Heidi Beth

Hi Friends,

We’re back in the hospital room with my mom. I haven’t talked to the surgeon or his staff, but he felt that she was stable enough to come back to her room rather than go to ICU for her first night post surgery.

She is paying attention to everything going on around her, has verbally appreciated Word Girl’s power to entertain her grandsons, and otherwise has been alternating between trying to get in a comfortable position (with the nurses help she seems well adjusted now), smiling and laughing a bit, talking, and easily drifting off to a light sleep.

We’re still praying, praying, and praying some more, appreciating the abundant support of family and friends (who are family), and the excellent staff at this hospital.

A poem must bee ritten on behaf
uv food-laden laptop keybords,
uv the littul bits that will never be remooved
from beside the letter K, Qtips that cleen
the alfabet nun too often, the embairrussment
of handing your compyuter to yore mother-in-law
to uze for a moment, witch becums the day
she wunders whut yore howse looks like
at too in the afternoon most days.
Weel call it, Finger Prints That
Yused To Smudge Novel Paiges.

I couldn’t know he was/we were going to be a certain gift,
broken love, friendship forever. One summer dusk,
tattered cuffs hanging off the curb, me watching as he,
straight blond hair hung over grey eyes,
taught himself to play guitar in the glow
of a Burger King sign and the old clock tower,
each slip of carefully picked sound a ribbon of silk,
as he taught me how to find my melody, open with it,
free my voice, with no further explanation,
no self-abnegation. I could earn a smile, an impression
that imperfection paled in the face of harmony.

It’s no wonder I’m thinking laundry can wait til morning.
Sleet bouncing on the rooftop is for pajamas, yawning, soft music
letting legos in their piles be uniquely organized floor ornaments
I walk around on the way to gathering another brownie,
a second cup of coffee, my breath in one large motion
before sitting again beside the space heater
beneath a crocheted lap warmer.
Dark comes so early, whispering, “Slow down, listen,
look up and see the children grow, a little more amazing,
every minute.” I do stare so long each one asks, “Mom, what?”
I smile, just barely remembering we once shared a body,
but aware like lightning that these children
are fully their own, a sweet gift indeed.

I have looked out of my third story window to the sidewalk below, and seen people floating, rather than walking, but I didn’t blink. I knew they had been doing this all along.

I visited my aunt’s farm at sunset, looked out over the acres of corn, past silos and barns, and there the atoms rippled silver. I cried, awe struck, but I was not surprised.

I knew I had missed this view every other visit because I didn’t know how to see clearly.

Above a north Chicago cemetery, the universe righted itself. Like turning the earth inside out, I knew the souls who once used the bodies buried deep were in reality; I was (we were) merely waiting, in the workshop, preparatory, but not yet alive, not really.

Standing on the top step of the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette on a bright, clear afternoon, I looked out over a neighborhood I’d been familiar with since before I could walk and talk. I was twenty seven. That day I didn’t see houses, mail boxes, trees, a road. I saw a clear, silver thread, softer than silk, connecting every one and every thing. It was a moving ocean, its waves rising and falling, brilliant, beyond beautiful, and as solid as my own flesh. No, more so. Without warning, I heaved a sob, and a river of tears poured from my body. I couldn’t explain why. I couldn’t stop, nor did I want to.

It is like this: in our cars at rush hour, at our desks, eating lunch, writing a book, washing dinner dishes, tossing our limbs to a night club beat, we are taking a ride in the sky. But between the smallest particles, around our every breath, outside the infinite dimensions of physical existence, the spiritual world is the actual pulse, the reason, the doing, the “matter” woven through everything. We are the illusion in the womb of the physical matrix.

Holding this is very hard, though I never completely let go.

These experiences were not isolated, but stories I lived in a string of similar stories the year I sought out peace with impermanence, with my own eventual death. Hours of prayer and meditation each day, evenings beside a lake that stretched far beyond my limited view, studying the lives of spiritual heroes, internalizing shades of their strength, offering my free hours to voluntary service, two meetings a week to tame addiction, turning aside from everything familiar and easy – this was my food, rather than a regimen of daily life as most seemed to be living. I had no TV, no radio, no distractions. I had tried meeting society’s common expectations for too long (failing countless times), and all I gained from it was a sense that most everyone had gone insane and I couldn’t hang on much longer.

Now I see that science is beginning to uncover what I already knew.

If you have a few minutes, this video is amazing.

