the angels sing

This morning I carried Beatrice down the stairs, as I am wont to do (motivated by a combination of impatience [she can be so slow on her own small feet], refusal to say goodbye to her babyhood, and pleasure in the feel of her warm sleepy arms wrapped around my neck) and when we reached the bottom of the stairs Beatrice, as she is wont to do, told me what she wanted for breakfast as if she were a bejeweled, fur-covered elderly widow ordering her longtime waiter at the Plaza to fetch her tea - a minor character, soon to have her feathers ruffled, in one of the Eloise books. 

I want oatmeal. Then mah-tella on toast. And I want milk, without Miralax in it. 

Beatrice. Say please.

Without Miralax in it please.


And Beatrice, we don't have any Nutella. 


Then I want grits. With cheese. And then I want cereal.


Beatrice. Beatrice. What do you say?


At this point she'd followed me into the kitchen, where she saw her brother quietly pouring Autumn Wheat into a white cereal bowl at the counter. She proceeded to flip out, grabbing at the box and screaming that she wanted cereal first, not Gabriel! Nevermind that the cereal course was supposed to follow her grits. She lost her capacity for language, so distraught was she by the idea that someone else was getting to the cereal first, so irrationally determined and angry.

Before I could say a word, Gabriel put down the box, turned to her, and reached out his arms. She collapsed into his hug. They stood there quietly. She pulled away and looked up at me wonderingly.


Mama. Gabriel understands my feelings. He understands my feelings. 

I pulled out a bowl for her and brought both to the table. The morning proceeded in good cheer.

Let me be clear: this does not happen very often. Usually he gets very annoyed. Usually I separate bickering children many times a day. But this one time, the two of them found peace all on their own, a peace much more meaningful than any end-of-conflict I might impose.

When we sang It Came Upon a Midnight Clear in church this morning, my heart filled until it overflowed in tears. Something about the solemn stillness necessary for us to hear the angels singing connected to the loving stillness that Gabriel offered his angry sister earlier.

 It came upon the midnight clear, 

that glorious song of old, 

from angels bending near the earth 

to touch their harps of gold: 

"Peace on the earth, good will to men, 

from heaven's all-gracious King." 

The world in solemn stillness lay, 

to hear the angels sing. 

And to Mr. Rogers. Oh yes yes, I speak of singing angels and miraculous peace between siblings in the same breath as a I speak of Fred Rogers. While Frances and Gabriel watched some of The Lord of the Rings with Mike last night, I snuggled in my bed with Beatrice and watched an episode of Mr. Rogers in which Daniel Tiger feels forgotten by a friend. The way Lady Aberlin rushes to his side, once she realizes her mistake! It's been a long time since I've seen this old favorite, so I was amazed to see the careful, loving attention she lavishes on a puppet. You felt really sad, she tells him with full eyes. Did you worry it meant we weren't friends anymore? Daniel nods and his plastic puppet eyes seem to gleam with feeling. He asks her to tell him what happened once more. How did she forget him? The two of them spend what seems like a very long time listening to each other, healing the hurt between them with quiet, careful attention.


The sermon this morning explored "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God." The priest suggested another translation of logos: voice. It suggests action, relationship. In the beginning, before time, before the world, was a voice. A voice calling out! A voice that creates, and calls to its creation. A voice that we were made to listen for, to yearn for, to receive.

It has been a hard few months. I have felt so very, very tired; so afraid to listen. But my own children, my church, this time of year - all invite me to consider the possibility of peace. To consider the healing that comes when one is courageous enough to turn to it all - the full moon, the quiet dark mornings, and the raging toddler - with quiet, attentive, loving presence.

 For lo! the days are hastening on, 

by prophet seen of old, 

when with the ever-circling years 

shall come the time foretold 

when peace shall over all the earth 

its ancient splendors fling, 

and the whole world send back the song 

which now the angels sing.

memory picture

There he is, at his school winter concert this afternoon. Gabriel is the one looking my way.

He's been opening a window into his private world lately. I've always accused the kid of serious spacey-ness. When he's drawing or playing with legos, I repeat requests three or four times before he even registers that I'm talking to him. It takes ten minutes to put on one sneaker. Then he can't find the other, gets distracted, and wanders off with one shoe on until someone notices and we are already running late. Then he says stop rushing me you guys!

The other evening I got frustrated with him, repeatedly urging him to brush his teeth, to no avail. Mama, he finally replied, don't you ever have to think about battles?

What?

You know, the weapons the soldiers are carrying, and their coat of arms, and how they put ladders up the castle walls, and how the other soldiers will push their ladders over as they're climbing up, and how they jump down just in time?

