my little play and joy teacher.
On Sunday, we took advantage of the warmth and the sunshine; Freddy dressed as a little blue elf with his shiny new harmonica stuffed in his pocket; and headed to a local playground for the first time since the fall. He was thrilled. Especially when he saw how many other folks had the same idea. He ran around that whole big park stopping in front of every cluster of people to play them a little ditty. Loud and clear. He told me later with pride that a few folks clapped for him. I am trying to channel his bravado, his uncompromising courage, into every pocket of myself these days. I want to be that undefended, that open, that confident in the Grace of my actions.
The following night Chris and I took Eider into the local Emergency Room after he had passed out and then fell backward down the stairs. He was lightheaded and woozy after a 24-hour stomach bug and we just couldn’t get a sense of the extent of it as we hovered and peered into his face in the moments following. Was he just shakey or was he having a seizure? Hard to say and I think Chris and I are now of a mind that it is always better to go to the ER and find out it is nothing than to have it be something and wish we had gone in. We try not to second guess our fear anymore.
And holy hell were we both well and truly afraid. Eider is such a steady eddy, a solid and stable force in our sphere, and this sort of out-of-the-norm presentation is unnerving. He is also incredibly difficult for me to read because he is such a consummate empath and caretaker. He always sidelines his response as he tries to feel out what others need. He wants to be no fuss. He wants to be the easy one. Cuz he kinda is.
When we got there, 10:30 on a Monday night, the folks on were reassuringly thorough in their examination of him. They did an EKG and then monitored his heart rate for several hours. They gave him an IV with some anti-nausea medicine in the mix and he rested and recovered until we were sent home in the wee hours. Chris and I did our best to simultaneously self-soothe and model self-soothing to our son. I think we did ok. Pretty good but with infinite room for improvement.
We have been in much deeper consideration since the onset of Chris’ illness of the ways in which we regulate our nervous systems especially when the scary shit is happening. How do we practice being with what is while also tending our human bodies? There is a fine line between a dissociated neutrality and a conscientious calm presence and I am trying to be honest and clear with where I am within that spectrum. It is pretty easy for me to separate and detach. But that is antithetical to my values and I am challenging myself to keep my core values of Love and Honesty and Respect front of mind. Especially when I am suffering, especially when my fear is activated.
This work of relationship, to self and one another, is central for our family, my parenting, and my partnering right now. I think I am living one of the most connected times of my life. I have never felt more anchored in gratitude and love. I have never felt more exposed and revealed. The work of my marriage is full of so much reward and I am steeped in a rich and connected love with my partner that it infuses all else. My love and respect for him, and his for me is the very ground we stand on. It is the context of everything. We live inside of this well-built, well-tended love. It is the essential nourishing force that we offer our children. It was here and this was ours well before cancer moved in. But cancer has perhaps strengthened my awareness and devotion toward nurturing this context.
Sometimes I try to put myself in our kids’ shoes and imagine what it would be like to have a strong home with two parents who love and respect each other so well. What might it feel like to live inside of that sort of security? How does it affect the ways they move through the world? Honestly, it is a mystery to me. To Chris as well. It is outside of our experience. I think that it must be good. Living inside the clarity of values. Their solidity and stability. I think it may give our children a sort of superpower that I know very little about but am enamored to observe in them.
When Maple and I were in New York City at Chris’s Aunt Lucy’s a week or so ago, she found this collection of letters that Chris’s grandfather had written to his grandmother during WW2, while he was stationed in the Pacific. Chris’s cousin Weezy is an archivist and she had put this incredible amount of correspondence together into a book. Maple devoured it while we were there. It is almost entirely Angelo’s letters to Twinkie, part updates and part love story. He was so articulate; clear and beautiful, expressive of both humor and vulnerability. It was clear, that despite whatever havoc time and circumstance wrought on their family, the foundation was a big L O V E. It was the context within which many lives were built.
I find some sweet comfort in that. I have begun to consider our relationships as part of the legacy we leave our family. Especially Maple and Eider and Wilfred, but it is bigger than the three of them. The work of trying to be a good person, to love well, to seek to improve in action as well as response, to stay awake to the growing and changing truth of being alive in the world; this is where my life is firmly seated. It is my incredible good fortune to receive the gift of this life, these people, this place. I am so thankful for each additional day I get to practice here. For each moment in which I get to try again.