really, how it is we teach the human heart to go beyond its borders, to consider how the other child feels. but i won’t stop trying. won’t turn in the book of empathy. and this seems, indeed, time again to stretch and reach and plant another seed.

it is, perhaps, the most essential lesson that we teach.

we spend our years, some of us, mumbling and muttering words that might, frankly, enter one ear and exit straight out the other.

but we mumble and mutter anyway.

we mumble and we pray.

we pause and say the words.

dear God, we prayed last night, my little one and i, please take care of all the hearts that are sad tonight, the ones who didn’t make it.

my little one prayed along. or at least he echoed all the words.

i prayed in double-time, praying not only the prayer itself but also that some little crumb, a dust speck maybe, of the message here settled on my brand-new soccer player’s heart.

that especially when we grab hold of what we wanted, more than anything, we remember those who didn’t.

remember what it feels like. imagine what it feels like.

to go running in the rain, three nights long, and then be told by week’s end, that it wasn’t good enough. we weren’t good enough.

not everyone, i know, can be a winner all the time.

but dear God, i beg, bless the hearts of those who cannot understand, who wonder what it is that left them looking for a number that wasn’t there.

and now at merely 7- or 8-years old–so very, very young, really–they’ve come to stumble on a sort of sadness i don’t wish for any child.

do you worry about the shock to the human heart of being told you’re not good enough? did you suffer this when young? how did you survive, climb out of that dark hole? how have you been tested to soften the blow when it came to someone you love? what are your thoughts on social constructs that are built on a foundation of some-win-some-lose, that’s-the-way-the-world-works? need it be that way? or is there, please Lord, some other gentler way?

every once in a while, you hear a story, ‘bout some super nanny, just shy of mary poppins maybe, maybe one who doles out only three-quarters of a teaspoon of sugar with every lump of medicine.

regardless of the nitty-gritty, you hear these tales of someone loving and kind and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious who, well, arrives on the doorstep not long after the stork makes its deposit, and then never really leaves.

that extraordinary someone puts up with it all: the babies who howl through dinner time, the little boys who can’t possibly watch enough trains go up and down the tracks (and so they sit trackside watching and whoo-whoo-ing and clapping crazily for hours on end).

why, they are there to teach little ones how to throw a baseball, tie a shoe, and the difference between a butterfly and a moth. out on their daily rounds, the little one and the keepers of the children might make whole flocks of friends. they might come to know the crossing guard by name, and the lady at the bakery who always picks out the oatmeal cookie with the fattest raisins.

these someones seem to have something for every passage, from secret potions to cure a diaper rash to how to make the letter “a” not look as if it’s whirling down a drain, spiraling off the page. even how to execute a K-turn, when it’s t-t-time to teach driving 101.

in my house there is that someone. and curiously, uncannily, she is the same someone who plied these tricks on me, when i was the one with diaper rash, or wouldn’t eat my peas. or crashed the old ford wagon into a bush.
i broke her in, i’m sure she’d tell you. and so did my four brothers.

we must have exercised her like a race horse. thrown every trick in the book in her direction. turned her, unwittingly, into the super-est nanny money could not buy.

she is my lifeboat, my salvation, and my answer-gram, to boot.

yup, she’s my mama. and she’s grammy to my boys.

of late, though, she’s upped her standing here in ways i’d never ever imagined, or dreamed. nor wished for.

you see, i’ve been expunged from my house, more or less. hauled back to the mothership of my old newspaper. told to sit and type where all the other grownups type.

and so, for the first time since birthing children, i am now the absent mother.

i’m not there two days a week when my boys bound in the door (the other workdays i race home in time to beat the schoolbus).

i’m not there when the dishwasher goes kerpluey and makes like a raging waterfall.

and, nope, i’m not there when the one in high school–the one who plays a double bass so big it won’t fit in one of our old cars, not unless you remove the lid (of the car, i mean, not the double bass)–i’m not there when he calls and coyly mentions that he needs a ride home from school at the precise hour that his little brother is being visited by a teacher who has him plucking up and down the ivories.

and this poor supernanny–who is getting darn near 80, for crying out loud–smoothly takes it all in stride. tells the big one to wait. mops up the flood. and when the little one gets to middle C, points him toward the bass-retrieving-mobile.

