Remembering my mother

I think about my mother every day. I know that the people who loved her and were loved by her think of her all the time, too. For those who were unable to attend her memorial service, I wanted to share some of the images, music, and words from that day.

You can read the obituary that Phyllis and I wrote for our mother here and here. There were several news items on WIU's website and listservs and facebook pages of feminist organizations helped to spread the sad news.

We held the memorial service at the WIU Multicultural Center. My mother had been an active supporter of the creation of a welcoming home for the Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center, Casa Latina, and the Women's Center. My mother and ten other women contributed towards the installation of a stained glass window in the library/lounge of the Women's Center, "Honoring our Mothers."

Our dear family friends the Howds, Nulls, and Diehl-Earlies helped us to select the artwork and set up the space, along with my friend Parisa Parsa, who officiated the ceremony. Phyllis and I chose to have only roses for flowers, and we all worked together to create memory boards filled with pictures and to select pieces of my mother's artwork -- her collages and a few decoupaged items. We also displayed the photograph from the Women of Western Centennial Phographic Exhibit.

At the welcome table we placed a small vase of roses, the programs, a photo of my mother with Phyllis and me, a guestbook and a box filled with rubber bracelets embossed with WWPD -- which stands for What Would Phyllis Do? This was a comment that so many people had made to us during the week following our death. Many of us, including Phyllis and I, felt lost without her.  We wanted to ask her advice on what to do.

Of course, it's intended to be funny, too, because my mother was often very forceful in her advice-giving and could laugh at herself for this trait while still insisting that you listen to what she was telling you. Anyone who reads this and would like a bracelet, email me your address and I will send you one.

Jim chose the opening and closing song -- they were both songs that my mother would interrupt conversation for, telling Jim to turn up the volume so we could all listen.  When we sat drinking wine and deciding on music for the program, Jim put this one on and we all sat quietly, the tears beginning to flow. We knew this was the one to start with.

Rebekah DelRio - Llorando

My Uncle Patrick then shared his Eulogy. We had asked him to share some memories about what our mother was like as a young woman -- where she came from. Patrick's memories and images truly captured just how cool my mother was.


Phyllis read her Eulogy next, in which she captured our mother's thinking, her beliefs, and what she stood for personally and professionally. She chose "American Tune," to end, capturing the spirit of my mother and giving us all moment of reflection -- a lullaby to comfort us.

Eva Cassidy - American Tune 

 Next I read my Eulogy, attempting to capture my mother's role in so many lives as a generous and caring source of strength, comfort and good advice.The song I chose to follow my words was "Nobody Does it Better," and yes, it was supposed to be funny. I also can't imagine who could possibly replace my mother's sage advice and ability to know how things should be done.

Carly Simon - Nobody Does it Better

Jim spoke extemporaneously, thanking everyone for coming and explaining that the music we had been listening to were all important to my mother and had a connection to my mother. They were songs that my mother loved, or songs that made us think of my mother. He expressed how much it means to see so many people who love her like we do.

He then asked everyone to listen closely, and asked for the volume to be turned up, so the music could fill the room.

At the Four Corners with Jim

Philip Glass - Forgetting

Parisa ended with a prayer, and we collected ourselves and shared tears and hugs over refreshments provided by our friends. 

Jim's kids returned to the house and set out a beautiful reception for everyone to return to when we were ready to leave the memorial.

It was a day filled with love and I thank all who drove miles to be there, who shared words and hugs, and who made donations in my mother's honor. 

In total, approximately $2,000 was donated to both the McDonough District Hospital Hospice and the WIU Women's Center, and around $4,500 was donated to WIUM Tri-States Public Radio.

My mother's name has been added to the Memorial wall at the hospital, next to my father's. We also received notification of many donations to the ALS Association or Les Turner ALS Foundation.

The faculty senate at WIU passed a resolution in mom's honor, and I recently learned that she had been named Professor Emeritus, which I had not realized. According to her colleague Janna Dietz, an undergraduate political science paper will be awarded in her name beginning this year and her friends and colleagues are working toward a named scholarship that will honor her teaching contributions. 


It's an incredible comfort to see all of these memorial tributes honoring my mother and we are blessed to be surrounded by such love.  I hope that these remembrances and images are helpful for those who wish to feel part of that day of remembrance.

Holding

I've been thinking about the phrase, putting my life on hold. 

My mother is in the end stages of ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease. It's as awful as you think it is. There was a time period where we thought it was ALS, then she was told it was Multiple Sclerosis, and we were like, crying tears of joy and relief. It's just MS, thank God! But then she got a third opinion. Doctors hesitate to issue death sentences and therefore hesitate to be definitive with this particular diagnosis, but it was confirmed to be ALS.