Well, no. I don't ever have to think about battles. Not like that, anyway.

(Shock.) You don't??

I'm afraid I disappointed. But nonetheless - he's been telling me about the stories in his mind that he is compelled to detail and flesh out. Most of his narratives are in pictures, which isn't surprising, as he is most content when drawing. I am fascinated. His sisters tend to articulate every thought that passes through their busy minds, but most of his typically remain unspoken.

Tonight he told me about memory pictures:

Mama, when I want to remember something, I take a picture of it. I focus on it, and I take a picture in my mind. Then I never, never forget it. Like I took a picture of the blue heron we saw when we went tubing in North Carolina.

(We saw a blue heron?)

And I took pictures when we were in Berkeley Springs.

-When were we in Berkeley Springs with you?

Mama, we were there. I know. I remember a lot from that trip.

-Oh. Right. What else?

One time, one of my earliest pictures, is from riding in the car with James and Thomas. I could see Miss Brigette's hair and the light coming in the window, and I could see a sign with enormous white letters.

(He must have been three).

-Do you ever take a picture in your mind without meaning to?

Yes. I don't always know that it is happening. But those stay forever, too.

(I didn't ask for examples. The first that came to my own mind were some of the sad moments of these past few months).

I think my very first picture is nursing in the chair with you.

(He told me about this memory a few weeks ago: there was a dotted piece of fabric he could see on the chair [his G blanket, that Christine made for him as a baby], and the light was dim, and it was just before bedtime, and I was singing to him, and he felt so warm and like he didn't want to fall asleep but he was falling asleep.)

(He weaned a couple of months after he turned two).


Friends. It is a privilege to be a witness to their becoming. Who will this marvelous boy grow up to be?

god is in the kitchen

This morning I baked a cake. Instead of helping me, Beatrice "pretend helped" me, stirring her own invisible bowl at my feet, because she didn't want to wash her hands. 

I told my family, in all sincerity, that I would like to bake a cake every day. A fresh loaf of bread, and a cake. 

Good idea, they said.

Dear readers, it was as if someone flipped a switch inside me.

Because honestly, I have been awash in kindness and care throughout all of this. Mike has been doing so well on this round of chemotherapy, despite all my anticipatory fears. The man is eating cake. You'd think I'd be swimming at a nice, comfortable clip in these comparatively peaceful waters. 

And yet. Lately I have felt so tired. Beatrice is hard. Frances and Gabriel bicker. My patience is threadbare. I do not really believe in my ability to pull off Christmas, nor, for that matter, everything else they all depend upon for their sense of stability and safety in this wildly unpredictable world. 

Over the past few days I could barely muster the energy to open my doors wide enough to let the love of others seep in.

But then mysteriously, something shifted within, and the doors and windows began to blow open effortlessly. It turns out that fresh air and sunshine - literal (such a gorgeous sunny day!) and figurative -  go a long way. I felt renewed, complete with an acute sensitivity to the beauty of the world around me, delight in the company of my family and friends, and a lightness in my limbs. What a freakin' relief. That closed-off darkness can be terrible. 

Would you mind if I told you about what I was grateful for? And would you perhaps, in turn, consider telling me what you are grateful for? I think I would really, really like that.

To begin:

Two cards from Carolyn. I do not think she would mind if I told you that she writes me every week, at least once. The title of this post is a line from one of her notes. Her cards are like hands extended, a constant and faithful offering of friendship. Whether they are full of grief, or awe, or doubt, or joy, the miraculous thing is that her hands are always open. 

Packages from exquisite people. In particular, the sight of familiar handwriting, an expression of my friends' embodied (and faraway) selves, provided such pleasure. 

My sister's birthday. I got to talk to her on the phone two days in a row AND she is coming to visit in less than a month with my new tiny nephew. 

(New tiny nephew! Say that five times fast.)

A snippet of a marvelous interview with Lynda Barry heard in the car, while I was BY MYSELF, because my dear father-in-law was visiting and at home with Beatrice, who, incidentally, was not napping. 

An exuberant, silly run/walk to piano lessons in the fading light during which everyone talked at once and I did not mind. I might have even enjoyed it. 

A near-perfect poem, sent by Christine, that surely helped prepare me for the switch-flipping. That, and the fact that my mother watched my little one yesterday while I wandered the mall in a daze, thinking about presents. Again: by myself!

And finally, Beatrice's persuasive powers, which led us to a brief foray on the swings after we dropped the big kids at their lessons. We were walking back home through the park. I told her it was too late, too dark, I had to make dinner, yadda yadda yadda. She told me it was time to swing. 