(she does though ring me on the workphone, drop her voice to a whisper and ask, furtively: “where’s the scotch?”
hmm. note to self: remember to pick up a fifth of scotch for the sitter.)

it’s not merely that she covers the basics. oh, no. we seem to have selected nanny-plus, the premium model.

in just the last few weeks, a stint in which she signed up without a whimper for two not one dinners-per-week, including grocery shopping, she has miraculously nudged our resident picky eater to down these heretofore-untouched morsels: lamb patties, hamburgers, why even mashed potatoes, a form of spud that had never crossed his little lips.

and, by jove, he likes ‘em all.

this nanny should be cloned.

she has melted my heart a time or two when she reported in that she’d picked up child A from point A to deliver to point B, and thought to pack, why, cookies and ice-cold water, so the little dear could sup in leisure and not be forced to gulp and swipe—or go without, had it been not-so-strategic mommy in the driver’s seat.

but that’s not all: this nanny package we seem to have won in the state lottery, why she’s been spotted in recent months teaching grown boys how to iron clothes. imagine that. i walked out the door to work, and came home to a child now fully equipped to zap my wrinkles–or at least the ones on my pants. whether she can prod him to keep up such skills remains, of course, to be seen.

if anyone can whip this house in shape, it seems to be the one who’s stepped in in my stead.

heck, i’ve come home to find my garden rearranged; the lovely big-leafed hosta that suffered regular beatings from wild basketballs–the hosta i’ve been intending to move for, oh, the last five years–she up and popped it from the earth, plopped it down in just the right shady spot.

she even sorts the mail. empties the recycling.

there is nowhere on the planet the brand of love she pours: all-encompassing, all the time. she is clearly heaven sent, and heaven-bound, i guarantee.

she told me once, in a whisper, that when my papa died she’d turned her life to God. her every breath, then on, would be in the service of others. we seem to be among the winners.

there are, in so many houses around the world, souls who keep the walls from falling down. who keep the kiddies scrub-faced, and the mommies from exploding.

at my house, it’s my mama. and with all my heart and soul, and all my achy bones, and my head that pounds some days, i thank her. upside down and sideways. through and through. and then some more. times two, doubled. to the nth power.

my only question now: can she fit us in on the days when i am home? i do need help. clearly.

i’m not the only one i know who has someone to thank for getting me across the finish line each day. or at least on the days when we’re at wit’s very end. i am blessed that i’ve my mama to be the one who’s here for me and my boys.
feel free to write along, and tell the tales of those you love and couldn’t live without. especially when it comes to those who live inside your home. or maybe in your heart…

the women came the way women often come, filing in in dribs and drabs, once they’d wrapped up the business of their day. obligations out of the way, time now to get down to why we’re really on this planet.

there was among us, one in need. very much so. and we were there, armed with slender wooden sticks and balls of yarn soft as kitten’s fur. and prayer.

oh, yes, skeins of prayer.

these women call themselves “the shawl sisters,” and their task was this: to knit a prayer shawl for a child, a girl of 17, who is off, any day now, to houston where she’ll meet up with a phalanx of oncologists, cancer doctors, who will peer into her liver, and prognosticate the days–and years, God willing–ahead.

she would be wrapped, this girl too young for what had taken hostage her liver, in soft looped stitches. some too tight, some too loose. some missing altogether. but each one noosed and pulled with prayer.

as she lay on hard cold tables, as she leaned against stiff rough hospital sheets, ones washed 10,000 times, she would be cloaked, this child, in the tender labor of tired women who’d do anything to soften the hard blows. insulate the chill. take away the hurt.

the equation was simple, and ancient: women gathered, as they’ve done since there were threads to be pulled through cloth, strands to be woven into squares, crocheted into circles, the geometries of homelife so elemental and everywhere.

cradling sewing baskets and knitting bags, drawn into circles on dusty prairies, or candle-lit cabins–or the well-upholstered dining room in a leafy, tranquil town–women have come to tend the stitches of each other’s lives, to patch together what it is that aims to leave us tattered. or in pieces on the floor.

as the night wore on, as teacups were filled, the cake plate passed, time and tempo were measured in murmured words and click-click-click of wooden needles, slipping through the loops of yarn.

we knit 1, prayed 2. and in between we purled across the rows of our life. the prom dates and all their dramas. the stormy weather just ahead. the recipe for chicken salad.

then at last, late from a meeting, dressed in pointy-toed heels, flush from rushing up the highway, the one among us arrived, the one for whom the knitting started three short months ago.

she came with news: not only need we pray for her second-born, the one who’d soon be wrapped in the shawl, but also her fourth-born, who’d just come home from the hospital himself. a fever, for six nights and six days, that had raised untold fears.

her fourth-born, you see, has leukemia, and a spiking fever is never good.

this mama bears more than any shawl could hold–or so you’d think. until you heard her laugh. until you heard her swear with all her heart that all would be well, dammit.

it had to be.

