Do we have it all?

My friend Susie recently pointed me in the direction of a Parenting.com writing contest on the topic of whether or not we have it all.  The deadline was Oct. 1st.  Some 16 days ago.  I'm a little late.  But I've been thinking about the topic often.  At first I started to make a list of all the things that parents do have:

first smile
vomit
giggle giggles
blowing bubbles in the bath
sleep training
finger grasping
snuggles
lost blankies
favorite stuffy
laundry laundry laundry
pooping on the potty
soccer practice in the rain
nightmare in the dark
waddle waddle diaper walk
first bike
feed the dog your dinner
not funny
time out
for mommy too
brush your teeth
try this peach
polka dotted footed pajamas
diaper rash
rats nest morning hair
did you just say "no" to me?
tickle bug
better yet...zerbert
peak-a-boo
nappie time
Cheerio
pout
Ring Around the Rosie
tumble class
finger paints
toe nail polish- on the floor!
1st tooth
favorite book
sweet sweet dreams
dimple
milk breath
sweaty fever head
the best hugs in the world
Whose bed is this?
That's okay, I'll share because you are mine.


I could go on and on but I don't know, this came instead:

All my jeans used to have holes in the knees.  That's when I was changing two sets of ammonia smelling cloth diapers every two hours.  Kneeling at the baby in front of me on the floor, kneeling at the toilet spraying poopy diapers, kneeling at the washing machine loading them in.  I should have bought more Carhart's with the reinforced knees.  Shortly after this I wanted to put a hole in my head because my 3 year old daughter started to say "no" to me.  A defiant stubborn absolute NO.  I spanked her once because I didn't know what else to do and then I cried.  Lately I feel like I have holes in my elbows as I arm wrestle them to pick up their dirty socks, put away their clothes, take the recycling down the the basement.  But then there are the holes in the ground we dig together to plant the crops in the Spring.   And there are the holes in the blankies that they curl up next to me on the couch to watch me mend.  And there are the holes in the socks that I have to throw in the trash- just one more symbol of their growth.  Like the holes in their mouths from missing teeth and the holes in their understanding of how the world works.  But we'll try to change that.  Me and him.  Mom and Dad.  We'll teach them to turn the pancakes when there are holes in them and how to mend a hole in a sweater, a wall, or even a heart.  They'll find out where the holes in their arguments are, what it feels like to have money burning a hole in their pocket, and maybe even the joy of getting a hole in one.  They'll make wishes on the whole of the moon and follow a road or two with many potholes, learning as they go.  I'm  hoping they meet beautiful people who complete them and who they can start on a whole new path together with.  I'm trying not to think about the hole in my heart that I'll have when they leave this nest or how I'll fill that hole, or mend it, or accept it.  But we'll build a bridge across that river when we get there.   I guess what I'm saying is that we can't have it all- ever.  Not with all these holes.  It's just that there are too many places to fill.  We can't have it all.  What we must do is seek the joy in filling in these empty spaces.  And then keep looking out for where the next small cave might be.



Thanks Susie!  I didn't get it in on time.  But you made me think and that's one way of filling in the holes in my brain!

My Wheel.

I miss using my hands to make things.
I wrote this last year for a writing competition.
I did not win.
Which is why I'm changing diapers and folding laundry.
But I miss using my hands to make things.
And using my brain to write things.
You don't have to read it.

My wheel sometimes makes a clicking sound when the knot in the string hits the pulleys, but I don’t think that was what was making Mr. Lucy entranced. I’m fairly certain he was mesmerized by the drive wheel and how I was making it move with my feet on the treadles. I imagined him with his head in a tractor immersed in the same kind of studying. His interest in the nature of how my spinning wheel worked implied that he tinkered with things with wheels, and pulleys, and shafts. We had a common ground somewhere on the floor of our town’s library that snowy day in November.

