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Tag: motherlove

March 4, 2011

pulling rabbits out of hats

it is what mothers do. on a rare day, on a day when stars and moons and jupiter and venus all align.

it is what mothers wish they could do every breathing day–make it all all right again. pick up the pieces. clean up the mess. shake off the bits of gravel from there on the sidewalk, where the grit scraped the knee. kiss the hurt, slap on a bandaid. make it all right again.

we know, those of us with half an ounce of living, that more often than not, we can’t right what’s wrong. can’t make the mean girls go away. can’t shift the score of the ballgame. can’t even chase the mean coach into a corner, make him tremble for what he’s done to someone we love.

but, once in a while, when the pile of wrongs piles too high, we swoop into action. we make like houdini. pull rabbits from hats.

and so it was the other morning, when i got to breathe deep of that rare sense of glory, of having triumphed, mended a hole in the day of a kid i happen to love more than life.

here’s the simple story, told only to remind me and you that we really can, every once in awhile, grab onto our britches, dash out the door, and make like a hero for someone we love. and of course it’s not about being the hero, it’s about that rare chance to do as we wish others might do for us, be for us. that rare chance to live the magnificent, luminous goldenest rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

how often have we found our sorry selves at the end of our ropes, and wished upon stars that someone would leap to our rescue? and what a beautiful thing when we find that we can do just that. for no reason other than through-and-through, inside-and-out, plain pure love.

so this boy who i adore–you’ve heard me write of him over the years–he is this week about as neck-deep in plain old unfiltered stress as a senior in high school can be: he is in the thick of tryouts for crew, a sport that has kids pulling on oars till they literally see stars and crash to the floor (don’t get me started); he is also in dress rehearsals for the spring musical; and cranking out not one but six art pieces for AP photo class, with a gallery show opening next week.

and so of course this is the week his phone, a fifth limb if ever there was one, decided to sputter and gasp and utterly die.

now a boy without phone is, i quickly realized, a boy whose life is verging on crumbling.

for one, he had no way to wake up in the morn, as that phone serves to jangle him from deepest of sleep, with its haranguing alarm that wakes the whole house–except, of course, for the intended sleeper.

for two, since the world has been stripped of pay phones, he couldn’t call for a ride, or tell me what time to be where.

and the mere look on his face, the oh-my-god-if-one-more-thing-goes-i’m-going-too, it stirred me to muster some forces.

as i dashed in his room that dreary morning, just after he’d trudged off to school, and suddenly i spied the dead phone stiff on the desk, i charged into supernurse mode. i dialed the phone store (from a phone with a pulse, thank you). i made an appointment. i squeezed in a triage, smack dab in the thick of a workday. the dear man at the store, he pulled out a toothbrush, of all the high-techy tools. he oohed and ahhed at all the gunk that had nestled into the cracks of the phone. and then, in unsparing words, he looked up and declared: “this phone has come to its end.”

he rattled through options. i attached price tags to every last one. but then i thought of that kid, i thought how little he asks and how hard he tries.

i told the man i’d like a replacement, didn’t care much that it’d cost more, by a long shot, than popcorn and movies.

the nice man played a rare card: without my even asking, he rang up the bill, and as he punched in the buttons asked me something about was the battery working. i said i really didn’t know the state of the battery, but then when he showed me the final sum, he’d sliced off a whole $120, because he deemed it a “battery issue.”

then he handed me a brand new phone, and i brushed the tear from my eye, sprouted due to his kindness and the mere fact that not even dollars would keep me from fixing a hole in the skin of my kid.

i walked out of that store as if on a hovercloud, my chest nearly heaving at the rare joy of success, my mood downright giddy. what had felt like a mountain just hours ago, was now whittled down to a clearing. i couldn’t subside the pure joy of lifting the load from my boy. knew, through and through, there’d be more times than not that i’d stand on the sidelines helpless, while the stretchers were rushed on the field. but for now, there was only delight.

and that night, when that tired tall kid strode through the door, expecting to spend yet another long night without phone, he looked at his bedside table, and there, lit up and flashing the time, he spied the fruits of my motherly labors.

he practically rubbed at his eyes, as if he couldn’t believe what he saw: the one thing he wished for that day, the one thing he couldn’t possibly have carved out a minute to do, it was lying there, shiny and new, just waiting for him to pick up and text.

it’s a rare and heady day. but oh how glorious a gift to get to play like a mama magician and make one bumpy life all smooth again.

no old hare ever looked so magnificent, no matter the hat from which it was pulled.

have you yanked any rabbits out of hats lately? anyone pulled one out for you?

3 Comments
January 14, 2011

sometimes we forget the power of a hug

it was last friday night, i am nearly certain, when my little one, who sometimes is a prophet, climbed into our bed. he wanted snuggles, he said.

and then, as he was wrapped from both sides by arms that have held him since the shaft of light in the middle of the night shone that long-ago hot august vigil on his slippery, pink, eight-whopping pounds, he spoke the words that have blanketed me all week:

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could ever hurt me.”

i know that’s what he said, because as he spoke those words in that pure-hearted voice of a boy who doesn’t censure a syllable, the words–a mere two dozen, swiftly chosen, unfiltered words–pried open my heart, whirled to that place where they will forever live, and i let out a sigh.

it’s not every night you find yourself wrapped around poetry.