My mother is hilarious. When something good happens to her these days -- like she got a big tax refund because she had thousands and thousands of dollars in deductions because of all of her medical expenses -- she smiles and delivers her favorite punchline, I'm so lucky. 

Having an awful illness really does make you courageous. It's something people say, oh she's so courageous to battle this disease. If you're on the inside, part of you cynically thinks, well, what else is she going to do, give up and die? But then on the other hand, it's probably true that we human beings do have a lot of courage. The simple fact we don't give up and die proves it. So yes, my mother is courageous. 

The frustrating thing of course is that I didn't need this stupid, awful illness to show me that -- I already knew that from the way she has always lived her life, a loud-mouthed, opinionated, brilliant thinker who challenged the utter stupidity of prejudice in countless ways as a mother, teacher and small-town activist. She raised two feminist daughters who believe that our identities, happiness, bodies and minds have value -- no small feat in our culture. 

I'm 39, and I think about the fact that she finished her PhD after 40. Who does that? Who believes strongly enough in themselves to finish college *after* they have kids, then goes on to pursue a PhD in their 30s -- finishing just as her kids enter adolescence? Who has the self-confidence to agree to pause her tenure-track to apply for an interim Dean position, when the University President takes notice of what an outspoken and kick-ass leader she is among the faculty? Then, accepts the permanent position, making her the first woman Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Illinois University. Then negotiates an awesome golden parachute during a later regime change, securing a cozy retirement for herself and showing the rest of us "this is how it's done, ladies." 

Who does that? My mom.

So, I've put my life on hold to help care for her. I took a formal leave of absence from my work, after calculating that we can survive on Kevin's salary for a few months. I spend about equal amounts of time with my mother and her parter in Illinois, and with my family here in Cambridge, doing my best to keep up with the emotional, educational, financial, and therapeutic/medical needs of my children. Although traditionally I love my work, it's easy not to work when my mother's needs are so much greater. It's very, very hard to be away from my kids. I am grateful to have a husband who is a true life partner and keeps the homestead humming along while I'm away. I'm grateful that my sister and I can take turns so my mom and her loving, amazing partner Jim are less alone in this "end stage."

Everything is on hold. The kids aren't doing activities because it's too crazy to keep up. I'm not working, and don't volunteer for the kids' school if I can avoid it. All I do is focus on taking care of my children and taking care of my mom.

When I'm in Illinois, I spend a lot of time sitting with her while she sleeps. She sleeps in her power wheelchair because she can't reposition her body and her back begins to ache terribly if she tries to lie in bed. Her bed is adjustable, but her wheelchair is customized and has a lot more ways you can move. Among its cruel ironies, ALS paralyzes you but does not take away your sensations. You can think and feel as always. So if your foot has become twisted, you can't straighten it out. ALS has also robbed her of her ability to speak, so she makes noises and points - thankfully she can still move her arms - until you work out what is causing her pain and help her fix it. When you relieve her pain, she has to lie back, exhausted from the effort to communicate. 

It's ok to leave her alone while she sleeps, but it scares me to think of her struggling, alone, unable to call for help. Jim takes incredible care of her, but he needs to be able to leave the house sometimes. She is utterly dependent on others despite holding onto every last ounce of independence that remains: her ability to make decisions, to type a message on her iPad, to drive her wheelchair, to lift a strap on one of her medical devices. Jim, my sister, and I have to be a team - supported by friends, my sister's husband and mine,  the hospice nurses and my mother's neurologist - in caring for my mother.

I help her administer medications. She has some regular pills she takes, which we crush and dissolve in water and inject through her feeding tube. Feeding tubes sound invasive, but hers is just this little rubber hose with a nozzle on the end that goes into her belly, held in place by a plastic disc. I insert the end of another plastic tube into the nozzle, and formula flows through from a bag containing formula --  like what babies get but formulated for adults. She does feedings twice a day, napping and watching tv, or checking email while she is nourished. 

I help her get her biPap machine on -- her arms have recently grown very tired, and when she tries to pull the headstraps back over her head, sometimes she has to stop to rest because it is so exhausting. I help get the back part, and she positions the nose piece. Although she prefers to have Jim help her with her most personal bodily needs, sometimes I help her to use the bathroom. They installed an expensive, un-insured piece of equipment in their bedroom and bathroom which is the primary reason she is not in a nursing home: an electric lift. With the push of a button, we lift her in her sling out of her wheelchair and slide the sling along a track in the ceiling so that she can then be lowered onto the toilet, or between her chair and bed. The only time she gets into bed is to have a sponge bath. It's too hard for her to sit up on the shower chair they were able to use for many months. 

