So many momentous occasions this past week; it seems fitting to write them down, lest I forget.
Last Sunday was Mother's Day, and Moriah's dedication day. In our faith tradition, we don't baptize babies with water, but we do bless them--we bring them to the front of the church where our minister hugs them in his arms, charges us parents with faith-filled parenting, and blesses our children with prayer. It was a milestone for me in particular; a public surrendering of what we have been given, an opportunity for me to say, yes, here she is, I am laying it down now, all the pain and grief, and wanting now just to bless her, to stop the cursing of the last months and open my heart to the blessing. The pastor prayed a prayer that incorporated the biblical meaning of her name, including a verse that has become very poignant for me, when King David says of purchasing the land of Mount Moriah, "I will not give to the Lord that which costs me nothing." I think that verse so relevant--mostly, I think of how much it has cost us to birth Moriah--but the pastor turned the verse on its head for me, and reminded me how much God's love costs Him, how precious (what a "pearl," Moriah's middle name) Moriah is to Him. These reflections make me want to say, if God's love can hurt him, and it certainly did, then it's okay for my love for Moriah to hurt me, too. Because it does hurt. On Sunday it hurt to see Moriah held up for all to see, to imagine how her diagnosis was dawning on all who saw her. It hurt to stand with two other families whose babies are pictures of health, to wish all good for them, while also carrying so much that has not been good for us. So mostly, I found again that this surrendering stuff is not easy, and is ongoing, and messy. And mostly, I found I was tired, as most moms of three kids are, and was grateful finally to return to my seat in church and, at the end of the day, to send our well-wishers home and lay down to rest.
On Wednesday we celebrated Orilus' four-year anniversary of his bone marrow transplant. I made both of our boys cards (Jackson, for donating four years ago, Orilus for fighting his way back to health and for both of them, remembering God's grace in our family) and got up early and baked them cinnamom rolls. Jason was home that morning (he had to take Moriah to an audiology appointment, which didn't go that well...Moriah has fluid in her ears and is probably hearing us "through a swimming pool" only, and may need tubes in her ears in a couple months), and I was grateful for family time around the breakfast table. Except when we sat down to eat with cards and cinnamon rolls, both the boys were incredibly grumpy. One refused to turn towards the table to eat, preferring instead not even to look at us (I forget why this was, but it may have been because we had forced him to actually DO his homework the night before, which, as you know, is no different than any other night, but my gosh, WHAT were we thinking?!). And they both refused to speak a word. Jason: "Boys, did you read the cards mom made you?" Boys: blank stares. And so on. And so, friends, we marked another milestone feeling very tired indeed, and again I was reminded...it's easier for me to feel spiritual and amazed and thankful about such milestone than it is to actually help your kids to feel such things.
And so. And so Thursday was Moriah's 10-month birthday, and by then, we had even grumpier boys than the day before, and knew better than to try to mark the thing except to say, "Hey, boys, it's Moriah's birthday today!" for which we may have gotten a nod or something nearly as significant.
And then came this weekend, which was no marker at all, just a bright and warm and sunny wekeend. And we put down a lot of things we wanted to get done, and used some time to have a picnic supper in the backyard together. And to play a (really rough...ow!) game of basketball together while Moriah watched from the sidelines. To take a walk. To hike the pond. And so on. Our boys were sometimes grumpy, sometimes not, but by the end of today, I had this thought: the chaos and craziness of our life is not really guaranteed to go away. We have three very needy kids. And just two parents. And a dog. And new friends to meet and make. And a whole Winchell clan that needs us in various ways, for moving into their houses and bringing their trash to the dump and so on. And our own plans, for date nights and things like that, don't really happen hardly ever, what with people cancelling and unable to help us out. All this was nearly enough to make me crazy yesterday. So I walked for four miles, came back a couple hours later (it didn't take me a couple hours to walk four miles...I stopped to read a book and feed Moriah and check out a consignment shop), and by the end of it all, I realized it's all craziness, a lot of the time, except what is in me...that doesn't have to be craziness. So instead of waiting for the next gala date night, or the "break" I think I really deserve but am probably not going to get, I'm going to do what I know to do...breathe deeply. Do yoga in the living room. Journal. Reach out for Jesus. Take walks. Ignore things that "have" to get done in favor of the things that keep ME from being un-done.
This morning in church our speaker was talking about God IN us. I do believe that. Which means...which means when all else is grumpy or disappointing or sad, I can be well, empowered, strengthened, and even, yes...at peace.
