pull up a chair

one of us had worked herself into such a froth of worry that a pounding headache had taken hostage her noggin. moved right in beneath her skullbones and hammered away for days and nights on end.

seems it was a worry headache (either that or i’m allergic to snow). worried about the tall fellow, the one who lives here, who was off wandering the desert, looking skyward, in the land they call “the vegas of the desert.” the arabian desert. far off dubai.

oh, there was all the flying back and forth. apparently, the world no longer travels in sailing ships, the kind that bounce upon the waves. we go for big metal tubes, with wings, we climb in and confound gravity, bump above the clouds.

these days, besides the litanies of prayer for gravity to hold on tight, not give out, not surrender its airborne cargo, we’ve all sorts of crazy other things to pray about. hope no one climbs aboard with powdery explosives in his undies, for cryin’ out loud.

so, yes, all those worries climbed aboard, settled in, made themselves most at home inside my head, and set me throbbing for days and days on end.

which is a long-winded way of saying we had our eyes wholly set on the little box on the calendar that said the fellow from the desert was, at last, after nine long days that stretched way back before the new year, coming home, just last night.

in fact, the eve before his homebound plane even rumbled down the runway, we got down to the business of welcoming, called a meeting of the full committee.

made signs, a whole sheaf. taped ’em to every nook and cranny we could find. strung streamers far and wide, strung a veritable web, a trap for getting here to there, anywhere that involved the front hall and doorway. poor children were on their knees, shimmying to the stairs. had to come in from school the round-about way, trudging through the snow, clomping through the garden path that runs beside the house, climbing in the back door where no crepe-paper traps had yet been set.

but, oh, that tall fellow was being welcomed verily.

while we waited for the plane to zoom in beneath the blizzard clouds, i set about the business of cooking up a welcome feast.

my mama, who’d early in the day decided no one ought be out upon the icy roads, showed up anyway, round noon. carried in her little cooler, filled with all the fixings of the fellow’s favorite middle-of-the-winter dinner, a chicken, rice and mushroom concoction that is pure comfort food, and named, in honor of the cook, chicken rice grammy.

at last the phone rang. he’d landed.

and like that the headache started lifting.

miracle cure for worry: just land the plane in one piece, and hear the voice of the one you love without the crackle that comes while overseas.

oh, it was sweet all right. when the cab pulled up, and all three of us–the ones he’d left at home–nearly leapt out the door, into the blowing snow in our holey socks. we hugged him so tight, it’s notable that he didn’t topple down.

and now, fed and rested, he is home.

as i type i hear the sweet sounds that are as much the heartbeat of this house as the sputters from the furnace and the creaks of all the floorboards. i hear him clearing his throat in that way he does. i hear his fingers at the keyboard, a staccato that is his and his alone. i could tell you who was typing five rooms away, because each one of us has a signature tap-tap-tap it seems. and i know his.

i’d thought this meander might be a meditation on coming home. how there’s nothing like the feel of your own sheets, the lump in that same old spot on the mattress, the one there before you left and still there upon return.

instead, it’s mostly a postcard to those who know and love the tall one, who like me held their breath the whole nine days. who tracked his flight, his comings and his goings. his stories splashed across the news.

our world was suspended for those days, while we hoped and prayed that he’d come home. while i, for one, sent up prayers each morning, noon, and night. and a hundred thousand times between.

the world is right again. there is no missing piece in our midst. all four chairs at the table are filled again. the laundry’s piled high, but i don’t mind. the juice glass is left on the counter. the toothpaste is smeared beside the sink.

but after nine days so far away the phone lines from here to there wouldn’t reach, i am quite content to wash an extra glass or two, wipe down the bathroom sink. and smooth the sheets from where he slept.

he’s home, and that’s the only thing that matters.

among the dozens of signs we made with construction paper and markers, the one above is the one that melted me the most. my little scribbler made it, words that if you knew him would melt you through and through. he is always, always pining for a donut, that little one, and so, when i looked down on his drawing pad, and saw the love poem up above, “love you more than donuts,” with a carefully drawn and sprinkled ring of dough, well, i knew that was the sign that belonged in front of all the rest, taped to the front door, the first thing our desert traveler would lay his eyes on upon return to the house that loves him like no other…

no questions today, just a simple sigh of relief and joy. and now i am scurrying off to spend some time with the tall, gentle giant in our lives.

may you too cherish the ones with whom you spend your blessed holy hours.

there is a crispness to this new year, to any new year, that like a newly laundered bedsheet, pulled tight around the corner of the bed, invites us in, to fling our tired selves upon its smoothed-out softness, to refresh, shake off the cobwebs, give it yet another try.

the new year, the dawn of january’s oneness, is clean, unscratched. like those new white p.f. flyers you got when you were six, the ones in which you tried to only tiptoe for a good few minutes, see how long you could make it before you left a smudge of dirt, a scrape upon the rubber bottoms. until you forgot, started running. dove in hard and muddy, those once new shoes.