She was right. 

oh how lovely

I have become an expert distracter and entertainer in our bathroom. Sitting on the little plastic Ikea footstool facing Beatrice, my hands resting on her bare knees, I sing songs and make up stories and often I close my eyes and pretend that I am listening very, very closely for the sound of her pee hitting the water. And when I do hear it, my eyelids fly open in astonishment and she is grinning at me. Like - oh yes, Mama - it worked. Again. We did it.

Tonight we were back in the bathroom, before bedtime, and nothing was happening. I stood up and looked at Beatrice and I sang

oh how lovely is the evening, is the evening
when the bells are sweetly ringing, sweetly ringing

and truth be told, I was kind of enjoying the sound of my own voice, and the feeling of singing so fully, and just beginning to think about how much I appreciated this particular perk of parenthood - that you can sing all you like and they will tolerate and even enjoy it - when Beatrice interrupted me.

"That makes me cry."

"The song makes you cry? Why?"

"Because that song is a sad song. It makes me cry when you sing it."

I looked at her. I told her music made my heart swell up with lots of feelings, too. I was just beginning to tell her that it's okay to feel sad, that sometimes sad is one of the feelings a song makes you have, when she said, with her I'm-putting-on-my-best-bright-eyes-and-sweet-smile-to-persuade-you-otherwise expression:

"...how about Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree? That is a not-sad song!"

So we sang that one instead. And eventually she peed.

The bathroom is one of the few places Beatrice, at two and a half, can exert some serious control over her world. So lately, as many important things continue to go in a direction she would not choose, she has been resisting, refusing, avoiding. I cannot tell you how many days passed before she finally pooped on Tuesday.

(Am I talking about constipation on my blog? Oh gracious. It was only a matter of time. I am totally, completely going for it.)

With each passing day, she became more irritable and irritating. She started yelling instead of talking. And with all that holding it, and mounting fear of the bathroom, she peed in her pants. Twice in a row! Cancer is one thing. A toddler who refuses to use the bathroom and pees on the rug as a result is something else.

She is my youngest child, my last baby, and she was potty trained in June. I simply could not take it. I could not bear going backwards and I had to take to my bed.

I don't mean that in a funny, exaggerated way. I really did. I think Tuesday was the absolute worst day I've had in recent memory. Beatrice was blazing with a harsh, irrational toddler light, melting down left and right, and I could do nothing but join her. At one point I told her that if she needed to keep crying, she had to go do it in her room. I would go to my room. And when she was finished crying, she could come in and get me.

I got into bed and cried. I listened to her wail a few feet away. It made me cry harder. We were the saddest two people in the whole world. Finally I couldn't stay away another minute. I walked in, so very tired, and climbed into Frances's bed (which we moved into Beatrice's room not too long ago). She ran to me, still crying, crying a bit harder because she could see that I had been crying, and said, "I looked and looked everywhere for you, and I couldn't see you."

Oh. My dear, dear girl. She got into bed with me and we snuggled and cried some more and snuggled for a long time peacefully after that. My heart had to grow in love so that it wouldn't break. I love them all so much.

A couple of hours later she pooped. We were all SO relieved. The clouds parted and our Beatrice returned. It was that simple! Everything has been going as well as it could since then, though the bathroom continues to exert a repelling force on her. Hence the games and songs and eyes-closed trick. It's fine, I'll take it, I'll sing Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree all day. After that dark afternoon, I am determined to stay firmly within view.

armor of light

We five went to church this morning. Today is the first Sunday of Advent, and in the collect we prayed that God might help us cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light. 

Oh, that I had a suit of armor, wrought of darkness-blasting light, hanging in my closet! Or casually slung on a hook in the mud room, waiting to be donned for the walk to school or tomorrow's long visit to the cancer institute. I like the idea of an armor of light because it is something you wear - rather than something your heart naturally produces, that shines forth from within. 

Because sadly I haven't felt very shiny this Thanksgiving weekend. The days are short. It's rained, and I've felt the tug of weight and gloom. Tomorrow Mike begins chemotherapy again. We all feel the dread of that inescapable, necessary reality waiting for him, and for all of us. 

Yesterday, Beatrice and I were walking Gabriel to his grandmother's for a special sleepover. It was only 4:30 but the sun was nowhere in sight. Everything was wet and gray, and as we crossed North West End Avenue she looked up at me and said, "I am thinking all the time about what would make Papa better. Mama, I am thinking about it every day."

She was actually in a pretty cheerful mood. She and her brother had been chasing each other during the walk, and now she was engaging in what we like to call 'dancing-walking' as she talked, shaking her curls and lifting her knees high and weaving a bit on the sidewalk. She looked up at me with her wide eyes and said "maybe you can give him a new special medicine, Mama!" Pause. Grin. "That will make him better!" 

