That Is Why It Is Called the "Present"

The day before my 33rd birthday I nearly died.

Yesterday morning was nothing remarkable. I had made a few loose plans to do laundry and read books with the kids. I had lunches to pack and errands to run and chores to do. I was preoccupied with a collection of quotidian details as I was driving home from my sons' school where I'd been helping with reading groups.

Just as I was starting to cross the highway to turn left at a green light, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a car flying like a bullet toward the intersection and showing no signs of slowing down.

I slammed on my brakes and lurched to a halt. My front wheels had already advanced half-way into the crosswalk the moment the speeding silver sedan shot through the red light. It was gone before I had gathered enough wits about me to honk my horn or read license plate numbers. With the sound of my heart swooshing rapidly somewhere behind my ears, I rolled forward again, trying not to let my knee shake as my foot pressed the gas pedal. I turned left, catching the eye of one of the drivers who had stopped at the red light. Her mouth was hanging open, and she raised her hands and shook her head in utter disbelief.

Death had just looked me in eyeballs, and my eyeballs were now open very, very wide. My vision, for that moment, was as sharp as shattered glass: My time is decidedly not in my hands.

Had I left the school just a split second earlier, had I proceeded from the stop sign up the hill just a moment sooner, had I driven just a hair over the speed limit on my way down that hill, I might have spent this day not enjoying birthday hugs from my children or lunch with my grandmother or a dinner out with my husband and some good friends but in a hospital bed or, worse, in a morgue.

Ironically, it's brush a death that may revive a love of life in all is mundane details. After that near escape, the fall leaves look a little brighter, the sky a little bluer, the laundry a little softer, my breath a little warmer, my family a little dearer. Life is good.

That "every day is a gift" may have been reduced to a greeting card platitude, but it's a truth nonetheless. Today I feel acutely that the mere fact of a beating heart is the gift of a lifetime.

Today I celebrate the day I was born. Today I celebrate that first day that life was given to me. But today I will also celebrate the other 12,044 days when that precious life was given to me again and again. Today is my birthday. Today I am alive. It is a very happy birthday indeed.

I Plead the Fifth

Introducing our fifth little boy, Liam Quentin:

He arrived on Friday night, November 26, his great-grandfather's birthday, and was a very healthy eight pounds, fifteen ounces and twenty-two inches long.

Meeting his brothers for the first time:

October Fruit

They shall still bear fruit in old age; They shall be fresh and flourishing...

— Psalm 92:14

Another year of my life has drawn to a close, and with it, another growing season. The tomato plants, once pregnant with summer's bounty, now sag dejectedly in the muddy ground, heavy with green fruit that will never mature. The icy night air has faded their once-bright flowers into a pale yellow translucency—an annual picture of the fruitful might-have-been. October has again caught them unawares.

* * * * * * * *

Three weeks ago, when my 91-year-old grandmother fell and ended up in the hospital, none of us anticipated a prolonged recovery. She had hit her head, and she was weakened by the injury, but the bruise would heal, and she would be well again soon. She has always gotten well again. Hers has been a long life.

But a life, to be called "long," must have an end; eternity is not a span that can be measured. And so it seems that this long life of hers will, after all, have an end as well. She is home again and has regained some of her strength, but I can see that her October has come. In spite of this brief Indian summer, the first frost has already taken its toll. She complains of the chill in the air, and her limbs are more frail, her hands less steady.

* * * * * * * *

Last Friday, I spent the lunch hour with my sons at school. We passed the potato chips among the five of us and talked amid the din of a hundred children laughing and joking and shifting fidgety legs; of a hundred children crunching apples and unwrapping sandwiches and rummaging in brown paper bags. My own little boys bounced and squirmed in their seats, talking over one another, giggling at trifles, filled with a surplus of energy that could not be contained within their small, robust frames.

That entire lunch room was a fresh battery, charged with electricity waiting to be released. If I were to spend a full day in the company of so much youth, I imagine I would gather an electrical charge of my own. I felt as though the room might burst—that those walls, like my own bulging body, were pregnant with life about to break from its confines. And at noon, the room did, in fact, give birth to a hundred electrified children rushing outdoors to play. The clock's hands converged at the number twelve with a clap like thunder.

I have seen these children zipping down plastic playground slide, their hair standing on end. At the bottom, I stretch out my cold hands to catch my sons and pull them up, and as we touch, their lightning fingers burn my own; at that startling moment, that point of contact where we two distemporaries collide, something ignites.