and so it is with the turning of the calendar, the clicking up of yet another year, a shiny digit added to the nameplate that sits upon the desk in the department of the year.

in my geometry, it’s yet another spiral–not a circle to which we’re forever confined. we round the bend, see how sights have shifted, what’s there we’ve never seen before.

i’m not so much for resolutions, would rather merely keep up the climb. take one moment’s tender triumphs, another moment’s sorrows, the joys, the disappointments, call them, “oh, well…life.”

i am wholly and fully awake to the truth that every year brings unexpected twists, brings heartache of sometimes immeasurable proportion. and so i’m braced. always half holding my breath, i do admit.

for this one unscuffed morning, though, i might stoke my january self with the delight of scribbling one short list, a list worthy of concentrated effort at one point or another as the year unfolds.

and so, in the spirit of that freshly laundered, unwrinkled bedsheet, i’ll hope to encounter these few holy triumphs:

i’d not mind more gatherings at my table, dinners long and animated, breakfasts that somehow spread all the way till darkness steals away the shadows. till we look up and realize we’ve spent the whole long day shifting from the table to the kitchen to the couch and back again to the table.

i look forward to the moments when someone launches into announcement with the preamble, “good news!” words that always spark my ever-eager heart.

i’ll delight, perhaps, in spying on a nest of baby birds, and absorbing all there is to learn from the mama bird who flies in worms, who withstands of the heartache of the one wee thing who falls from that nest, doesn’t make it. for i know the arithmetic of nests and it is sobering.

i’ll await the sound of rain pit-a-patting on my windows.

and the holiness of candles, wherever they burn. church or table, in particular.

i’ll hope for a long walk in the woods. hearing the crunch of leaves beneath my soles, feeling the expansion of my lungs and the pounding of my heart, besides. dodging in and out of dappled forest light.

i will savor the days when all the boys i love are falling asleep in the same darkened house. when i needn’t worry because one of us is far away, too too far away.

i can’t wait to hear the tales of my ella-bella-beautiful, the little little girl growing up too far away. i hope i’m by her side when she turns one, when a cupcake and single candle is more than plenty for those chubby little hands and the bright and shining eyes.

i look forward to one fat red tomato, one whose juice runs down my chin. and is sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh-cracked tellicherry pepper.

i hope and pray this year brings me the chance to sit outside just after dawn, listening to morning song and wind blowing through the branches.

i await the end of day some day when my shoulders ache from digging all day long, from hauling rocks, cutting limbs, learning once again that the best tools i own are the ones i was born with.

i look forward to a great read, wherever i stumble upon it. and along with that i hold my breath hoping for the moments, holy ones indeed, when i am listening to the plaintalk of an ordinary someone and out pours poetry and once again i am stunned at the power of the human mind and its capacity for story and storytelling.

i count on this year to bring me long walks with the boys i love, the tall one with the big big ideas, the little one who every time takes my hand in winter to keep me from falling on the ice, his tenderness and caretaking always just beneath the surface of his 8-year-old busy busy self.

i’ll leave it there–for now…and make a wish for all of us to find blessing in the days ahead, and strength to stride the potholes. happy blessed new year, indeed.

carry on, friends. what would be the moments you await and hope for?

the eggnog bread pudding just came out of the oven, making its sweet presence undeniably known as invisible bits of it swirl through the kitchen and up to our noses.

the brown sugar bacon has taken its turn in the very hot box, is now sizzling there on the old oven racks.

the boys–bass and soprano–shriek from the basement, playing a game found under the tree. bach pours from the radio, tucked on the ledge.

it’s been quite a morning already.

it’s the morning i love so very much, for its quiet indulgence, its unscripted joys.

what i love about christmas as a mama who loves tending her boys is the chance to lay down deep chords, to wrap them in ways that will forever inform their vision of christmas.

even if, just a while ago, the older one mentioned how some christmas he wanted to go the cheap-chinese-and-a-movie route, to try out being jewish for christmas. i laughed, then got teary eyed, said, “wait till i’m dead.” (not a moment later, mulling it over, we struck this religious detente: christmas morning we’ll keep, and at 2 some christmas afternoon, we’ll give it a whirl, shuffle off to chow mein and a movie.)

oh, the joy of christmas.

ah, well…..

while i purr like a cat, puttering about the kitchen, making merry with sugar and cinnamon, egg nog and spice, i leave you this little tale that i wrote for the tribune. seems like just the right bit for this christmas-y morn…

Long, long ago, I figured out the Christmas morning secret: Before the sun peeked up, I would tiptoe down the stairs, guided only by the light of stars and moon, if I fancied half a chance of getting there before Santa’s shiny boots landed with a thud.

After all, once the jolly fellow in the all-red duds arrived, it would be bright lights and crinkled paper hurled beneath the tree. And if I wanted what I was after, well, I practically needed to slide down the banister before another creature stirred in that old house.

Oh, this wasn’t back when I was a child. But, rather, as the mother of a sleeping babe.