and then she told us, worst of all, as if all that was preamble, that the need for prayer this night was this: the shocking call that had come at 5 a.m. that morn. a suicide, a cousin, long plagued, had leapt off a bridge, down in tennessee. her beloved aunt, she insisted, was the one who needed prayer.

and so the women dropped their needles, clasped hands and prayed.

it went that way for hours, the seamless intermingling of the prosaic and the prayerful. and so, too, the laughter then the tears.

there is much to pray for, always. but especially so this night, where the women came with petitions, and pieces of a prayer shawl.

it is apt, i realized, that women so often turn to spools of thread, and rolled-up balls of yarn when life seems to be unraveling at the edges. when it seems the strands that hold us together are being tugged at, torn, mercilessly.

“we’re knitting toward the mystery,” said the woman sitting next to me, a beautiful woman, with bare, muscled arms. “the prayerfulness of knitting is a long tradition.”

one by one, stories were told of how knitting had been the occupation of choice at the side of so many death beds.
one woman told how when her husband lay dying he was wrapped first in a jewish prayer shawl, and his tumors went away. and then, months later, she was handed a knitted shawl, knitted by catholic women who’d thought to knit in prayer medallions, and ones of patron saints, and how in desperation she’d flung it ’round her dying husband’s shoulders. she believed, she said, in the power of a prayer shawl. and you knew she meant it.

someone else mentioned that when you are furiously knitting, you need pay some attention, and thus your mind is blocked from thinking all the other things that haunt you in a room where someone’s dying.

but this night, it was all about believing.

why, the yarn was even green, the color of a meadow in the spring, when it’s shaking off the drab of winter, bursting feverishly into life. the earthiest of greens.

and this night, the prayer with every stitch was that the cancer would be nowhere found. vanquished. sent to hell to stay there. the only place where it belonged.

fervently the mama of the shawl child worked those needles. click-click-clicking all the while.

at last, two pieces were complete. no rows, it seemed, were much the same. it was plenty holey here and there. but it was beautiful all right, the handiwork of many hands and hearts.

time to join the ends, the mama declared. her baby’s shawl was nearly ready. all talking lulled while she put her mind to this knitting task–how to make it whole.

and then one knitter in the circle–a doctor, by the way–who’d come with crochet needles, just in case, pulled them from her bag, held them poised. dove in, as if the surgeon.

more clicking followed. breaths were held all around.

and then she held it up, case closed. and the mama flung it round her shoulders. beamed. she’s a believer, this mama.

and she is sure as sure can be that what they’d done, those nights as winter turned to spring and they’d clicked and prayed, and prayed and clicked, what they’d done was knit their way to holy resurrection.

she is counting, as clearly as she counted stitches, on that shawl to keep her child whole and safe from what the cancer aims to do.

may her will be done, Lord, may her will be done.

i was blessed last night, so blessed, to be in this circle. i was entranced by these women so devoted, so devout. i hold up this one most blessed mother, and the women all around who hold up basket loads of heart ache, and don’t much take to stumbling.
have you too marveled at the ways in which women do the holy work of patching whole the world, the world and all the hearts so very often torn and tattered? where would we be without their fervent prayer and the circles that click on late into the night, never giving up where hope might come at the end of the next row?

hours on end, and well past nightfall, these past few days and eves, i’ve been digging in the dirt. the straight-up way, dirt to skin, the way it oughta be. the way of purists, and desperadoes.

count me among the latter.

ripped off the gloves, i did. sunk my fingers deep. as if clinging to the ledge, come to think of it.

even landed me some worms, a good three or four or five, over the course of my dawn-till-dark, bare-skinned diggin’.

hoisted up those worms, dangled them right before my eyes. tried to stare ’em down, see who’d blink first, the worm or me. but, dang, i never did make out where the worm face was exactly. so i simply transported the little fellows on to browner pastures.

they are worms after all.

and, of late, i’ve been feeling wholly sympathetic to the plight of each and every creepy crawly thing.

and i’ve been more than grateful to all that dwells within my garden’s mounds, the things with legs, or simply gangly roots.

it’s been–as the garden always, always is–my last-ditch, sure-thing salvation.

or at least the place that lets me unknot the kinks inside my soul. and the lumps stuffed down my throat. and the raw parts, wherever they are.

as i find myself being pried away from this holy plot that’s mine, this humble chunk of real estate that somewhere bears my name scritch-scratched on a hundred thousand documents (or so it seemed at that signing long ago), i find myself, more than usual, being called to knead through the tsuris the dirty way. the way that demands a shovel and a trowel. and knees so caked with mud they might never come clean again.

