Christmas Hands

Here I am again: nearing the end of a year that I never quite seemed to lay hands on, despite my respectful efforts to do so. 

Last Sunday at church, a fellow elder and I were installed to serve on next year's Session (our governing body). This involved, as is our tradition, the pastor and all past or present elders laying hands on us to pray. My church is small, and its people have diligently served for years. So by the time all past and present elders came forward, the pews were empty, except for the children. Then, the children joined the party.

They reached through the tangle of adult bodies, trying to be part of Tradition. There was whispering and jostling and the littlest hands slipped off my arm.  The whispers got louder. Suddenly that pair of little hands shoved their way through with utter determination and GRABBED.  Forget the standard laying on of hands.  This was no gentle touch. No aiming for socially acceptable body parts. This child was determined to be part of the action, and if that meant doggedly squirming through and latching on to any part of me she could, then she was darn well going to do it.

I confess that I missed some of the prayer as I tried to keep a straight face.  I confess that my composure gave way to uncontrolled giggles later, in my car.  And I confess that in the midst of the laughter, a lesson resonated.

It's Christmas Day. This seems like a good time to start following my diminutive friend's example:

Join me - let's all dive in and grab hold of each day with both hands.

(c) Can Stock Photo

The New Normal

A fellow Freecycler called tonight, asking for a better description of the item I had listed. 

“It’s white, sports-style, size medium," I told her. "I bought it for my mother, but she passed away before ever wearing it.” I paused, knowing there would be an appropriate expression of sympathy.

I’m getting used to those expressions. But I’ll confess that in the aftermath of my mother’s illness and death, I find myself slightly adrift. So much of my life until now has been spent responding, in some way, to my mother. 

 
As a teenager, I embarrassed Mom with my choice of music or topic of conversation. She embarrassed me by having my latest ex-crush over for a sympathetic ear and fresh cookies. 

We clashed over her expectations for me and of me. While at boarding school, I knew which topics to avoid in our weekly radio visits. I also knew what I could get away with - like turning up at my parents’ house unannounced with 17 overnight guests in tow. 

This was our brand of normal.

Then, in the summer before my senior year of high school, the world changed. Dad was in Africa on mission business. I was in boarding school. Mom called. Her doctor had just diagnosed her with breast cancer. I left school that same afternoon, travelled the three hours by bus to my parents’ town and spent the weekend caring for my mother. The cancer created a different (but no less complicated), normal. 

Over the decades, we continued to adapt - as families are wont to do. Then just last month, not quite a year after Dad died, Mom passed away. As my siblings and I sorted through her things in Indiana, as I removed the last bits and pieces of her life from the apartment, I noticed an odd vacancy. 

“Normal” had disappeared.

This was uncharted territory. After 53 years of adapting, I was at the top of the pyramid. I was The Grown-Up. This did not feel normal. Despite my theoretical knowledge that this would occur, it was still unexpected.

I mulled this change on my drive home. I was still pondering when I unpacked my bags and found something else unexpected.

It seemed I had accidentally brought home one of the brand-new post-mastectomy bras that I’d bought for Mom when she was in the hospital. It was still in the package. I put it aside and listed it last night on Freecycle.

Ergo, the call from my fellow Freecyler.

Only now, a split second after murmuring her condolences, this stranger on the phone was doing a major double-take. “Size medium?” she asked, confused. “Never before worn?”

Unsure of what the problem was, I answered, “Yes, a size medium, brand-new post-mastectomy bra” - which is about when she started laughing. Between giggles, she explained that she had intended to answer a different post. The one offering a small rack…

The accidental double entendre caught me off guard. I burst out laughing as well. As we giggled on the phone like a pair of teenagers, I was struck by an oddly comforting thought.

I will find my new Normal. And I will never finish growing up. 

 

 

(c">http://www.canstockphoto.com">(c) Can Stock Photo

 

Tribute to my mom (read at her funeral, May 24)

When I was very little, someone sent the missionaries (i.e. my parents) three blankets. One green, one blue, one pink. It was a well-intentioned gift with two problems. A) They were for USA-standard twin-sized beds and we had jungle-standard Dad-made beds that were decidedly narrower. And B) my parents had four children. Not three. 

It was a gift of love that slightly missed the mark. What Mom did with that imperfect gift has stayed with me throughout my life.

She carefully cut off the excess material from each blanket, leaving the original blankets the proper width for my siblings' beds. Then she sewed the three strips together, took a wide ribbon and sewed it over each seam. More ribbon was added around the edge of the tri-color piece and - voilà! A one-of-a-kind blanket just for me. She told me it was special because it had a bit of each of my siblings in it.

It also had a lot of Mom in it. Her resourcefulness, her determination to make things work, her conviction that family mattered: they were stitched into that blanket as firmly as they were sewn into her life.  

I still have that blanket. Faded, falling apart with age, it is a tangible reminder of my mother's gifts in the face of imperfection. 

Today, it is also a reminder of how deeply Mom loved each of her children.

And for my mother's gift of love, I am forever grateful.

Socks

Just call me the Sock Whisperer.

The last few weeks have seen me ensconced in my mother's old Independent Living (IL) apartment in a senior living center, while my mother lies in a bed down the hall in the skilled nursing wing. She is dying.

We didn't know she was so close to the end when I first came up to Indiana. In fact, I came up to help my elder brother move Mom into Assisted Living (AL). Her IL apartment had become just too much to handle.

We managed to move what she would need and were beginning to sort out the rest, when her health took a nose dive. In the space of three weeks, she has gone from IL to AL to 2 different hospitals and now to a bed that she has neither the strength nor the desire to leave.

But let's get back to the socks. While here in this facility (where I am the youngest in my hall by a good 20 years or more), I use the in-house laundry room.  Each time, upon fetching my dry laundry, I have found an extra sock.

These are not my socks. They are random socks seeking asylum among my clothes for reasons unknown to me, making me wonder if somehow a hobo sign has been etched into my basket, letting fugitive socks know that I have unwittingly been enlisted in the Underground Railroad of Sockdom.

I am reminded of a skit by Carol Burnett in which she stumbles through a dryer seeking a lost sock and finds herself in The Land of Lost Stuff. The great Burnett goes on to find her lost hopes and dreams, her childhood, and assorted other things before - eventually - being reunited with her sock. 

I, on the other hand, have started out by finding. 

I've been finding once again the peace of sitting vigil with a dying parent, grateful for the chance to say thank you, you matter, and I love you.

I have been finding incredible role models for living life fully. There's nothing like a 97-year-old who struts her stuff with panache and no fewer than 3 necklaces, offering honest compassion with a twinkling smile.  I want to be like her when I grow up.

I have been finding that the bond with my siblings really is made of velvet steel.  My other brother and our sister have come, and the four of us spent last week sorting through the stuff of our collective memory.  You may have to pull us in from multiple continents, countries and states, but when we're together it seems we were never fully apart.

I have been finding facets of my mother that I never knew. There are bits of her tucked away in her baby book, in her high school yearbook, and in the mementos she chose to preserve.

Soon I will lose my mother from this life. There will be no cosmic dryer for me to crawl through á la Burnett to find her. I will lose the chance to ever ask her about the unsmiling people in old sepia who inhabit her picture frames.  I will lose the opportunity to listen as music pours from her fingers to the piano keys and out.  Very soon, the door will shut, and she will be on the other side, and I will lose my mom.

But I have been finding again that there is always strength for the Very Soon.

And if you ever want to stop by, I may have found your sock, as well.