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could ever hurt me.”

i am certain those are the words he spoke because i wasn’t about to leave anything to chance, there in the dark. or to the soft spots in my memory.

i asked for the phone (yes, in the dark). i dialed my number at work. and i recited the words into the phone, knowing i’d etched them into the digital memory that is my work voicemail.

that sweet little boy didn’t know—nor did any one of us–how powerful those words would forever ring, especially as they came just 12 hours before a madman lifted a gun called a glock (a name that sends shivers down my spine, the sound of cold-blooded crime locked in its clipped hard-edged consonants), and sprayed bullets into a crowd, into the heart–yes, the heart–of a 9-year-old child.

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could hurt me.”

so we hold our breath and pray.

so we wish.

so we fool ourselves every time we wrap our arms around the ones we love.

as if it’s a shield that cannot be shattered. as if impenetrable walls are forever wrapped around the ones we love, the vulnerable ones, the ones who do not–do not–have rhyme or reason to be taken away.

lord have mercy.

my little boy’s words, now a refrain that i tumble round my brain, like some succulent fruit whose juice i cannot get enough of, his words are what we pray for.

his words are what we need to remember.

isn’t that the prayer at the heart of all our comings and goings?

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could hurt me.”

we are, sadly, old enough and battered enough to understand the limits of those words, a child’s words, to run our fingers along the sharp-edge where our prayers fall off, and pure chance reigns.

but the words are worth remembering: it’s our place in the world, our place by the gift of being grownups, to wrap our arms around our children, around all those we love, the ones whose breath we depend on, the ones whose stirrings matter.

it is all our children ask of us, in the end, to be their shields from the darkness, to chase away the ghosts and goblins, the creaks in the hall in the thick of the night, the ones that scare them to no end.

they lean their little bodies into us, into our soft chests. they ask for so little: wrap me, make me feel safe, shoosh away the monsters.

and while there might always be madmen, and madwomen, who steal the light, who shatter the morning’s hope, our jobs do not cease.

our arms are forever needed, and the hearts that beat in the middle:

“i like when you hug me. i feel like the whole world is around me, and i feel like nothing could hurt me.”

make it your job to hug the ones you love today.

even when they don’t put words to it; the little prophet reminded me the other night in the darkness.

who did you hug this week? how did the heartbreaking news of the week toss and turn in the shards of your heart?

as promised last week, when i feel the rumblings of something to say, i will put fingers to home keys. i will write as long as what’s here doesn’t feel too lean. and bless all of you who took the time to let me know you are out there….i can’t give up on a place where civility and deep thinking and heart have always reigned. bless this place in the world, and my prayer is that we can take it beyond.
i found myself this week making it my personal mission to add extra doses of decency and kindness. i looked more people in the eye, other riders on the el; i said thank you in a deeper way to those who unfolded kindnesses, large or small. i can’t turn around a nation’s civility (or lack thereof) but i can make sure i act with wholehearted dignity and grace. at every turn.
how bout you?

6 Comments
October 29, 2010

sometimes…

sometimes, when you’re a mama, you wish you could fix it all with an apple cut into crescent moons, and an oozy grilled cheese, and a wee ghost mug filled with chocolate-stirred milk.

sometimes, when you’re a mama, it’s nowhere so easy.

sometimes, say the night your firstborn promised the college essays would be done–signed, sealed, delivered–you find yourself checking the status, oh, every half hour. and it’s not too long till you realize this night could unravel right before your eyes.

and soon enough, you feel the weight of the world that bears down on the shoulders of the babe you once birthed to the world.

and as you sit there listening, sopping up heartache–his and, quickly, your own–you see in your mind’s eye the whole picture show of his life.

frame after frame spilling by.

and stunningly, awesomely, you grasp the enormity of the fact that you’ve been there for a front-row seat all the way along. and you cannot think of one other someone you have known so utterly wholly–every night fever and rash, every scuffle and pitfall. the girl who said no to the dance. and the one who this summer said yes.

and, by now slid down against the chair where he is curled, your shoulder against the sides of his thick rower’s legs, you think back to the hours and months before he was born.

you remember when your belly got to the brink of a room, any room, before the rest of you did. and how you loved that belly. how you tried on the clothes that would show it off well before you needed to wear them. because, after waiting a lifetime, you could wait not one minute longer.

you wanted this more than anything ever–before or since.

and you remember, back then, how you promised yourself, promised the unborn babe, promised the universe, and God too, that you would love that sweet not-yet-met someone so wholly and so completely, surround that sweet someone in such an un-pierce-able bubble of love, that babe would never be knocked back by the high waves of doubt and despair that, too often, threatened to topple you over–and did, more than just once.

and you really thought, back then, that committing to love was all it would take.

and so you set out to make it come true.

why, you’d practically wear that babe on your chest, barely put him down, sleep curled right beside him. you’d hardly go out, rarely bring in a sitter. you’d work from home, give up the downtown office–just to be minutes away, always.

you would do everything under the sun, for years and years and years, to keep that child from knowing the heartache that you could not bear to imagine.

the heartache that now seeped into the room, filling it like a hose with a spigot, as you sit there on a cold autumn night, watching him struggle to type in a chair with a screen that resists being filled with his thoughts, with his words, with his sketchpad for college.