It was there, in the kitchen, as the windows clouded up with steam — as heat from the oven met with bitter freezing cold just beyond the panes — that I discovered the joy that, for me, comes on no other morning of the year: Christmas tunes on the radio, tree lit bright just for me, I haul out the makings of my tried-and-tested coffee cake, I get the cocoa bubbling on the stove, I set the table with a handed-down set of merry Christmas plates and cups and saucers.

It is the gift of making joy in the morning, wrapping my every sense in the magic of the season, and then, once the footsteps come — not so long ago, padded toddler feet, now the clomp of boys who’ve grown to nearly man-size — I get the best unwrapped gift of all: I behold the face of pure delight as my most beloved boys dive into what’s become of my pre-dawn puttering.

They needn’t say a word, needn’t whisper thanks. The thrill comes for me in watching tradition replay its fine refrain, the candy canes lifted from the cocoa, the clementines passed around the room (and occasionally tossed as if baseballs), the Christmas stockings unceremoniously dumped.

This is a mama’s heart’s content: to lay down the stuff of dreams, and weave golden-threaded memories for all the yuletides yet to come. Mine as well as theirs.

***

from my steamy kitchen to yours, i wish you the utter contentment that comes, wholly and purely, on the most blessed of christmasy morns.

xoxoxo wherever you are…..

p.s. instead of snow we’ve buckets of rain here this christmas, thus instead of white it’s a wet christmas….

soon as the snowflakes started to tumble from the sky, i threw on my puffy old coat, slipped in my boots, went out to play elf, quite early this morning.

never mind that the sun wasn’t yet out from under its covers. sleeping in, that sun was.

i’d been up hours already–16-year-old pulling an all-nighter, 8-year-old burning up with a fever (the yin and yang in my house really is something sometimes)–so why not shuffle through snowflakes, make my deliveries, greet the dawn with that rare, lung-filling mix of seasonal tiptoeing around.

might as well finish the job is more or less what i was thinking. fact is, i’d been up late into the night, filling my sacks with holiday breads, studded with cranberries, swirled with almond-y paste. i’d dropped in a helping of clementines, enough for every house along my way. and candy canes, too.

such was my merry christmas this year, up and down the alley. draping the bags over the knobs of so many doors.
christmas is simple this year. simple with purpose.

seems right to pare down, for a whole host of reasons. indeed, so says the look from my mate who happens to think not so much of the giving of holiday gifts. oh, don’t take that wrong. send him off to the store for a little something, he comes back with a thoroughly thought-out, utterly generous choice.

it’s just that, well, he does not–in any way–equate the giving of “stuff” with holidays. (sorry news for the two boys in this house who are living rebuttal to the notion that all jewish-catholic kids are holiday double-dippers. alas, they escape with not much more than hanukkah gelt and a christmas sock stuffed with an orange and various old-world trinkets.)

but that doesn’t stop me from wishing.

i wish, i wish this time of year, my head filling with a list that goes on and on.

oh, no, it’s not what you might be thinking. it’s not for me i’m wishing.

what i wish, darn it, is that i could be the merriest elf that ever there was and give and give till my old heart’s content.

i seem to find my december delight in thinking back over all the year, and wishing i could fill the arms and hearts of all of those who’ve sprinkled some sort of magic dust here upon my path……

i wish i could fill a basket, first off, for my little one’s teacher, a teacher who buried his very young wife, not even a year ago. i’d give him a blanket, and home-cooked breakfast, i’d wipe away the tears that surely will spill plenty of times in the long weeks to come.

i wish i could wrap up a house with an orchard and mail it off to the brother i love up in maine. i wish i could do the same, sans the orchard, to my very best friend in sunny LA, who feels very cramped in her tiny apartment, with a dog and a daughter besides.

i wish i could make the cancer go away for my across-the-street neighbor.

and i wish i could find a job for my friends who have lost them. especially the one with the newborn, and the wife who can’t bear to leave that baby for 10 hours every day, but will if she has to, if he can’t find work before this hard year ends.

i wish i could knit a sweater for the old man who lives next door, who tells me how his wife is dying, as tears run down his very sad face.

i wish i had time to bake beautiful cookies, and wrap them in bright shiny paper, for each of the very good souls who sit beside me on the days i toddle off to work, all of us typing away in what might be the end of the newspaper era.

i wish i had enough left-over sweets to make one heaping platter for the wonderful man at the front desk of the tower where i type, a bear of a man who greets me every morning with a heart-melting smile, and gives me reason to not mind the 45 minutes it took to get there.

i wish that each one of you could come to my house, pull up a chair, and dive into a big bowl of oranges, pour the coffee, slice through a nutty cinnamon cake.

i wish we could sit and watch the birds flutter by. i wish you could see the sunlight begin to filter in. and the candles flicker.

i wish, in one last outrageous wish, that i knew the address of the wee little boy who sat beside me on the train the other night, showing off his brand new construction boots, size 3 at most. i wish i could knock on his mama’s door, and hand over a tree, and a basket filled for christmasy dinner. and a bright shiny something for that kid who made the whole train car laugh out loud.