The personal experiences I described happened in 1997-98

I keep picturing carrots, shredded in the food processor, added to the batter, cake in the oven, then I see myself enjoying a piece of cake with hot coffee, a sunny afternoon just right for this moment. I imagine going to the grocery store for the carrots. Then I sit here, unmoving other than the effort it takes to type, to reach for coffee that is gradually cooling, to look out the window at the neighbor’s iron fence and empty flower pots beside the garage door.

Life is so amazing, I get stuck some days, listening to each inhale and exhale, tears playing behind my eyes, flooded with appreciation, wondering why I get to be so lucky.

In her shimmery blue, pleated dress, the one my son told her was, “Beautiful,” before reaching his hand out to touch it, she danced beside her husband of one hour. I stood in the dining room doorway and watched these two bright beings float and swing to the beat, all the time circling each other, radiant smiles never faltering.

There is no mundane in life. Not when we consider the brilliance of what cannot be seen outwardly: souls interacting; the moment two people know they have found “the one”; the inner process of creating a sculpture, poetry, music; what is not said when one friend holds another through a difficult hour.

I will almost certainly get to the grocery store before sunset, and once home, I may, among other important tasks, bake, and if the evening unfolds as expected, I will soon be drinking warm decaf, enjoying a piece of carrot cake.

If you were in our back yard, feet cooling in the sled-turned-wading-pool, you would have noticed her tight blond curls, the way she sat up straight in the seat her mother’s arms made, bent and wrapped around feet that had yet to carry her own small frame, sunlight around both of them as if it had been painted there. You would have held your gaze on the small girl’s dancing eyes, and when she said, “Hi” as any talking person might, you would wonder if she were a genius, because she is barely nine months old. Maybe we were all there. The earth is not so big as one might perceive relying solely on physical senses. Maybe you felt my heart thump as it opened to make room for our neighbors to become dearly loved friends. I must have said, “Hi, CJ.” (that was before she started school, before she asked to be called Connie).

On my mom’s refrigerator, a picture of two very short people pushing the large tummy of a fifteen foot, inflated rubber duck, its edges curling up with age, is held by a red plastic button of a magnet. I was sad that day, tired, wishing the children would slow down, maybe even sit down so I could too. CJ and my son, their curls now past small shoulders, raced up and down a single ramp most of the afternoon at the duck races. Marylin and I managed to share half thoughts, pieces of ideas, smiling sighs, with each other, both accustomed to not knowing the rest of a story, content with the intention of clear communication, mostly watching the story of our children’s lives unfold beneath a clear summer sky.

When I needed other mothers, CJ and Marylin came over with a bag of groceries. While our children brushed a giant stuffed tiger, we chopped strawberries, simmered vegetables, finished most thoughts; time had passed and young ones contained indoors make for better conversation among parents. Around a spread of mismatch food, an invisible thread continued to wrap our families in a gentle bond, one that does not need spoken affirmation.

These are the early memories, followed by babysitting trades, more potlucks, a little sister for CJ, a little brother for my son, and countless battles of wills between the older kids.

People will move, one after the other.

Children need to be reintroduced each year. They believe us when we tell them of the past, but must navigate a new friendship each meeting regardless. Thankfully, it always leads to giggles. Last time we stayed over at their house, when spring was just taking root, the kids were ten, ten, seven and six. Connie delighted in telling me all about her perfectly strange cast of classmates and neighbors.

*****

I called our friends last night, expecting to ask the expected question: can we stay with you while we’re in Chicago next weekend? We hung up after I decided it would not be a good question, but before the conversation was really over. Connie needed her mom right then.

There are “first times” that are, hopefully, not universal, and news better heard while the sun is high, but reality does not always fit our preferences, nor does it really matter that night had already fallen. I would have gone hollow anyway. Connie is the first child I have watched grow from infant to playful bookworm who now faces the possibility that her life will be cut short by illness.

It was harder than learning my mother had cancer again, even though our daily lives had not crossed paths for years. Right now I want to call her CJ. I never got used to saying Connie anyway. Regardless of what I or anyone else calls her, no one can magically make her brain cancer vanish; only time and months of sickening treatments can (please God) heal her. Marylin said CJ’s prognosis is good, but since we’re talking about cancer, you never know, and the remedy wears on everyone.

I thought maybe today would be easier, that I would not feel the weight of grief so heavily. I was wrong.