you hear a depth of heartache that rips your own right out from your chest. and so, when the talking is done, you cannot walk back to your bed. you cannot leave his room, you realize.

you can’t type the words, can’t pull the thoughts from the utterly drained mind that is his–he’s been at it for days now.

but you can’t sleep down the hall. so you do what mamas do, sometimes. you stay where you feel the pull.

you curl up on the floor. lay your head on the emptied-out backpack, make like it’s the pillow.

and you close your eyes while the typing starts up again. the pads of his fingers tapping their way toward college.

and you feel the tears roll down your cheeks from under your closed eyelids. you taste the salt of the runaway one that rolls over your lips. you wipe it away before it’s noticed.

once upon a time you thought you could love your child free from all this. safe from all of this.

and at every turn along the way, you did what you thought would stoke him with strength, with joy, with lightness of heart.

but then on a dark night at the end of october, when all the colleges begged their assignments, you realized that, sometimes, in the end, all you can do is lie there and pray.

and wait for the dawn, finally, to come.

i write this for all of us, the mothers, the fathers, who keep vigil through these final days and nights, as high school seniors around the country, type out their thoughts and their big ideas for colleges who will or won’t let them in through the gates at the head of the line, the early decision line. and i write this for all those who love children at whatever stage, whenever and wherever and however they stumble and struggle. i know, because i have friends, that ours wasn’t the only house that felt dark last night as all the desklamps burned.

on a much lighter note, i promised a word on breakfast with ina, the barefoot contessa. she is, in a short string of words, everything you would hope she is. and so much more. she oozes goodness. engages in deep conversation. sparks up at a question. wraps it all up with a genuine hug. you get up from the table feeling as if you’ve just made a friend. one you’ve known for a long long time. which in so many ways, i did.

what dark nights have found you keeping vigil, curled up beside the someone you so thoroughly love?

2 Comments
June 18, 2010

love at the grocery store

there were tears at the breakfast counter this morning. oh, not because the flakes got soggy. not because of bad news on the sports page.

no.

it was the news that the big brother, the one who’s far away this week, won’t be home in time for tomorrow’s all-star game.

the little one, you see, is on the team. got voted there by the ones he slugs beside. the lineup of little stars who watch him leap and stretch and tumble, all in the name of making a TV-ready play.

the little one lives for games with balls. has far less patience when it comes to words and numbers. even less if there’s a pencil on the scene.

but give the boy a ball and he takes to it like he was born to make those muscles stretch, the synapses connect, the catching hand signaling the running leg at DSL speed.

i tell you, the kid is wired in ways that baffle me, his mother who could barely walk across a room without finding something there to trip on.

and the kid is utterly deflated that his all-star hero, his big towering eight-years-older brother, can’t be there in the bleachers.

he’d had hopes, he said, sniffling through his almost-tears, that his brother would be the one to call out his name, into the plug-in microphone, over the scratchy loudspeakers, as he approached the plate.

at the little ball park where the game is played, they go for schmaltz like that. good schmaltz, the best schmaltz; they play it up in pure old-fashioned ways.

glancing toward the breakfast bowl, once i saw the scrunched-up face, knew the tears were on the way, i did what any mama would: i dropped the spoon i’d just picked up, wrapped my arms around his shaky little shoulders, buried his soggy face into my fresh white t-shirt, gave no thought to the strawberry bits i would now be sporting in the bull’s eye of my belly.

i held him tight, and wished like anything i could rent a helicopter to get his brother home.

i tried talking so-called common sense, explained that no one knew, so long ago, that he’d be on the team, back when his brother made the summer plans, back when we penciled in the one short week away.

he blew his nose, the little one. slapped on sunscreen, shuffled off to camp. but as i drove him there i heard the sigh, asked, “what’s wrong?” he answered in two short syllables: his brother’s name.

i knew what that meant. i caught his face in the rear-view mirror. the boy was deeply sad, in one of those ways he’ll not soon forget. i can hear it now, 30 years away, the little one will rib his brother, remind him, how, when it mattered, he wasn’t there.

egad. dial ET, for emotional triage.

once i dropped him off at camp, i headed straight to the nearest first-aid station: the grocery store.

it’s often, at our house, the place to turn for makeshift reparations. end-of-a-long-week. half-birthday. any holiday from halloween to little easter. like a madwoman, i comb the shelves, find all sorts of bells and whistles to mark whatever is the moment. you’d be amazed what you find stocked at the all-purpose store. it’s where i spend my paycheck, with nary a second thought. long as it fits in a brown paper grocery bag, it’s hardly an indulgence. just a mama’s fix-it for whatever is the urgent need. and, besides, it’s open all night long, a convenience that’s downright essential when you’re someone who cooks up schemes at all hours of the night. and often on the fly.

i roamed the aisles, searched for all the balm and anti-sting cream that i could find. i started in the cereal aisle. found a limited-issue summer crunch, one with bats and balls to pour into your bowl. stumbled over to the streamer aisle, grabbed red and white and blue.

we’ll do it up, this all-star theme.

called the bread shop once back home (because i forgot to steer the car there), ordered up a loaf of cinnamon swirl, his breakfast favorite.

if i can’t bring on the brother, i can at least supply the band-aids.

it’s all we’re left with, sometimes.

too often.

and in the million other times a week when we flub it up, fall short, run out of steam, chase the little bugger back to bed (with nary a note of tenderness), well, we try and try again. most especially, when we think it counts.

we fill our grocery cart. we tuck away the treats. we scheme and hope.

we picture the little all-star, waking up to festooned room. sitting down to all-star slugger cereal, and swirls of cinnamon and sugar.

we’ll take pictures. tell stories. cheer our lungs out and our throats till they’re scratchy.

we’ll try to fill the stands with all the love we can muster.

and, yep, the seat beside me will be empty.

because sometimes all the wishing in the world won’t bring back the one you long to have there.

anyone else patch together a broken heart this week? what were the balms that worked for you?

