I’m on my way back to Toronto from a weekend visiting Steve and Nicole in their sunny cabin in the woods. It’s great out there; you can really feel the melting. As the farms and trees and little houses fly past I’m thinking about what I’ll do when I get back, what my plans should be in the next couple months. Maybe it’s this shift in the weather (thank you spring for being true to yourself) but it’s like I need, or I like I can, begin again too. I’m going to be done my thesis in not too long (will I breathe differently then? Will my hair change color and suddenly grow past my shoulders? Will I tell jokes and laugh at myself? I hope so. It’s been such a long time coming. Sorry everyone for the delay. Patrick you’ll see I was a shooting star once upon a time.)
So I’m going to be done and I’m going start training more seriously for this second triathlon of the sunflowers - and hopefully a few others. I decided last year that triathlons are something I really enjoy doing. And I think I’m good at them. I like running, always have liked running. I’m going to get a new pair of running shoes and hope my knee gets better, along with my ankle (tore a couple of ligaments last August playing Frisbee). I also like biking. I go to a bike class with a really great teacher who makes you feel like it makes sense to commit yourself to hard work, and that it takes both the mind and body to be strong, which it does, doesn’t it mom? And I like swimming a lot more than I did last year. I still don’t like walking to the pool, but I actually like diving in, especially now that my mom gave me all her old bathing suits and I don’t have to wear the same old one all the time. Soon I’ll have matching bathing caps and goggles. You know there are things I want to do. Holy. There are at least 20 sets of birds flying in v formations. I guess they feel the spring too. All of a sudden the south doesn’t satisfy anymore. Well the light is growing stronger every day. I’m letting the sun stare me in the eyes right now even though I know it’s bad for me. Really, can any amount of light be a bad thing in the middle of March?
Well, love to everyone. I think this spring is going to be a good one. I can feel it. And it must be all of you. The sun doesn’t get brighter for no reason. Like the Killers say, “I don’t mind if you don’t mind cause I don’t shine if you don’t shine.”
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Friday, May 2, 2008
ne doce me
Did not the body of your son break
so that our bodies would not?
Did not the spirit of your son live
so that ours would not die?
I have no third person;
I am not a Trinity;
I cannot keep my mother wholly within
me when she is gone.
Neither can I tear off these eyes and see
what you have taken away.
You, my Father, are not the same
to me as my mother.
so that our bodies would not?
Did not the spirit of your son live
so that ours would not die?
I have no third person;
I am not a Trinity;
I cannot keep my mother wholly within
me when she is gone.
Neither can I tear off these eyes and see
what you have taken away.
You, my Father, are not the same
to me as my mother.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
from january
(early January, 2008)
I have a lot of ideas for blogs inside my head, but I write now of the feelings that are now present, of the feelings that are mostly present: mostly, I am afraid. While I know that because the diagnosis is vague, so also are the potential years of life my mother has left to live, the possibility of her not being here is what is most real to me. It's like I can conjure up in myself a huge wave of future time where I am without my mom: a time when my mom is no longer there - in the room, on the phone, upstairs, in the kitchen, driving the car . . . I am overcome by this wave and it grabs my chest and holds my breath and comes out of me in tears. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but there have been nights more often as of late that I have cried myself to sleep.
(January 4th, 2008)
I thought last week as I watched the sun set over the sound that there are things we love because of our mothers, that the world appears to us in the way it does because of a mother's presence within it. Many things I love my mother loves too, but she has been the first to love them. Or, maybe it's because I love my mom that I can't help but love the things in which she finds pleasure.
What are some of these things my mother loves?
My mom loves flowers and working in her garden. She has a beautiful garden. Unlike the one we had growing up in PEI (which was great but in a different, more practical family-survival kind of way), in this garden there are no vegetables, only flowers and herbs and some strawberries. I love this garden (maybe partly because I don't have to weed it), and I especially love the joy my mom takes in watching it grow. I also love flowers - except carnations (which my mom doesn't like either).
My mom loves music and prefers classical music above all others. Every morning I wake up and come downstairs to the sound of the NPR classical station. I know this music has been on for hours, warming the house like a fire. But my mom does not just love to listen to music; she loves to play it too. She is a fantastic pianist because she plays with skill, grace, and emotion. My mom understands music and music understands here. It is this relationship of mutual love that I hear when she plays and I know is present in those earliest morning hours when she wakes up.
My mom also likes to wake up early. Early mornings are kind of like an extreme sport for her (this love I cannot claim to share, but I’m trying to). I don't know if she developed this love because it was only early (and I'm talking early) in the morning that our loud, busy house was quiet, or because she just always loved that first light and the silence that only the songs of small birds accompany.