Great idea! I'll try that! Because, as you children often suggest, I have magical powers! In the meantime, could you please stop breaking my heart with your two-year-old tenderness and worry?

On Thanksgiving we made a tree, festooned with everything we are grateful for. The children enjoyed it, and I'm the one who spied the perfect branch and asked Gabriel to bring it in, but I confess - the whole exercise struck an obligatory note to me. 

It felt like something we would do in our normal life. But nothing is normal now. Why bother twisting pipe cleaners to affix little scraps of paper to a dead branch? Does it make any sense when Mike will be so sick again, so soon?

Then yesterday I led the children in collecting greens for an advent wreath. They are convinced I will be arrested at any minute for clipping holly and pine from our neighbors' yards. I told them no one will mind enough to call the cops. I told them we HAVE to find all the prettiest greenery for the weird-looking wreath I fashioned from a brick of floral foam and a wire frame. Again, the gloom tugged at me from all sides, trying to undermine this regular life sort of thing I was insisting the children create with me. I weirdly persist in these gestures of care, these rituals that mark the seasons, albeit often with heavy limbs and heart. 

Is this one way to understand the armor of light? The things we do, the choices we make, even when dark voices whisper doubt within? Our bishop in Maryland preached a sermon once at our old church about how the old chestnut isn't 'feel unto others as you would have them feel unto you' for a reason. We do unto others. He said you don't have to feel your heart swell with love all the dang day long. But you do have to do love. You act lovingly.  You put on the armor of light, even if you don't feel like it.

Thank goodness I do feel like it, much of the time. Thanksgiving, though small and quiet, still felt like Thanksgiving. I still get a kick out of singing and dancing and embarrassing my children whenever possible. The light in the trees is still a blessing, my children's laughter in the pews during the most solemn liturgical moments still brings a sense of irreverent, gratitude-filled delight. 

I have to go walk my mom's dog. I don't really want to, out there in the damp and cold - but I will. 

Love to all of you dear people. Wear your armor well. 

the embarrassing elevator

Years ago, I took Frances and Gabriel to swimming lessons with a relentlessly encouraging teacher in the too-warm waters of an indoor hotel swimming pool. She herself was ah-MAY-zing, a delight to watch in action, and ceremoniously presented each and every child, no matter their performance, with a personalized gummy candy prize after each lesson.

...And for the person who did the best dolphin kicks and put her face under the water and was so, so brave? A DOLPHIN GUMMY!!

And all the kids, criers included, just freakin' loved it.

Every week we'd trudge through the lobby, or rather I would trudge - laden with towels and goggles and dry clothes - while the children would dash ahead, past the clear plastic case of sad-looking Otis Spunkmeyer cookies on the front desk (having already asked about them and already heard they're just for hotel guests countless times), in a race to the elevator to be the first to press the button.

I don't know how it started, but around that time I taught them how to sing/chant hey Frances, it's your birthday, not for real though, just for play play and it tickled them to no end. Somehow the goal became to sing it with as many of our names as we could in the time it took the elevator to descend from the lobby to the pool level. And sometimes I would do the running man or the roger rabbit for them while we sang. Or a kind of hip hop Axl Rose impersonation. And then they would join me, doing their own crazy dances.

So we called it The Embarrassing Elevator. As soon as the doors closed, we broke out into wild song and dance, acting like joyful lunatics, but the moment the doors parted to open, we had to compose ourselves. Quick! Return to normal. Because it would be really embarrassing if anyone else saw us. Our behavior was strictly for the hermetically sealed world of the elevator.

But it was really, really fun. They cracked me up. We let something wild and real loose in that little container.

Over the past few weeks I've had occasion to listen to Terry Gross interview Mary Karr and Lena Dunham. She asked them both about oversharing. When does a person cross that line? Both of them talked about protecting the privacy of other people. Well, sure. That part is easy. (Lena Dunham also observed the gendered nature of the "TMI" accusation. Men are brave for sharing something difficult and personal; women are just oversharing. I thought that was  pretty astute.)

But neither person really got to the heart of it. Is there a problem with writing about oneself in a personal way? I want to say absolutely not, especially given the nature of my blog...but. But why do we roll our eyes? Why does the memoir as genre seem so annoying sometimes?

I have childhood memories of feeling frustrated, downright furious, about the impossibility of making the sentences I formed in my journal match up to the intensity and confusion of whatever it was I was feeling at the time. Nine year old Meagan simply could not do justice, at least not via the written word, to the emotional realities of fourth grade. But I really, really wanted to. I wanted my language to link up and firmly connect to my inner world. Yet it always seemed to fall short.