the blessed thing i’ve noted this time around, the lesson worth hauling in the house, is that, while all the world around me seems shaken, seems not the same anymore, the garden picks up where it left off.

it is in many ways a narrative ever spiraling, a plot that comes again and again. at once changed but constant.

like a great good book, one you pick up again and again, knowing just the spot on the page where your heart will race, and then the tears will come. because every time you read it, the words are just the same. only the way you read those words–the power and the message–shifts, falls in and out of shadow, spills suddenly into dappled light.

fact is, i find it wholly reassuring that everywhere i step–beneath the pines, in my squishy sodden some-day meadow, just beyond my star magnolia–i find evidence of what has been, returned again.

as if the whole experiment in birth and death and resurrection is headlined with this promise: “to be continued…”

the truth, of course, of any well-loved garden is that its cycle never ends, doesn’t flag. might wilt. might collapse in august heat. but come the spring, come april’s hope, there it bursts in may, the sweet reward for nothing less than not tossing in the trowel.

why, just beyond my kitchen window, the spicy viburnum, the one that makes me swoon at the turn of every april into may, it’s back again, replaying its intoxicating theme, reminding me of the elixir named anticipation.

and right where i planted them, and where i watched them turn to brown and look for all the world like shriveled death, there come the tips of ferns. and then the fronds, furled tight, like newborn’s fists, not yet splayed, reaching out beyond the womb.

no wonder not even hunger calls me in.

i cannot stop, cannot be sated in my quest to take it in.

everywhere i look, there’s proof: faith pays off. believing is a virtue.

why the bleeding heart, dug up and moved in the heat of july, it’s forgiving me. it’s shaken its summer shock. burst forth in tender profusion. all’s well that blooms in my garden.

how is it that the earth remembers? how is it that it gives and gives again?

who deserves such generosity?

i don’t know those answers, but i do know this: we’ve embarked, my garden and me, on a holy blessed journey. i tend with all my heart. i make mistakes galore. but in the spring, it soothes me. it sticks its neck out here and there and everywhere.

it asks little.

rewards abundantly.

teaches plenty.

so i’ve made a vow. i’ll be there for my garden as often as i can be. i’ll miss it when i’m gone. and i’ll always hurry back.

my garden’s the thing that’s saving me right now.

and i intend to pay it back in rapt attention to its glories.

forgive me, as my garden does. the day’s been long again, and the hour’s late. i might need to shift just one more blessed thing in this the latest chapter of my life: my wednesday meanderings might become my friday meanderings.

i think perhaps the chance to meander on my own slow time might be a finer thing. this downtown-first-thing on wednesdays demands one of two things: getting up at 4 to meander. or typing fast as i can in between making dinner, shuffling little legs to bed, and keeping my own eyeballs from falling closed.
i’m not one to shift my rhythms without a moan and groan. but seems the wiser thing to do, to unloose these hours, and make the end of week a holy place and time. stay tuned to see what next week brings…

so here’s my question: what does your garden whisper to you, when you tiptoe by? if not your garden, then what otherworldly living things call out to you, teach you sacred lessons?

i’ve been cataloging, the last few days, the things i’ll miss.

i’ve been walking through my life keeping watch, and taking silent census.

it’s become, i’ve realized, an inventory of the ordinary made sacred.

i can’t deny, as i roam from room to room, this house of mine, this creaking groaning house, has, in many ways, become the vessel for a prayerful life.

no hallelujah chorus here, no cymbals clanging by the hour.

just the barely-noticed wisps–through the window panes, amid the wind-blown daffodils, cast upon the kitchen table–that launch for me a tapestry of joy and wonder.

a place of simple, daily prayer, is what it is. and what i’ll miss. so very much.

i’ll miss the birdsong all day long, and the doings of the little sparrows who, on the branch outside my window, propagate the species.

i’ll miss my sweet holy viburnum exploding right before my eyes. and my traipsings, not infrequent, to see what’s sprouting, improbably, through the sodden thawing earth.

i’ll miss knowing how the light slants in at noon. or 10. or 2.

i’ll miss being alone.

oh, i’m not going too far, and i’m not going so long, really. just downtown, three days a week.

it’s just that for 16 years almost, i’ve worked from where i live; i’ve lived from where i work. i’ve cleaned the sink, then put in a call to ms. or mr. know-it-all, or, sometimes, just the random hoi polloi.

i’ve dashed to close the windows when the rain came pouring down, and then returned to type a sentence. or several hundred. and all the while soaked up the rat-a-tat of pounding rain as it punctuated and permeated the percussive clicking on the keyboard.