4 Comments
May 28, 2010

scrambled eggs and a prayer

in the end, after all of the worry, and all of the nights of stumbling from bed, retracing my steps to the sliver of light that seeped from the crack in the door of the room that never seemed to go dark…

in the end, after all of the fears that somehow it wouldn’t get done, that papers would never find words, and psyches would crack under pressure…

in the end, after 40 weeks of this school year that everyone labels “insane,” where parents in lines at the start-of-school book sale lean in and whisper of kids pushed to the brink of emotional breakdown…

in the end, it all came down to three eggs, cracked on the rim of a bowl, shells the color of cafe au lait cast in the sink, so many empty-hulled shards.

it’s all i could do here at the end, at the start of the final exams, as the boy who i love inhaled a few last lines of latin declensions, read back over ovid, gathered his pencils and sighed.

all i could do was stand there stirring, and praying. watching the yolks turn creamy and hard, pile high into egg drifts.

i imagined the protein, the strands in the eggs, bolstering all the cells in his brain. i stirred and constructed the scaffold, the brace that would hold up his thought, streamline the answers, hurdle him straight to the finish.

it’s all a mama can do sometimes. stand there and stir, and spiral her prayers.

“channel grandpa geno,” i told him, as i sprinkled cheese in the eggs. “he was a wizard in latin.

“and, remember, this is your national language,” i added, a feeble attempt to lighten the moment, to wedge in a sunbeam of humor, one that drew on his old catholic roots.

and then for a moment, i clung to that thought of my papa, saw him again in my head, vivid and clear and in color: his irish face round, decidedly rosy, his eyes atwinkle as always. i imagined him, an apparition of comfort and joy, see-through and floating, just over the desk of my young latin scholar.

i’d grown up with stories of how my papa, time after time, saved my uncle’s behind and his grade point average, besides. how, under the strict gaze of the jesuits, he’d managed to lift the edge of his test, so from the seat just behind and across, my uncle could peer at the answers.

i imagined my papa doing the same for my firstborn, the grandson he never knew, though over the years i’ve offered him up, made him a part of the canon of story. made sure through the power of word that one knew the other. my firstborn, in fact, can reel off tales of his grandpa. and i can picture my papa beaming, bellowing, at the antics and charms of my firstborn, the one with the mind so much like his grandpa’s.

it’s all a mama can do at the dawn of the year’s final passage: beckon the spirits, call on the clan. all the while stirring the eggs.

it’s time now to let loose of the worries. time now to lean into faith, and the soft chest of my papa.

it’s time to believe in the power of mind and of prayer.

it’s time now to rinse our hands of this year. to bid it goodbye and good riddance.

all we can do here at the end is serve up the eggs and the vespers.

as i scraped out the pan, buttered the toast, i realized this was the last. next year, there will be no end-of-the-year finals. and the year after that, when he’s somewhere at college, i won’t be there to stir–at least not the yolks of the eggs.

but wherever he is, wherever i stir, the prayers will always continue. and as long as i breathe, i’ll channel his grandpa.

for just such a classical challenge and triumph.

believe me, i hear the idiocy of such pressure run amok. i swore back in that book line, that i’d not succumb to the madness. despite my deepest intentions, though, this year crept up on us, got under our skin, jangled our nerves. forgive me for writing about it time and again these past few weeks. but typing is healing. and in the construction of word and sentence, i found wisps of solace. enough some days to carry me through till bedtime, when i got down on my knees and prayed. for holy strength to get to this day. and now, hallelujah, here we are. two tests next week, and i’ve got a senior in high school. holy lord……

8 Comments
May 7, 2010

the labor pains that never really end

back in the day when my belly was on the rise, and my doctor gave me choices, i signed up for the labor plan in which no drugs were involved.

i wanted to take it head on, surge through, make like the rest of the mammals and feel the pain.

i imagined it pure, somehow. undiluted.

didn’t realize, quite, that i’d signed onto that plan for life.

oh, i weathered it all right back in that birthing room, rode the tidal waves of contraction to the point that i imagined myself on a ledge, and wondered if at any second i might teeter off, go plunging to the lanes of traffic far below.

ah, but then the end came. the part where squeezing stops and pushing takes over, the part where the doctor aptly diagnosed, “looks like an irish head,” and my jewish husband asked, “whaddoes that mean?”

and before the first push, at the brink of discovery, i hollered out, “it means it’s gonna HURT!”

and, i suppose it did.

but that hurt like no other hurt gave way to miracle. gave way to pool-blue eyes that looked at me, studied me, as if to say, oh, so you’re the one.