I was trying to sell my wares at our small town craft fair, as if I were at market and had walked there (or had my oxen pull me there) and I was using my time wisely by making more wares. I spin fiber shorn from the backs of the 11 alpacas we own. I’ve only just recently learned how to do this. That doesn’t mean I’m bad at it. It just means I’m new. But I’m not sure he could tell this about me as he stood not two feet away and studied my hands for many minutes. As far as I was concerned he thought I was a professional. And so, for his sake, I pretended. I didn’t stop my show. I just kept my feet moving as my fingers fed the twisting fiber into my spindle shaft. All around me were my skeins of wool, resting on the sides of wooden peach crates. They looked like wet wool socks draped over a drying rack in front of the woodstove. Browns, whites, and rose grey. And at my feet, too, were boxes of un-spun colored fiber that I had dyed with natural things from my land. Goldenrod. Elderberry. Black walnut. This, too, piqued his interest.

He asked questions. Simple ones. About the process. I answered. But mostly he stood and watched, with his rough, overworked hands clasped simply in front of him. On top of his head was a ball cap, weathered with sweat and sun and years of pulling up and down and on and off. The hat had a tractor brand name on it. I can’t remember if it was Case, John Deere, Ford. He had mentioned knowing a family in town who are dairy farmers. His hat and associations made me assume he had worked and reworked the land. But that story, and the one about the moose, and the one time in the woods, and the spring the sap ran so much they couldn’t…. they are all the stories I have yet to hear.

Mr. Lucy moved further away to the circulation desk, but he continued to watch me turn my wheel. He finally introduced himself to me after he bought me and my family some raffle tickets. The library was trying to raise money for its ailing walls and was raffling off an oversized handled basket of Lake Champlain chocolates. He handed me the ticket stubs and thanked me profusely for sharing my art with him. And then he reached his wrinkled hands into his trouser pockets and pulled out a few squares of dark chocolate. He shyly handed them to me and said, “these are for your children.” His smirk implied a little embarrassment at sharing his secret passion with us but I understood at that moment that his gesture of generosity and his trust with divulging his vice only implied that he liked me very much.

The following week I received something in the mail from Ken. His hand written note contained letters scribed in the most perfect penmanship I had ever seen. The D in Dear placed him back in time for me to a small school house, one in which he may have had to walk to. With every correct swirl in his capital T’s I saw his obedience and a strict school marm looking sternly over his shoulder. Every precise third hump on lower case m’s suggested attention to detail. That kind of penmanship is a lost art and it made me want to dig out my very finest paper stock to write back. He had sent me an article from Northern Woodlands magazine about dyeing fiber from wild sources in the forest. I pictured him thumbing through his back copies, piles of them on the floor next to his favorite reading chair, to find this one article he remembered reading years ago. I saw him shifting his weight to dig in his trouser pockets to find a knife, matted in color. His calloused fingers pulling the dulled blade open in order to use it to meticulously cut the article out of the magazine along its bound edge. His crooked body bending over the table to fold it into three.
I practiced my letters first in rough draft form before feeling like I could send a presentable reply. I was sure to mention my gratitude for his thoughtfulness. And that he should, please would he come, to meet our fury friends. I invited him to come for shearing day, which is always set for the first Monday in May. I told him that I liked his penmanship and he wrote back to me, 

Hi Mary,
Well it was away for the holidays. Then away again to help someone. Now it’s back to be a Vermonter.
Your letter was nice about meeting your animals. When it’s time for them to get trimmed I’ll show up. I think that would be a great thing to take in. And you mentioned meeting and touching them especially if I have some chocolate (ha ha) with me.
I’d like to pay a little in advance with this package.
Thanks again Mary for inviting me to enjoy your animal friends. And for learning about your art.

Bye for now,
Ken Lucy

With this note came more chocolate in payment for a future date. And then as life often does to us, it got away from me. I never called Mr. Lucy to make sure he ‘showed up’ at our farm to touch our animals on that warm May Monday. And even though he never came, I kept my eye out for him, as my booth sat directly in sight of the library door, this snowy November at the craft fair. I kept my feet pedaling and my fingers busy, hoping for Mr. Lucy to come and slip some chocolate from his trouser pockets. But I’m selfish. I want more than dark chocolate and hand written notes. His life’s stories are some that I would work for. I could spin by his wood stove. I could catalogue his magazines for him. Chop wood. Dust the shelves. Make dinner. Anything for love letters, fading photos, artifacts not yet buried, things to write down. Yes, I will spin for stories. I will send chocolate too. Tomorrow. As deposit.