i wish for all the world to be blanketed in a holy comforter of peace. i wish for houses filled with joyful noise. and the utter silence of two dear friends who needn’t say a word.

i wish for whatever’s deepest in your heart to please, please, please come true.

i wish you merry almost christmas.

what do you wish for? let the wish list begin….

we count, some of us, to keep track, to order, to line up.

we count, some of us, to make sense of the sweep of history.

we learn to count on stubby, chubby little fingers, fingers so plumped-up there are dimples where the knuckles ought to be, will be some day, before the gnarly knots set in when we are old, very old.

we count, early on, with cheerios. or raisins. or pebbles on the sidewalk. we count watching clouds scuttle by. we count our eyes, our nose, our toes. we learn that we are whole while counting.

and then we go to school. we learn to count forward and backward. we learn that numbers jump and leap, crumble into bits, and hurtle ever higher. we learn there is no end to counting. we try. anyway.

we count as if to shove tidy, sharp-edged bookends on the sloppy shelves of our lives.

and so i count.

and here we are, at three.

three years ago this day, my not-yet-highschooler, pushed me to the edge of where words and screens came tumbling into this new odd invention, the blog. sounds like someone burping, that word.

you should do it, mom, were the words, as he shoved me off the diving board, into the deep waters of the world of clicking buttons in the dark, in the quiet of this little room where i type, where you, all of you out there in readerland, you find those words, give ‘em a taste, swirl ‘em around in your mouth, maybe in your heart, and then, through a mix of alchemy and voodoo, we are joined. our hearts march along a little mountain trail, together for a while.

closest thing to friendship some days. you can wrap your hands ‘round a mug of steaming tea, or you can click a comment box, send words, connect.

too often, maybe, we click.

maybe there’s not enough time made for teacups at kitchen tables.

but we are living now in the chapter of the in-home computer. in-home, heck! on-person. there are folks, i know, who haul their little box to bed. tuck it underneath the pillow. who knows, maybe news comes in the middle of the night.

for one whose father long long ago now, once said, “you have a sense of history,” leaving me at the time puzzled, a bit let down, this blog that sounds like burp is in fact a blessing. think of all the sharpening of pencils it saves. and the reams of paper.

then stop and think of all the places and the souls to which this world without wires has carried me. and us, the lot of us who make the chair a stop along the way.

makes me scratch my head, and count my lucky stars.

it’d take a lot of postage stamps to get to all of you the old way.

so here we are: three years later.

there’ve been births and deaths and diagnoses this year. there’ve been friends i love, wholesale fired, shoved out the door, their worklives packed into boxes with other people’s names already scratched out.

i no longer get to work where i live. no longer get to simmer winter stews while i talk to smart and newsy people. can’t run out and peek in on the tree peony, minutes away from bloom. don’t mark my days by the way the light pours in. don’t hear my little one bounding in the door, ready to spill the stories of his schoolday, now a third-grade day.

but still, despite the changes all around, i’ve cleared my friday mornings, made this a time to type the keys, watch what spills, sometimes wonder where it came from, sometimes wonder if the words are even worth sending on their unseen voyage.

but send i do.

and i am grateful for the chance to reach out and grab a swatch of life. to try, with all my heart some days, to lay out what it looks like, feels like.

like catching butterflies, or moonbeams, the art of trying to write your life. or at least wisps of it.

some day, long long away from now, someone with ties to me, might look back, and read, come to understand this time, this heart. mostly, i think, i write for my own two boys. i write to leave them a record of how they were loved, how they lived in the old house where they grew up with a mother who was always watching, always looking out for their hearts, their sense of wonder. who tried to stitch the beautiful into their everyday, and somehow found her own salvation.

i write for all of you, kindred souls. you who take the time to trace your eyes across these words. you who write back–or not. i write because in this wee small circle we’ve discovered that we’re not alone. not always anyway.

in a world with not enough teacups and kitchen tables, not put to good use anyway, i write here so we can all–all of us who long to share the good company of our tender hearts–i write so we can, each of us, pull up a chair, find the closest thing to joy and gentleness we know how to offer.

thanks for stopping by, all these many many weeks—156, and counting….

no questions, today. but listening, as always….

until a few minutes ago, my day was humming along. i sat here typing. about snow. about a dusting of snow that came before dawn.

then the phone rang.

it was my oldest best friend. the one who has been through every twist and turn of my heart in the last 33 years. the one whose voice has always been balm to whatever ails me, the voice of tenderness itself.

the best friend who long, long ago, taught me, perhaps, the lastingest lesson about just how to love, when the one who needs love is your very own self.