I also help her use these foam swabs to apply a medication inside her mouth, because she has thrush -- a yeast overgrowth caused by being immunocompromised and unable to swallow. It's also exacerbated by the nebulizer treatments she has to do to maximize her airways. I help her with the nebulizer and this thing called "the vest," which provides percussive rattling to her ribcage to loosen up secretions that build up because she cannot effectively cough.

I give my mother morphine and ativan to help calm her body and make breathing feel like less of a struggle. My mother does not want to go onto a ventilator, and her particular course of illness is causing her diaphragm to be slowly paralyzed, which will eventually stop her breathing. Her lungs are healthy; she could get pneumonia from aspirating liquids, but more likely her perfectly healthy lungs will become nearly motionless. She will stop being able to pull oxygen into them and expel carbon dioxide from them. She will go into a deep sleep and then she will die, and I will miss her terribly.

So, I have put my life on hold. Holding implies an uninvited pause -- an in-between space. Sometimes it feels like the opening scenes of The Graduate, where Dustin Hoffman is gliding along a people mover inside an airport -- in between terminals, in between college and real life, floating along, in between. Being on hold with health insurance companies and healthcare subcontractors has been a major activity of mine since my mother became unable to be understood on the phone, and it is sometimes frustrating. Some days feel like that, like when I'm sitting at home in Cambridge in my pajamas, wondering if I should be doing something different than watching reality tv and folding laundry. 


Other times, when I make my mother laugh,
or she types into her iPad something really helpful like, "I need you, but your family needs you too. Go home to them" -- I feel the other sense of hold. I feel held by her love, even as she grows weaker. And I know that my love -- and the love of her partner, my sister, and her dear friends -- are holding my mom. This cocoon that illness has woven for us blocks out the light, but it also sustains us.

Fifteen Years

Fifteen years ago this morning, I was thinking about what to wear to a party where I’d see a bunch of friends I had known when I was a teenager. I was 24, in graduate school studying religion. I was young and thin and smart, with long hair and perfect skin, and I chose eggplant satin pants and a see-through shirt with velvet leaves.

On the way to the party, I mentioned to my graduate school friends that Glastonbury is an affluent suburb of Hartford, that all these friends were good friends who I’d done musicals with in high school, and that I had no idea whether we’d fit in. I mentioned that I’d heard Kevin Fanning was coming, and that he was a writer and had a good job, and had just returned from a weekend in London. I mentioned I’d had a crush on him in 8th grade, and that I hoped he would think I was hot and want to date me. I’d recently lost a lot of weight, so in my fantasy, I would flirt but eventually reject him, just for fun. I didn’t need anyone to be happy -- I was young and thin and smart, and life was good.

That’s not how it turned out.

Fifteen years ago this evening, Kevin Fanning swished into that party wearing pleather pants, a pink top, and spiked hair, bleached at the tips. He kissed me on the cheek with the familiarity of a close gay friend, and I thought, “oh, well he may not want to date me, but we can be friends and talk about cute boys.” Then the flirting began. He teased me about divinity school. We went outside for a smoke and he gave me mints. We made each other laugh, we both loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer (him, the show; me, the movie) and thought Mike Myers made the funniest movie ever (him, Austin Powers; me, Wayne’s World). We made out on the host’s bed, next to a pile of coats and a porcelain Christmas village that lit up from the inside. A friend offered us a ride home, and I rode holding Kevin’s hand. When we got to Kevin’s house, I expected him to pull me inside, but he gave me a kiss on the cheek and said he would call me.

I called him. Or emailed, I don’t remember. What I remember is the incredible anticipation of getting to see him again. There were emails and mix tapes, a first date in the North End, evenings in the austerely decorated bedroom of the house he rented with a group of college friends, kissing under Christmas lights, strung above his bookcase. That first year, we decided to move in together. During the next year, we committed to remaining happily unmarried for the rest of our lives.

We moved from our Somerville triple decker to a top-floor apartment with a roof-deck in Jamaica Plain, with exposed brick walls and a mouse problem. We moved to Illinois with our cat and our sanity barely intact from navigating a U-Haul across interstates -- the cat meowing all the way above the sound of a tinny, staticky radio.  We worked in jobs that made us unhappy, decorated our house, bought a Christmas tree, and had a baby. Baby Raimi loved the lamp above our dining room table, but the house was not ours -- so we bought one with a down payment from our parents and moved in. Raimi made me happier than I could have imagined, and I was scared that another child would take away from what we had. 