Just a piece of short fiction...

*to be drunk when you have time in your pocket

**based on a true story...loosely

It wasn't the cancer that stopped Jody in midair, making her hover in the space above the then and the tomorrow. It was the idea of eating cardboard for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was the vision of her sitting on the velour couch, by herself, the lights of the t.v. reflecting in her glazed eyes. She was stranded not by the words Papillary Thyroid Cancer, written out for her by the endocrinologist, but by these ideas- the 'after the cancer came' ideas. It wasn't at the intersection of left or right, die or live, that left her baffled about which way to turn. The road, dirty as it was going to be, was what kept her awake at night.

She worked with kindergardeners by day, picking up their toys, pulling on their mittens, zipping their zippers. She taught the elderly at night, in a pool, how to keep their feet moving, their arms going, their blood pumping. She fought tirelessly at home for a clean house, laundering her two young children's and her husband's dirty clothes, wiping down surfaces continuously. Her family did little to help, and they couldn't afford outside help, so Jody did it all. She was constantly moving, organizing, packing lunches, unpacking backpacks, drying bathing suits, picking out books to read to her students. She slept well before the doctors wrote the words down for her.

They guessed she had Follicular Papillary Thyroid Cancer (with a capital C) and they sat around the oval table and one of the doctors, the only one willing to look Jody in the eye, described this kind of cancer as being like an arm of an umbrella. And the wind in her mind started to rise up and her umbrella started to blow backwards against itself and then it was bent. Her husband, in his silent but strong way, saw that Jody was starting to implode and he reached under the table and touched her hand which brought her back to the oval table in time for her to hear the words, 'most treatable form'.

And then the planning began. The who will come when, who will bring what, who will take them and where and how will this all work out? She worked at keeping life moving despite wondering if this umbrella was ever going to keep the rain off her head ever again. And so the sleepless nights commenced. There was many a night that she just had to pull herself over the side of the bed and look out at the street lights. Never before had she seen so much of the inside of the darkness, but there she sat hours upon hours thinking about her daughter and all her sass and her son and how his little feet were just finding his path. And she would climb back into bed with her silent but strong husband and finally let sleep cover her wondering.

Jody knew that it was going to take some broken nails and sweaty brows to beat this thing but it was the searching for the gumption that she didn't realize would knock her down. Surgery to take out her thyroid was planned for 12:50 p.m. Jody left that morning to drop the kids off at daycare and her fear snuck up behind her by the cubbies, where she held on too tightly to her daughter, "Momma, you're hurting me." "Sweet girl, I'm sorry. I'm just sad I won't be able to see you for a few days. You know Momma loves you right?" And her daughter nodded in agreement but wiggled out of her grip to go play at the sand table. And Jody watched longer than she normally does and wiggled herself, too, of the fears that were starting to seep into the cracks in her face that were normally stretched tight with bravery.

The surgery took four hours and Jody walked out of the hospital the next day without her thyroid or the racquetball-sized tumor attached to it. The scar on her neck was smaller than she imagined, but the drain in her incision made her realize how close her insides were to the outside, as she watched oozing liquids escape through this route. She imagined that if there was any cancer left in her that it was seeping through these waterways and down the drain in the shower. Never to be seen again.

Jody slept and barely ate. She wasn't allowed to pick up the kids and so they would sit with her, quietly on the velour couch, not sure what they were able to touch and what they shouldn't. She complimented them on how gentle they were being around her and she kissed them as often as they would let her. She was alone during the day while everybody was gone. She rested and watched t.v.- something she never had time to do. She read magazines, books, wrote in her journal. She was more determined than ever to practice her mindfulness, something she had been meaning to work on.

The lying around part was difficult, but Jody knew it was only going to get harder. The pathology report came back undetermined. The pathologists in her small local hospital couldn't identify the exact nature of the tumor and so they sent it to the Mayo clinic for further examination. And so news, via layers of dense bloody tissue, was printed again on a piece of white paper: Papillary Thyroid Cancer. Again, in capital letters.