gave way to thighs, rich and pudgy and layered with hallelujah fat. (i’d convinced myself, somehow, that i would grow a babe of merely flesh and bones. ahem. not that i’ve cooked up a stewpot of worries ever since conception…)

i remember my arms reaching out to take that just-born child, my fingers hungry, reaching as they’d never reached before, to pull him in, to harbor him against my chest, against my heart, to seal forever the envelope that would keep us one heart against the other, that would surround him forever in a cocoon of infinite love. love that always was and always will be.

i remember being wheeled from the room where he was born, down the hall and up one floor, to the room where i would come to know him, to study him, to memorize the dips and planes of his whole blessed body. to baptize him in the tears that came that night, that did not end, not until i had anointed him, bald head to baby toe, in the salty wash of a mother’s hope-give-way-to-ever-after-love.

back then, no one explained to me how those labor pains don’t really end. oh they subside, retrench, slither back into the corners.

but, your whole life long, when you’re a mother, you’re at risk of nearly writhing again. that ledge, where once you teetered, you remember it.

when you sign on–or at least when i did–you sign an everlasting contract.

you are, for the rest of your life, right there in the trenches, one step ahead of your child’s heart. it’s you–your flesh, your blood, your bones–that stands between you and the tip of the sword that flails toward your child.
or at least that’s the way it is for me.

all week this week, i’ve ached and held my breath. watched the boy i love so very much weather curves and setbacks.

the other night, when the clock ticking on the kitchen wall, ticked straight up to 1 a.m., all i yearned for was a bed. but right beside me sat a boy who ached from head to toe, whose body nearly flopped onto the keyboard where he typed, whose brain gears were getting stuck, but whose sentences needed words.

all he wanted from me was to stay right by his side. he did not want to face the night alone, the dark, the hollow.
i tried to make my braincells kick in gear, to back up his, but mine too were stuck in midnight quicksand.

except for this one thought, the thought that kept me upright, shoulder-to-shoulder beside my aching tired boy: remember when the labor wouldn’t stop, i asked myself, remember when it hurt so much and there was no escaping? well, this too is labor, flashed-forward, labor of another kind: yes, it hurts; stick with it.

this child, now nearly 10 inches taller, and 50 pounds heavier than his mother, he’s in a dark hole now, i told myself. he is trying to make sense of sentences for a teacher who demands the very most–razor-sharp thought, construction without yield, lump-free logic.

you do not leave a child when it hurts, when it gets too hard. at least not in the book of motherhood that i took off the shelf.

i’m not alone.

i see it all around me all the time. the mother whose son’s leg was crushed in the elevator door–after the other leg was broken in the shower. the mother whose sweet girl has tumors in her liver, for the second time now. the mother whose baby was born blind in one eye. the mother whose third-grader doesn’t learn like all the rest, who twirls in circles, even when the teacher says to stop, even when the other parents pretend to look away, but you hear them if you listen, tsk, tsk, they pretend not to say.

mothers do not escape the pains of birth once birth is ended.

mothers sign on, through thick and thin. marriage vows pale, put up against the promises of motherhood.

there is no mountain i will not climb. no shark-infested waters i won’t swim.

if i need to be up at 5 to stir the oatmeal in the morning, watch me stagger down the stairs. need to run to the grocery store at 10 p.m., to buy roadfood for the hungry rowers, well then grab the keys, find the clogs, and point the car where it must go.

there is no shortcut when the subject is a mother’s love. no cliffs notes on how to raise a kid. you take what you’re given, you swerve, you duck, you swing. you give it all you’ve got, and then a dollop that you never knew you had.

show me a kid in trouble, and a mama whose heart is not weighted down, as if sagging from a bag of rocks strung and tied around that sorry muscle.

but then the morning comes. the kid looks up, stares straight into your eyes, deep through and out the other side, into the eyes of the one he knows loves him through and through and through, rough spots and zits, a mother’s eyes don’t see those things. or if they do, they forgive and forgive.

all a mama wants is for that kid to grow and thrive and capture all his dreams.

and if it takes the labor pains that do not end to make those dreams come true, well then i’ll be the mama who takes it head on, full throttle.

because, in my book, that’s what births the miracle, the love that’s like no other.

that magnificent creation up above, the garden of wonder? it’s from my little one, and i am crazy mad for it. intend to frame it, hang it on my bedroom wall. so i can wake up each morning, and rise and shine and face the world that so benevolently gave me not one but two dreams come true.

happy mother’s day to each and all of you who mother in one magnificent form or another….

13 Comments
October 10, 2007

the gospel of the pillow

the day had been long, had been wretched, had been draining in that way that day after day of worry can make it.

the task at hand, at least according to the books, was getting the little one into bed. the clock said so. the dark said so. only the little one seemed to dissent. he seemed wide awake for a few innings of baseball.

so it was me, the one who slid onto the sheets, curled in a ball, and lay there, eyes closed. just breathing. feeling the rise and the fall of my chest. hearing my heart. my heart that all day had felt like it was trudging a mountain. or cracking in half.

that’s when the boy who struggles with pencils spoke: “are you hurt? are you worried? are you tired?

“you need to sleep,” he said, touching my hair.

“grownups,” he told me matter-of-factly, “are more important than kids.