Because for whatever reason, authenticity was (and is) a value, and I thought I might embody it by sharing the brilliant mess of my feelings and thoughts with others. Only connect, says Mr. Emerson in A Room with a View. And how to connect? Through some kind of honest expression of, and receptivity to, what matters.

I've been keeping family and friends abreast of Mike's experience with his cancer treatment online, and I've written about how crappy it is to deal with cancer here. I love to post photos of the kids on Facebook. Is it oversharing? Is it too much? Should I cultivate just a little bit of good old fashioned restraint? Sometimes I wonder, and I don't have an answer - though deep down my intuition says it's fine. It's hard to write about what is happening to my family, but it helps me bridge the gulf between this strange reality and the rest of my world.

This blog is my embarrassing elevator. I want to dance and sing, exuberantly. I want to tell you about all of the things that a person waiting for the elevator doors to open on the pool level would never, ever see: the arc of drips left on the carpet from when I whisked a peeing Beatrice up the stairs last night, my voice off key, singing along with Hank Williams in the car, the crazy dance I do while Gabriel practices the piano to make Bea laugh, my tendency to anxiously eat Halloween candy after the children are in bed, the heartbreak I feel looking at the jewel-like red maple leaves littering my front lawn.

I want to share my singular weirdness with you, so that you might do the same with me. And so that there might be just a little more truth and beauty in the world, some clarity in all this muddle. Only connect.

rooted

We live on the leafiest street I've ever seen. The sycamores are knobby and enormous and meet overhead above the middle of the street. The sidewalk curves to accommodate their trunks. 

I used to say the one thing Lancaster was lacking was natural beauty. The city is relatively flat and surrounded by lots of farmland. But how could I have missed what was right in front of me? This brilliant fall, walking the city streets with my kids, I have been floored by the trees. So many streets are lined with old, established beauties, which are now just past the peak of their blazing color.

We moved here in 1990, on my thirteenth birthday. Then I found the heavy, established quality that the trees seem to communicate downright oppressive. All those Millers and Weavers and Stolzfuses! Everyone is related, everyone stops to talk, communal memory stretches back and back and back. There was a story behind every corner, and I was not in any of them. This felt like a place where we would surely always be newcomers. 

But the weight of this town, over years, ceased to be a burden and became instead an anchor. Twenty-five years later, I feel like myself here; I feel at home. I love it. The way my memory infuses its geography is extraordinary, like the canopy of a tall tree, layers upon layers of leafy branches through which the same ray of sunlight shines. I run with Beatrice in the jogger down the same street in School Lane Hills that I once ambled late, late at night with Melissa when we were fifteen and had snuck out of my house. I walked past our old house this morning after dropping the big kids at school, first remembering bringing newborn Frances here to visit Bob and Cathy (its current owners), then remembering raking leaves in the front yard with my family. I almost conjured my dad's shoulder to lean on as I passed. 

Time and place make a tiny bit more sense here. Continuity offers a kind of peaceful entry into those mysteries. There is more space for the dead in a town like this. 

The circumstances that brought us here in August were - are - the stuff of nightmares. I never could have guessed that cancer would bring us back to Lancaster. But I cannot imagine a better place to fall apart. People my children meet at birthday parties tell them about their grandfather. A teacher remembers me as a teenager. They discover that a friend's favorite babysitter was, at age two, my babysitting charge. So many want to reach out to all of us and care for us in this harrowing time. Gabriel asks: do you think you and Grandma know everyone in Lancaster??

Education, class, and a host of other things contributed to my sense, growing up, that to stay in the place one comes from is to fail. Growing up meant leaving. Ambitious, successful adults follow their own independent passions. Relationships should rank below career - especially for someone who identifies as a feminist (which I did and do) - right? 

This now strikes me as a counterfeit, hollow notion of freedom and an impoverished idea of success. It's a set up; it denies the truth of our embodied, particular, interconnected selves. I first questioned it all when slammed with the vulnerability of parenthood - loving a tiny helpless baby more than myself. A tiny helpless baby does not need or even want a parent with a fancy job or big city real estate. A tiny baby wants a lot of people to love and care for her, and to support one another in loving and caring for her. 

Just so a young family going through a catastrophic illness needs family and friends. We are known and loved here, which is what we need and want. I am watching the rings grow and grow on my family tree, newly aware of the ways in which its roots tunnel through a singular patch of rich soil. It's a desperately difficult part of the story, and I have awful days. But even then, the solidity of this tree holds me up.

a bad case of the FCCF

Frustrated caregiver cooking fever. FCCF. I've got it, and an awful case at that. 

