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.

gabriel's song

We've got nursery rhyme fever over here. Again. Beatrice has all four of us reading, all the time, from The Real Mother Goose and the book I mentioned a little while ago, Over the Hills and Far Away, and probably more than either, a perennial family favorite called Ride a Purple Pelican. And when we aren't reading and reciting, Beatrice freestyles her own nonsense nursery rhymes. Or her brother makes them up for her. Like on our walk to school this morning:

John John
Pteranodon
Painted his nails at the beauty salon
Eating a lot of squishy bon bons
John John
Pteranodon.

Also, a collaborative effort:

Tick tock tick tock
Goes the clock
Put a banana
in your sock.

That cracks them up every time. A banana in your sock?? Wild!

Gabriel has composed his own melody for one of the little poems from Ride a Purple Pelican. Beatrice can recite the words with him (in fact, we all can):

Late one night in Kalamazoo
The baboons had a barbecue
The kudus flew a green balloon
The poodles yodeled to the moon.

A monkey strummed a blue guitar
A donkey caught a falling star
A camel danced with a kangaroo,
late one night in Kalamazoo.

So on our walk, he was belting out this song, including noises for a guitar, and some doo doo doos at the end of each verse. He was dancing around the stroller, playing an air guitar. Really, really getting into it.

Mama, he explained. I'm playing an electric guitar when I sing this song.
And some girls in pink bras and underwear are behind me on stage singing the doo doo doo part. (Wow.)
I'm wearing a silver cape and I'm all sweaty. (Gabriel as James Brown? Elvis?)
And this is a dance I'm doing. (Swiveling hips, shaking his long hair around).

I am completely captivated and help him imagine his show-stopping Vegas-ready rock number. He continues:

And everyone in the audience is clapping their hands like this (over their heads in time to the beat) and holding up signs, and all the girls want to marry me, and they play my song on the radio all the time, and I get really rich. And then I can buy The Mansion*!! Won't that be awesome?

Oh yes, Gabriel. When you collaborate with Jack Prelutsky and record nursery rhyme-based raging rock songs that go platinum, that will be so awesome. And then, as now, I will be delighted by your spectacular you-ness, and all the ways you shine your light.



*The Mansion in question: he plans for all of us, along with his and Frances's and Beatrice's spouses and children, to live together in a mansion when they are all grown up. There will be a bowling alley and movie theatre and basketball courts and, it turns out, a stage for his shows - intimate affairs for family and friends. Because obviously, even in The Mansion, all his fans would never fit.