And the treatment- radioactive iodine treatment- rolled off her friendly doctor's tongue like a lyrical song. But there was nothing beautiful about it. No musical notes sprang over Jody's head as she sat across from her friend, who slobbered her face in gravy fries, as Jody choked down homemade bread and hummus, and plain unsalted corn chips- all a part of the low iodine diet, preparation for the "treatment". There was no sweet song in the background as Jody got to eat this morning's newspaper as the rest of her family ate what the neighbor's left on the doorstep...homemade macaroni and cheese, pasta with red sauce and meatballs, pork roast. Jody chose to eat the classifieds by herself on the velour couch.

The Thyrogen, the medicine Mr. Happyface prescribed for Jody to make her hypothyroid, was on order. It took a week and a half. And in this waiting zone, Jody dove deeper into her spaces, places she had never really looked into, scanned, dusted, folded, organized. She decided to do some reorganizing, refolding, redesigning. She dusted off the treadmill and started walking. And she found boxes of fabric samples that she garnered from furniture stores. She had a plan for them a long time ago, before Sassy girl and a little boy who was just learning how to walk and before an umbrella whipped backwards and busted up in her face. She opened these books of fabric and started cutting and combining colors, patterns, shapes. She laid the fabric pieces in piles on the floor in the living room. And asked the kids not to touch them. And then when the Thyrogen came in she went to the hospital. And in a special padded room, Jody sat on a padded table. Her robe draped over her iodine free body and she was cold. A Radiation Safety Officer walked into the room carrying a lead container. She couldn't tell if the officer was a man or a woman; he/she had a full body suit covering his/her body, except for the eyes. Jody tried to make a joke about the suit, hoping it had no holes in it, but she couldn't make out if he/she smiled so she just watched as the Officer poured out her radioactive pill into a cup and handed it to Jody. She took the cup and swallowed the little pill and then drank the water. And that was it.

Except now she needed to be in isolation for 6 days. 6 more days with her self. With her spaces and crevices. She was able to eat normally again, although her stomach wasn't up for it. And so the withering began, except she wasn't willing to let that happen. She fought. With milkshakes. Somehow the outside world found out that the milkshakes were what she could eat and everyday there was a new flavor waiting for her on the front stoop and she would look periodically outside the big picture window right above the velour couch to see if a new one had arrived. And in between the slurping she maneuvered her way to the sewing room and started to piece together the spaces and crevices and patches and pieces of the furniture samples. The hum of the sewing machine could be heard by dog walkers and night walkers and the friends who dropped the milkshakes. And sometimes Jody would look out the big picture window, but mostly she sat at her sewing desk and hummed away.

Her little boy was sick with the stomach bug and all Jody could do was commiserate with her mother (Mammie) because the kids were at her house, so Jody walked on the treadmill for a little bit to shed the weight of the guilt, and when the hum of the sewing machine would echo in her head she would turn on the t.v. again. But always when the sun poked through her blinds in the morning she would pop up to grind away at the sewing machine. And on the 6th day when the children blew open the door and Sassy girl was carrying a chocolate cake she made for Momma and dinner was brought by Nina and everyone got to sleep in their own beds, Jody got to watch everyone move sweetly throughout the house once again.

The next morning it was snowing. A heavy deep snow, an all day snow. The walk was unshoveled, cars buried. The excitement of a reunion was wearing away. The kids were exploring their own space and Sassy girl made her way into the sewing room. "Momma!" Jody heard from where she sat with her silent and strong husband in the kitchen. "Yes, darlin." "Momma!" Jody could hear Sassy girl walking from the sewing room. "Yes, dear." She did not get up from her seat at the table and Sassy girl came around the corner with eight hand bags over her shoulders. It was hard to see her tiny body behind all the colorful patterns and fabric squares, all sewed together to form perfect designer bags. Jody laughed out loud. "Momma? What are these?" "Sweet girl, those are for the children." "The children? Momma, they're too big for children." "No sweetie girl, the money...the money they're gonna raise. It's going to the children who have dreams, but they get cancer, and then they fight their cancer and live and then when they can, the money will go to the children to help them finish those dreams." And then Sassy girl said, as she laboriously turned to walk back to the sewing room, dragging the bags behind her, "Momma, they're heavy with dreams." And Jody smiled, "Yeah, sweet girl," looking at Sassy girl's wake, "we're all full of heavy dreams."