I was wrong. Baby Kinnell made our family complete. The four of us laughed together, crawled around on the floor together, played together, went for walks in the beautiful parks and playgrounds of Champaign-Urbana. Our kids rode big wheels and drew in chalk on our sidewalks. Raimi went to Kindergarten and Kinnell became everyone’s favorite at his daycare. Raimi and Kinnell are one another’s friend and protectors, and they go through life with a peaceful good humor that I attribute to their father. 

In this fifteen years, Kevin lost his Grandma Helen and his Great Auntie Anne, and the first adult to encourage his writing, his friend's beloved mother, Rosemary Cronin. I lost my father. When my father died, my mother called Kevin first, so he could come to comfort me. I was sitting at my desk, stunned at the news, when he wooshed in and wrapped his arms around me. We gathered up the kids and drove across Illinois to mourn.

In this fifteen years, we moved to Cambridge, the first place I’ve ever lived that felt like home. Our children were each diagnosed with a condition that they can live with, and I spent my spare time educating myself about medical and educational systems that I never imagined needing to know about. Kevin has been the life partner every parent dreams of -- at my side when I needed him, splitting off to care for one child while I cared for the other. Kevin washes the dishes every night and does all the laundry.

In this fifteen years, I have read the funniest, most brilliant works of fiction, startled by the fact that they were written by my husband. The humanity - embarrassing, awful and beautiful - that he captures in his stories - gives me hope. Kevin’s writing makes me feel like whatever I’m worried about will be ok. He makes me feel like it may be awful, but it’s what we have. He makes me feel like maybe it’s actually quite meaningful, this life. 

In this past year, Kevin has finished a novel, that -- I can’t even tell you how good it is. The main character, Katie Raygun, is the girl I imagined myself to be in my childhood fantasies -- tough, hilarious, smart, with kung-fu moves. She is a complete person with mistakes and stupidity and dreams and competence. She kicks ass and thinks for herself. You will read it, I promise. It’s so good.

In this past year, my mother was diagnosed with ALS, and Kevin has been the stabilizing presence that keeps our family together in the most literal sense. Because of Kevin, I will never regret the time I have spent away from my kids, helping my mother or simply being with her. While I am gone, he takes the kids to weird restaurants and shuttles them to their lessons. He takes them shopping and supervises their homework and introduces them to fruitcake. It is a lot to travel cross-country every month, and if Kevin were not my husband, I could not do this. He makes it possible for me to do this. It is a gift I cannot adequately describe.

Oh, and we got married. In the midst of our move to Cambridge. It was just the four of us and Chaplain Gay King Crede, in the small chapel at Cunningham Children’s Home. The kids signed our marriage certificate after joining us in saying aloud, “Love makes a family.” 

I love Kevin Fanning so much. Today is the anniversary that we celebrate, because it was the beginning. I am thankful every day for the gift of our commitment and the joy of our partnership and marriage. 

Happy Anniversary, my love.

She Loves You

The Beatles were the first band that really meant something to me. A nerdy preteen girl with braces and glasses, I was sure I was completely unlovable. When I popped my Rubber Soul cassette into my Sony Walkman, the world around me would fill with lightness and love. I may have had all the wrong clothes, but that's not what mattered -- all you need is love, love is all you need.

I could not, would not be forced to choose a favorite Beatle. The balance of spirit (George), critical thought (John), and love (Paul) seemed to capture it all.  I loved the idea that if he hadn't been a Beatle, Ringo would have been a hairdresser. The dorkiest Beatle was, to me, also the most relatable. 

I knew it would be very uncool to love Paul the best, especially when I'd talk with guys about it. They'd dismiss Paul as a sap, argue that Wings was proof that without John, Paul would be nothing. I remember watching The Compleat Beatles and thinking all those girls screaming about how cute Paul was were ruining the music for the real music fans. But this begs the question: why did the girls love Paul?

My high school friend Beth was an unashamed Paul fan, and I remember thinking that was so cool. Beth was a pianist and knew what she was talking about musically. If John was the guy the boys all wanted to be, then maybe Paul was the guy the girls all wanted to know.

Some of my favorite Paul songs: I've Just Seen a Face, Good Day Sunshine, I'll Follow the Sun, Blackbird.  Each of these songs has some sadness in it, uplifted by joy. How could I not imagine myself in the lines, "And then we lie / beneath a shady tree / I love her / and she loving me."


The best songs of Paul's solo career are incredibly catchy. Underneath every cheesy post-Beatles line is a propulsive melody, sung with a wink. I'm a little obsessed with "Live and Let Die," and will fight to the death to argue that it is better than every other James Bond theme and if I'm really being honest, better than the movies themselves. 