I told this to Moriah today, and she gave me a big smile. So I think she agrees, too. Peace is possible. Even in the crazy Winchell household.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
for Eddie's mom
Yesterday, our transplant friend, Eddie, returned to 6 West. The transplant floor. The "isolation floor." He is sick again, sick with seizures and trying for four long years to recover from the same transplant that turned by son free in one year. Last night, I sat with Eddie's mom in a too-familiar room, talking about the number of Mother's Days we've spent in hospitals (me: one, her: 4). She reminded me of an essay I had written after Orilus' transplant, when he was re-admitted to the floor. I wrote the essay for her, and our other friend, Crystal, whose little girl didn't survive the transplant after all. So much sadness, so much history, so much suffering.
Kori, my friend, I looked up the essay in my files for you this morning. Here it is again, friend, to make you laugh, to remind you how far you have come, and mostly to say, what other mothers cannot possibly understand, I do. Happy Mother's Day to the most courageous mom I know. Sending love to your room on 6 West today.
On Taking Out the Trash
Written for Kori and Crystal
June 14, 2006
Melissa N. Winchell
I left my house Tuesday for Jimmy Fund Clinic and haven’t been back. We ran out the door—running later than I had planned, because as I was tying my Adidases Orilüs informed me that he wouldn’t eat the free Clinic food. And so I had spent precious minutes scooping out a lunch of mac-and-cheese, digging out the cooler from the basement, scrounging up freezer packs and Cheez-Its, finding Gladware in the mess underneath my kitchen sink.
The last thing I did, as we rushed out the door, juggling three heavy bags—a backpack for Clinic, half-full with meds, a gym bag for overnight “just in case,” and the cooler—was to empty the kitchen trash.
Soon after being re-admitted to 6 West later that same night, I stood outside another mother’s room, recounting the story of bagging up the kitchen trash with nostalgia. This surprised me. But suddenly that single act—glaring accusingly at the trash can, which seemed suddenly too-small for all our weekend laziness—that momentary pause (should I leave it for Jason to discover after work, or empty it myself?), seemed precious. The usually obnoxious bending down below the kitchen sink for a trash bag (why is it that I always seem too tall for things?) seemed painfully usual. And overwhelmingly, I wanted nothing more than to be back in my kitchen, squeaking open the closet door and reaching for a too-full bag of garbage. To be that carefree about throwing out the tangible evidence of being home, of a life-almost-normal.
Instead, I am here at Children’s Hospital again. I don’t have to take out the trash here—the two huge gray receptacles in our room get emptied three times a day, my favorite trash-emptier being a man from Port-au-Prince named Gin. I make a home here as best as I can, but nothing is really mine. I make beds with linens foraged from two linen carts in the back hallway (I will choose nothing but the yellow-edged sheets, because they are the only ones that fit easily, despite the nurse’s insistence that the teal and navy threaded sheets are all the same size). I walk to the laundry room—five floors away—wearing flip-flops while others walk the same halls in business suits and uniform. I feel about the hospital like those who haven’t lived like this can possibly understand—it is one large dormitory to me now, a big place around which I wear my pajamas and messy hair, the Au Bon Pain staff smiling at me in familiarity.
My friends here, women on 6 West, are friends of the strangest sort—when we talk, we sound half insane, laughing too loudly at the craziness of our isolated rooms (one friend’s window gapes only at a brick wall all day, without sky), of the housekeeper that sits in our family room for hours every night watching Spanish soaps instead of doing her job. We lament the babies and children who have already passed. We gossip about the nurses who wake our children too early in the morning to weigh them, or who loudly throw open our doors at night and disrupt our sleep and invade any sense of privacy we still have left. We swear more than any of us ever have, and declare to each other, in our darkest moments, that this place is hell, a place of great suffering. We don’t usually cry about the big stuff, the scary things the doctors tell us before they return to their Starbucks and gleaming white computers, or the undertow of fear and cynicism that bites at our proverbial ankles. We cry, instead, over the littlest of things. The smallest of procedures, after having survived chemotherapy or radiation or surgeries. The afternoon emesis, after days of having watched our children endure tens (is it hundreds now?) of such sickness. The blood counts that crawl forward only to fall back again the following day.
This is life here on 6 West. We don’t take out the trash here. We envy the moms “on the outside” (as if our stay here is some kind of incarceration) who probably took their kids to school this morning (did they even appreciate it, we ask?). We wonder if we can still remember to cook and long for homemade meals, treating ourselves to Bertuccis only when the Resource Manager comes by to offer us a gift card as if we are the hospital’s version of parents on welfare (and, considering what we’re here for, we are). We scoff sometimes at the “stressed out” lives we used to lead and question if we will ever be that worked up about such pettiness again.
