Mother's Day

All over Facebook, friends are posting open letters to pastors about how to deal with Mother's Day and Anne Lamott's comments about mother's love and mystical unicorns. People are thanking their moms and saying happy Mother's Day. The sign in front of the pharmacy says "Flowers for Mother's Day," the greenhouse down the road has "Mother's Day Gifts." Even our farmer's market last Thursday offered jewelry, just in time for Mother's Day.

Last year, I remember reading about people sleeping in and breakfast in bed and homemade brunch and quiet time, and I got jealous. I don't particularly care about  flowers or jewelry or chocolate. I don't need a Hallmark card. I really, really would have liked to get to sleep in though. Instead, Brian rolled over and said, "I need a little more time," and I got up and got breakfast and got everyone dressed. It was not Mother's Day, but a mother's day for me. And as grumpy as I got, and I did get grumpy, I was thankful for the little girls who were there needing me. I was thankful that the trip to the cemetery wasn't the only part of the day with my kids, because I remember the Mother's Day five years ago when that's all there was, when I knew and wasn't sure if I was a mother.

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I suggested to Kathleen that she make cards for her nana and big nana (my mom and grandother) for Mother's Day. "And one for Nana B too," she said, "to send to Papa, because she died and we miss her." We mailed all three out yesterday.

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 On Thursday, Kathleen brought home a magenta flower in a peat pot and a card she had made. I looked a the flower she had cut and glued for me at preschool, but when I looked closer she told me it was for "another day." My girls both wanted me to look and not look at the flowers they hid up at my neighbor's house. So there will be flowers and cards this year. I won't sleep in, but maybe I'll get a run in along with plenty of time with my girls. And we'll go to the cemetery or I'll work in Henry's garden or at least stop to admire the bleeding heart that I planted last year.

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I won't see my own mom on Sunday. I'll call but she may be out to lunch with my sister and aunt and nana. In my card, I thanked her for among other things for letting us go out and explore and get muddy and dirty. I was thinking of Elizabeth at Easter in her white dress and rain boots running and jumping and slipping in the mud, but tonight I honored my memory of being allowed to wallow in a huge mud puddle one summer on vacation. My kids had mud in every crack and crevice. Their clothes are still brown. We did showers and hair washes even though we just did them last night. Coming in to get ready for bed, Kathleen said, "Best day ever!" I got them both warm and cozy. I read the stories and sang their songs and hugged and kissed and tucked them in. Tomorrow I will be up early. I'll snuggle with Elizabeth on the couch and read stories through bleary eyes. I'll referee arguments about who turns on the coffee maker for me and get Cheerios and toast. I'll fix the fort that's taking over my living room when the blanket falls and remind Elizabeth to go on the potty. Brian will get up eventually. Those flowers will appear. Lunch, nap, outside time or movie time for Kathleen. Snacks and snuggles and meltdowns and dinner. A mother's day.

May

Six years ago I was getting ready for this little being I didn't yet know as Henry to be born. I knew there was a small hole in his heart, and yet I wasn't freaking out. Otherwise, all was well. I felt great. The house was chaotic as Brian tried to finish up the painting projects we had begun before I got pregnant, but the glider was up in his room, a few clothes were washed and ready.

I was busy digging in my garden, trying to get things planted. I didn't expect to have much time to work in the garden, but lettuce and tomatoes would do their own thing if I could get them in. I think of this in flashes, remembering squatting, moving around my belly as I worked. I remember my simple expectation as I get my garden ready this year. And here's the thing: I still believe.

I still believe that my work will pay off even though unforeseen circumstances could pull me away from home come July or August or September as the bounty really begins to flow; we could get late blight on the tomatoes again this year or drought could shrivel up my plants or a late freeze could kill them before they begin to thrive. Squirrels will undoubtedly get the peaches from Henry's tree long before they are ripe. I don't think about what could go wrong when I'm out there digging and moving compost and spreading ash. I don't worry the what ifs while I sprinkle seeds or wield the hose while Kathleen flaps about the yard with the rhododendron branches I pruned recently. I dream. I look at where I might shift and expand. I try to figure out where to put a new strawberry patch next year and where to finally start asparagus. I contemplate fruit trees and blueberry bushes and how they fit in with dog runs and clothes lines and open space for play.

I see the magic in the rhubarb that is already humongous and the chives that greened up before anything else and the cilantro that seeded itself for me and is ready to use now. I see the wonder as little bits of green poke up where weeks, days I ago I planted seed. I, who am usually so linear and organized and planful, can't seem to finish prepping a particular section because there is so much work to be done and I see so much potential. I have new energy. It's been growing in me, and maybe I've talked about it before. I am refilling after the complete and utter wring out of early grief. I am refilling after the needs of the early days of mothering my girls. I am refilling by claiming a little time and space for me to run and write and dig in the dirt.

