Happy Chaos

Today was such a good day. I had a tough week, feeling sad after the death of a long-time coworker and friend, worried for the health of another long-time coworker and friend, remembering the devastating anniversary of Julia going into the hospital 2 years ago, and then all the trivial things that shouldn't matter but do: colds that keep coming and coming, boys that butt heads like loud little billy goats as soon we get home every afternoon, and the constant, constant demands on my time and patience.

And then today happened.

The mad rush to get both boys off to school was relatively peaceful. Tillie and I got to walk with Carrie in the beautiful autumn morning. I worked for an hour while the little one snoozed, and even remembered to feed myself lunch before she woke up. Off to pick up the boys, playtime at the park and then home... and the billy goats were nowhere to be seen. Instead, two boys unloaded and put away all the groceries while their sister cooed and kicked on the floor, watching them. I unloaded the car. Finn zoomed around the house with a sword defending us from imaginary foes while I nursed on the couch and Oliver snuggled next to me and knit three rows completely on his own. "I love this," I told him, and he answered "I love it too." Then we made chocolate chip cookies and nobody cried except Tillie, who fussed herself to sleep in the wrap on my chest, and the boys did dot-to-dots while the cookies baked. Alonso came home and held Tillie while Finn took a bath and I made dinner and Oliver delivered cookies to our neighbor. At dinner everyone ate and no-one dumped their water or threw any food on the floor or declared anything disgusting. Both boys tried arugula and couldn't believe I was eating it by choice. Tillie lay beside my on the floor while I did yoga and she practiced rolling over. Finn joined me for some twists and draped himself across me. "I love you, Mama" he kept saying. Everyone got ready for bed without protest. "This has been such a nice day," I told Oliver. "Why do you think it has been so nice?" "I don't know," he answered. "Maybe it's because I sat next to you to knit. You should have me do that every time I need to calm down. I wish I could knit myself to sleep." And then they read and went to sleep (without knitting) while I lay in the dark and nursed Tillie down for the night.

Tomorrow it will start again, and maybe the peacefulness will last, or maybe the day will start with protests and tears. Either way, we'll have cookies, and a big pile of books from the library to read, a hike with friends, meals to cook and laundry to wash (always). And no matter what, another chance to find each other in laughter and love.

Letter from September

September, 2012. 
It is fall. Dusk comes while we are eating dinner, the last shaft of the setting sun briefly picking out the newly yellow leaves at the tops of the poplars. It was hot this afternoon, but the warmth drains quickly from the evening air and we tuck a blanket around the kids in the double stroller before we head down the street. A flock of Vaux Swifts has made a chimney three blocks away its temporary home, a resting spot on the unimaginably long migration from Canada to South America, and the whole neighborhood turns out for the nightly show. The birds swoop and dart across the sky, catching a bedtime snack of insects before some unseen signal sends them spiraling in tighter and tighter loops, perfectly coordinated, until they reach the tipping point and begin to pour into the chimney. 

Our lives are about to change in unimaginable and terrible ways, but right now there is this moment of perfection, of being together in the chilly air while a hundred birds become one unified swirl, a small tornado of dark wings against a pale evening sky. 

November 2014
More than two years pass before I come back to finish this post. One month after I started it, Julia King, my god-daughter, happy mud-taster, fearless ladder climber, little sunshine girl, went into the hospital where she stayed until her death in January. Only one more month from the swifts to hear her little voice, so clear, point to the night sky "moon!" Only one more month to see her boogie her hips when she heard music, only a handful of days to watch her and Finn look through books together, eat bananas together, ride in the car together, just the two of them, big siblings away at kindergarten. One month of her smiles to see those big kids come out of the classroom at the end of the morning, one month to sing together at music class. One month for "You are my sunshine" to be only a song, before it becomes one of Julia's songs, sung at her hospital bed, at her memorial service, printed on the plaque on her bench at the park,

Two years before I can come back to this blog. Ten drafted posts, but none of them really my story to tell.

And now it is fall again. The swifts don't come to our street any longer. The house has been sold, the chimney fitted with a bird-defying cap. The boys remember the swifts, though. They remember Julia too, both through their own memories and through the stories we tell each other. I carry a new baby through the fall days, one who will never get to walk down the street hand in hand with Julia, who won't get to know her in this world, although I suspect they held hands in the spirit world that she is so freshly come from. She comes with us now to visit Julia's bench at Ragle Park, where the boys and Amanda draw pictures of hot air balloons, read books she loved, and climb trees just because that's what they do everywhere they go.

