Two Birds, Two Stories

I first thought I could write again about a month ago, and I knew what I was going to write about: Joseph and I had found a young, wounded sparrow outside our home, and we had saved it. That morning, before the sparrow, we had biked (Joseph in a seat on the back) to my parents' house about five miles away. There, I had sat on the bed where I last said goodbye to my mom and cried. That is, I cried for about 10 seconds until Joseph started squeezing my cheeks and making silly faces, screaming, "Don't cry! Stop crying!" I stopped -- laughed, even -- and we got ready to ride home, but I was still so sad.  

We were three houses away from our own home when we encountered the sparrow spinning in desperate circles on the sidewalk. We stopped, wondering what to do. This sparrow was clearly in trouble. 

Eventually, thinking of the cats that lived just down the street, I gathered a shoebox and some soft hand towels and placed the sparrow on the safety of our back screened-in porch. A quick drive to pick up the girls from basketball camp and we were back, the girls now joining in the concern and excitement. Grace called her cousin Emma, who said, "You should take it to Cedar Run." This wildlife refuge, just down the street from her home in Medford, had a hospital for treating wounded animals. Of course! I called. They would take her.

Animal lovers Joseph, Genevieve, and Grace. 

Forty minutes later, we drove the winding road through the woods that led to Cedar Run. The sparrow sat calmly now in its box on Genevieve's lap, then Grace's. When, after I had parked the car, I leaned over the box to check on her, the sparrow seemed to meet my gaze with a trusting look. Take care of me. Or, perhaps, it was resignation, and a question. This is out of my control. Will you take care of me, or hurt me?

It felt good carrying her into the hospital. We filled out some paperwork, passed the sparrow to them, and left. They seemed to know exactly what to do. 

That night, I thought about the sparrow, and how it had fallen onto my path so wounded and small. And I thought about how I had felt better after doing this small, good thing. I was ready to write. It felt good -- maybe great, even -- to make that decision. Thank you, little sparrow, I thought. 

But it was not to be. "Starting to doubt u only get what u can handle," was the text from one of my closest friends this week, telling me of a terrible crisis in her family that threatened to put her over the edge (it came on the heels of several other crises), "Wondering, what next?" Her words brought me back to the reason I never wrote the sparrow story. 

The night I planned to write, I arrived home from the movies with the kids, feeling happy. I would put them to bed and sit down at the computer. The feeling of that little sparrow, its heart beating fast, in my hands, the satisfaction of helping it...  

My thoughts, along with me, and the kids, came to an abrupt halt at the bottom of our front porch stairs. There, right in front of us, was a dead bird. It was actually on our welcome mat, I kid you not.  It was black, and its feet stuck straight up in the air, stiffly. I looked behind me to see if someone was playing a joke on me. Joseph and Genevieve were waiting for my reaction. When I didn't say anything, Joseph started talking, an innocent three-year-old's words, but ones that cut me to the core. "It's dead, Mom, see? It's eyes are open, but it's dead. That means it's never coming back. It's dead, forever." Genevieve continued to watch me closely, and Joseph kept talking, both of them close behind as I carried the bird to the back yard to bury it. "Are you ok, mom?" Genevieve asked. 

I didn't write that night. I went to bed early, right after the kids, and dreamed in fits. In one dream, I was in my childhood home, and my mom was there, only it wasn't really my mom -- I realized this even in the dream -- and, feeling badly, I tried to lock myself in a bathroom so I wouldn't have to see her. 

"You only get what you can handle," some say, and maybe there's truth in it ("If He brings you to it, He'll bring you through it! That's what I always say!" I overheard a woman at church saying once). But to be honest I've always hated this saying, and I think that any thinking person can clearly see that some people do get more than they can handle. I don't know why. 

Still, the human heart can handle a lot. My heart can. And though I often feel like the sparrow in my hands that day, helpless in the face of a universe that will do with me what it pleases, I'm going to keep trying for that deeper trust, the one that says Take care of me and then believes, deep down, that Someone will. 

Photo of a young sparrow (http://www.wunderground.com)

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." - Matthew 10: 29-31

When You Can't Hit a Winner

Grace at tennis camp

The girls just finished a week of tennis camp with their cousins, a summer tradition now for three years. Their head coach is Dave Okun, who was also a coach to my sister and me growing up. Though I haven't played tennis seriously since high school (my sister still plays), all those hours I spent on the court are a part of me. Dropping the girls at tennis camp feels different than dropping them at basketball, or soccer. The thwack of ball hitting racket has an emotional resonance with me still that  is tied to my memories of my parents (many time champions of the "Married Couples" tournament at the Haddon Field Club) and my youth. 