i have, over all these years, found sublime the rhythms of my wholly seamless life, the way i’ve chopped onions while thinking up a verb. or made beds while waiting for the phone to ring. my one job never ends, and neither does my other. and i’ve come to love it that way–to count on it.

but, these days, much is changing. and last week the folks i write for told me i’ll be writing on their turf. not mine. they need me nearby. i understand, of course, but it hardly means that i’m not aching.

i started this experiment in typing lifetimes ago, really. i’d not yet birthed my firstborn, but one hot day in may, i waddled home, dumped my notebooks, and never did go back.

after he was born, i didn’t miss the office, not one day. didn’t give it a thought, not much anyway. not till the weeks turned into months and the unavoidable truth was seeping in: it was nearly time to start to type again. but i couldn’t leave. couldn’t figure out how i’d up and wrench myself away from the little one who owned my heart.

i had a boss back then–and now it seems like once-upon-a-time ago, the stuff of fairy tales–who said this to teary me: “i don’t care if you write from mars, just turn in great stuff.”

and so, from mars, i tried.

along the way, on this planet where i’ve typed, i’ve become a certain sort of mother-writer. and this old house–nearly as much as its inhabitants–has pulled me in, sunk into my bones. but even more, my heart.

these walls i’ve memorized. these creaky floor boards, and the pipes that sing. i know them all. we’ve grown accustomed to our quirky ways. i understand that the pipes are old, and whining now. i know the shower’s got the shakes, at least, that is, when you slam the water off, too swiftly for its feeble constitution.

more than anything, though, what i’ll miss are the ways my house invites the outside in. or, sometimes, how the outside merely barges in, not waiting for a proper beckoning.

it’s in the spilling of the sunlight, or the bird that perches on my sill, that i feel cupped some days in the palm of God.

i’ve grown porous over all these years, and my house has too.

seems i need the blessed stream of birdsong and the dappled light–it’s the holiest of holies here among us–to keep me upright, keep my knees from buckling under.

and it’s the uninterrupted hours alone in this old house and rambly garden that i’ve come to call my peace on earth.
but now, instead, i’ll ride a rumbling train, dodge taxicabs that nearly leap the curb. i’ll sit all day amid a room of metal cubicles, and crusty folk who cuss. an awful lot, i tell you.

it’ll take some getting used to, if i ever truly do.

and when the day is done, when at last i’m bumbling in the door, and safely back where i belong, i do believe i’ll traipse, all right. from room to room. around the so-called grounds.

i’ll wind the clock, perhaps. fluff the pillows that the cat has squished, shake out the bits of fur.

i’ll see what’s bloomed while i’ve been gone.

i’ll poke my nose where the sparrows built their nest.

i’ll search for signs that God stopped by–even if by flashlight, i have to comb for evidence.

oh, lordy, this was hard to write. i started back at half past five this morning, then stopped to do the million things the day demanded. some other day, perhaps, i’ll tell of the very hardest part of all of this–leaving the little one, the one who bounds in each day from school. the one who asked, “but, mommy, what if i come home all sad?”
or perhaps i’ll tell the story of the saint behind the byline, my mama who stepped right up to the plate, said she’d be here after school two days. and fix dinner, besides. i’m blessed. and so so tired. so g’night for now. i’ll be back to clean this up, tomorrow. for now, it’s the best these tired hands could type.

my friend from the down the alley, the muddiest garden girl i know, came rapping at my kitchen door just the other day. the look on her face–wan, wide-eyed–told me something surely must be wrong.

i was running late that morn, and still in jammies.

can you come, she asked? there’s a bunny who needs a nurse.

thank the lord bunnies in distress do not check for valid nursing licenses. mine, alas, went kerpluey a few years back, the occupational hazard of being distracted by the news.

she explained that she’d just found the little thing; he was tucked up against the house, not moving so very much.

despite her love of all things of the earth, she was not so keen, it seemed, on nursing little bunnies. and besides, she had two cats. two often hungry cats.

oh, dear.

we decided that since i’d be fired if i was late–a fear that might run ironic any hour now, should the telephone ring-a-ling-a-ling–she would take first shift.

i’d be back by 2:15, i said. i’d be there soon as i could be.

indeed, i kept my word, worried all morning long about the bunn in some distress.

figured i’d cook up my wonder potion, the one i’ve used on baby bunns and birds and squirrels, all fallen from the nest. it’s part carnation milk-in-can, part molasses, two parts prayer. you dispense in little drops, lose sleep a night or two.

and any rescue, far as i have known, involves a cardboard box. always. never have i partaken of any garden triage without corrugated cardboard serving as the ICU.

as i loped down the walk, decked out in bunny nursing garb–muddy shoes, holey jeans, a pair of muddy gloves–i saw my muddy friend near-galloping toward me.

come quick, she said, spinning on her garden clogs.

and thus we tiptoed toward the little bunny’s side, the rescue box nested on the way with the softest driest grasses, thrown in in clumps as we passed her rusty wheelbarrow.

as we rounded the bend, we saw the one thing we did not wish to see: the hungry cat, standing much too close, a look of caught-me on its hungry face.