“i have breast cancer,” she said, minutes ago.

just like that–no preamble–that’s what she said. those words that pierce and destroy.

i’ve heard them before. heard them too many times.

once from my mother. once from my east-coast best friend. to name but two times in a long, hollow litany.

this though is the best friend who moved down the hall my sophomore year of college and wholly captured my heart, who i lived with back when we were young and, often, spinning in circles, who was maid of honor at my wedding, who is godmother to my little one, the one i call my miracle.

she has had trials already, my very best friend. melanoma, among them, just a few years ago.

and now, this lump in her breast, a lump discovered nine months ago. a lump, checked right away and mostly dismissed. not by my friend though, she kept close watch. and that lump, just a while ago, it decided to change.

this time the test came back with these words from her doctor: “this is not the news i was hoping to give you,” he told her.

and so my best friend called me.

that’s what best friends do. we hold each other up. we share one deck in the cards of life. she’s dealt a card, it becomes mine. and vice versa.

we don’t shirk, run or hide. we step right up, we do the lifting. we hold each other’s hearts, often, more firmly than we hold our own.

we don’t edit our thoughts, or our words when life is upturned and one needs the other. we spill as it comes, knowing every last drop will be sopped up, taken care of.

the chamber in which we talk is the place where knowing comes swift, where silence is filled with deep understanding. the beauty of friendship, when it’s deep, when it’s real, is that it is the essence of life itself.

we are, through our history, through our ups and our downs but always together, pulled into a primal language of love leaning up against love.

you needn’t hold back, needn’t protect, when you’re deep in the work of propping up your very best friend.

right away, she said, her thoughts turned to the one thing that mattered the most: her daughter, her long-legged, blond-haired, brainy, 12-year-old molly.

“it wasn’t, ‘oh, i can’t handle it,’ or ‘poor me,’” she said, as i scribbled her words, an old habit picked up from years of recording whatever folks say.

“what tore me apart was molly. it’s the mother in you. i don’t want her to be afraid, i don’t want her to have a sick mommy.”

and so i just listened. woulda leapt through the phone if i could.

couldn’t stand being half a country away.

what is it with this damn cancer?

i’ve been following a friend in new york, just barely 30. two weeks ago, had a double mastectomy.

other best friend in new york, mother of three on long island. she called and said the same thing, years ago now. she had the surgery, the chemo, weeks of radiation. she still holds her breath. every year, every month, every day.

there are women who come to this table, who count themselves among the survivors.

they know what it is–as my young friend in new york wrote just this week–to be afraid that every mole, every headache is cancer.

to wonder, quite realistically, who would care for their kids, who would give them the talk (quaintly put: the one about the birds and the bees), who would shop for the prom dress, who would recount all the stories from when they were babies…..

my best friend is now among the ranks.

and i, once again, am praying like mad, and doubling my heart. i’ve got a faraway friend who needs me again.

she needs me to be strong.

to believe.

to listen.

and to tenderly care for her heart, as she gets on with the business of beating this cancer.

today turned out to be more of a ramble, than a meander. it’s what happens when you are knocked flat, find yourself trembling…..i trust you understand……so here are the questions…

who and how have you held up the ones you’ve most loved? who held you, when you needed the holding?

and, p.s., whisper a prayer for mary mullane, an angel without the wings…..

that slip of paper, long of my wallet, now stashed at the back of the drawer beside my bed, somehow slipped into obscurity, somewhere over the years.

it’s expired, they tell me.

while i was busy chasing crooks and fire trucks, a lifework i picked up along the way, that license to practice what i love, that stamp of you’re-okay from the state board of declarations, well, it got dumped by the wayside.

all those long nights in the library, all those hours at the bedside, washing the dying and the newborn, depending on the day’s assignment, it’s washed away. or at least on paper, it’s no good.

except for days like today, when all the pages and hours and hopes come rushing back. when i might as well sling on my cape and cap, haul out that ol’ stethoscope from the drawer.

i swing into nightingale action when the ones i love go down.

no board of examiners, far as i can tell, is hiding in the wings, keeping watch on how i do. long past are the skill tests on how to fold a bedsheet with hospital precision (though i still make a mean tri-fold corner).

i am left to my own deep sense of tending to my firstborn, who any hour now is going under, to have his four wisdoms taken out. those would be his teeth, of course. the only wisdom he’d ever relinquish.

and i, as the resident nurse on duty, i am armed, already, with prescriptions, ice and popsicles, the holy triangle of recuperation from oral surgery.

mostly though it’s the rare chance to once again slide into a calling that still calls out my name.

i am not ruffled, much, by blood or body fluids. comes with the territory. comes with reaching out and taking the hand of the one who’s hurting, or afraid, or losing hope. comes with saying–most often, without words–i won’t leave your side, i’ll get you through this valley, back to where the sun does shine, and where your mouth, your head, your tummy doesn’t throb.

i have counted, over the years, whole flocks of children who were mine to care for. children with terrible horrible cancers. children who died. children who writhed in pain. children who fell to the floor and lay there, shaking.

oh, i cried a lot. i held hands. and whispered prayers. i gave meds. hung transfusions. sat down on the edge of beds and talked the night away. i walked long halls with parents. shared cold cups of coffee, poured in styrofoam cups.

i drove to small towns for funerals. went to dinner with grieving fathers whose tears would not end.