My mind spends inordinate amounts of time thinking about food: what to cook, how to cook it, how to maximize calories for Mike, how to entice him, how to somehow make something so delicious that it overpowers the pain of eating and rehabilitates the whole ritual of meals into something pleasurable again.

This is something, the rational part of my brain tells me, that is simply not possible right now. Not today, not tomorrow. His throat is simply too burnt and ulcerated by radiation to be able to enjoy eating and drinking. He can barely get through a smoothie. Plain old water is a terrible challenge. Whether I roast or saute garlic before adding it to broccoli potato soup is not going to make one ounce of difference to him. 

And yet while I push the stroller, while I drive to an appointment, I wonder about that garlic. I consider adding an avocado to the mix, or maybe that cashew cream in the fridge. (Speaking of: a friend loaned us her Vitamix. I've used it four times in the past 18 hours.) It's not that I have too much time on my hands - it's that I feel utterly futile and frustrated by the fact that I can do so little to help. And cooking for someone is the most powerful way I know to manifest love, to soothe a hurt.

I was listening to an episode of The Splendid Table on a run the other day, fueling the cooking obsession, when I heard an interview with the Italian chef who cooked for the Pope during his visit in New York. She was so joyful and full of feeling as she described the meals she prepared: how she gathered vegetables from her own garden to serve him, how every choice was made with care. She talked about how food connects us all, and how feeding someone is the simplest form of showing love. 

After one of her lunches for him, the Pope surprised the cooks by coming into the kitchen and asking if he might share a coffee with them. The chef could barely come up with words to describe what this experience of drinking coffee and talking about their lives together had meant for her. I think I laughed and cried while listening. It's not just feeding someone; it's sharing the meal. 

The nutritionist at the cancer treatment center recommended a cookbook called One Bite at a Time that I've been cooking out of over the past week. I think it's great and would recommend to anyone else in my situation, whether suffering from FCCF or not. More than any particular recipe I appreciate the author's approach to cooking for someone undergoing cancer treatment - she advocates maintaining that person's connection to food and meals. Setting a beautiful table, adding flavor, color and brightness to food, using colorful dishes. Inviting the senses whenever possible. It is humanizing to fight against the tendency to view eating as taking one's medicine.

It helps me recognize Mike's great gift to us in continuing to sit down to dinner with his family, to patiently make his way through a bowl of soup while the children bicker and compare school notes and submit to one more bite of peas. 

Asking for a coffee was a generous act. Not that I really have any idea what motivates His Holiness, but I imagine that the coffee itself was less important than sharing the coffee with singular, beloved others. Just so it does not matter much what the soup tastes like for my husband; it matters that he is being fed, and that we eat the soup together. 

(Much to the children's chagrin: soup again?!?!)

p.s. On another note - isn't three year old Frances the baker adorable?

homemade time, the swearing edition

I recently heard myself say to a friend that I am sick of this crescendoing radiation bullshit. I really am. I am fed up with the whole scorched earth approach to battling cancer. 

Watching my beloved suffer is heartbreaking. And bone-breaking and soul-breaking too.

In conclusion: I fucking, fucking hate it.

p.s. Even when I'm mad, I still feel immense gratitude and love for all of you.

nurture and nature

As we lingered over dinner yesterday, trying to convince Beatrice that there is no dessert only dinner and watching her nibble a tiny purple carrot oh-so-slowly, there was a quiet knock at the front door. I opened it to find Kerry, with her beautifully open and kind face, holding an enormous bag full of soft and fluffy throws. A warm, snuggly blanket for everyone in our family, each selected with favorite colors and proclivities in mind. How did she know Mike had been shivering with cold yesterday, that he had casually commented that we really needed a cozy blanket in the living room?

And how had Hannah and Emily known that I have been overwhelmed by the beauty of this autumn, that I had just been talking to Gabriel about how we've never found a truly excellent way to preserve leaves? They brought a flower/leaf press with them from Annapolis, amongst other treasures. Milena must have known too, as she sent me this link yesterday as well. 

And in between Hannah and Emily and Kerry's delivery, there was Jessie and her family, bearing many individually portioned bags of frozen, lovingly made soup for Mike. Do you have a sore throat? asked little Elias when he walked into our kitchen. Yes, I do, replied Mike. Now Elias is acquainted with the intended recipient of his earnest culinary efforts. He seemed satisfied. 

Oh! And in the midst of so many comings and goings, Rhoda's big box arrived, filled with gifts and most especially the fabric for a fleece quilt for all of us to make together.

