My last posting was November 18. I talked a lot about time…my sense of time as a cancer survivor in her 7th decade. Whew! I made it through the looking glass and I’m none the worse for wear. In fact, maybe a bit better for the wear…a little more polished. This birthday may have been one of the most outstanding of my life. Many spots and splashes of love from family and friends, old and new…splashes of love like stars sparkling in a small universe of God-lights. It was memorable.
Sometimes I’ve gone to bed asking God if s/he loves me. Of course, I knew and know the answer, but I needed to ask the question, just out of habit in the same way that sometimes we ask our spouse, our lover: “Do you love me?” A tiny bit of assurance after a long day’s work or a difficult day’s successful encounters. I am so incredibly human, so flawed, a sprouting mustard seed, a bird with big wings to grow into. Made in God’s image. That is a comforting thought.
It is 1:30 A.M. I’m looking back over the hills and valleys of the past 12 days looking for meaningful events to share with you. There was the evening my friend and his young family came with cookies to celebrate my birthday. How can one be sad in the presence of young, vibrant, loving children dancing and prancing about—their laughter, drawings, paper snowflakes—all love gifts…God-gifts of God-light.
There were many messages from here and there—affirmations. People appearing like open pages in a children’s pop-up book. One person from so long ago, a fellow cancer survivor saying a private hello on face book, just because he’d read this blog and the years melted away. That was awesome, as the kids like to say.
Dinner with good friends…always a nice treat, and I had several of them, each very loving and memorable. But lunch with my daughter at a wonderful French restaurant, just she and I, cozy and sweet was very special. If you are pining away for quiche or crepes…or Buche de Noel…be good to yourself…enjoy those things at a good French restaurant. You will be pleased. The French know how to prepare foods for gastronomic happiness.
Thanksgiving day came soon after my birthday, and I had much to be thankful for. There is one little story of losing and finding my wallet that I will save for a separate posting, as it deserves it’s own place. Thanksgiving day 2009 was the first major holiday that my biological family and I faced without my oldest sister, who died in December of 2008. And it was the first major holiday that my partner and I faced since the bad old times of 2008/09. They say the first year is the hardest. I expect that is true.
As my dwindling family and I sat down to eat on Thanksgiving day, one of my young, great nephews announced that he had written a prayer of thanksgiving and would like to read it. He is a very sweet and sensitive boy. As it turned out he was overcome with stage fright and couldn’t read it, so his dad read it for him. The prayers of the young and sincere are touching in their innocence. This prayer was lovely but was missing a couple of adjectives in one of the points of gratefulness, so there were stifled chuckles from some and unabashed laughter from the younger sibling who sat directly across from the author of the thanksgiving prayer. Embarrassment, humiliation the color of red beets! My heart went out to him because I have been in that same spot as a child with adults laughing and smiling. It took many grown-up decades to really understand that they were not laughing at me, but expressing, however awkwardly, their enjoyment of my child-self singing a song, or telling a story, or reciting some verse or another. Those early experiences of perceived ridicule formed parts of my character for a very long time.
I sat at the table for what seemed like way too many minutes, feeling for him, wanting to comfort him…cover him with this understanding I now have. I sat until I couldn’t sit any longer, asked God to give me words and knelt down next to him, his red-beet face in his hands. I don’t know if what I said helped him or not. He is a very shy boy and way too sensitive for the competitive, heart-breaking world we live in. I was thankful for the glimpse of his soul that came my way to stay. I will always feel connected to this little boy from a foreign land. What I witnessed will be sacred to me. Maybe some day he will know that and be glad, as I was glad for the rather few adults in my growing up life who made a place for me, a very different sort of duck, in what I thought was a world of swans.
why these new birds don’t see how hard it is to be a newbie. They are all good birds, but for some reason they don’t show themselves, don’t let their feathers touch mine. I am the new bird on the wire and I wish it weren’t so lonely. Last year this time, I was sitting happily on the old wire. My sister was dying and I was able to touch her feathers in a special way, because mine were touched. I am a bird on a wire, waiting for the silence to stop…waiting for the memory of loss to fade.
Called By Name 