from last week

Now raindrops fall, and fall and fall, on places snowflakes had been.  Storms rinse the sky and the streets, while a bright pink sun dips behind the hills, setting houses and trees on fire.  The boys love the way the world disappears when it snows so much, but we're all ready to close the book on winter.  Soon a new blue roof will hang over the state, and we'll be able to spend even more time outside.

The planet spun around again

At karate earlier this week, a young man mentioned it was Dr. Suess's birthday.  The sensei wondered how old Dr. Suess was, and another little boy yelled "He's dead!"  The children laughed, and then I heard Tucker say But you can still have birthdays when you're dead.  His comment was not acknowledged with more than a raised eyebrow as the group stood for ready stance, but I heard him, and I agree.

We learned the baby was a girl the last week of October.  I remember coming in to my classroom the day after Halloween to a desk covered in Reese Cups.  The kids knew chocolate and peanut butter were my favorite, and each of them shared at least one with me.  The loot should have lasted through winter break, but I may have taken eating for two a little too seriously.

Mom, what if a scientist discovers a medicine for Celia's disease?  Could we send it on a balloon up to Heaven's house and then she could take it and float back down?

Our house was under construction at the same time she was.  The carpenter began in the fall, and said it could be finished before the holidays, drywall, hardwood, a whole new bathroom, but his estimate was poor.  Celia was due on March 3rd, and I was on my hands and knees pulling up painters tape and vacuuming debris on February 28th. At the time, it felt like the worst thing I could imagine, bringing home a baby to a dusty, unfinished house.  We didn’t even have a rug on the floor.  Since then I’ve learned there is so much that is so worse.

We celebrated four March sevenths with her, and as many without.  It's my birthday too, and at this point I am very practiced at wishing.  But for every birthday candle and for every shooting star, for every blown dandelion and heads-up penny over the past few years, I have wished for increasingly detailed versions of the very same things: that she were not dead, that we'd had more time with her.  That there were a cure for Batten Disease and that we could have another healthy daughter.  That nothing horrible will ever happen to her brothers.

There is no room for nasty surprises from the universe with that degree of specificity.  Except I am also old enough to know that one bad thing cannot keep another from happening.

some photos via @photodespoina and @ alisowalke

Scientists say "helper's high" - that feeling you get when you do something nice for someone else - is a real thing. So instead of just wishing for good things, I tried to make some of my own this week.  I shipped a care package to a friend up north who might need a pick-me-up in the days ahead, and covered my countertop with hot glue trying to reconstruct fifty silk flowers for another friend who has a fast approaching hairband deadline.  We made music with the God's Treasures class at Sunday school and we made oatmeal cookies to share with neighbors.  

And because OF COURSE you can still have birthdays when you're dead, the boys and I sprinkled donuts across town in celebration of what would have been their sister's eighth.  (There are sprinkles all over my car to prove it, and sprinkles on our kitchen floor that might point to where at least one donut from each of the eight boxes ended up...)  We left a note about Celia with the donuts, reminding folks that every day is an opportunity to do good and to show kindness.  We asked them to pass it along, to sprinkle it around like confetti. Everyone needs a little to land in their hair, to get caught on their clothes and settle in their hearts.  Maybe you'll carry some with you this week too, make a mess with it, spread it out and share it with her in mind?

Mom, I've got a good idea of how we could see Celia again.  We could just all die.

I stand silent witness by my son, the one with the ideas and the questions, learning how to honor life and how to ponder death.  Tucker turned Celia into a sister, they shared a special bond and a tangle of DNA.  He shared knock knock jokes and showed sincere compassion and she gave him whatever attention she had and all the love she could.  The planet spins and spins and I stand with them and wonder, will she become a myth to her brothers, something larger and smaller than who she really was?

We do not invite silence in place of expressions of joy or pain.  We just keep talking about her.  Some people think we're crazy, but I believe the craziest thing we could do is nothing.

*****
The next Celia's Walk/Battling Batten Disease 5K Run has been scheduled for Sunday, November 8, 2015!  Please consider saving the date.  More details to follow.

Now We Are Six

Inside the book, below, is an inscription from 1958, when it was given to Tucker's grandpa Tim by his parents, Tuck's great grandpa Jim and great grandma Barb.  And another inscription, from 1984, when the book was passed along to Andy on his sixth birthday.  Now the book belongs to Tucker!

A letter to my {almost} birthday boy

Dear Tucker,
You were the best birthday gift a mother could ask for -- healthy, although we didn’t know it right away, and so handsome.  Such a blessing, the way you put so much happy in March seventh.  You bend all our days and weeks and years toward joy.  You are, and always will be, one of my very favorite people on the planet.

Five was like phosphorescence, blazing brightly and then vanishing in a blink.  And now you are six.  You are the smartest, most sensitive six year old I know.  You got a lot of lessons at a young age; you know that people are the point of life, but also that people can disappear.  You are attuned to the reverberations of both the beginning and the end.  Your intuition into the struggles of others stops me in my tracks and your enthusiasm toward every living thing ignites my own.  You are so good at seeing the world in all the ways.