i loved those years, those hard, hard, inconceivable years.

and now the children i’m left to care for are my own. don’t need a license. curiously. don’t even send us home with instruction manuals, when they are newly born, for crying out loud.

we are, all of us, left to what our mothers taught us about how to cool a fevered brow. how to hold a child retching in the toilet. we know that rubber bands go on glasses of a child with a cold. and ginger ale is the surest cure for a rumbly tummy.

but those of us who’ve walked through nursing school, we’ve got an extra edge: we rise up when our babies go down. we swell our chests, feel that thump again in our veins. we were schooled on how to heal the wounded, how to soothe the pain, and dash the rising fever.

it’s in our blood: we swoop on the scene, we make it right. or at least we do everything we can think of to try and do so.

and so today, any minute now, i’ll never mind the folks who say that i’m expired, who say my license doesn’t count.

i’m armed, and ready, and we are heading off to surgery, my firstborn and i. i get to be a nurse today.

not exactly the post-prandial walk in the woods, we were hoping for, but my man-child’s gums started throbbing, so i peeked in, and saw the stumps of wisdom teeth. and the ol’ doctor said he’d yank em out. today. all four. impacted. egad. not quite the soothing post holiday agenda. but we’ve readjusted, lined up movies and popsicles and plenty of ibuprofen. i’m dashing this off, and will be back for adjustments. in the meantime, hope your turkey day was calm and filled you to the brim. one way or another……

the arithmetic of november is a fine tally indeed. it’s the month where we begin to add up all the wonders of our year, the graces large and small.

the ones that make our hearts go whoosh, as if niagara falls (see delicious cupcake above), and the itty-bitty whispers of holy hallelujah (as when we catch our little one, say, giving us a backrub, just because he sees the worry on our brow).

when you pause for just a minute, maybe long enough to grab a pen and paper, for this accounting-in-the-works, you can, if you give it half a chance, get swooshed right over, for all the goodness that’s come round.

oh, lord, i know, there is heartache plenty. there were days and nights, perhaps, when you thought you couldn’t breathe, what with all the drama in the wings. and there’ve been bedtime pillows, too, soaked with tears. and hours spent on knees, praying for holy miracles to dash away (fill in your blank).

but, here, on the brink of this national time-out for cranberries and thanks, i find myself, in slow moments, in the breaths between the thoughts, beginning to accumulate a swath of holy blessings…..

i begin with the very girl i’d spent a lifetime dreaming of, the one whose arrival woke me in the star-lit cloak of an april’s night, a night when tears and dreams-come-true came rushing, when over a phone line and millions of miles away, i heard her rustling, peeping, squeaking, in my brother’s arms, and felt my heart take flight.

oh, it aches to be so far away, but as i trace her every leap and bound, as i stockpile frequent flyer miles, i know we’ve years together down the road. we’ve tea rooms, and walks in the woods. we’ve story books, and some day, long long talks. if i’m as blessed as i hope i’ll be.

speaking of endless hours deep in conversation, there is the blessing of watching my 16-year-old turn to his beloved uncle david, the one who once took him from dawn till way past dusk on the el (that’s chicago’s elevated train), with no destination other than adventure, and who over the years has opened windows for him all around, from thelonious monk to qi gong, from homer to sartre to music made from water dripping in a pot.

oh, lord.

be still, my most humbled heart.

i count, too, the blessing of my cottage garden, the stubby little tree, with arms outstretched, who grows just beyond my window.

i count the bluestone path, the one that meanders, slows me in the way of ancient zen walks where each stone is placed to accentuate the pause. and so it is with my wiggly, sort-of-wobbly bluestones. more accident than art, but still, the effect is the same, you move slowly through my meandering garden, the one where blueberries and roses ramble side-by-side.

and what of the fact that i live in a creaky old house, a house that over the years we’ve nipped and tucked, stitched with windowseats and bookshelves in nearly every single room (save the bathroom, but hmm, there’s a thought)…

and what of my holy blessed friends who pull up here to the table, nearly every week, or only once a season? oh, thank God for them, for they’re among the closest to my heart, here in a world where we build bridges through words and shared story, where the village we carve is less one of geography and more one of common heartbeat.

and i’d be missing a whole chunk of my life if i didn’t say i’m thankful, so thankful, for the job i do most days (paid or not so very much). the one where i ask a zillion questions, poke around in places others rarely get to see, then sit before a keyboard and let the story spin. just this year, i’ve spent the night with a saint in a hospital kitchen, i’ve watched another genuflect on a city sidewalk to save an injured bird. i’ve worked with editors and writers who’ve leapt to my rescue and stood firm behind me, and i’ve cried hard and long as i watched some of the very best exit the newsroom, told to leave for good, after packing lifetimes into cardboard boxes.

before i move onto little graces–the wren who sang his heart out, the over-watered tree that didn’t die (yet), the cloudy days that brought me comfort–let me sweep my arms round the boys who put meaning to my days.

