The Little People in the House

March 11, 2016March 10, 2016

Regarding the Miscarriage That Led Us To You

Someday I’ll tell you how empty we felt
when the nurse left the room, the scan of your
mother’s womb, empty and dark, like a sun-
spot. The Catholic doctor
who did the second scan tried to spin it
into light.

“My mother had a dozen kids and nearly as many
misses,” he said (or something like that)
with a sympathetic smile, but your
mother still wept all the way home,
and for days after, wondering who that small space
would have been.

There

were

large

spaces

our

lives

during

those

later

days. The minutes and hours stretched
like an awkward verse pried open and scraped
clean.

Then, two months later,
two months after the emptiness
two months after the breath-taking scans
your mother became pregnant
with you.

I’m sorry to say it, but we didn’t dare hope for you
in those early days, so recent was that vast
emptiness. That lost future. We held our breath at the
first doctor’s visit
and the second
and especially later, when your heart would stop
for short periods of time. Your mother strapped on
a machine that tracked your beats through the night,
the line on the paper sometimes straightening out like
a desert horizon
or a needle with no string trailing behind.

When you finally slid into the world, angry and pooping
all over your mother, we laughed and cried and named you
Abra, “mother of nations,” from my favorite book
East of Eden
because, yes, we had left the garden behind, but we
also realized there was still good in this world, even after
the empty spaces.

Perhaps I could even say there is good in this world
because of the empty spaces
but that is a leap over a void
I am not yet prepared to take.

February 11, 2016February 10, 2016

My First Ash Wednesday Service, and a Suggested Lenten Practice For My White Friends

I’ve never been to an Ash Wednesday service before. This is just our second Lenten season at Saint James Episcopal Church, and last year we couldn’t make it to the Wednesday service, so when we headed downtown yesterday, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.

“Stop being so happy,” I told the kids as we walked towards the church. “This is not a joyful service. They put ashes on your head. It’s basically death.”

The kids stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.

I didn’t have anything to be afraid of, though. Reverend Lauren was as kind and gracious as ever, and she welcomed all the children to sit on the carpet up on stage, at the front of the church. She brought out various elements – water, light, oil, and ash – and explained their significance. After she explained the meaning behind Ash Wednesday, she walked around to each of the children and made the sign of the cross on their forehead with the ash.

“Remember you are made of dust, and to dust you will return.”

It was a somber service, yes, but there was a depth to it, a heaviness of spirit that somehow seemed right. I closed my eyes as Reverend Lauren put the ashes on my forehead, and, oh, how human I felt. Suddenly, the shortness of my life was on display for me to see, lasting no longer than the time it took her to mark me. I looked around at my fellow congregants and there was something obscene about the mark, as if I was seeing them naked. But there was also something beautiful about it, as if we had all finally admitted something very important, and now we could move forward.

I opened my eyes, my soul stunned. I glanced over and watched as she did the same to Leo, and I had to fight back the tears. It is one thing to acknowledge your own mortality, but quite another to be reminded that your one-year-old, with his new breath and his innocent eyes, is also marked. He will someday return to dust.

“Remember you are made of dust, and to dust you will return.”

* * * * *

I’ve been thinking a lot about what to give up or take on during Lent this year, and for the last few days one word has been projected into my mind: “Listen.” I haven’t been exactly sure what to think of this.

Then came the recent, trendy firestorms. Cam Newton, the black quarterback for the Carolina Panthers, and all the criticism surrounding him. Beyonce’s new video, Formation, and the backlash against it from many of my white friends. So many issues involving people of color, and so many smug, dismissive, insulting white voices.

Friends, during Lent, I commit to actively listening to my friends who are people of color. Will you join me in this? I say actively because I AM GOING TO SEEK THEM OUT AND ASK THEM TO TALK. My Facebook and Twitter friends. Eric, from across the street. Shayna, my wonderful new friend at Saint James.

For the next forty days, when you feel yourself getting ready to SHOUT your opinion about something that involves someone who’s not white, will you stop, take a deep breath, and find someone of color who doesn’t see things the way you do? Instead of simply spouting your opinion to the world so that all of your like-minded friends can like it or pat you on the back, will you ask people of color why they like Beyonce’s video, and then not argue your own side? Will you ask them how they feel about police brutality without saying anything in return? Will you ask them how they feel about racism in this country and simply listen? Will you ask them how they were treated growing up without comparing it to your own childhood? Will you ask them about the fears they have for their children without dismissing those fears?

Most of us have very deep, foundational reasons for feeling the way we do about certain things. Maybe it’s because of where we grew up, or who we grew up around, or what we’ve seen in the world. Maybe it’s what we were taught, or what we experienced, or what we believe. But other people have seen other things, and if we can stop shouting past each other, if we can stop and listen…I don’t know. It seems the right place to start.