“you want your grownup to stay alive to keep you safe.”

he started to put his hands to the back of my nightgown. he made little circles where the angel wings might have started to sprout, back when God was deciding if we’d be the species with wings or without.

he was the putter-to-bed, this long achy night. it was my little one, with his hands and his words, who woke me up from my over-drained stupor. i didn’t move, didn’t flinch, but i tell you my spine tingled. had i not wanted to scare him i would have sat wholly up. his words pierced through to my heart.

i whispered them back, as if a refrain. “you want your grownup to stay alive to keep you safe.”

i realized that was his prayer. mine too. dear God, i whispered so no one could hear, give me strength. the sort of strength i’d needed before. the strength to get up a mountain. to look out from the top.

just earlier that very same evening, i’d been in a church listening to a very wise soul. a woman who’d once struggled with polio. she said, and she meant it, “you can survive anything. you have to decide to survive.”

i decided then and there that my weary old bones had nowhere to go, except to lie by the side of my lastborn. i let his hand circles and his words wash over me, fill me, soothe my twittering heart.

i asked him then about grownups, about why he thought they might be more important than kids (a point i would argue, if not in inquisitive mode).

“they make your food,” was his very first thought, one that came without pause. “they check it out at the store. and they make it, the farmers do.

“they’re good for the environment, the garbage people are,” he continued.

“they stop people from doing mean things,” was the last of his litany.

i lay there absorbing the gospel according to the one whose head shared the pillow. i lay there thinking how God speaks to us, some hours, in the voice of a 6-year-old boy.

i lay there feeling the tenderness, feeling the power of his wisdom. i marveled long and hard at the miracle of how the teacher speaks to the student at the hour of absolute need.

i marveled at the clairvoyancy of a child. how a child sees through the thick of a heart, through the tangle. how a child, as if a surgeon who works with micro-sized scalpels, can incise right to the core of the matter. can feed in the words that the heart needs to hear. can wake up even the sleepy.

i thought, as i reached out and stroked his soft curls, no, my sweet, the grownup is the one who desperately deeply needs the eyes and the voice of the child.

at my house last night, it was the child who was keeping the grownup so very safe.

there are many voices of God all around us, if only we listen. have you been struck lately by one voice that rises above all of the others? that comes out of the din, speaks straight to your heart, points the way toward the light? are you, like me, amazed at how often that voice is the voice of a child?

6 Comments
August 29, 2007

heart to heart

the little red heart is the size of a button. so is its twin, the other half of its whole.

when the sun peeks in his room, when he bounds out of bed and into his school clothes, he’ll slip his into his pocket. so will his mama. i promised i would.

a heart in your pocket is a very good thing. especially on the very first day, the very first long day, when the time between saying goodbye at the school door, and climbing off at the bus stop, way past lunch in a lunchroom, and scrambling all over at recess, way past standing in lines and marching through halls, past sitting in chairs and reaching in desks. way past finding your name on all sorts of supplies, and even a locker you barely know how to use.

a heart in your pocket is a very good thing.

you give it a squeeze when you need to. you give it a squeeze when you’re sad. or you’re wobbly. or lonesome. you give it a squeeze when you’re certain its powers will work like a cell phone, connect you in magical ways, without even dialing. and the heart on the other end of the line will be there, will know that you’re calling, really she will.

because hearts in the pocket are like that.

they connect you.

and when you are six, and going off in the world, for the very first time really. for the very first time where the lumps in your tummy, and the ones in your throat are so big you think they might choke you. or send you flying to the boys’ room, way, way down the hall, before it’s too late.

the need for a heart, the need for a something, became wholly apparent last night in the dark.

that’s when your heart’s bared. that’s when all that is hiding comes out of the shadows. that’s when your room and your bed get overly crowded. that’s when the things that behave all through the day come haunting. they decide in the nighttime, they want some air time. they want to romp in your head.

that’s when the feet came. tiptoeing down the stairs, around the corner, right to my side, that’s when the words came too: “mama, i need to talk to you about something really serious about school.”

and so, of course, i stopped what i’d thought was important, scooped him onto my lap, and i listened.

“ i think i’ll be homesick.”

that was round one. before it was ended we’d talked, re-climbed the stairs, re-tucked into bed, re-kissed that soft head.

then came round two.

again, feet shuffling.

this time i was not far from his room. this time the words came in whispers, barely audible whispers there at the top of the stairs, where i promptly sat down.

“i’m nervous about tomorrow. i’m afraid i might vomit.”

the child goes straight for the heart. cuts no corners. softens no blows.

in a word, he took me right back. took me back to the weeks, there were two of them, one in kindergarten, one in first grade, where i too got so sick, so dehydrated, they twice tossed me in the hospital. i remember it vividly. remember the little pink puppet they sent me home with. but i remember other things, too, that weren’t quite so nice. things that still give me shudders.

i know what it is to be so afraid, so rumbly inside that you can’t hear a word, and the room feels like it’s swirling.

i took my boy by the hand. we had us some digging to do.