The truth is, though, that although at one point I was a promising tennis player, despite my hours of lessons and clinics, I never became that good, because I turned into an emotional basket-case on the court. Really.  Once I hit the big time (read: varsity high school tennis), I played with a desperate fear not to lose rather than any over-whelming desire to win. It is still a little embarrassing to me, so much so that a few years ago when I was invited to the Hall of Fame dinner for a teammate who was being inducted (Kim Lamania--she was amazing), I contemplated, for a moment, not going, because it meant reliving all those feelings. I know this is ridiculous. Nobody, nobody at all, has thought about this for even one second other than me. This is probably true for all teenage anxieties. All life anxieties, perhaps. 

A good coach, if you listen to him, will tell you this. I wasn't ready to listen all those years ago, which is a shame, because I'm sure Dave and many others were giving me all kinds of wonderful advice.  I know he did, actually, because when I picked the girls up at camp the other day I noticed a painting that one of Dave's players had done. There were two, in fact, and both quoted Dave. One read,"If you can't hit a winner, don't hit a loser," and the other, "Make a decision." 

I don't know what this year ahead will be like but I know that, since my mom died, something has fundamentally shifted in me. Or perhaps I am the same but the ground beneath me has shifted, and now I have a different view. I find Dave's words very wise, so much so that I think I'm going to live by them for a bit. For the day by day, "If you can't hit a winner, don't hit a loser," (i.e. get out of bed, be kind, do some work, breathe) and for the long-term, "Make a decision"  (i.e. LIVE). For though I never quite mastered it in tournament play, I still remember that wonderful feeling of hitting the ball right in the sweet spot, the power of my arms, my legs, all of me, making a decision and doing something about it. Though you were never guaranteed that it would happen, when it did, it was magic.  

My Light is Shining Bright

My mom in LBI during the summer, 2012. 

My mom and dad recited e.e. cumming's poem I carry your heart ... to each other at their wedding 43 years ago, and for the last few months of my mom's life I noticed that my dad had placed the tattered paperback they had read from on her bedside table. I noted this to my mom one evening in early April as I sat beside her on the bed. "Yes ... I always loved Walt Whitman," she answered, slowly and in that slightly non sequitur way conversations with her had begun to have. "O Captain! My Captain!" I quoted, laughing that with all my years of studying literature this was all I could produce. My mom continued, "My light is shining bright." I reached for my dad's Ipad to search for the full poem and wrote in O Captain! My Captain! My light is shining bright. I may have also typed in Walt Whitman. Up popped his poem Miracles, below.

Miracles

Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of
   the water, 
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
   with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
   forenoon, 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
   quiet and bright, 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with
   the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
   the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

I do not know why this poem appeared instead of Whitman's more famous O Captain! My Captain!, though I imagine it was the line "the stars shining so quiet and bright." As my mom and I lay side by side for the rest of the evening, mostly in silence, I thought of the poem and my desire for a miracle. I was praying then, and continued to pray until the end, for a miracle to save my mom. I believed it could happen. On Sunday, the day before she died, I thought, "Maybe, just maybe, it will happen on my birthday (April 10th)." Instead, that was the day of her funeral. What does one do with this?

Well, I have started running again. Also, doing yoga. On Mother's Day weekend my sister, dad, and I, knowing it would be hard, came to the beach, and I was able to "wade with naked feet just along the edge of the water," as Whitman wrote. As I waded, dolphins appeared along the shore and swam along, playfully. The waves caught the sunlight just so and I tried to capture how beautiful it was with a photograph, but I couldn't. And as I walked my mom's line came to me and I kept repeating it over and over and over:"My light is shining bright, My light is shining bright, My light is shining bright." What does one do with such a miracle?

Me, my dad, and my sister in LBI Mother's Day Weekend. I love these people.

Mom, your light shined so brightly. We miss you.  We always will. 

Is Tomorrow Friday?

Genevieve on her first day of school this year.

It's Tuesday evening in my house and everyone is tired already, wishing it were Thursday. Actually, everyone is sleeping but me. I'll be up for a few more hours grading tests. But I wanted to take a few moments to write down my conversation with Genevieve tonight. It spoke to my heart. She was all tucked in, cozy in her flannel "I woof you" puppy pjs, and contemplating the deeper messages of Lois Lowry's Gooney Bird the Fabulous, Fabulous, Fabulous, Fabulous as she drifted off to sleep. Then, she sat up in a panic. "Mom, is everything in my folder for tomorrow?" She had asked me this twice already. First grade is the real deal, and Genevieve feels it. Though she likes school, she especially likes the feeling of right after school (if everything has gone alright), when she can relax and know that she has done her job well. She practices her spelling words, reads her book two or three times, and makes sure that her math worksheet is perfect. "Can you check this, Mom?" she always asks, diligently erasing and retrying when I point out a mistake. Then, homework complete, she rolls around on the floor with her baby brother or draws endless pictures to post on the refrigerator. The stuff she really loves.

