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.