“we need a heart,” i informed him, as i led him. as if i knew just how to fix this. as if i was a sorcerer and i held the potion that would cure whatever ailed him. sometimes even parents play pretend. because they have to. because sitting there falling apart would not help. would not do a thing.

so we pretend that we’ve all sorts of lotions and potions and balms. we dab cream on a cut, make it feel better. whip up concoctions to take out the sting. we do voodoo and rain dances, for crying out loud. whatever it takes to get over the bumps.

the bump last night called for a little red heart. or a little wee something. something he could slip in his pocket, and know i was there. not down the street, around the corner, four more blocks south.

we dug through my top drawer, the one where i stash all my treasures. there was a rock shaped like a heart, a tarnished old ring, a bunny the size of a quarter. and the two red see-through hearts.

we sifted and sorted. i let him decide. i told him how his big brother, too, used to go off in the world with me in his pocket. explained how it worked. how you give it a squeeze and you know that i’m there. that i’m thinking. and loving. and waiting. for the end of the day when he’ll be home again.

i told him i, too, have him in my pocket. how i too would carry a heart. give it a squeeze. send a signal. all day, back and forth, little hearts would be flying. would be defying all logic and sense, and even some science.

but they’d not ever quit. would not break. not run out of batteries. they are forever.

good thing when you’re six, you know things by heart. and you believe, most of all, the things that your mama, she tells you.

especially at night, especially past bedtime, when all of your insides come tumbling right out. when the house has no noise, and the moon guides your way down the stairs.

that is the hour that’s blessed. that is the hour that mamas and papas and all the people who love you pull out their needles and thread, and even their little red buttons, whatever it takes to stitch you and your heart all back together.

now go to sleep, sweetheart, and when the day comes, just give me a squeeze. and i’ll do the same. we’re as close as two hearts in a pocket.

that’s a promise i’ll keep. i promise.

any butterflies and rumbly tummies at your house? what magic spells and secret potions do you have to chase them away? do you remember your first long day away from home, tucked in a school desk, when you thought your heart would pound right through your chest, and the flip-flops in your tummy nearly did you in? did someone you love soothe you? make you believe you could get over the hump? do you still get butterflies? i do…..

8 Comments
April 11, 2007

thinking in circles

last night, while i scrubbed the onion burn off the bottom of a pan, i dove in deep in conversation with a mind i have known since delivery, which i think was just the other year.

heck, i can close my eyes and see that brain unborn, an ultrasonic skull, white-on-black on screen, the fuzzy outlines of cerebrum, the big black space i once mistook for lack of brain. until the radiologist talked me off the ceiling. i’ve had my eye on that gray matter since way back, in the beginning.

only last night, suddenly flashed forward, we parsed evil versus harmful. evil, he pointed out, is big picture; harmful is far less sinister in scope. next, he told me why he worries about organized religion; he worries that too many are too judgmental. who do people think they are, he asked, judging other people? it simply makes no sense. the God he knows forgives.

then he tossed out this: “people say you’ve gotta be good because you’ll go to heaven. it’s not about heaven,” he said as if that’s plain as day. “it’s about how you’ll impact other people.
“oy!”

not a heartbeat later, he’d moved onto deep forgiveness and i’d moved onto the pan that steamed asparagus.

he circled the sink and me, the boy who’s walked in circles as he thinks ever since he started thinking, which might have been the original day he lifted foot from ground and placed it back again. nearly 13 years, he’s walked circles ’round me; now, i realized as i grabbed for towel to dab at dripping pan, he thinks circles ’round me too.

when all the pots were clean enough, he and i indulged in sweet dessert—even deeper conversation. we retired to the maple table, we pulled up chairs, an after-dishes tete-a-tete all too rare in the world of over-busy, overburdened children. a tete-a-tete that might be required should anyone ever think to license those who sign certificates of birth.

while he ticked through list of one to twelve, a ranking of degrees of evil, each culled from news reports of recent years, i couldn’t help but note how on the days the news had happened, i’d so fiercely blocked him, little thinker, from this very litany of horrors—columbine, timothy mcveigh, the east texas worse-than-lynching death of james byrd, jr., the black man tied behind a pickup truck and dragged down a country road (my thinker’s pick for evil no. 1), and of course 9-11, which unfolded just minutes after i’d put him, then third grader, on a 12-seat van, newborn in my arms, his first solo ride to school on the far side of the city, a ride that, torturously that september day, coursed him through the shadows of chicago’s tallest towers.

back then, not long ago, i’d not wanted him to know the world could hold such hell.

and now, just minutes later, he was almost-man equipped with mind that studied every shade and shadow of every real-life horror story, probed for what it meant well beyond the news. a mind, i couldn’t help but notice, i could drink like desert water for the rest of all my days.

i shook my head, although he didn’t see me shaking. how, i wondered, did we get to here so fast? how is it that all those bedtime prayers, and all those late-into-the-night conversations, the ones where tears were wiped, the ones where stories told and questions asked sometimes felt like brill-o to my heart, how is it that while i was keeping watch, i swear i was, he had unfolded from little thinker of big thoughts into this mind, this soul, who, as i watch, is sharpening that tool, the way a carver sharpens knives, so he can use it to try to rid the world of what he sees as evil and injustice.

there are not, it seems, too many moments when you freeze the frame, see what’s taking shape before your very eyes. not on-stage moments. not graduations. not holding up a torah, or taking first communion. but right there, at the kitchen sink and just beyond, at the same maple table where you once set your elbows and launched a life of asking big fat questions.

there are a million moments along the road to that maple table and the parsing of degrees of evil that are, simply put, not a lot of fun.