You used to say live and let live 
(You know you did, you know you did you know you did) 
But if this ever changing world in which we live in 
makes you give in and cry:
Say Live and Let Die  

The song is hilarious. It's hilarious to imagine vegetarian animal rights activist and devoted husband to Linda, Paul McCartney growing as jaded and callous as James Bond. It's just not in him. Someone called him up and said, will you write a James Bond theme song, and he said, sure. Then instead of evoking a bunch of sexy naked ladies dancing to a thrusting musical score, he came up with a musical chase scene, a bunch of puns and grammatical contortions, and the jokey old-fashioned promise to "give the other fellow hell."

I happened to catch the radio interview with Paul on NPR's Fresh Air, and was so riveted I had to listen to it uninterrupted and then listen to it again with my husband. You can hear how starstruck Terry Gross is when he discloses he's sitting at a piano and will happily demonstrate a few musical concepts for her. 


What comes through is how much Paul loves his family. He talks at length about what an important musical influence his father was. You hear in Paul a loving son. The interview doesn't mention it, but Wikipedia informs me that he named his first child after his mother. In the interview he speaks of his love for his new wife, and he sings a few lines:

What if it rained?
We didn’t care
She said that someday soon
The sun was gonna shine
And she was right,
This love of mine,
My valentine.

He describes writing these lines at a lounge piano in a hotel where he was vacationing with his wife. It was raining and he was feeling disappointed about the weather, but his wife told him she didn't care because they were together. He realized she was right, and plunked out the melody, while waiters and bus boys set up for the dinner service.The interview is really lovely, ending with him describing the room where he's recording: a light-filled music studio in the English countryside. 

Paul's life hasn't been all sunshine and happiness. He's lost a wife he loved dearly to cancer, seen his best friend murdered during a time when they were barley speaking, and seen another dear friend stabbed and nearly killed -- eventually succumbing to cancer. It's only Paul and Ringo who are left, and they get together to play music sometimes, you hear in interviews. I mean, how could they not.

That guy's been through a lot of sadness and keeps on singing sentimental, light-filled songs about love. He jokes about sex ("why don't we do it in the road?" naming his album Kisses on the Bottom) -- and he means it. He seems to know pretty well that he's the luckiest man alive.

Choosing a favorite Beatle is like choosing your favorite child: there really is enough love to go around. But at this moment in my life, I'm really into Paul. The last several years have brought a lot of pain into my life, and at times I've felt powerless and alone. Although I didn't used to like the song "Let it Be," it speaks to me now. Paul was in his early 20's when he sang, "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom: let it be." 

He was just a kid who'd lost his mother, and remembered the comfort she gave him during her life. His mother's love stayed with him, and came to him when he needed it. This week I sat by my own son's hospital bedside and told him that same thing: it's going to be ok, I promise. I love you. Paul wasn't the first to suggest that a mother's love is powerful, but not a lot of rock stars would choose that as a theme in their music, or talk about it in interviews.

There's a gender issue in all this of course -- my sense of Paul McCartney as a husband and father, as a son and someone who loves and listens to women, and remembers what they say. Sure, Paul has written a lot of silly love songs, and his attempts at political relevance are sometimes a little clunky. But I appreciate that the love Paul writes about isn't a philosophical idea of love, but a bodily kind of love: two people lying together in the shade, a mother coming to her son's side. It's a love with kisses and arms and shouts of joy. 

I always thought it was clever when, at the end of "All You Need is Love," Paul sings a phrase from "She Loves You" -- reminding everyone of where the Beatles started. But on another level, the reference inserts the idea of relationship into an abstract metaphysical statement. The way it comes out is something like:

Love is All You Need
Oh Yeah! Love is All You Need
She loves you, yeah! yeah! 
Love is All You Need

The love you take is equal to the love you make -- it's an equation and a relationship, and that relationship is all that will matter in the end. Amen.

Happy Birthday, Paul! I love you!

Easter

My family visited Mount Auburn Cemetery on Easter morning during a week in which I'd spent seven days indoors caring for sick children. As we were about to end our trip and get in the car, I took this picture of my five-year-old, Kinnell, perched in a beautiful and very old tree.

That evening, I remembered an experience I had when my older son, Raimi, was just two years old and I was pregnant with Kinnell. Getting your child to sleep is a challenge for many parents, and at the time we were in the grips of a seemingly endless struggle to get him to go to sleep on his own, in his own bed, without a parent lying next to him. Exhausted and defeated and feeling like the most permissive and unhelpful parent on earth, I lay next to Raimi and prayed to a God I wasn't sure I believed in.