the tall one who lets me in his heart, through long and winding hours of seamless conversation, and nothin’-else-like-’em belly-bustin’ laughs, sitting side-by-side (often, these days, that would be as i ride shotgun and he’s the one behind the wheel, steering down the lane, er, oops, that was a stop sign, honey…).

and the little one, the one who takes my breath away each and every time i glimpse his tender side, the one stoked by his papa, yes indeed, and whenever i catch him, nearly always, leading with his heart.

there’s my mama to thank, too, for making every tuesday and thursday work like clockwork, even when i’m far away. and, on both those harried nights, for getting dinner to the table, and not just any dinner either, grammy dinner–stews and meatloafs, potatoes mashed, and peas frozen in a pouch, comfort foods, foods like mama used to make. oh, that’s right, she is my mama and she is, after all these years, still making weeknight dinners. all that’s left for me to do, those achy tired nights, is scrub the pots and pans, and sometimes she does even that.

oh, there’s more and more, the ones i love around the continent, from jersey shore to sunny california, from maine to arizona, with stops along the way.

there’s the bones that hold me up, at least for now. a word i learn that takes my breath away. an idea that’s new and even better.

i thank God for pillowcases crisp, and socks that don’t have holes. for books on tape that hold me rapt. and ones with pages, too. the ones i race to bed to read, but then, dag nab, i cannot stay awake.

i thank God for pomegranates and popcorn. for old jeans all full of holes, and the leggings worn beneath them, the ones that keep me from being charged with indecent exposure.

i thank God for gloomy moods that lift, and i’m sorrys from the heart. i thank God for friends who make me laugh so hard i fear i’ll, well, you catch that drift.

i thank God for the sky at dawn, and the quiet of the house at night, when all there is is my breathing and the tick-tock-tick of the old fine clock.

i could go on and on in this holy sacred litany of thanks. there is much, especially for those of us who take the time to add it up, as if a census of the heart.

my forms are filled, and i’ve only just begun.

for all of this and so much more, dear holy God, i thank you and i thank you.

all right, you blessed souls in all the chairs, pull in close and let it pour, the thanks with which you fill your heart….

sometimes, holiness is the absence of flutter.

so it was the other morning when, as i always do, i bounded out the back door, coffee can in hand; called out, “mornin’, babies,” to all my flocks.

crossed the chilly bricks, tiptoed into grass, the not-so-vast terrain that stands between me and my seed troughs.

right then was when my bare toes curled; i looked down, saw right away, the blades of grass were crusty white. the morning’s frost had robed them, made them downright furry.

but i had work to do, was on my morning rounds. i had birds to feed, and a crust of fragile frozen mist was not about to stop me.

after all this time, you see, after all the awe as i stand and watch the winged ones dart and peck, as i catch a scarlet ribbon flash before my eye amid a drab brown world that screams for color, after waking up to bird song, and watching babies dare to leave the nest, well, i’ve come to think of all those birds as mine. we belong to each other, the birds and i.

or, at least, so i fool myself.

my coffee can, of course, was filled with breakfast for those birds. not the oatmeal i’d be bubbling back inside. this day, a blend of fruits and nuts was on the menu.

and while i stood there, sizing up the frost, determining to add a little zip to this trip to the feeder, i noticed something else that stopped me in mid-pace: papa cardinal hadn’t flown away, was mere feet away, gobbling down the seed from yesterday.

now, every single other time that i’ve stepped outside that door, to haul a hose, to haul the garbage, to go inspect a rose, i’ve been met with the popping sound of wings in sudden flight, the darting of each and every bird, lurching off to camouflage and haven in all the boughs and branches.

but not this time.

the scarlet wings stayed still.

and in that absence of haste, the morning’s calm unbroken, i felt a cloak of heaven falling down on me, cascading over my shoulders, warming my bare arms.

it is a holy thing, for certain, to be nearly eyeball to eyeball with a wild thing. especially when the wild thing has wings, could fly away at the wisp of a breeze.

he carried on with his chowing down, that red bird did. and i, now frozen, just stood and stared.

i put down the foot i’d been holding in mid-air.

the cardinal didn’t flinch.

i picked up my other foot.

no flinch.

put it down.

no flinch.

and then i stood and marveled: this bird seems not to mind me, i realized, not consider me a wild-haired bother.

why, he’s gobbling as if at a diner counter, and i’m just another hungry soul sliding onto nearby stool. plunk down my elbows, take a menu. order up a coffee, tall and black. ask him how his day looks, here in this small town.

geez.

i tell you, he might not have been too ruffled by my being there, the very picture of cardinal nonchalance, but i, well, i was wholly tingling.

it’s not every day you discover you’ve crossed the line, and what a line it is. the birds no longer see you as a stranger, threat, or alien.

the birds don’t even bother.

for all they care, you’ve sprouted wings.

well. yes. indeed. i’d say so.

i felt as if heaven’s gate had swung wide open, whirled me right inside.

there i was out there where i shoulda been shivering, but instead i was hot inside. barely breathing. heart pounding, too.