there were fevers when the mercury shot to 105. and back at the beginning, weeks of rocking him beside the tub with the water running hard, something about the rushing sound that soothed (hmm, wonder if that’s why he now takes showers that could go on for hours).

there were schooldays when i heard all about how he’d stood alone on the playground, or perched on the roof of the climbing house, keeping watch on all the other children playing games without him.

and then we up and moved in the middle of fourth grade, and he endured a whole semester as the new kid from the city, the kid who in a town where baseball truly mattered, barely ever got on base, and swung at nearly every ball.

but sitting at that table, watching how he thinks, realizing that i was talking to a soul i couldn’t have designed to be more nourishing to my own soul, i couldn’t stop the warming down my spine: i’d do it all, all over again. in a blink, please sign me up.

it is perhaps the sweetest after-dinner morsel i’ve tasted in a long, long time: half an hour being circled by my firstborn child.

might i mention that it is exceedingly hard to write about how you love your growing-up child. i groped my way through the dark just now. i do it not to say how wonderful he is–that’s not the point at all. i do it to hold up the fact that here we are, some of us, in the very blessed front-row seat, watching the spectacle of true creation. it is almost unspoken, shared perhaps in pillow talk, the truth that what we’re watching takes our breath away. this is, i hope and pray, a place where we can whisper out loud the things not spoken often elsewhere. it is majesty, in rawest form. and though it’s hard as heck to put words to God’s most divine creation, i thought it worth a take. this, after all, is life in roughest draft. as always, i pull in close, i would love to hear your thoughts…

and while you’re at it, please, keep my blessed friend susan and her mama in your prayers. they could use a few today.

4 Comments
March 1, 2007

all through the night

let’s see, doctors in med school do it. fire fighters do it. airplane pilots, if they’re flying ’round the world, do it. but, no, i think they get breaks. i’m pretty sure some federal regulator decided it’s not a good idea to fly a locomotive with wings on two winks of sleep.

but mamas do do it. papas too, plenty of times. work through the night. forgo the pillow they so long for because someone who’s little is crying, is whimpering, is making bold proclamations such as the one that bounced into my ear at 4:38 this morning: “mama, my tummy is gurgling. should we go to the bathroom? because i may throw up.”

that was merely crescendo to what had been building for hours. started with a hot body, hot like a rock left in the oven, tucked in the sheets beside me, a true furnace for my always-cold toes. the hot body needed bubble-gum fever-killer. the hot body needed cold washcloth, pressed to head, just like my mama used to press to my own. the hot body left his bed, was airlifted by papa, to our bed. that was at 1 something. the hours between are a blur. sort of like the type on this screen through my eyes with no sleep. (you’ll understand, you’ll forgive, if verbs they are missing this morning; they would be found, i assure you, under the pillow i did not get to use during the night of the hot body beside me.)

it’s certainly a scene i’ve played before. not a one of us who signs up for this gig, this parenting gig, gets a free ride, an escape-from-the-night-on-the-bathroom-floor clause. but lying there, counting the sides of the hexagon tiles, over and over and over again–snapping just the one picture above because this is photojournalism, darn it, and my bathroom floor was a war zone and we wanted you to have a feel for the mood there in the trenches–lying there in between gurgles i had plenty of time to ponder.

to ponder the infinite power of the pull between mother and child as you groggily push away sleep, push away every note in your brain calling you back to the bed, because you are ministering to a sick little child, one who in the dark and the black of the night calls out your name, not anyone else’s name, because you are the one chance he’s got to make it all better. the child has powers invested in you. he believes in you. and you, darn it, had better come through.

so lying there together, we fumble. we try rubbing that tummy. re-wetting the cloth. we sing lullabies. and we both moan together. it’s all voodoo really. but it’s the voodoo of love. i know there’s a virus in there running amok. took enough physiology to know a silly old washcloth will not make a dent. but i grab that cloth anyway, crank the faucet to cold, but not too cold, drape it over his brow. i wonder if my mother’s mother did the same. i wonder if the cold cloth on the head is buried deep within my maternal wiring. or if it’s deep in all mothers, all women, all humans.

i lie there on the floor ’til the whimpering stops, ’til the gurgle stops gurgling. then slowly we rise, grope through the dark back to the bed. the light out the window is shifting. not far away it is dawn. the hot body, still hot, climbs in first; i climb beside him, entwine.

slowly his body goes still, his breathing is steady and soft. i, too, drift off for maybe a quarter of an hour. then, blaring, the alarm tells me nighttime is over. it’s time to get up and get moving. it’s morning, and i, like the doctor, the firefighter, but not the pilot who’s federally regulated, i am on 24/24ths of the day. unlike the doctor, the firefighter, all of whom get to go home, i am 24/7. this is home. this is my job that won’t stop.

yup, it’s a job that leaves you, me, all of us, plenty exhausted. but not for the life of me would i not want to be the one counting the tiles at 4:38 in the morning.

i close my eyes and still feel my mama’s thick hand on my brow, bracing my shoulders as my little gut wrenches. forty-some years down the road, my little guy might close his eyes; i want my hand on his brow to be the thing he remembers. it’s my prize for endlessly counting the tiles.

and your tales of mothering all through the night? you, or your very own mama?

3 Comments