Dear God, I prayed, if you are there - if anyone is there who can hear this: I am so tired. I work hard all day and do my best to take care of this child every single day. I am frustrated. I feel hopeless, and I can't believe that something as ordinary as getting a child to sleep can make me feel so powerless and alone. I wonder what's the point of it all. If you are there, can you please give me some sign -- some reason for hope?

My body was relaxed but I did not fall asleep. An experience filled my senses, more than a vision -- a sense of complete awareness. I felt myself held up by the branches of an enormous tree with smooth grey bark -- the kind of tree I used to climb as a child, whose thick branches contained easy resting places and spots to hide behind green leaves. In another branch I saw Jesus. I didn't think he was God, he was just hanging out there, not making any demand or offering any particular comfort. I felt the smoothness of the bark, its strength and solidity holding me up as solidly as the ground although I knew I was in the air. I felt safe. I knew I was being held, and it would all be ok.

It turned out that both the child I was soothing to sleep and the child I was carrying each was born with a disability. My kids' lives stretch before them, yet thanks to the insights of genetic counseling and neuropsychological analysis, we have glimpses of the course their lives will take. Kinnell will face health problems. Genetically-determined patterns in Raimi's mind mean that he perceives the world differently than most people, and may struggle to understand and have his insights understood.

I wasn't thinking of my experience of God/prayer/tree when I lifted Kinnell up into the tree at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. I just saw the tree, and it seemed to reach out and ask to be climbed. It was open and solid, smooth and ancient. So I lifted Kinnell up and took a picture.

That night I wondered, was the tree that held me when I prayed to God also holding Kinnell as his spirit formed and his body took shape inside my belly? Thinking about these two experiences of trees, a phrase came to mind: I contemplate a tree. Here is the passage it is taken from, from Martin Buber's I And Though (as translated by Walter Kaufman):

I contemplate a tree.

I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.

I can feel it as a movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the sucking of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air--and the growing itself in its darkness.

I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance, with an eye to its construction and its way of life.

I can overcome its uniqueness and form so rigorously that I recognize it only as an expression of the law--those laws according to which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or those laws according to which the elements mix and separate.

I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relation between numbers, and eternalize it.

Throughout all of this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition.

But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an it. The power of exclusiveness has seized me.

This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused.

Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the stars--all this in its eternity.

The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it -- only differently.

One should not try to dilute the meaning of the relation: relation is reciprocity.

Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.

I first read these words when I was taking a college course in 20th Century Theology. Religious studies at the University of Iowa exposed me to the idea that religion is the place where human beings can wrestle with suffering and emerge with a sense of meaning. Not that suffering is itself meaningful, but that life has meaning even in the face of suffering. In Buber's writing, this meaning emerges when we are fully present, open, and in relationship with the world as it is and other human beings who are themselves being present and open with us.

Trees and art are part of Martin Buber's work on I-Thou relationships, but his primary concern is the human relating to another human -- the I and the Thou. Kaufman uses Thou to indicate that the you is himself or herself also an I -- it is a mutual relationship between two subjects, not a subject and an object.

Buber wrote I and Thou after a student of his committed suicide. The student had come to him before killing himself, and Buber felt he had failed to fully engage with his student and his suffering. He felt intense remorse that his student had found his suffering so unbearable as to extinguish any sense of purpose, and Buber hadn't helped.

During this time I also read Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be. Writing after an early career as a Chaplain during World War I, Tillich had witnessed and grappled with the extinction of hope; and with its resurrection. The crucifixion of Christ on the cross conveys this experience for Tillich, and as a non-Christian I was moved by the power of this understanding of the symbol of the cross. In practical terms, I realized, we live in a world that is shot through with suffering. The rational response would be nihilism, and yet we have hope. We believe it is worth it to go on living. Most of us do go on.

Studying religion at the graduate level, I hoped to find a clear sense of the way towards deeper connection, truth and meaning. I found many examples of the religious life, but I did not find my own path. The religious paths I studied had been carved out largely in solitude by Buddhist monastics, Roman Catholic mystics, social justice martyrs. I tried prayer, meditation, visited many different houses of worship, posed as a Unitarian Universalist. I lived my life relationally, not in solitude. I met my life partner and settled on working for a living. I became a parent. I felt I lost my way.

Yet, in the moments when I have felt most constrained and burdened by the work of raising a family and keeping a home, I have experienced these flashes of insight and meaning. I contemplate a tree and meaning emerges.