SHOO! we shouted, both at once.

and then dove in to do our mercy work.

the little bunn was there, all right. all fur and ears and just about the size of a golden goose’s egg. still breathing, too, though the up and down of belly fur and diaphragm came rather slow and not-quite-steady, pausing long enough to make you think each breath might have been his last.

and then his little jumping leg, the left one, wiggled just a bit.

so, right away, i dropped all thoughts of dripping droppers through the night. i knew at once, this was hospice care, i was being called to.

and somehow, suddenly, that felt all right. felt sanctified.

every hour of every day, in woods and garden shadows, there are little wisps of life extinguished. and no one’s there to watch, to whisper final benediction.

that’s just how the cycle flows. life to death. death to life again. no usher needed for these trips, it happens all alone, in silent solitude.

and what a holy sacred thing, then, that i, decked out in muddy shoes, would get to tend this dying thing.

isn’t that a blessing, on a chilly sunny april day? to be the caretaker at this precipice where life gives way to death.

my friend reached down and tried to lift the little ball of barely-breathing bunny. she lurched, and stopped, and looked to me. can you do this, she asked?

i gulped. then i dipped deep down, into that place reserved for times like this, when we need to put aside our wobbly selves and reach instead for fibers sure and steady.

we reach across the gulch from i-can’t-do to i-am-needed, and we do the thing we fear. we hold the hand that’s dying. we sop the blood. we wipe the throw-up off the bathroom rug.

we lift the dying bunny.

we pray and hold him up, feel the weightlessness of weeks’-old fur and bones and flesh, now limp and barely pulsing.

i felt the sun beat down, cool sun, april sun. i lay him on the bed of grass. i whispered holy words.

his care belonged to me now, this sacred time was mine to oversee. i knew at once i would lay him thick with flowers from the woods. sprigs of cobalt blue, and washed-out periwinkle. a daffodil or two, the tiny ones, with throats the size of hummingbirds’.

i brought him home, to my summer porch. laid him in a patch of sunlight, where his dying breaths would at least be warmed.

i sat beside him then. watched the breathing slow to almost none. i would not leave his side; wouldn’t let him die unwatched. i’d not want that; why would he?

and then at last, it came. the breath that was his final one.

i sat in utter stillness. and then in time i gathered up more stems and blooms from all around the yard.

my boys came home from school; each paid respects.

i went to grab the shovel.

this is indeed a holy task, the digging of a grave beneath our old tall trees, the laying to rest of woodland creatures, fallen to our care.

it makes a garden more than just a growing place, which it never really solely is, though that truth is sometimes overlooked with all the nodding blossoms and the buzzing bees.

when a bird or bunny’s buried there, it is indeed a plot of holy earth, blessed earth. it’s a sign to those who toil there that all of life is but a circle turning ’round.

and so i dug a hole, sliced blade into the earth, turned out a mound of piney dirt. i laid a nest of soft dried grass. dropped in petals pale, pink and blue and linen white. then, with tender gloves, i laid the bunny down. covered him in daffodils, added softer grasses still. then put back the shovelfuls of dirt, of earth, until it was a mound.

my boys chose not to watch this work, i did it all alone. and that’s all right. i’d taken on this bunny’s care, and i needn’t share its weight.

i rather cherished my long slow minutes under all the pine boughs, the dappled light of nearly-dinner time playing on the spruce’s fallen needles.

one more small bouquet i laid, just to consecrate the spot.

i tiptoed off, left the bunny all alone.

but now my garden’s richer than it was. my holy charge is there, not far away, where i can always keep my eye, and always murmur prayer.

it’s not everyday we’re called upon to tuck a life to everlasting sleep. but in these april days, when all around life is budding, bursting, chirping, it’s a holy thing to know: life, too, must end.

and in the end, we can bury it with grace and holy whispered wings, wafting heaven’s way.

as i type this i await word about big changes at the newspaper. already i’ve heard of heartaches that leave me stunned here in my chair. it’s only just begun, and like a grownup game of musical chairs, i’ve no idea if i’ll be left without a place to sit. i’ve no idea if i arrived at where i set out to write today, but it’s an odd day for storytelling when you have no clue if they’ll let you tell another–at least in the pages you’ve called home for 27 years. alas, we wait…

i oughtn’t say a word today: just let you drink her in, gulp after gulp; she’s more than plenty, really.

behold those long, long fingers. check out the little feets. and what of the face so round? and the perfect pink of her complexion? i’m certain she feels like velvet, rare and pricey, the finest bolt there ever was; a creamy smooth you’d not forget.

alas, i’m too far away to let her wrap my finger tight, not just yet anyway. and i ache to kiss those lips. and press her to my heart. so while i wait to flap my wings, and swoop down beside her, i’ll just ramble on a while, tell the story of the girl who came at last.

this is ella’s story, a falling-in-love story. the first of oh-so-many.

