all of your beeswax

There's our big sunny dining room window, the panes of glass framed by miniature smiling faces, friends and family who took the trouble to print up holiday cards and send them to us. I love these cards; I love that I can hold them in my hands and tack them to a wall. Their material existence lends them the weight of reality, something a texted photo skates around but never quite touches.

But sometimes in the morning I sit before all those pictures with my coffee, while everyone in my family is talking to/at me at once, and I feel so lonely. The pictures are of beautiful people in beautiful places; of children and families doing things like hiking or swimming, generally exuding health and happiness and taking those things for granted - because they should. Why shouldn't they? But oh, those photographs are from a place I haven't been in a long time.

It's the way I feel at a party. Like a mother returning to a job, having spent the last year consumed by the work of caring for a baby day and night, uncertain as to whether she knows how to make conversation with adults any longer or possesses whatever skills she once utilized in the workplace. Like an immigrant trying to operate in a new culture, looking for a way into a foreign social flow, feeling disorientation at the periphery all the time.

I've left Mike sick at home multiple times over the past few days to strike out with the kids to holiday events, held in homes filled with a delightful mix of old friends and people I haven't yet met, tables strewn with gorgeous food, everyone looking downright excellent in their new Christmas finery, spaces filled with the good cheer of the season.

And I walk in, and I feel like an alien.

I love a party. But now I can't remember what I'm supposed to say. The gears are stuck. I'm afraid of crying when someone inevitably asks me something innocent and light. Like how are you. I cringe when I am introduced to someone new, a poor unsuspecting soul holding a drink and standing ten inches away from my face, listening with polite inquisitive eyes while I fumble (still, so many months later, still I fumble) around for a low-impact, non-burdensome way to explain that the reason we are living in Lancaster is that my husband has cancer. And we couldn't stay in our house in Annapolis. And we really, really needed a lot of help, and this is where we found it.

Now tell me about you.

I cringe for my awkwardness, for the other person who has to figure out how to respond to this sad tale, for the friends standing a few feet away who know it all too well and have to hear it again. I feel tedious. I am the person you might want to avoid while partaking in holiday good times because I am, no doubt about it, a serious downer.

When I walk into a room filled with normal healthy people doing normal healthy people type things, and my heart is already disquieted without my beloved, I simply don't know what to do with myself. Traveling from our home sick planet to an oblivious healthy planet, where people talk about books and movies and the news and work and kids? The culture shock hits pretty hard. Every time, I try to harden up inside (to avoid aforementioned crying) but then eventually I talk to someone who I love and loves me too and end up crying anyway. I'm like one of the beeswax candles the kids made just before Christmas: a little lumpy, seemingly solid, but when the heat from a pair of caring eyes gets within a few feet of me I begin to melt, dripping tears rather than wax.

Friends, don't worry. I don't cry all the time. It's just this whole party season thing has really thrown me off my game. That, and almost six months of a bullshit cancer treatment nightmare. I told Mike about how I felt so awful and outsider-y at today's social event and he said, that's how I feel at every meal. Excluded from the world of enjoying food.

What a long, beastly road.

Thank you for walking it with me.

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.