thankslisting

Gabriel spent the week prior to Thanksgiving at home, sick with a persistent fever and remarkable congestion that lasted long enough that my worrying wore me down and I took him to the pediatrician, who told me that he had a virus. I guess I knew that. He needed rest and fluids. Yes. Right. Just as he was finally behaving - and eating - like himself again, Beatrice succumbed. 

She developed a fever on Thanksgiving, and the congestion was so awful that she had a hard time breathing. All she wanted to do was nurse, and it was impossible, which was terribly frustrating. The fever worsened, and the two of us were up most of the night. My poor sweaty, snotty little girl. Every time I resettled her in the portable crib at the foot of our bed, I would lie there, staring at the ceiling, listening to her awful breathing noises and coughs, torn between exhaustion and wanting to pick her right back up again.

That little conflict never lasted long because within minutes she'd begin crying again, asking for me. And really, who wouldn't? If I felt like she sounded and my mother was a few feet away, I would call for her too.

Luckily my mom was, in fact, a few feet away! The next day as I talked with Mike about leaving a day early because Beatrice was so sick, it suddenly occurred to me that that was utter insanity. My mama was here, making us popcorn while we watched movies and offering to bring me tea. She was taking my big kids out to lunch and sharing her big fluffy dog with them. When my kids are sick and want me all the time, I often dream of my mom's caring presence. Caregivers are in serious need caregiving.

So in the scheme of things, the timing couldn't have been better. No work/child care scrambling, no neglecting the other children, just enforced down time with a hot little monkey who wrapped her sticky hands around my neck and could not bear to be parted from me. 

Usually visits to Lancaster are full of visiting friends, trips to Central Market, knocking on neighbor's doors, and stops in my favorite shops, cafes, and galleries. I'm so happy to be there; I want to soak it all in. Oh yes, I tend to overdo. So to spend three days on my mother's couch, pinned beneath my flushed-face little one, watching the snow fall, snuggling with my family, talking with my aunt - it was different. 

All that sitting and holding and sleep deprivation inspired a meditative mood. I kept noticing. (One of the perks of the stillness and singletasking children sometimes demand, especially as newborns). I kept noticing little things - everyday things - and sometimes, as I noticed, I felt awe before them. Wonder. Maybe, even, gratitude. Here are a few of the things that beckoned to me during the long weekend:

-the vertiginous sight, up through the bay window, of heavy white snowflakes falling through the gray sky

-miniature marvel: a perfect, smooth, shiny acorn

-my husband's clear eyes (true windows if ever there were a pair)

-the sunburst pattern of melted snow on the windshield, water beading out in every direction as we drove home, and the pleasure of anticipating Gabriel describing it to me, knowing he would also notice (and he did, within moments)

-the fast-paced drama of the East coast late autumn sky

-listening to the Beattles, those prolific wonders who supply my children with seemingly endless favorite songs, watching all three of their faces

-wily, wonderful, irrepressible squirrels

-Frances playing the piano with pride and pleasure

-a photograph in a large frame tucked behind my mother's armoire, discovered on one of my lingering visits to her sanctuary of a bedroom: a portrait of my great-grandmother Viola. In her face I saw my mother, my aunt, my sister. Maybe even myself. It was arresting. 

-my children's growing bodies, ever longer and leaner

-my mother's profile

and finally, 

-creamy pumpkin pie with a gingersnap crust. 

I hope you also had a beautiful Thanksgiving. 

xoxo

john cerutti and all the saints

As we headed out on our walk to school yesterday morning, Gabriel looked over at me across the stroller handles with November in his eyes. He sighed heavily. "First Peepiceek, then the Car Talk guy, and now John Cerutti, too."

What do Frances's mouse, Tom Magliozzi, and a former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher all have in common? You guessed it. They're dead. We cared about them, and they died.