It seems our family and friends are determined to keep us warm and well fed, to maintain a steady flow of music and books and art into this borrowed house. I decided to let it be known via Mike's Caring Bridge site that we could use some backup soup for him, now that only liquids are tolerable. Days later our freezer is full of nourishing broths and purees. Eating has become hard, but I do believe eating food prepared with love and kindness is a little easier going down.

I'm not the one with cancer, but still I say cancer has had a clarifying effect. So much in my life these days has a certain brilliance, a force to it: the color of the sky, the warm spices in a pumpkin muffin, yellow late afternoon light on brick, delight in Beatrice's eyes. The necessity of receiving the care that flows towards us with grace and love. 

A recognition that both reaching out and receiving requires a generous spirit. These past months have stretched my heart's capacity for reception. I'm making space. Sometimes it hurts.

Also: figuring out what is essential. Food, warmth, beauty. Reading aloud together. Walking, biking, making art. The flaming brilliance of the season. The people whom we love and love us, and the people who love them, and the people in turn who love them. The signs of what we mean to each other.

p.s. Our first annual apple picking trip inspired one of the very first posts on this blog. How things have changed! How they have stayed the same! This time we met in Pennsylvania, and Gabriel was missing, and Beatrice has joined us, but Nathaniel still likes to pull a lot of kid weight in his wagon.

missive from the other side

This is a portrait of me and Mike. Or Mike and me. We are sitting in a waiting room quietly, with our own thoughts, with our own burdens, together.

Actually the sloth (such a new addition, I cannot remember his name) and Ha Ha the Monkey sit there companionably, per Gabriel's arrangement, on the headboard of his bed while he sleeps at night. And nearly every night when I come in to stretch out beside him and do his bedtime routine, I imagine them as me and Mike, a worn out pair whose present duty is to sit and wait.

I have been writing blog posts in my mind for weeks now. I have told you about so many things, most of them in the bleak dear diary vein. I don't usually compose when things are going well - though truth be told, most every beautiful and joyful thing these days feels at least a little weighted with grief and worry. I never seem able to find the time, or spiritual energy, to translate that 'writing' into actual writing. Maybe someday I will tell you about the past two months.

The first dividing line in my life was when my dad died. Everything was then understood as belonging to either before or after. A few precious things belonged to both sides, but even they became bifurcated: my friendship with so-and-so before Dad died, and my friendship with so-and-so after Dad died. The second line was when my first baby was born: before and after parenthood. Everything changed.

Now I am, muddled and tired and scared, making my way through the swamps of a new unknown. Mike's diagnosis was the third dividing line. It breaks my heart that it also marks the first such line for my children, who are all still very young. I suspect that there will be good things about this transformation for all of us, that we will grow in love and empathy. I hope so. Regardless of the specifics, I feel certain that we will be marked by this experience, changed forever.

I started running more after Mike's treatment started. One day in the heat of August I was at the track and saw a bald, shirtless guy running up and down the bleachers with an enormous sandbag slung across his shoulders. He was sweating and grunting and stumbling every once in awhile. I felt like I could barely finish my run at my usual slow pace, slogging along in the humidity and heat. But look at that guy - geez. What is he thinking??

I am, per usual, a feelings sponge. These days soaking up the emotional flow of my husband and children can be a bit harrowing. But then also the trash still needs to be taken out, the car still needs new tires, the children still protest piano practice. Every so often I get brittle and exhausted and feel so small and mean - a caregiving and general life-living failure. I snap at Frances, I invite conflict over peeing with Beatrice, I cry - a lot - when I can't find a parking spot and walk into the first yoga class in weeks very, very late.

But then I think of that guy with his gleaming bald head and his grunts. It wasn't pretty. But he was doing it. He was getting it done. My sandbag can be a real bitch and the effort it takes to lug it around is evident, but basically, I'm getting it done too.  

With, of course, serious help. So many of you have been supporting us from near and far, in more ways than I can count. Without that constant flow of love I surely would have slipped and fallen right off the bleachers long ago. Thank you for keeping me upright!

I've missed this space for reflection and connection. Hello, hello. I'm so glad you're here. 

where we're going

Dear friends, I apologize for sharing this difficult news on the blog, especially to those of you that I haven't yet had the chance to talk to directly about this. We found out yesterday morning that our health scare was, after all, more than a scare. Mike is very sick. We have had to cancel our sabbatical plans in the UK and are in the midst of planning medical care, investigating alternative housing, and arranging a battery of tests and scans for the days ahead in order to understand better what we are facing.

The word is getting out - which is fine and as it should be - and I wanted to let all of you know: thank you for your kind words, your prayers, your offers of help. We appreciate it more than I can say. The outpouring of love has been tremendous. I may not be able to respond to your calls and texts and emails any time soon but that doesn't mean I don't cherish them. I will let you know when and if there is something you can do. In the meantime, keep praying. Keeping holding us in your hearts with love.  That is, in fact, doing a lot.