On a dark October night, we could have seen the spark.

* * * * * * * *

As my two youngest sons and I entered the nursing home after lunch, my gait was slow and plodding, heavy with my long-awaited child. I felt that I, too, could make good use of the abandoned walker sitting just outside the front door. Passing through the hallways, my children ran their dimpled fingers along the handrail, hanging and swinging and skipping from it, using that would-be crutch as the bar of a jungle gym. They leapt past each open doorway, never noticing the frost-bitten forms lying on inclined beds just inside those rooms; never seeing the hundred color-drained faces bowed over half-eaten meals in the quiet cafeteria.

We turned a corner, and boldly centered at the end of the long hall sat an old man, directly facing us from his wheelchair.  His unflinching gaze was fixed upon us as we worked our way toward him. His crooked, unclipped fingers grasped the arms of his wheelchair, while the oxygen tubes in his nostrils made a rhythmic pop and hiss. He breathed with a sound like Darth Vader. I made eye contact and then looked away, pretending to instruct my kids on how they should behave when they saw my grandmother, although I had given them the same reminder only moments earlier. And when I looked up again uneasily, those aged eyes had not wavered from their point of focus.

As we drew nearer to him, my sons, too, became aware of his unnerving presence, and they fell back, hiding behind my legs. He stared us down. Would he let us pass? I tried to slip casually by him with nothing more than a quick hello. But as I turning my eyes again to my sons, his gnarled hand rose from its resting place and, with a suddenness inconsistent with his shriveled state, he jabbed a pointed finger at the center of my protruding belly, his ridged fingernail pressing into my flesh as if testing the ripeness of a large fruit.

Did that moment of contact leave him with a sensation of warmth? Of an electrical charge shocking his chilled limbs into life? Perhaps some sort of strength did flow out of me, but even the vigor of nascent life does not have the power to raise the dead.

Life and death were colliding, and my burning skin was caught in between.

"What's this?" he demanded like a gatekeeper demanding a password. I laughed nervously and stammered something about having another baby in there, but the man had already shifted his attention downward. "Hellooo," he crooned. "You are our favorite kind of visitors." I smiled feebly and told the boys to say hi—something I had hardly wanted to do myself. And I did not rebuke my son when one of them ignored my instructions and merely gaped.

I felt tempted to gape myself.

We moved on down the hall to meet with my grandmother. I could still feel the sting on my belly where that withered hand had touched me.

* * * * * * * *

Another birthday has arrived, and I have much to be thankful for in remembering the year that is gone. Every October brings reasons to celebrate, but it also brings reasons to consider my own mortality. This northern growing season is painfully short, and those sun-loving tomato plants never do reach their full potential before fall arrives. They could have done so much more—born so much more fruit—if the cold had not set in just yet. Not just yet.

But while I survey the frost-stricken garden and look back on the harvest that was, I must remember how much this growing season has given to me. And I can see that even now, among all those withered plants, not a branch is barren. Their fiery red fruit is gathered up, their feeble limbs now limp and unable to rise. They are weighed down. But with what?

At the end of my own growing season, at the end of my own painfully short life, is this the sight I want my time-worn self to see reflected from the mirror? Will I recall with joy the fruitfulness that was mine? In that final October, when I reach out my hands to touch the young, and I again feel the startling heat of that spark, may I  see In the light of that momentary fire that, although my weakening limbs are weighed down—they are weighed down with still-forming fruit.

The greatest show on earth

On Sunday afternoon, we celebrated the birthdays of my two youngest sons, Paul and Asaph. Paul is four today, and Asaph turned two on Friday. I know that every mother says this each time her child has a birthday, but I really, truly can't believe how fast the time has gone. My "baby" is two? How did that happen? All I did was put Cheerios and strained carrots into his mouth, and poof! I now have a walking, talking, sword-wielding boy in front of me. My little Paul is now learning to play piano and sound out words. Is that possible? Is there some astonishing sleight of hand at work here?

I can tell you what happened. But I absolutely cannot tell you how. This wasn't my doing. I had nothing up my sleeve. No trick cards. No false doors. This is the real deal. This kind of magic has the makings of a sell-out Vegas attraction—only better.

David Copperfield, you can't impress me. I know someone who can turn water into wine. He can do it with a (magic) word in a moment, or he can do it with rain and vines over months, but he does it all the time. What can you do, Mr. Copperfield?

I know someone who can turn coal into diamonds. Do they do that in Vegas?