Above, Buber's phrase, "if will and grace are joined" seems to hold some key to understanding the process by which this meaning emerges. Through an act of will, we can choose mindfulness and seek to remain open. Through some external grace, meaning breaks through.

So perhaps the path I am walking is not as well-defined by the footsteps of those with the time to document and map their way; but it does seem to have been worn deep by the laboring of everyday families and communities seeking to live and to love. Not everyone uses their will to create openness to grace, but how is a monastic retreat chopping wood and preparing meals so different from the daily work of dishes and laundry, working and cooking dinner, caring for children? Doesn't patting a child to sleep require the same discipline as sitting zazen? Your body is tired, your mind strains against the monotony, you lose your sense of self. Isn't the work of parenting, working, loving and friendship just as abundant with richness as any work there is?

I'm not trying to be lazy or get out of doing the spiritual work so many teachers have written about. I'm seeing the path I have been given, and finding that the difference between a right path and a wrong path may be an illusion. Is the difference really the path, or the openness of the one who walks it?

What I did over Spring vacation

I spent most of this April vacation focused on things not going right, that I could do better, that were imperfect and disappointing. In each corner of my family someone I love is suffering with injury or serious illness. It must be frustrating for them to feel broken and sick, and it is frustrating for me to realize there's nothing I can do to heal the people I love.

Uncle Jason came to visit and together we traveled to see Kevin and Jason's mom for an early Passover celebration. Iris and I took a trip to Crown Market for prepared kosher sides and stood together in line, laughing about the mad rush to prepare for the holidays, and the deals the bakery was offering before closing for the holiday. Pareve black and white cookies were 10/$10 -- who could resist? We would take them home since Iris would not eat anything with hametz during the holiday.

Iris cooked a beautiful meal and we ate with silver utensils off of good china. We recited the names of the plagues and the children wore funny masks. We talked about freedom and justice, and considered the meaning of the elements arranged on the seder plate. Something about life and sacrifice, food, family, and staying together as a community. It was a lovely holiday, clouded by the sense of all I'm not doing to raise my children with a clear sense of their religious upbringing. The kids were confused but delighted -- Raimi insisting several times that he was a FIRST BORN and had a special connection to that particular plague.

We returned to Cambridge with Uncle Jason, but Raimi came down with something like the flu -- high fever and chills, coughing, exhausted and achy for days. Jason took Kinnell out to the park and museum while I stayed home with Raimi. It was a godsend that Jason was there to get Kinnell out of the house. We were sad when Kevin had to take him to the airport on Wednesday morning.

The plan had been to travel to Canada on Wednesday but we postponed our trip when Raimi's fever climbed to 103. With Kevin at work all week, I spent 3 more days inside with the kids, making soup and jello for one, entertaining the other. Raimi watched entire seasons of Mythbusters and Kinnell drew picture after picture of his mommy smiling. We decorated construction paper flowers and bunnies. We read books inside a blanket fort in the corner of the living room. When Raimi's fever broke I began to think we might be able to get on the road by morning... until Kinnell's temperature began to rise. I let him nap inside the blanket fort while I did dishes and laundry, coaxing a still pale-looking Raimi to read a book instead of watching tv. I'm such a bad mother, I thought, to let him have so much screen time, sick or not.

When I realized it was almost Easter I became overwhelmed remembering the holidays of my childhood. Yes, my kids were sick and plans had changed, but I thought surely there is something wrong with me that we don't belong to a faith community; that the kids had no new spring clothes; that we don't have friends in the neighborhood we can just drop in on; and I don't have the perfect recipe to pull off the shelf in keeping with tradition.

In my family Easter meant time with extended family, an indoor easter egg hunt, new dresses, a full sanctuary at our UU church, and a beautiful meal cooked by my mother. I was not raised to believe in the trinity or resurrection, but the holiday offered the chance to welcome the spring and consider the role of Jesus the social justice activist -- alongside other great men and women who have fought for the rights of the poor and oppressed. I was raised to believe that Jesus was just a man, not perfect or better -- as imperfect and human as the rest of us.

Kevin & I took stock on Friday night. One kid on the mend, the other's fever reaching a peak of 103, I raced to the store for more ibuprofen and tylenol, and candy and trinkets for Easter baskets. Saturday morning I left Kinnell with Kevin while Raimi and I ran errands to pull together a very human and imperfect Easter dinner. Kevin suggested dolmades, the kids wanted corn dogs -- Raimi wanted to decorate them like bunnies. We found allergy-friendly cake mix, organic icing and natural food-coloring at Whole Foods. Raimi's vision was to bake a cake and decorate it using the candy the Easter Bunny would bring. We debated what flowers to buy for the table, settling on a mix of fiery tulips and yellow snap dragons.