* * *
what you need to know, my little love, is i’ve been waiting for you for a very, very long time.

hmm. let’s see. maybe half a century.

and, mind you, i’m that plus two. what i’m thinking, though, is it must have been right around when i was two, maybe before, when i started to wish for a little girl all my own. or even one that i could share.

i was, i am told, a girly-girl from the get-go. i know i carried a purse wherever i went. even into a lake, once. and, always, i clutched a dolly. wrapped her in a blanket, never forgot to feed her from the wee plastic bottle, one with make-believe milk sloshing around inside. dunked her right in the sink, too, whenever she needed it, scrubbed her itsy-bitsy plastic toes.

i was, am, ever will be, a dolly girl.

there are girls who like trucks. and mud. and high-hoppin’ frogs.

and there are dolly girls.

i like mud, all right. and don’t squirm (not too much, anyway) when i pick up a frog. or even a worm.

but give me a baby, put me within yards of a baby, and i, like the mud, get mushy. all oozy-goozy mushy.

i imagine, even though i cannot recall, that growing up i made my babies be the girl kind. all around me, you see, were the boy kinds. one after the other, except for me, my mama kept poppin’ out boys. four in all. your papa is one of them. no. 3 of them, as a matter of fact.

oh, i liked them just fine. climbed trees with them. stayed up late in the night listening to ballgames, there in the dark, curled on the edge of one of their beds, the score and the crowds squawking from the radio.

on occasion, we rescued each other from peas we couldn’t bear to swallow, or tuna casserole. we giggled clear across the country, more than once, stuffed back in the back of the station wagon, bumping all the way. especially across indiana, the state that would never end.

but, oh, how i longed for a girl. ached, even.

at last, when i was 11, and one final time my mama went off to the hospital deep in the night, i lay there holding my breath. i was sure this round my prayer of prayers would be answered, and i’d at last have my very own girl.

i still remember my papa tiptoeing to my bedroom door that early dawn in the winter of 1968. the only one in the house yet awake, i’d been listening for his footsteps, awaiting the good news.

“you have a baby brother,” he told me, beaming, ruffling my hair. i tried hard not to cry, not to let on that, somehow, that wasn’t the something i’d been telling my guardian angel i wanted, the baby sister i swore was due me.

and then i grew up. got told myself, five times, that i was having a baby. once, it was a girl. but she didn’t live to be big enough, and i only held her one time, before we buried her, right atop my papa’s chest in a cemetery where neither one, now, is alone.

i have two boys. and with all my heart i love them. even though, alas and indeed, they’re not girls.

i wasn’t too deterred. bought a dollhouse anyway. collected tea sets. rolled out cookie dough. taught them all the things that make for tender hearts.

but i’ve not had a girl to dress in ruffly underpants. not had a girl to shower in dollies. nor even to plan elaborate teas. (don’t know if anyone’s tried, but a teaparty with boys is mostly about spilling the tea, and gobbling teeny cakes fast as you can, and then, poof, it’s over, and you’re left alone to sop up the mess.)

and, so, when months ago, word came that this blessed child (yup, that would be you) was–at long last–a she who was on her way, well, i was beside myself, tickled pink as pink could be.

so many picture frames clicked in my head: the hand i would hold as we walked through an orchard, the pies we might bake, the frilly skirts i would buy. and the overalls. the baby dolls i’d wrap and send you for christmas–or just because it was, oh, a monday.

utter truth be told, and of course i swear i know this: in a million different ways, it makes no difference that you are a she. not really, anyway. not at all.

you see, long, long ago, your papa and i made a promise, launched a kite of a dream: we would be for each other’s children, every thing we could ever imagine–and then some. we’d hoped to raise you all side-by-side, in a yard with trees without end.

life, though, rewrote passages of that plot.

my babies came first, by years and years.