I know someone who can transform tomato soup and grilled cheese into flesh and bone. No smoke or mirrors involved. And I don't have to buy tickets to watch it happen. Can you do that, Mr. Copperfield?

Unlike in Vegas, this is the kind of show that attracts biologists with clipboards. They sit, unmoved, in the audience and observe the magic. They describe it in minute detail—right down to the molecular level. They write articles in scientific journals and make Discovery Channel documentaries about it. But they can't tell us anything—not anything—about how all this is happening. Or why. They might use the word "because", but they don't really mean it. All those impressive charts of the digestive process and the breakdown of chemical elements for use by various cells amount to nothing more than journalistic observation.

The biologist might say, "The kidneys convert vitamin D into calcitriol to help the body absorb dietary calcium and phosphorus into the blood and bones." But in spite of his impressive, Latinate words, he is doing nothing more than telling us, in essence, that the kidney has just pulled a rabbit out of its hat. The scientist is simply another spectator (albeit with a good pair of opera glasses) recording his experience at the greatest show on earth. He has no backstage pass.

We think that, because we've seen something a hundred times, we can understand it. Because we can describe what we saw, we believe we can explain why it happened. But that is the only illusion taking place in this venue. What's happening in front of our eyes is no illusion; it's magic in its most genuine sense. The medieval alchemists believed that lead could be turned into gold. But I believe in the far more improbable notion that a single cell can turn into an oak tree, or a sea cucumber, or Barak Obama. Ladies, and gentlemen, children of all ages, it happens in real life! Why isn't anyone selling tickets?

Four years and several gallons of milk can turn my helpless infant into a talkative preschooler. Throw in a few more years and a mountain of sandwiches, and that preschooler will be big enough to drive a car. And his voice will have changed. What a brilliant performance! And I've been invited to watch from the front row. Could there be a greater privilege?

Sometimes, I admit, raising small children seems to be something less than magical. Sometimes a day at home with a group of busy little ones can feel like an eternity—an endless cycle of diapers and drool and discipline. But then, I blink and realize that the baby has (abracadabra!) grown into a toddler. Right here, under my nose, a jaw-dropping transformation is taking place. Suspend your disbelief. (Suspend your unbelief.) Enjoy the show. The Bellaggio has nothing on the nursery.

When the party's over

White flakes were drifting to the ground outside my window yesterday morning, and the soggy leaves heaped in our front yard wore a silvery trim of frost. It looked festive, but nobody was tempted to play in that heavy mass of foliage. When the weather was still dry, the boys had raked a pile of enviable dimensions, and they had waded through the crisp leaves, buried each other in them, jumped into the middle of them, tossed them above their heads in handfuls to flutter downward like excitable birds and alight on the brown lawn. But when rain fell (as it always does in October), the autumnal celebration ended.

Tuesday night marked the end of my boys' soccer season, and I can't pretend that I am sorry. This weather has dampened my team spirit. The trees in the distance were pale with snow as we stood huddled on the sleet-saturated grass to watch red-cheeked second graders chase a very wet black and white ball. Jonah complained of numb toes. Paul and Jude, retaining precious body heat with a blue fleece blanket, slouched in the double stroller to keep out of the wind. Asaph's nose ran. I could not feel my fingers. We cheered and clapped, but not with the usual energy; our applause were stifled to lifeless thuds by winter gloves.

That soccer game ended not a moment too soon. But then we raised our eyes above the muddy grass and saw that, against this dim and chilly fadeout of the season, the sun, as it sank, was shooting a blast of pink light across the sky, setting the gray clouds and the snow-dusted hills on fire. The unexpected gala of color overhead seemed to revive a bit of the celebratory spirit as we vacated the darkening field. The whole scene reminded me, just a little, of that sense of anticlimax, when the last shower of sparks fizzles to black; when the show is over; when the crowds quietly prepare to leave—and then, out of dull silence, the echoing barrage of canon fire pounds against my rib cage, and the night explodes into a pyrotechnic grande finale.

Which just goes to show that you should never hang up your party hat too soon.

Two weeks ago, when an early freeze threatened our garden, I thought the end of this year's ingathering had come. I had finally resigned myself to the untimely demise of my tomatoes, picking the last of the green orbs from most of the withered vines. But one tenacious plant was still in full, flourishing leaf and laden with so many unripe tomatoes, I couldn't bear to strip it of its fruit and leave it to die. (One can only stomach so many fried green tomatoes.) I dug it up with its roots, transplanted it to a roomy red pot, and moved into my living room. There it went into shock; its leaves shriveled and grew brittle, and again, I thought its time had come. But it stayed, weighted down by the unrealized crop on its branches, and I waited. During the days that followed, an unanticipated second harvest ensued. Every one of those lovely tomatoes took on a pale orange hue—and then a promising pink, and then a flaming Roma red. The second ripening seemed more robust and welcome than the first. It took me by surprise.