Today, Easter morning, Kinnell woke up at 5 unable to swallow, feverish, thirsty and sad. We gave him some advil and I snuggled him back to sleep, and when he woke up he felt well enough to appreciate the nests of candy and eggs tucked away in nooks throughout our tiny apartment living room. We ate breakfast and snuck bites of candy. I worked on a project on my computer and kevin read a book on his Kindle while the kids played with legos.

We baked and iced the cake, discovering just how awful the organic frosting and food coloring really was. But the kids excitedly created jellybean flowers and birds' nests, then floated marshmallow peeps on a purple "pond" and brownish "grass." Kinnell unwrapped a caramel egg, declared "this is gonna be funny" and poked it into the surface of the cake.

We got dressed and went for a walk around Mt. Auburn cemetery -- enjoying the view from the top of its mountaintop tower. I realized just how sedentary I'd been all week as my tired and shaking legs carried me back down the 95 steps inside the monument. As we walked around the grounds Kevin and I noticed the many older family plots containing children. We found a tombstone sculpted like a bassinet. Another monument depicted a boy cradling a baby in his arms, with the names and dates of an 8-year-old and 15-month-old.

We are lucky, I said to Kevin.

We saw tadpoles in Willow Lake and two turtles sunning themselves on a log. Dogwoods, forsythia and magnolia were blooming and the graves of the newer section were adorned with potted tulips, hyacinth, and easter lilies. We found the grave markers for Buckminster Fuller, Amy Lowell, and B. F. Skinner. We took Kinnell's picture cradled in the thick arms of a tree that looked as old as the cemetery itself. Its insides were beginning to hollow but its branches were dotted with the bright green leaves of early spring.

We came home and began dinner. Kevin and I rolled out the grape leaves and discussed how big to make them and how tightly to roll them -- our words part of the ritual for making dolmades. How many times have my mother, sister, Kevin, father, brother-in-law talked about the arrangement of ingredients within a perfect stuffed leaf.

We made salad and chicken strips (no corn dogs at Whole Foods). Kevin opened a bottle of wine and I chopped vegetables and apples for the kids. We shared what we were thankful for and talked about whether this had been a good April vacation -- what our favorite parts had been.

It was not a perfect dinner, a perfect week, a perfect holiday. We stumbled through the ancient rituals and I felt inadequate at nearly every turn -- doing my best to soothe my children and connect with family despite all plans going wrong. Holidays bring this out in me, this fear of inadequacy, awareness of my imperfections. I despair at the blooming pile of dishes and nearly miss the blooming branches outside the window of our apartment. I feel time passing us by as I fail to find the perfect OG-certified tutor or social skills group for Raimi, or give Kinnell enough attention as his vocabulary explodes and he needs me to talk with him. Still, I do my best for my children.

Religions speak of sacred time, and it is tempting to think of sacredness as an escape from the everyday instead of finding the sacred within the mundane details of our lives: Drawing pictures for one another with Kinnell inside a blanket fort. Listening to Raimi describe why he loves the mall and delighting him with a warm pretzel. The view of Boston from a mountain in Cambridge. The pots of flowers left by mourners, the thick trunk of a wisdom-old tree. Jellybeans on cake, my husband's hand taking mine while watching Netflix, the squeals of delight as he tickles two sick kids, shouting "laughter is the best medicine!"

It's an illusion that Spring brings new life. Spring comes every year of this same old life. May I be reminded of the beauty of my life as it already was, the beauty of my life as it continues humbly on.

Meditations

Meditation for Riding the Subway

My feet are flat on the solid floor.

My body is moving through space.

The subway car rattles.

What is that burning smell?

Meditation for Doing the Dishes

Clatter of bowls.

My four-year-old sorts the silverware

carefully into each compartment.

Perched on a chair, he holds up the basket to show what he has done.

Under my washcloth, stains vanish from the countertop.

Water and soap. My son's soft skin.

Meditation for a Science Guy Who Treats Me Like I'm an Idiot

You're not the first boy to make that assumption.

They were wrong, but I allowed myself to fold inward and stop trying.

Math used to appear to me in visual models.

I was filled with wonder at how explainable it all is and how beautiful.

The pop and click of scientific clarity,

a light switch, a light bulb, a lightness, a freedom: understanding.

A stronger girl would have had light sabers and calculus to defend herself.

I decided I was not good at math.

Take a piece of graph paper.

Do you create a graph, or fold it small?

A paper crane. Peace.