Julia will always be a presence in Tillie's life, even though they didn't overlap in chronology. Tillie was born into a family that was cracked open in ways both good in bad, Our love is a little fiercer, our hearts more tender. We try to follow Julia's example, to be brave and to love life even when it is hard and frightening. We try to care for each other every single day. We want her legacy to be one of joy and laughter. We want to sing "you are my sunshine" at the end of music class, even if it makes me cry and hide my face in Finn's hair.  Remembering her is the sweetest pain, and she is everywhere, in every mundane and joyous detail of our full and blessed daily lives.

One Year Later

This one sat in the drafts folder for nearly two years. Some things need to bide their time a little while, I guess. November 7th. 2014

Spring 2013.
It has been almost a year since I posted on this blog. A year ago, in another Spring, when Finn was just finding his legs, Oliver was getting ready for the big preschool bike parade, and many days we meandered home from school with the King girls, a stroller parade with the big kids running ahead or stopping to climb rocks and hang from railings, while the little ones toddled behind, taking turns wanting to hold hands.

 

Even then, when we didn't know what was coming, it felt like a blessed and precious time.Now those days hang in memory like images from another age. I look back at us and I feel so tender for those people, those people who had no idea what was about to be lost. And then I feel so tender for all of us, in our fragile and tenacious humanity, all of us who will lose, and lose and lose over and over.

So now it is Spring again. We traveled through those days of beautiful mundane routine, when the most pressing question was where Oliver and Amanda would go to Kindergarten. And then it was summer, and we embraced the unscheduled days stretching ahead of us. We went swimming, we went camping, we played in the woods and at the beach. We had days of toddler storms and five year old tempests, we questioned everything we did, we snapped, we cried, we cuddled away hurts. And we had days that unfolded with gentleness and ease.

Oliver and Amanda started Kindergarten, and Fall came, and the rituals of apple picking and pumpkin gathering. Worry was with us every day, and waiting for news from specialists appointments and lab results became a new occupation, but still the kids played, and argued, and found new ways to confuse and delight us.

 Julia was feeling less and less well, but she still loved to come over to play. We read piles of books, ate together, sang songs and chased the cats and chickens.

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And then, late October, the walls came tumbling down. A hospital admission, a transfer, phone calls and texts that seem even now impossible to believe. Learning that you can feel like a gutted fish, and still walk, talk and breathe. Knowing what I felt was only a fraction of  what Carrie and Glen were enduring, I watched in awe as they weathered--weather-the worst of days, of weeks, of months. Amazing Julia chronicled Julia's struggle to overcome a brain tumor, a stroke, infections, complication after complication, and finally her passage from her body as she left this life on January 24, 2013. These were months of the deepest tragedy and despair, of pain and heartbreak, but also of laughter and fun, companionship, a community rising to the occasion, hope, compassion and the kind of love that enfolds us in the gentlest and strongest of embraces, that carries us forward, that holds us together when we have broken into a thousand pieces.

Now it is Spring again. Julia is gone, but with us still. I slide Finn's feet into his sandals and see Julia's purple shoes. Finn does his silly walk across the kitchen floor, just the way Julia taught him. I walk into the gymanastics studio and am slammed with the memory of Finn and Julia playing with the lockers here last year. I dream often that I am searching for a missing child.

Oliver has seen her a couple of times since she died, he tells me. Once during her memorial service, when "I saw her in the sky. She looked bright-eyed and happy. She whispered something in my ear, but I don't know what." And once when Amanda, Audrey and Beatrice were coming over to play, and Oliver told me that Julia was planning to hang out so she could be part of the fun too. He insists that we have the right portions of treats so we can include Julia. He grapples with why she died, and how, and what it all means. And Finn. Finn asks to see pictures of Julia. He plays with toys that used to be hers and calls them Julia Toys. He has decided his toddler bed looks like Julia's crib in the hospital and says "I go hopital" when he climbs into bed. He is the age she was when she went into the hospital. Soon he will be older than she ever will be, a fact that still feels like broken glass in my heart.

And we go on.  We put in the garden, we plan camping trips and swim lessons, we fold basket after basket of laundry. We worry about mundane things again.  We get annoyed at the kids, and short-tempered, but we try to say yes a lot too, try with new fervor to enjoy what we have right now, this moment. Sometimes lately an ordinary kind of happiness has crept in and settled in my heart, right next to the deep well of sadness that I carry with me always. I am trying to be OK with that too, to say yes to enjoying the sun, friendship, laughter, to celebrating the kids' new milestones, even if they are reminders of everything Julia won't be here to do.

When Oliver was born, I felt broken open, exposed, vulnerable. The beauty of the world shone brighter, the horror was more real and much more terrifying. Holding this tiny life in my arms, I'd walk through town in a dream, feeling like I was missing a layer of skin I'd never known I'd had before. Losing Julia broke me open again, peeled away another layer. I feel open. I feel like I know less than I've ever known. Humble. More afraid than I've ever been, and more courageous.