Will you join me in dedicating this Lenten season to listening?

* * * * *

We got home, and we ate dinner, and the kids were playing around the house. I walked into the bathroom, and I caught my reflection in the mirror. The black mark on my forehead shocked me. I had forgotten about it. Instinctively, I reached up to wipe it away. But then I left it there.

How quickly we forget that we are all only ash. How quickly we forget.

February 3, 2016February 3, 2016

The Massive Nature of This Calling: Parent

“I’ll get him,” I say, at dark-o’clock
in the morning, rolling slowly out of bed.
I am older now
than I once was, and my body sometimes
creaks like a tired house in a storm.

I walk the hall, avoiding the toys.
“Good morning, you,” I say, lifting Leo and burying
my face into his neck, his cheeks, smelling his warmth.
A one-year-old is still so close to their beginning
you can see their rings expanding, if you watch,
if you pay attention. He looks concerned.
“MaMA?” he asks. “MaMA?”
His voice is like the call of a baby bird. He emphasizes
the second syllable.
“She’s sleeping,” I whisper, kissing his cheek again.
“Let’s get brother.”

We walk the dark hall, Leo and I. We go
into my oldest son’s room. He sleeps spread out
on his bed, a lanky boy-man. Waking him, I
remember when it was only him. Time
is wind through the trees, a spirit you see
only when you do not look directly at it.
“Wake up,” I say, shaking the outline of him,
hills under a blanket.
“Five minutes?” his now-deep voice asks
from deep within a well.
“Five minutes,” I say, and walk out
with Leo.

We climb the stairs to heaven, to the place
my girls sleep. We climb the steep steps and
lean into Abra’s room.
“Good morning,” I say, and her eyes open. She
sheds sleep the way a baby duck shakes water
from itself. She smiles. She sits up. She
stretches.
“Hi, Leo,” she says.
He waves, and the way he waves is by opening
and closing his hands, both of them, as if squeezing
away the night, or clutching
and clutching again,
each and every moment.

We walk into Lucy’s room and I put Leo on the bed.
He crawls towards her. She sighs and rolls over.
“Sleep good?” I ask. She nods.
“Leo,” she says, long and slow,
as if meeting him for the first
time, and he kisses her, and she laughs.
“Time to get up,” I say.
“Leave Leo here,” she says.

I always go to Sam last. He hates
going to bed. He hates
waking up. He progresses reluctantly.
I switch on the night, bringing day into
the room. “Sam-oh,” I call to him, over
that great distance. “Sam-oh.”
He is still as water. He sleeps in the depths, in some
other world, some other universe. My voice
comes to him as deep calls
to deep, travels the paths of comets, around
moons and between distant stars.
He is still so far away.
“I’m coming back,” I say. “You’d better
be up by then.”

When I think of these five lives,
and the sixth sleeping inside Mai, I realize
the massive nature of this calling.
Parent.
Each child, a universe.
Each mind, a fresh field of snow.
The tracks we leave behind cannot
easily be smoothed over.
This can be a good thing
if we tread lightly.

February 1, 2016February 1, 2016

Listening For a Heartbeat

Af0sF2OS5S5gatqrKzVP_Silhoutte — Photo by Mayur Gala via Unsplash

“It’s going to be fine,” I said.

Winter is a strange time of year. One night you spend far too much time staring out the front window, watching the snow fall through the angular light. Less than a week later you’re driving thread-thin country roads, the fields white and heavy, the runoff wearing ruts everywhere. It’s life, I guess, the cold and the sun, the clouds and the blue.

When Maile and I drove out of the city to a birthing center for Maile’s first midwife appointment, the tension was all around us. A January day that felt like spring. But the tension was also inside us. There was the normal excitement of going to the first appointment for this baby. There was also apprehension, the memory of two prior pregnancies where the first appointment didn’t go so well: missing heartbeats, dark circles where a tiny baby should be, miscarried hope.

“It’s going to be fine,” I kept saying, and Maile kept nodding her head on autopilot.

“It’s going to be fine.”

* * * * *

We sat in the examination room and waited. The clock moves slowest in examination rooms, of that I’m sure.

“Is that my uterus?” Maile asked.

I glanced at the desk beside me, where Maile was looking, and there was an almost-life sized plastic model of a woman’s reproductive system. It was kind of strange, seeing it all there in 3D. It was rather…informative.

“I don’t think it’s yours,” I said. “But yeah, I think that’s a uterus.”

“Huh,” she said.

The midwife came in and asked all the normal questions. Yes, this would be baby number six. Yes, this was pregnancy number eight. No, we wouldn’t be taking another copy of the healthy baby book. We had a few extra copies at home.

“You look nervous,” she said.

“It’s just the heartbeat,” Maile said quietly. “I’ll feel better once we hear it.”