I am not thinking ahead to the rest of May, to Mother's Day and Henry's birthday, except to think about what I will get for his garden this year. His birthday isn't easy, even separated from the day he died by several months, but somehow, part of what I relive right now is the anticipation, of him and a garden of vegetables, this time of joyful waiting and wonder.

Pansies

We planted pansies at Henry's grave yesterday. The water spigot near his stone was broken, so Brian walked the kids halfway across the cemetery to fill the watering can. Brian's voice faded slowly as he pointed out names we know and flags for veterans. Cars zoomed by on the road behind me. Our cemetery is right on the main road, and yet, when I'm there, I feel invisible.

The sun was warm and I just sat in front of Henry's stone before I started clearing dead leaves and digging a hole for the pansies. And I thought, not for the first time, "How is this my life?" I am still stymied sometimes by the fact that I have a child who died. I can't make sense of this stone with his name instead of the smiling face and warm body I once held.

Looking at the pansies, I remembered the basket of these white and yellow flower that appeared in this spot that first spring, when the ground was a scar of raw bare ground, much like our hearts. We didn't know for some time who left them, but I was comforted that somebody besides us came, that somebody remembered, that somebody cared enough to leave a patch of brightness for him, for us. I remember too how deflated I was when they disappeared, how the energy seeped right out of me even as Brian's anger burned brighter and harder. His anger frightened me. I remember but I'm here.

I'm here on this sunny day with the grass growing thickly where the ground was once bare. I'm here with a stone marking what was so long unmarked. I'm here with Brian and my girls moving back toward me, voices gaining as they moments before faded. I am here. Brian is here. My girls are here. And the pansies are here, so when I drive by there is brightness.

Care giver

I was stunned to find out that one of my all time favorite nurses died yesterday.

If I had been asked to pick one person from the whole hospital to provide Henry's care, it would have been her. Not a surgeon who might have saved his life or a specialist who might understand his condition better than anyone else, but Cindy. I would have picked her because she knew him. She knew how he reacted to meds and that when he wasn't doing well that turning him onto his left side was trouble. She knew what he needed medically, but she gave him what he needed as a person, as a baby too. She talked to him while she changed him. She smiled at him with her face and her voice. I was able to take a break when she was on because I knew she was on it.

She took great care of my baby, but she took good care of me too. She answered my questions and helped me talk to the right people when she couldn't. She made sure doctors knew I had been waiting to see them. She knew when I was really scared and talked me through it. On the day Henry was getting discharged from the CICU for the second time during our long stay, I was a mess. It was supposed to be a happy day, a step closer to home, a sign he was getting better, but I knew it meant less support, fear of leaving his room, sleeplessness, and of course the last time we were on the floor he coded after a week or so of me saying "Something's not right." She talked me through that anxiety and helped me formulate a plan. We talked about what I knew and when to worry. In the middle of piles of paperwork to move him down the hall from the care of one unit to the next, she sat down and talked to me until I calmed down.

She was one of the nurses who came out to say goodbye the day we were finally discharged. She left a tearful message on our answering machine when he died. She is very much part of Henry's story, and I am sad she is gone.

Enough: Little by little gardening

It's the time of year when I'm itching to get out into my garden and get stuff planted, even though I know I have more than a month before our "last day of frost." But all those "as soon as the ground can be worked," cold weather veggies? It's time. The past few years, pregnancy and little babies with short attention spans or quick legs moving toward the road and brick steps they can't climb, have made my gardening goals more modest. My dreams are still big, but my expectations are low. I work a small bit of ground at a time, say enough of a patch to do a first planting of lettuce. Little by little, piece by piece, my garden comes together, and most things get in on time, and the things that don't I pick up at the farmer's market.

Right now, I work in the afternoons while Elizabeth naps and Kathleen works on her castle, an intricate stack of bricks and soil and sticks that started last summer when Brian was digging out an old, choked flower bed in preparation for planting hops this year. Her castle has occupied her and one of our neighbor friends for countless afternoons. I'm not crazy about its location between the rhubarb and this year's tomato patch, especially with the ever bigger moat that they dig on one side, but I'm letting it be for now. Kathleen is big enough to work on her castle or on her alligator dam (a pile of sticks between a small stone wall and a downed tree) while I'm in the upper garden. Sometimes she comes to help me, but more often than not, she's quite busy with her own gloves and tools in her own little projects.

So as much as I want to get out there when the sun shines and the temps pop up into the 60s and 70s, I work with the time I have, and sometimes I just sit because that feels good too. It's April 9 and I have lettuce and spinach and arugula and beets in the ground, not to mention more lettuce and broccoli, kale, bok choi, and flowers started in my milk jugs. It's good enough, and maybe just a little bit more.