Your mind accommodates a seemingly inexhaustible catalog of Minecraft details/Captain Underpants plots/Spanish phrases/presidential trivia/Lego structure ideas/Angry Bird strategies/insect facts/et cetera and so on.  Your soul glows with some fundamental kindness, and your spirit shines with curiosity.  You absorb words like sunlight, somehow understanding most of the new ones that fall along your path.  Your hair smells a lot like dusk in the summertime, and there's usually some dirt under your nails or behind your ears.  You have a future full of activities and adventures and dreams you haven’t even dreamed of yet.  Keep growing at your own perfect pace buddy, and I’ll do my best to keep up.

I am certain I've learned more from you than you'll ever learn from me, but my advice at six is this:  Do not ever go to the mirror for a glimpse of something valuable.  You might miss it, and you need to know it’s there, always, whether you see it or not.  Look instead at the sun and know that you are brilliant.  Look at the birds and believe that you can go anywhere, too.  See the stars at night and imagine your own dots connected, one day at a time.  And if it’s cloudy, look again -- their persistence gives you all kinds of chances to finally see them, and invites you to be persistent yourself.  Build a ladder up there and climb on every rung.

I love you to the end of the earth, big boy, and then one very large step beyond.
Mama

My side

Yes you may have a banana for breakfast.  And bacon, sure.  Oh, and a blueberry muffin with green icing?  Okay. Yes, I do like your police motorcycle.  Yes, it does look fast!  Yes, I’m glad you told me.  You always should.  Yes, I am still happy at you.  No, it won't hurt anything if you press that button, but thank you for asking.  No, that outfit does not make you look like the tiniest enrollee in clown school.  Not really, anyway.  No, we cannot go to the library, it’s not open this early.  I agree, making a sturdy foundation is difficult, but I think you can do it.  You're right, that is the tallest block tower I've ever seen!  Of course I'll push you on the swing, that was a polite request. Oh, you do look like an airplane!  No, actually we need to keep the lid on Tucker's Lego bin today.  Yes, you may have more milk.  I love that book, I'll be glad to read it!  Oh yes, absolutely, you are very funny.  And smart!  No, I'm afraid I don't know anything else about bones, you'll need to ask Daddy when he comes home.  Yes, you took a great nap, thank you!  I'm not sure what a snow car is, but yes, we can bundle up and go out and try to build one. Yes, I do hear those birds, but I don't think macaws live in Ohio?  Certainly, you can have some of daddy's steak with the red muscles for dinner.  Yes, he does like to share.  No, it's not dark yet.  No, there are no ghosts, or monsters, or crocodiles under your bed.  Daddy put them all outside.  Oh yes, I do like those jammies, good choice. Yes, I would love a kiss and a hug.  Yes, always, you can.

A Splendid Inconvenience

The boys are rowdy.  Loud and rambunctious and energetic.  They seem to have stamina on steroids.  If we could harness it somehow, they could probably be the largest suppliers of natural energy.

They are ravenous when we are out of eggs and milk, and not hungry at all when I've spent all afternoon over the stove.  They are tired when it's time to pick up toys, and ready to wrestle, always, right before bed.  It's not until they are asleep that we can finish any of the sentences we started that day.

One misplaces the remote and one messes up the throw pillows, and they both drive me to eat a little too much dark chocolate.  One has mastered the eye roll and one still thinks it's hilarious to mark on the walls.  Oh wait, that's actually the same one.

Imagining that I might get to finish a meal while it's still warm seems to be some sort of delusional parent disorder. Imagining that all the laundry could be clean and folded and put away at once is too.  As is sleeping until the sun rises.  Or peeing alone.

When I humbly approach this existence - my small role in the scheme of things, what laughably little control I have, the fact that it will all end - I know that I am blessed to be consumed by this small, boisterous brood.  I am lucky to know what it’s like to live on very little sleep, on coffee and cold soup, with a heart nearly bursting.

He really is.

Tucker asked me to print a blank map of continents so he could label it yesterday.  He explained that he'd seen something about Africa on a Wild Kratts episode and he wanted to learn more.
And then he brought me a poster he'd created that divided circles and squares into semi-circles and triangles to show halves and quarters and eighths.  He said he learned that from a computer game at school.

At almost six I feel him diverge from me more and more, rely on me less and less.  His life is supported by a larger cast of characters, teachers and classmates, cousins and friends.  And television programs and computer games, I guess.  

Anyway, he steps away from me and into his future and it all just seems so sophisticated.

He has earned money from the tooth fairy, had photo day at school, he mails letters to loved ones and puts clean dishes in cupboards unprompted.
Everything he does comes with an added level of exceptionalness, because he did it first, because none of our kids have ever done it before.  Because she didn't get to do any of it, maybe.
But mostly because he really is rather exceptional.