“In that case, let’s find it right now,” the midwife said, smiling a kind smile.

* * * * *

How many times in life do we find ourselves on the cusp of something great…or something devastating? How many times do we have to wait for an answer, or a diagnosis, or an outcome? How many times will we sit in the unknown, the terrifying, with nothing to hold on to?

I think the hardest places to hold on to hope are in those arenas where our hope keeps turning out fruitless. When we so desperately want a child, but the months keep coming and going. When we so badly want the cancer to vanish, but it keeps showing up somewhere else. When we keep coming around to the same submissions, the same proposals, the same promotions, and we keep getting passed over.

Every. Single. Time.

But wait. Because even in those times, even in those disappointments, hope was not fruitless. Hope was not pointless.

Even after our last miscarriage, we buried what remained in a small box, and on the lid of that box was the word hope. Even after my last long spell without work, we regathered ourselves and put one foot in front of the other, hoping things would turn around. Even after we lost our way, we kept hoping we could find that path again.

“And now these three remain: hope, faith, and love. And the greatest of these is love.”

Yes, perhaps love is the greatest, but hope came first, and I think that’s saying something. Sometimes, hope is all we have, but it makes a firm foundation for whatever is coming next. Or whatever is not coming next.

* * * * *

Maile climbed up on to the table, paper rustling, and the midwife pulled up her shirt, exposed Maile’s rounding belly. She put some gel on the little wand and pressed it down on her skin. We didn’t even have time to worry. We barely had time to wonder.

Thump, thump, thump: 159 of them per minute, life racing around inside of her. The occasional Thwamp! when baby kicked. It was like radio waves coming from a distant planet, an entirely separate universe, yet that universe was right there in the room with us.

“There it is,” the midwife said. “Baby’s heartbeat.”

Maile teared up. She looked over at me.

“It’s going to be fine,” I said. “It’s going to be fine.”

January 14, 2016January 13, 2016

Some Thoughts Regarding Baby Number Six. Yes. You Read That Right.

Later this year, Maile and I will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. That’s a long time. Seventeen years ago, it was a different millennium. We spent our first New Year’s Eve together in 1999 as newlyweds in Jacksonville, Florida, waiting for the world to collapse under the weight of all those nines turning into zeroes. Seventeen years ago not very many people had an email account. In 1999, Justin Bieber was five years old.

The main reason I bring this up is simply to say that 17 years is a long time, and after 17 years you get to know someone pretty well. So when Maile leaned around the corner a few weeks ago, her head peeking out of the bathroom, and asked me the following question, I knew she wasn’t joking. I had seventeen years of experience in knowing the difference.

“So, are you ready for baby number six?” she asked, her eyes round, like a deer in the headlights. I just kind of stared at her. Everything went silent, except, of course, the sound of our five children playing in other parts of the house. Yes. Five plus one does indeed equal six.

* * * * *

It’s difficult to talk about this baby number six because I have more than a few close friends who would love to have baby number one, but for who-knows-what-reason, they haven’t yet. When I compare how I feel right now to how I know they would feel with a baby on the way, I feel a little guilty, a little ungrateful.

This is one of the most difficult things in life, the unfairness of it all. It seems like things should be more even. It seems like blessings should fall in a way that looks less random, makes more sense.

Good fortune, luck, blessings…whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t make me feel as ecstatic as it did when I was younger. I think I recognize better now the pain on the other side of the gift, the emptiness that trails along behind good things. I am happy, yes, I am grateful and amazed and full of thanks, but I also bear the weight of those who still seek, those who still yearn after something, something really good, something that just never seems to arrive.

Can we live in that tension between the having and the wanting? The blessing and the waiting? Can we celebrate and mourn with those we love at the same time?

* * * * *

To be honest, my answer to the question Maile asked from the bathroom was, “Not yet. I will be, when it’s time, but not yet.” I know I’ll be ready. I know after I hear the heartbeat in a few weeks, I’ll even be excited, falling in love with this next addition to our wonderful family. But right now? Honestly? I feel too old to be setting out on this journey again – I turn 40 in December. Leo will be just over two, and he still isn’t sleeping well, and I’m tired. Lord, I’m tired. Maile and I both are.

Thinking about baby number six is also tough because Maile has miscarried twice before. Twice we’ve gone in for the first scan at around 12 to 14 weeks only to discover there was no heartbeat. Things were not progressing. Twice we’ve left that appointment in tears. Twice we’ve gone home and gathered our children in a mass of humanity on the couch and explained what happened to the baby growing inside mama and then had a huge, family cry together.

And we can get through that again, if Maile’s upcoming scan reveals the worst. But I feel too old for that, too. Too weary, right now, for deep grief.