so THIS is what it feels like to be at one with holiness. this is how you know you’ve come to be so synchronous with that you love that your being there makes no wave, does not disturb the peace.

makes me think, suddenly, of old married couples who whirl around each other in the kitchen. she, splashing at the sink the way she always does. he, burping, pouring coffee, smoothing down the pages of the news with the same exact precision as he’s done for 50 years.

to co-exist. to be breath-to-breath. to not feel one bit afraid in each other’s holy presence.

that’s what papa cardinal seemed to tell me: i was someone safe now, a title earned through months and years of grace. (and good stock in bird seed, maybe.)

it’s a trophy only i would ever know, not one to perch on any shelf. which makes it the best sort, really.

that drawing in of sacred breath, discovering a truth of who we are or who we’ve become that no one else needs know.

but as we carry on, we carry forward this: the gentle quiet honor bestowed on us one chilly autumn’s morn, when the red bird didn’t flutter. considered us at one with the whole of winged creation.

and now i’m dreaming this: some day that bird will rest upon my shoulder.

or in the open cup of my outstretched hands.

be still my stirring heart…

i know there are those among you who’ve been at one in the woods, with the wild things. maybe your peaceful co-existence came with another human soul. or maybe you too carry unspoken, unheralded trophies in your heart. my point here was not to share mine, but to nod to the truth that we all have rich unexposed artworks deep inside. mine was bestowed by a red bird, gobbling day-old seed. do you care to whisper yours?

and while at it this lovely friday in november, keep in your hearts the lovely pjv, mother of the bride in just one day….tis a blessed, heart-stretching moment–i can only imagine–to watch your little bird fly the nest, robed in bridal white. peace and love and joy to you, dear pjv, and the lovely, lovely em.

they’ve tiptoed back, those november skies, the ones that wrap me and cloak me in their charcoal-gray-with-tint-of-violet wonder.

i am safe inside the nubby folds of such a sky, when simmering smoky gray heavens sink low down to the earth, the place where i walk and trudge and hope and dream and too often feel the heartache.

i like it when the limbs go bare, when we see the bones again, when sky presses in on us. when we feel–or at least i do–less far away from what’s above.

it’s not that i’m so melancholy. not really, i’m not. it’s just that sky the color of eeyore, that somber donkey with the pinned-on tail, the one who walks the woods with pooh and dear, dear christopher robin, all through the enchanted pages of a.a. milne, it’s just that such a deep rich palette calls to me, whispers to the curled-up places in my heart, gives them kinship and room to unfurl.

i never know if it’s about to snow, on days when the deep dark gray comes in. i hold my breath and hope, though.
first snow is sacred. and the clouds, so full with something that their white is turned to sooty gray, they whisper promise. something’s coming.

or else it’s just plain a gray day. a day that beckons for a blanket and a cup of tea. it nudges. tap-taps at my shoulder: sit down. be still. soak in the oversotted sky.

it’s turning-in time.

all around the world is doing the same. the bulbs, i’ve tucked deep down into their sleeping places for the winter. the birds, mostly now, have skittered off, the ones for whom these chill winds are far too chilly. but all the stalwarts stayed behind, the squawking jay, the scarlet flash of cardinal, the sparrows and the hatches, they’re all here, loading up on seed, the seed i pour each morning at the feeder, in my unending bow to st. francis of the woodlands.

even the squirrels, i see, have packed thick wads of leaves way up high in nooks of branches. they’ve made chambers l.l. bean himself might envy, what with their storm-tested knack for blocking out the cold. and not a bad perch for chomping acorns either, blithely tossing out the not-so-chewy caps that rain on passersby.

my little one and i were walking to the bus just now, talking all about the sky (and dodging acorn caps that rained at quite a clip).

i asked him if he, too, liked a sky that wasn’t full of sun, that gave you reason and permission to wrap deep inside your thoughts.

well, first he looked up in that way that children do, to check to see if their mama’s sprung a leak, gone cuckoo. but then he let on that he too didn’t mind a dark-sky day, when the traffic jam of clouds hint that something might be in the works in the bring-on-the-weather department.

as we shuffled through the leaves, the curled-up golden maples that bring crunch and light aplenty to a gray november morn, i asked him what color he would pick to draw the sky today.

he looked up and answered, simply: “squirrel.”

i looked up too. and sure enough, i saw. the curds of cloud are gray and grayer, not unlike the furry famished rascals who aim to raid my feeders, who dig up my bulbs soon as i turn my back, who might walk right in and take a plate of dinner, were i to forget to slam the door.

and so it is, a squirrel-sky day.

a day when all of us might see fit to gather up a wad of golden leaves and curl down deep inside. and while we’re at it, toss out acorn caps to pelt the passersby.

if only i could climb a tree.

oh, goodness. dashing here today. a long day’s newspaper writing lies ahead. by now the sun’s peeked through and my gray day is all but blown over the lake. sunny days do have their golden-drenched virtue, but given a choice, i fear i’d take a gray november day any day. anyone else all for curling up and staring out the gray gray window?