Right now I don't know where we're going. I really don't - not in any sense. But I know we are surrounded by love and light and that will help us find our way.

xoxo
Meagan

world's lamest bike gang

Today was perfect outside. Just perfect. Between the weather and having breakfast this morning with three inspiring and smart and funny friends, I moved through my day with a lighter body and spirit than I have in a very long time.

This thing has been happening over the past few months. I seem to embarrass my oldest child multiple times a day, in ways that boggle my apparently limited mind. I feel like I'm playing out a script that was written for us way, way, way back, an inevitable back-and-forth that leaves us both irritated and absolutely astounded by the perspective of the other.

The other day I heard myself say, "It can't be embarrassing that I exist. It can't be embarrassing to have a mother. Everyone in the world has a mother."

This was met with muttering and gazing towards the sky through her newly shorn, elegant hair. Then I shot her a look I employ frequently these days that translates as: oh no, oh no no no none of that please. Then she said - Sorry. But Mama, you just don't understand.

See what I mean? I obviously don't. But then today, in my outrageously high spirits, Frances, Gabriel and I went on a bike ride. Beatrice was in the bike seat, freshly stickered with all the odds and ends we've been finding as we pack up the house. I felt sort of like the Queen of the World, in the bright breezy sunshine, flanked by my people.

We should have a bike gang, I said. Let's be the Heritage bike gang. We rule this neighborhood!

Frances looked over her left shoulder at me. Mama, she calmly explained, I do not want to be in a bike gang with a mom who rides around with a toddler on the back of her bike. That is not cool at all.

Oh.

If I am going to be in a bike gang, I want it to be with tough teenagers who ride dirt bikes. No, motor bikes. And they actually go places, instead of riding around the same neighborhood all the time.

I had to laugh. I see your point, I told her. That does sound like a much cooler bike gang.

She made absolutely perfect sense. I understood. Hallelujah! What a great day.

where I've been

I haven't blogged in a very long time. I've missed this space, and the palpable sense of connection and  common experience that comes with it. I find myself oversharing on Facebook, which really isn't comparable to this - though it did provide a forum to share some of the adorable photos from our visit in Lancaster with my mom and gloriously pregnant sister and her family. I want everyone to see her and her belly. Magnificent, I tell you!

The house is half packed up, though it doesn't really look that way. It looks more like a big mess. Besides the normal logistical stress of preparing for a big sabbatical adventure, Mike has been struggling with some persistent health issues that had all of us worried and uncertain about the future. Over the past two days, we've been able to rule out more serious diagnoses and he finally seems to be recovering. His doctors concur. Gabriel told me this morning he knew Papa was better because he has been playing more games with him. I noticed that too. We are all finally relaxing into the knowledge that he is going to be okay.

But wow. Every time I felt tempted to post over the past few weeks, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Worries about health and whether or not international travel was going to be feasible, let alone wise, have been before my eyes and heart all the time. It seemed wrong to share here about anything else more superficial without acknowledging that sobering reality.

A little while ago some friends took me out for a lovely evening, a goodbye-for-now night out, and I found myself sitting down, looking around at the seven or eight open, dear faces, and telling them  tearfully about our worries. I explained I just had to tell them that right away, so as not to feel false or trapped in superficialities all night. Of course they got it. After that, we had a great time. 

So - inhale, exhale - that's what's been going on. Now that things are looking very positive and hopeful, I can safely acknowledge all of it without causing you undue worry - and move on to other things.

Well. Maybe I don't really have much else to share. Just one little observation: the humble summertime beauty on offer in my backyard has proved a great solace during this time of worry.  All the in between moments have quietly nurtured me - waiting on a very slow, distractible toddler to wend her way to the car while watching squirrels play, weeding for a moment before heading into the house and marveling at the abundant herbs, pausing before walking somewhere to watch the mama robin fly to her big babies in the nest outside our front door. 

It's probably time they fledged, but I want them to stay a bit longer. Take your time, little robins.

The most delightful and restorative sight in our yard? Goldfinches perched delicately on coneflowers, sunflowers, and lupine, plucking out the seeds and gobbling them down with captivating precision. Last summer I tried photographing them and they looked shockingly almost grotesque - bright yellow miniature dinosaurs. Much better to encounter them in motion.

All will be well. I always knew it, but now I know it with a more peaceful heart. Maybe, just maybe, I will make it back to post here again before we move out of our house in ten short days. Thank you, readers, for sticking around through a long quiet spell. I missed you.