but, boy oh boy, your papa’s kept up his end of the promise. quite beyond description: he’s built hot-air balloons with my firstborn, trekked to his second-grade classroom to help sculpt a flock of larger-than-life monarch butterflies, baked a saturn cake with spun-sugar rings and sparklers. he’s taught him of plato, and how to ride the “el” all around town.

my littler one, he’s adorned with, among other marvels, a papier-mache elephant head named omar (sculpted out of old clothes, believe it or not). your papa and my little one used to scoot side-by-side, for many blocks, to dine on hot dogs and green river sodas, plopping in the grass when they couldn’t scoot any longer, to watch the clouds change shapes. and your mama one summer spent every wednesday teaching my little one most important things, like how to roll up in aluminum foil, or build cities out of purple-heart scraps from your papa’s woodshop.

when they moved off to maine, your papa and mama, they left behind a glass prism to hang in my little one’s window, so every morning, still, he awakes to rainbows, scattered like thistle seeds, on every wall of his bedroom.

i tell you truly, in the end, girl or boy, it didn’t really matter.

but, well, for a girl who’d always dreamed in shades of pink, this girl news was something to behold. after all these years. i was more than swooning as we counted down the days.

the call came just the other afternoon.

your mama cried when she left the message. her voice cracked as she reported the news, “things are progressing along. and we’re very excited.”

from that moment on, i was suspended. moving through space here, but wholly transported to there. i shopped at the grocery store, but couldn’t tell you what i bought. instead, in my head, i was far off in maine, at your mama’s and papa’s side, putting cool cloths to her brow, holding hands, waiting.

i couldn’t go to bed that night, knowing you were all, at last, at the hospital; knowing you might or might not be coming before the morning. last i’d heard, all had stopped, and you might have paused for a last-minute nap. i knelt down beside my bed, stayed there for a long, long while.

and then, at last, at 1:34 in the morning, the phone rang, woke me from a dream. it was my mama. “she’s here,” she reported, at which, of course, i started to cry.

shaking, and bumping into walls in the dark, i ran down the stairs, dialing.

your papa answered, wrapped me in the story of how you arrived. told me that, at last, when your dark, dark eyes locked in a gaze with his, he was thunderstruck. lost in deep unending love, the kind that hits you with a thud.

and then, yesterday afternoon, i heard what i’d been waiting for, for months and months and 50 years: the undulating coos coming from your lungs and lips, the sound of your most holy gurgles.

i wept, no surprise. keep weeping at the fact that at long last we’ve got our girl. my girl, i try hard not to say. for you are not mine, but ours, no matter how fierce and deep i love you already.

i imagine a lifetime with my b’ella ella. i intend to be the auntie babs of any girl’s dreams. i’ve already written you once, on the day you were born, told you to call anytime. i am ready and listening. standing at attention.

i know already that you’re blessed beyond words with the mama and the papa in whose arms you’ve just landed.

but should i have any little bit to add to your growing up, your becoming, i promise you this: i will be for you what i’ve tried to be for my very own, a source of love unending. a pair of ears, deeply listening. i will take you by the hand, teach you of the garden and the birds and the bumblebees, things your papa and your grandma surely will teach you too.

i will roll out cookie dough by your side, stand you on the stepping stool, let you lick the spoon. teach you the art of the doily, something your great grandma lucille would have wanted you to know. i will read you storybooks. maybe even write you one. i will fly you on a plane, bring you here for days on end. i will tuck you in at night, whisper love songs in your ear. spoil you silly.

we will bite into strawberries at breakfast. go out for lunch. take picnics to the beach. i will kiss your toes. and run the brush through your maybe-curly hair, beautiful like your mother’s.

i will grow old with you. and you will always know that you’re my girl.

the one i waited for, forever.

and now that you’re here, at last, i’m not letting go. not ever. not a chance.

elena benham mahany was born at 1:25, eastern standard time, on the 14th day of april, 2009, in mercy hospital in portland, maine. she is tuesday’s child, full of grace.
her mama–becca, who i love so much–is over-the-moon, and radiant. and so’s her papa, too.
my brother david–furniture maker, master gardener, latin scholar–now adds father to his many gifts.

i am hoping he’ll pen below a few fine words. he writes like no one else.

please welcome her–miss EBM–with words of wisdom, prayers of grace. i rambled on too, too much, but i am spilling over on this perfect april day.

and happy birthday, too, to the mama of the man i love, ginny dearest, who i love so much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

the first station: jesus is condemned to death

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i admit to a skip in my heart.

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

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

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

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

he sighed as i sighed.

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

he fell asleep, my firstborn.

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

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

and maybe, just maybe, it took.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

purple napkins, someone else said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

God bless the children.

God bless them and bless them and bless them.

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

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

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