And all around our little rectangle of baby foods at the back of the yard is a beauty that shifts every day, an established flower garden that the previous owners tended for years before we arrived. Before Mike got sick exactly four years ago, before Beatrice was born two years before that, they were planting iris bulbs and allium and tulips and clematis. They were babying the lilac tree and building a fish pond. They didn't know that we were coming - they didn't know that our path of illness, uncertainty, and loss would one day lead us to their idyllic backyard. And yet, even so, their work is a gift to me every morning when I wake up and check to see what is blooming today.
Who would love this? Mike would love this. He was a passionate gardener. The two homes we owned together had very little going on in the way of landscaping when we arrived and he created beautiful spaces from scratch. He loved the idea of being a steward of the land - whether it be a postage stamp front yard in the city or a sprawling yard in the suburbs - he wanted to nurture native plants, foods, flowers, and tender trees that would live on and beautify our neighborhoods long after we had left them.
So I am happy for the established flower garden, and happy for the chance to plant something new, because it is a tether to Mike and our old life. He was the real gardener - the soul gardener. We just do our best.
Last weekend we went to Annapolis. Our dear friend was delivering the commencement address at St. John's graduation and I wanted to see it. I realized enough time had passed that I wouldn't know any of the graduating seniors - nor would Mike - and this was both relieving and devastating. None of them would run up to me with concern and sadness in their eyes. I could be anonymous. But then again, how could I possibly be anonymous? How could life in this community go on so seemlessly without Mr. Brogan?
It was the first visit that was not occasioned by a traumatic purpose: no moving out of the old house, no post-death business to attend. We stayed with Katie and Chester and had Taco Saturday the night we arrived, as we had together at least two hundred times before Mike got sick. I drove past Frances's old school, visited old friends, parked behind Danielle's minivan in her driveway and walked right into the kitchen as I once did every day to pick up baby Beatrice after work. My minivan sensed that I was a bit wrecked by all this and nosed itself in all the right directions without my having to remember where to go. All I had to do was sit in the driver's seat and rest my hands on the steering wheel; it took care of the rest.
It poured all weekend. Graduation was thus held indoors and I sat up front and watched all the faculty process in, many of whom I had not seen since Mike's diagnosis. I'm not sure they all recognized me with my now-big kids and without my husband at my side. The past president walked up to me afterwards to congratulate me on my performance, thinking I was an actress he had seen in a play recently.
But Robert's speech was perfect. I don't think I'm exagerrating. It was perfect. It captured what is so special - so idealistic and beautiful and never-cynical - about the experience of learning and growing at St. John's, and reminded me of why we had to move to Annapolis so Mike could be a part of that. It was worth the sacrifices we made. Mike was a really good tutor. I cried on and off throughout Robert's speech in recognition of that: this is what he had, this is what he lost when his illness took him away from work, this is the place that - whether or not everyone there knows it - is dimmer, less complete, without him.
Yesterday I read some of the Homemade Time posts from 2011. Just ended up there, moving through that year in our lives story by story, feeling sadder and sadder. Who was that woman? I can barely remember what it felt like to be her. I was yearning for more all the time then: more beauty, more truth, more community, more connection, more love. I had enough energy to take care of two little ones all day and then have plenty left over to imagine everything I would like to give them, to debate things like school and church with Mike, to think about craft projects and cooking challenges for the next day, to wonder about my place in the world. I spent so much time with Frances and Gabriel. We made so many things. We read so many books! Candy was for special occasions; videos were rarely and judiciously permitted; everyone was in bed by 7:30.
I know it wasn't perfect. But it was an ambitiously quiet, creative, bookish life.
Can you blame me for comparing their experience to Beatrice's? If you asked her, she'd probably tell you her favorite tv show was The Office. She begs for ice cream nightly. She mimics the adolescents around her with impressive accuracy. We read before bed, but that's about it, and she was up until ten last night, hollering every few minutes at me that she was scared and absolutely could not fall asleep. I just hollered back, because I was feeling sick and too exhausted to employ the every-five-minute bravery marble behavioral technique I've been using for the past two nights: I know you are, and I know you can do it!
Where are her tender, quiet hours spent arranging bits of yarn and cardboard? Who will she be, with no Papa stretched out on the couch reading King Lear and Aristotle and The Brothers Karamazov, modeling the joys of a contemplative life as he did for her brother and sister? I would get so annoyed at him, oblivious to the encircling chaos while I tried to make dinner. The only sound that got his attention was a grammatical error: he'd abruptly lift his head, look towards its source, and with his characteristic, infuriating authority say, "fewer, not less" before returning to his book.
What I now realize is that I cannot make dinner - and mow the lawn and pay the bills and bring them to the dentist and help them with their homework - and model the joys of silent, focused reading. I can't do it all. I have no one to show them the treasures of quiet, focus, contemplation, comfort and stillness in being at home. I have no one with whom to show them the challenges and joys of marriage, of partnership, of balance. It's just me, and I am one-half of what they used to have. The loss to who they were, are, and will be is staggering.
I worry they have been stiffed in a way that I cannot possibly make up for. I have none of that excess of energy and ambition that I once gave them, and Mike, and our little community. Nowadays it seems I use everything I've got getting us through the day as best I can.
I know our family is in a different developmental moment than we once were. A lot happened during the crisis-laden cancer years. My big kids are now independent, identified with friends and interests, heading off to an activity most nights of the week. Our dinners are quick and simple so they won't be late to soccer. And Beatrice, as the youngest, would be getting dragged around with them whether or not Mike was alive.
But. But Mike isn't reading on the couch. Or tending the garden. Or taking them to the lab or a concert at St. John's on the weekend. If he hadn't been taken from us, I might not be as thoughtful about creating a home and supporting our kids as I once was, but I think the person I am now would be more continuous with the person I was then. My body and heart and soul would be more spacious. The relentlessness of grief, the responsibility of being the lone parent, and the task of making us into a new kind of family shrinks that space. There's less room for yearning. There's less for setting boundaries in order to make a nurturing space apart from the noise and violence of consumer culture for my children to find peace within. I simpy don't have it in me to create the family space I once held with Mike.
I can't be a father and a mother. I can't be Mike and me. Hell, these days I can barely be me. Without him, I have to do so much more, and I fear, as a result, be so much less.
While there are plenty of things I wish Mike were here now to do for this family, more than any of it, I wish he were here to be. I wish my kids could have the gift of growing up in the presence of his unique and precious being. Can you blame me for worrying I will fail them?
2 comments:
No blame, just Love. And that's what you do best.
dearest, dearest Meagan, it is your wisdom and compassion and love that leads you to worry. no one teaches us that as mothers, we all will fail our children. in small ways, and sometimes in larger ways, we will fail them because we are human and imperfect. but in another way, our failing them will help them be stronger humans. because they will take our love and build themselves in amazing ways, and they will continue to create their beautiful selves with gifts that can grow inside them even in the shade of imperfect worlds and loss. They carry you and Mike inside them even when they cannot have him reading on the couch, and they cannot have the you of who you were before. No one can do it all. But what you can do, is enough. remember when you see the small green plants pushing towards the sunlight from underneath and in between pieces of cement pavement, growing life can be incredible.
they don't need you to be anyone's idea of perfect or good. you are there. and they will grow. and they will also be imperfect. but they, like you, will be wonderful.
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