When I turned the insignificant age of 31 last week, my family gave me some of the presents I'd had on my wish list. My husband took me out to dinner—just him, me, and a couple of plates of enchiladas. We had some good conversation, some decent margaritas, some fried ice cream. Fun, but nothing fancy. When we returned home, my husband held the door for me, and shouts of "Mommeeee!" sounded from the kitchen. With a screeching of chair legs on tile and a stampede of small feet, my sons rounded the corner and bombarded me with strawberry cupcakes and packages of chocolate and licorice and cards scrawled with misspelled birthday greetings. My sons were breathless with delight at having caught me off guard. The whole birthday was perfectly pleasant, and the party ended with a cheery bang.

My mom-in-law was still staying with us last Friday when my parents left town for the weekend. My grandmother, who lives with them, had just returned from a long trip, so my husband suggested that we go out to dinner one more time while we had our free babysitter and should stop to visit Grannie on our way to the restaurant. Sounded like a well planned evening to me. How well planned I little suspected.

When we arrived at my parents' house, instead of meeting my grandmother, I was greeted with shouts of "Surprise!" and with the laughing faces of some of my oldest and best friends. What began—and ended—as a birthday of little importance blazed back into life to become a birthday I will savor and smile about for years to come. Bursts of fiery color filled the vases on the table. Unanticipated gifts rested on the hearth. Ruby wine filled our glasses. And the food! My husband had conspired with one of our multitalented acquaintances* to present the twelve of us with a stunning eight-course Japanese dinner. I will not describe it, except to say that I cannot imagine enjoying a meal more. And is there any table fellowship that compares to the easy company of friends kept since childhood?

The snow may be falling, but lately I am starting to wonder if an unforeseen Indian Summer might burn through the clouds at any moment. This has been a week full of unexpected gifts. Of waking from sleep. Of gaiety revived. Of beauty for ashes. Don't put away your party hat just yet.


______

*Lisa B, for those who want to know

Unsophistication

Today is my birthday. Not a birthday of any great significance; no special legal privileges are newly mine, and the number doesn't end in a zero. It's just another year gone. Today, as usual, I staggered out of my warm bed early enough to squeeze in a morning walk before the kids woke up to to pull my attention in 4 different directions. I didn't even brush my hair before going out. The sun was hardly up when I came in the front door to find my three-year-old running to greet me with wet pajamas. Again. My 19-month-old stood rattling the sides of his crib, waiting to be dressed. "All the shirts in his drawer are too small," my husband informed me as he deposited the baby, wearing a shirt two sizes too big, in the high chair. As I reached for an apple, my eldest complained of three loose teeth and requested that I pack his lunch with soft foods. Meanwhile, my five-year-old ran laps through the hallway in a panic, wondering where his socks and belt could have gone. Apparently it never occurred to him to check in his dresser. Then, halfway through dishing up seven bowls of yogurt, I realized that I'd forgotten to have him do his math homework for the second time in a week.

If, at age eighteen, I could have seen myself at 31, I might not have recognized the somewhat disorganized mother of four I have become. I would certainly not have been pleased with what I saw. I've grown softer and rounder in all the wrong places, and the dark circles under my eyes seem to be a permanent fixture. I've never been the owner of a single item advertised in Vogue. I have never lived in Paris. I've traded art museums for coloring books; urban Shakespeare productions for grade school plays; dinner at eight for Happy Meals at noon. I never saw this coming. I'm not even a "kid person." As I look back, I ask myself how this could have happened to me. What became of all my ambitions?

The answer is: They died.

Thirteen years ago I was a college freshman with big plans and little foresight. I was going to study French, and then earn a Master's degree—probably a PhD as well—in Art History from some red brick institution on the East Coast. If I had asked my 18-year-old self what I would be doing now, I would have seen myself traveling to sophisticated places and delivering lectures to sophisticated students and reading sophisticated books and wearing sophisticated clothes and painting sophisticated canvases to the delight of my sophisticated patrons and dining in sophisticated restaurants with my sophisticated husband, whoever he might be. I would have a brilliant career. I would name-drop cities. I would know people who knew people, if you know what I mean.