* * * * *

I remember when we found out Maile was pregnant with Cade, thirteen years ago. We had been trying for six months and Maile fretted she would never be able to get pregnant. We lived in England. I worked in London, and she was taking a cooking class at Leith’s School of Food and Wine, and everything they cooked made her morning-sickness tummy feel like throwing up. I would meet her at the tube station and we’d board the train and she would hand me the food she’d made and I would devour it.

That first night after we found out she was pregnant, I found a kid’s clothing store downtown and bought her an outfit for the baby with a little giraffe on it. She cried when I gave it to her on the train. We sat close the whole ride home, her head resting on my shoulder, the weight of the existence of a new human being heavy on our souls.

* * * * *

I also remember Maile’s last miscarriage, three years ago, the two of us on the floor in the bathroom with her going back and forth between throwing up and passing blood clots. I ladled the ruby red human tissue out of the water with a slotted spoon so the doctors could analyze it. I put it in a baggy and we handed it in, feeling a sense of betrayal and deep loss. There was so much there, in the clear plastic. An entire world. A universe.

She slept for days on end. The kids asked what was wrong. I told them. It was like a nightmare but duller around the edges.

* * * * *

Now, here we are once again. We’ve got the noise and chatter of five wonderful children in the house, the mess and the chaos and the love to prove it. We’ve got a one-year-old who I lay down beside almost every night, the carpet leaving marks on the side of my face. And inside Maile, that miracle.

This is not the life I expected or planned. I can assure you of that. But it has more depth, more meaning, than I ever knew a life could have. The sadness is heavier, the joy less transient. Of course, it’s not just the children that make it that way – it’s the friends, the successes, the failures, the questions, the doubts, the certainties. The blessings. The empty spaces. All of it, balled up into one beautiful thing called life.

You know, just in writing this out I can feel my answer to Maile’s question shifting towards a yes. I am ready. There is a space here in our family for this little one.

Now, we wait.

January 12, 2016January 11, 2016

This is the City You’re Afraid Of

The four oldest kids and I bundle up and walk out the front door, on to the sidewalk that runs along James Street. It’s 5:45pm and January, which means it’s almost dark, the sun drowning in the buildings that line the western sky. And it’s cold – the wind whips through the intersection of Prince and James, and we wait at the corner for the light to change, and we all sort of gather closer together like penguins waiting out the darkest days.

“Look at the moon!” Lucy says, and it’s there, barely visible, a thin, rounded silver thread. We follow it as if it is a guiding star, all the way to the Y.

Inside, the girl at the desk smiles and welcomes us and my glasses fog up because of the humidity from the pool and we walk up a long flight of steps to the second-floor gym. The three younger kids are absorbed in a cloud of children for an hour of Fit Kids fun, while Cade goes to the other half of the gym for basketball practice. Older neighborhood teenagers hang around the margins, waiting for an extra moment when they can shoot some hoops before being shooed off the court.

One of the teenagers – a tall, tough-looking kid – grabs Cade’s basketball from where he left it under the bleachers. Cade doesn’t need it during practice, since they use the basketballs from the Y. The tall, tough kid dribbles the ball during Cade’s practice. I have to admit: I’m a little worried he might walk off with it. We’ve already lost a few things here in the city. I’m trying to be smarter about this without going all paranoid.

Cade’s practice ends and the kids fun time is over and the gym erupts in chaos between the classes. We gather our coats and walk towards the door. I walk over to the tall, tough-looking kid who has been playing with Cade’s ball.

“Hey, can I get that ball back? It’s my son’s.” I’m kind of expecting him to give me a hard time.

He stares at me for a moment, then smiles a kind smile and bounce-passes the ball to me.

“No problem, sir,” he says in a respectful voice. “Thank you.”

“Thanks,” I say, and we leave, the kids and I, back out into the dark and the cold and the short walk home.

But I can’t help think about the kid in the gym, the tough-looking kid I was worried about approaching. I’m a country boy, and I grew up fearing the city. With the five words he said to me, I could quickly tell he was a good kid. A kind kid.

He reminded me of another story, another instance here in the city, when the kids and I walked down the sidewalk on our way to the park. A group of teenagers emerged from a side alley and walked towards us. But they weren’t looking for trouble.

“Over here, kid!” the oldest one shouted to Sammy, motioning for him to throw him his football. Sammy glanced at me.

“Throw it to him,” I said, shrugging. “Go ahead.” Sammy did.

“Go on, go deep,” the kid said to Sammy, and again Sammy shrugged and this time he ran long, dashing down the sidewalk. The leader of this posse heaved a pass, and Sammy made an amazing over-the-shoulder grab.

“Whoa, boy!” the kid shouted to his friends, laughing and hitting them and generally making a big fuss over Sammy. “You see that kid? He can catch! Sweet grab, kid!”

Sammy, of course, grinned from ear to ear.

I only say this because this is the city you’re afraid of. These are the kids that make you nervous when you walk the streets.