On 6 West, we realize what we are no longer free to do on our own, what suffering has surrounded us for so long without our attention, and we begin to pray in earnest for relief. We want to be mindless again. We want to rush out the door, carelessly throw all evidence of time-lived into the backyard, and go about our day. Just like we used to do ourselves, back before we picked through minutes like homeless women hoping to redeem a life for a price we cannot name.
Kori, my friend, I looked up the essay in my files for you this morning. Here it is again, friend, to make you laugh, to remind you how far you have come, and mostly to say, what other mothers cannot possibly understand, I do. Happy Mother's Day to the most courageous mom I know. Sending love to your room on 6 West today.
On Taking Out the Trash
Written for Kori and Crystal
June 14, 2006
Melissa N. Winchell
I left my house Tuesday for Jimmy Fund Clinic and haven’t been back. We ran out the door—running later than I had planned, because as I was tying my Adidases Orilüs informed me that he wouldn’t eat the free Clinic food. And so I had spent precious minutes scooping out a lunch of mac-and-cheese, digging out the cooler from the basement, scrounging up freezer packs and Cheez-Its, finding Gladware in the mess underneath my kitchen sink.
The last thing I did, as we rushed out the door, juggling three heavy bags—a backpack for Clinic, half-full with meds, a gym bag for overnight “just in case,” and the cooler—was to empty the kitchen trash.
Soon after being re-admitted to 6 West later that same night, I stood outside another mother’s room, recounting the story of bagging up the kitchen trash with nostalgia. This surprised me. But suddenly that single act—glaring accusingly at the trash can, which seemed suddenly too-small for all our weekend laziness—that momentary pause (should I leave it for Jason to discover after work, or empty it myself?), seemed precious. The usually obnoxious bending down below the kitchen sink for a trash bag (why is it that I always seem too tall for things?) seemed painfully usual. And overwhelmingly, I wanted nothing more than to be back in my kitchen, squeaking open the closet door and reaching for a too-full bag of garbage. To be that carefree about throwing out the tangible evidence of being home, of a life-almost-normal.
Instead, I am here at Children’s Hospital again. I don’t have to take out the trash here—the two huge gray receptacles in our room get emptied three times a day, my favorite trash-emptier being a man from Port-au-Prince named Gin. I make a home here as best as I can, but nothing is really mine. I make beds with linens foraged from two linen carts in the back hallway (I will choose nothing but the yellow-edged sheets, because they are the only ones that fit easily, despite the nurse’s insistence that the teal and navy threaded sheets are all the same size). I walk to the laundry room—five floors away—wearing flip-flops while others walk the same halls in business suits and uniform. I feel about the hospital like those who haven’t lived like this can possibly understand—it is one large dormitory to me now, a big place around which I wear my pajamas and messy hair, the Au Bon Pain staff smiling at me in familiarity.
My friends here, women on 6 West, are friends of the strangest sort—when we talk, we sound half insane, laughing too loudly at the craziness of our isolated rooms (one friend’s window gapes only at a brick wall all day, without sky), of the housekeeper that sits in our family room for hours every night watching Spanish soaps instead of doing her job. We lament the babies and children who have already passed. We gossip about the nurses who wake our children too early in the morning to weigh them, or who loudly throw open our doors at night and disrupt our sleep and invade any sense of privacy we still have left. We swear more than any of us ever have, and declare to each other, in our darkest moments, that this place is hell, a place of great suffering. We don’t usually cry about the big stuff, the scary things the doctors tell us before they return to their Starbucks and gleaming white computers, or the undertow of fear and cynicism that bites at our proverbial ankles. We cry, instead, over the littlest of things. The smallest of procedures, after having survived chemotherapy or radiation or surgeries. The afternoon emesis, after days of having watched our children endure tens (is it hundreds now?) of such sickness. The blood counts that crawl forward only to fall back again the following day.
This is life here on 6 West. We don’t take out the trash here. We envy the moms “on the outside” (as if our stay here is some kind of incarceration) who probably took their kids to school this morning (did they even appreciate it, we ask?). We wonder if we can still remember to cook and long for homemade meals, treating ourselves to Bertuccis only when the Resource Manager comes by to offer us a gift card as if we are the hospital’s version of parents on welfare (and, considering what we’re here for, we are). We scoff sometimes at the “stressed out” lives we used to lead and question if we will ever be that worked up about such pettiness again.
On 6 West, we realize what we are no longer free to do on our own, what suffering has surrounded us for so long without our attention, and we begin to pray in earnest for relief. We want to be mindless again. We want to rush out the door, carelessly throw all evidence of time-lived into the backyard, and go about our day. Just like we used to do ourselves, back before we picked through minutes like homeless women hoping to redeem a life for a price we cannot name.
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