Last week Frances and I found her mouse curled up motionless in the bedding of his cage. She wept, then didn't believe it, then wept, then repeated over and over: I want him back. Bring him back. It was agonizing. My heart broke for her. Her remaining mouse, Reepicheep, has become the object of much worried attention.

When I heard about the Car Talk guy's death, I thought immediately of Gabriel. I've always had a bit of a love hate relationship with that show and assumed others did, too - but Gabriel surprised me not long ago by confessing that he just plain loved it. I turned it off a couple of weeks ago and he protested. This is a great one! I want to hear what they say about her car!

...You do?

He did. He loved how they laughed. He loved that they were brothers. On our walk we talked about how he seemed like such a happy person, and that made it somehow less sad that he had died.

John Cerutti is oddly the loss I feel most deeply. We've been using his baseball card as a bookmark for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and we used it for that endless tome of an interminable story Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix too. That's a long time to hang with John Cerutti's eyes squinting in the sun, his day-old beard, his good natured, relaxed expression. Over the weeks we began to wonder about him. The card is from 1988. It states he went to Amherst and enjoys oil painting, music, and drawing. Often we would address him directly, a retired ball player, out there somewhere: John Cerutti, who are you? Where are you? Are you puttering in the garden? Painting a landscape? Are you happy, are you well?

Finally Mike Googled the man. He died ten years ago, at the age of 44. That's how old my dad was when he died. Cerutti had a heart condition. The Wikipedia article on him ends thus:
John Cerutti was known and admired for his exemplary character, good will, and sportsmanship.

When Mike and Gabriel told me what they'd learned the other night, I surprised myself and nearly cried. How can he be dead? How can he have been dead all this time? But he was so young!

What is it about just now? Proximity to All Saints Day? The sudden change in weather and shortened days, shifting from golden, warm October to wet, dark November? I feel an openness to grief, a susceptibility to sadness. We all do, in our own ways.

Tonight I read In The Night Kitchen to Beatrice before bed. It was the first time she'd seen the book. I find it to be magical, not only gorgeous (an aside: I have long dreamed of a poster designed from the illustrations to adorn our walls. Ever seen one?) but true in ways I still do not fully understand though I have probably read it hundreds of times.

Beatrice also seemed entranced. We read it once, then twice (with Frances and Gabriel, who also cannot resist). Beatrice was getting tired but insisted on reading it AH-DEN, so I perhaps stupidly turned to the beginning just once more. But as I began to read I noticed Beatrice's lower lip was trembling. She began to cry, sorrowfully and fearfully. Mickey is tired, she said. He will sleep. More tears.

Am I reading too much into it when I say that she felt her first intimations of mortality tonight? She kept crying, kept insisting on finishing the story. She became focused on his bed, his leaving his Mama and Papa sleeping tight (Mama! Papa!) and finally I had to close the book and say it was bedtime. She kept crying and talking about Mickey. While she nursed she pulled off repeatedly, that sad tremble still in her voice, saying Mickey ...okay. He is okay. Mickey is okay. She couldn't stop thinking about him.

He's not leaving his parents forever, he's not alone, he's not scared, he's not going to die. Right?

After I shut the door she wailed so miserably I had to get her out of the crib and bring her downstairs, where she ate Girl Scout cookies with her brother and sister, snuggled in my lap, and eventually calmed down.

What a few days it's been. What sadness there is in the world! Those unsettling, mustachioed bakers say "we bake cake, and nothing's the matter!" These are the same bakers who put Semitic, chubby, capable little Mickey into an oven. Something is the matter, alright, you nasty bakers. Something is very wrong.

Surely by now Mickey has died. So have his parents. Maurice Sendak has died. My dad, my grandparents, Mike's grandparents, Pete Seeger, Tom Magliozzi, John Cerutti, Frances's first pet. Name yours too. All the saints. It makes the grief even more excruciating sometimes to share it with one's children, but in that sharing it can take on a beautiful, holy quality. Blessed are those who mourn.