But something—let's call it grace—happened to all those sophisticated plans. Today, on my 31st birthday, tiny, unsophisticated fingerprints stipple the lower halves of the windows and the French door to the living room. Sticky drips from unsophisticated sippie cups pepper the hardwood floors. The upstairs trash can is overflowing with unsophisticated diapers. I read unsophisticated stories to unsophisticated children who can't sit still long enough to hear the ending. I have a family-size bag of highly unsophisticated chicken nuggets in the freezer for those nights when we get home late—and muddy—from unsophisticated soccer games. I sing along with unsophisticated songs while attempting to accompany them using my unsophisticated piano skills. And I live in my unsophisticated home town where I push an unsophisticated double stroller while wearing the unsophisticated tennis shoes I purchased at a church rummage sale. And the strange thing is that I know this life, although I sometimes live it poorly, is a far better life than my 18-year-old self could have understood.

It's difficult to discern how my perception of "the good life" altered during the intervening years. But if there's one thing I've learned during that time, it's that a well-lived life means dying well—over and over again. I have not done it as often or as willingly as I ought. Not nearly. Sometimes I think that leaping in front of the oncoming train to rescue the baby in the stroller would be the best way to go—all at once, in a blaze of selfless glory. But where would be the challenge? Or the reward? Until I see that I must die daily, a little at a time, sometimes imperceptibly, I will never learn to truly live.

My husband's mother is staying with our family right now, and I think she has known this for a long time. She has given her years to teaching English to teenagers on their last stop before jail; helping kids with special needs learn to read; giving hours and days of every week to students and grandchildren and friends in need. She's been a mentor to people with addictions. She walked 60 miles this fall to raise money to find a cure for the cancer that took her little sister's life. She's planning a trip to volunteer in an orphanage overseas next year. She drove alone 1200 miles to see her son's family here in Idaho and will drive alone 1200 miles to get home to her other son's family in Arizona. She gives her life away. That is to say, she has found it.

We went with her down to the river this week when the weather was warm. We ate a picnic on the levy and watched the boys play on the rocks near the water. She and my husband climbed down with the kids and peered between the stones with them in search of lost treasures. They returned with a broken pink fishing pole, two golf balls, and an orange water pistol. They also returned with smiles and dirt on their hands. My hands were clean. Sophisticated people do not get dirty.

As we packed up our picnic, my husband told the boys to throw the remains of their sandwich bread into the river. When they did so, a pair of gulls plummeted to the surface to snatch the floating pieces, leaving a lone duck to seek vainly for the leftover crumbs. The bread was gone. But somehow the news got out that food was being distributed, and the gulls and ducks from across the river came in a mass to find what we had to offer. My oldest son turned to me and asked for more bread to give them. I hesitated. I had just packed it away. There were sandwiches to be made during the week ahead. I paid good money for that loaf and didn't want to waste it on an assembly of dirty, ungrateful birds. But I am slowly learning that my own plans must die and give way to something richer; I passed the loaf between my sons, who broke it, throwing it riverward.

The cries of the hungry fowl filled the air as piece after piece descended toward their waiting beaks. We all laughed at their enthusiastic response to this unexpected bounty. Broken bread may have been wasted on these filthy crowds, these shepherdless flocks. But what we gathered from it was something much more. Something multiplied. Twelve baskets full.

We took a stroll along the levy and then down its steep green slope toward the road. But looking behind us, all the boys knew that a grassy bank like that is not to be experienced by mere walking. Back up they all went—even the baby on hands and knees—to roll down in dizzy giggles. I stood apart to watch, with the stroller between them and me, giving way to a dignified smile. But then my husband broke away up the hill after the children to take part in their game. And after him went his mother, who reached the summit and came twirling toward me, calling to me to join in. I hesitated. Sophisticated people do not roll down hills.

Sophisticated people do not know how to live. I stepped from behind the stroller and jogged to the top of the levy, lay down on the grass, and let myself go. Over and over. A whirl of colors spun around me. Gulls cried overhead. I slowed to a stop at the bottom of that grassy bank and lay, arms outstretched, breathless, with a thousand-thousand friendly blades against my back. And I died. Laughing.

Three-Oh

I just thought you all should know that I turned 30 recently. Here's proof:

We just had a small family gathering at my parents' house, and our friends the LaMoreauxs came over for a bit, too.
And the weather was nice enough for us all to play on the basketball court outside.

Thirty seems to be a good age so far. Can't say I feel different, but I'll keep you posted!