I admire you, Genevieve, I thought, as she once again snuggled quietly under the blanket, finally secure in her preparedness for the next day. You have focus and tenacity. You'll be o.k. A few minutes passed. I was about to get up to leave when Genevieve's quiet, sleep-laden voice questioned me again: "Is tomorrow Friday?" Her voice was full of hope. "No, Genevieve, tomorrow's Wednesday." "Oh. Is the next day Friday?" Not yet, I told her. Finally, she got the answer she wanted. "And then it's the weekend, right?" Yes, it's the weekend. Not long now. Not long now ...

Happy Fourth everyone! As I was neatening up the house tonight, trying unsuccessfully to find a home for all the stuffed animals, toys, and little trinkets, I thought of the graduation speech Masterman's valedictorian made this year. A brilliant student who is headed to Harvard in the fall, he shared a bit of his personal story in the speech. He and his mother came to this country from China when he was only five years old. They joined his father, who was already here, and lived in a basement apartment in New York City. Both his parents worked long hours, so much so that he rarely saw his father. He saw his mother, who worked in a factory, only at night. A babysitter dropped him off and picked him up from daycare. Eventually, the family moved to Philadelphia and opened a Chinese restaurant, where they all spent long hours fighting to succeed.

What touched me most about the speech is that Yun-Teng recalled each of the gifts his parents had been able to give him over the years. There weren't many, but they were treasured. He spoke in great detail of a miniature basketball game (the ball now lost) that he taped to his bedroom wall and played over and over again. And this is what I thought of as I attempted to clean up my children's many, many things. We have too much stuff.

Like everyone I know, I love my children beyond measure and want the best for them in life, and I delight in seeing them happy (as do their grandparents and many aunts and uncles), but it's this desire that has lead to all the stuff. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. I feel blessed to have the problem.

This Fourth of July, I am so grateful to live in a country where I am able to provide for my children everything they could possibly need (though often this turns into more than they need!), and I am also grateful, and proud, to live in a country where stories like Yun-Teng's are possible.

I saw the movie Brave tonight with Grace and Genevieve, so I was thinking about destiny as I put them to bed, and thinking about destiny got me to thinking of how Anthony and I got together (we were neighbors), and how we probably never would have had my grandmother not driven by our house when I was just nine years old and seen the "For Sale" sign. As I pictured that old Woodland Avenue house and thought about the first time I saw little ten year old Anthony riding his bike down the driveway (didn't like him), what I next saw was what I first fell in love with on Woodland Avenue: the milk door. You know, one of those old metal doors leading into the kitchen (one door on the inside, one on the out) where the milkman used to leave the cold glass bottles each morning. Of course by the time we bought the house the milk door had long been out of use, and a few years later it was taken out when my parents renovated the kitchen, but nonetheless when I think of my destiny, and of that house, I think of that tiny metal door.  I used to crawl through it to get into the kitchen, though there was a perfectly good screen door just steps away. Sometimes when I had friends over we would pass secret messages through the door, and other times I would store my own secret things there, as by this time in life my older sister had outgrown the need for such silly childhood games. The tiny space between those two metal doors was mine and mine alone.


I used to be so nostalgic that I could hardly move forward I was clinging to the past so tightly, but I have gotten better about that as I have gotten older. Still, I think tomorrow morning, the sun rising on a whole new day, I will sit down at my dining room table and drink a cold, lovely glass of milk to honor for a moment that little metal door I fell in love with so long ago.

The Moon

Grace has to keep a weather log this week, which had us running outside in pajamas and bare feet at 7:30 this evening to sketch the moon. Though she is 7, she still wanted someone to come with her. It was, after all, dark. I liked this bit of vulnerability after an afternoon of feeling like I had already lost her to the teenage years. She slammed a door, teased her sister mercilessly, and then told me that she has a boyfriend, Timothy (though he, apparently, doesn't know that he's her boyfriend).

When Grace was 3, she woke up in the middle of the night barely able to breathe and came stumbling into our bedroom. I will never forget it. As I carried her out to the car to rush her to the emergency room, she looked up at the enormous moon that summer evening and, gasping with each word, said, "Look ... at ... the ...moon. ..It's ...so...beautiful."

Tonight, standing on the cool grass with eyes turned upward, I could almost touch the thread of time connecting us to all those past moon-lit nights--with Grace, before Grace, before me, even--and all those future moon-lit nights before us. May we all have a chance this week to stop for a moment and look up, if only to record that we are here. We are here.