A love my mom has always fought to preserve is that of order. She like for things to be organized, both on the inside and outside. Now that I have my own large apartment to keep tidy (without kids in it), I realize more and more that my mom was achieving an impossible task: despite the number of people in the house (12) it was always organized and very clean. I'm not sure if it is her corresponding love of bleach that motivates her desire to have a clean house, but I am a firm believer that you can't have one without the other.
My mom has a great love of time, being on time, that is. As you can imagine, this love also seems to defy the sheer physical inertia of my family, and yet, somehow, my mom manages get my entire family to places on time. I think in some way it must be a relief to her that everyone but Joseph has his license now and she can just let us find our own way . . .
My mom has many other loves and even the loves I have written about could be expressed more fully. But there is more time to write about my mother's love, because when I look at myself I see it.
I have a lot of ideas for blogs inside my head, but I write now of the feelings that are now present, of the feelings that are mostly present: mostly, I am afraid. While I know that because the diagnosis is vague, so also are the potential years of life my mother has left to live, the possibility of her not being here is what is most real to me. It's like I can conjure up in myself a huge wave of future time where I am without my mom: a time when my mom is no longer there - in the room, on the phone, upstairs, in the kitchen, driving the car . . . I am overcome by this wave and it grabs my chest and holds my breath and comes out of me in tears. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but there have been nights more often as of late that I have cried myself to sleep.
(January 4th, 2008)
I thought last week as I watched the sun set over the sound that there are things we love because of our mothers, that the world appears to us in the way it does because of a mother's presence within it. Many things I love my mother loves too, but she has been the first to love them. Or, maybe it's because I love my mom that I can't help but love the things in which she finds pleasure.
What are some of these things my mother loves?
My mom loves flowers and working in her garden. She has a beautiful garden. Unlike the one we had growing up in PEI (which was great but in a different, more practical family-survival kind of way), in this garden there are no vegetables, only flowers and herbs and some strawberries. I love this garden (maybe partly because I don't have to weed it), and I especially love the joy my mom takes in watching it grow. I also love flowers - except carnations (which my mom doesn't like either).
My mom loves music and prefers classical music above all others. Every morning I wake up and come downstairs to the sound of the NPR classical station. I know this music has been on for hours, warming the house like a fire. But my mom does not just love to listen to music; she loves to play it too. She is a fantastic pianist because she plays with skill, grace, and emotion. My mom understands music and music understands here. It is this relationship of mutual love that I hear when she plays and I know is present in those earliest morning hours when she wakes up.
My mom also likes to wake up early. Early mornings are kind of like an extreme sport for her (this love I cannot claim to share, but I’m trying to). I don't know if she developed this love because it was only early (and I'm talking early) in the morning that our loud, busy house was quiet, or because she just always loved that first light and the silence that only the songs of small birds accompany.
A love my mom has always fought to preserve is that of order. She like for things to be organized, both on the inside and outside. Now that I have my own large apartment to keep tidy (without kids in it), I realize more and more that my mom was achieving an impossible task: despite the number of people in the house (12) it was always organized and very clean. I'm not sure if it is her corresponding love of bleach that motivates her desire to have a clean house, but I am a firm believer that you can't have one without the other.
My mom has a great love of time, being on time, that is. As you can imagine, this love also seems to defy the sheer physical inertia of my family, and yet, somehow, my mom manages get my entire family to places on time. I think in some way it must be a relief to her that everyone but Joseph has his license now and she can just let us find our own way . . .
My mom has many other loves and even the loves I have written about could be expressed more fully. But there is more time to write about my mother's love, because when I look at myself I see it.
Monday, October 15, 2007
second blog
It is not early and I wish it were earlier. Every morning I feel late, as if the one hour of time I missed would have been the most productive one. This feeling usually dissolves at some point during the day and I’m able to tell myself that tomorrow will be different; I will wake up early, I will have that hour in which all things I have not done will get done. This is only my second blog. Every day I think about my mom and most days write blogs in my head about her but I haven’t written any of them down yet. And I don’t really know why. Writing about how I feel about my mom’s Carcinoid isn’t one of those things I ever plan to do in that one elusive hour. My feelings couldn’t fit in that hour, they hang over and around me like a damp cold day when it’s cold outside and inside – maybe like Russia in the late fall or Nova Scotia in the spring. So I try to keep this feeling away. I go home more, talk to my mom on the phone more. Getting lost for a while in the normalcy of every day activities can usually make me feel like Carcinoid is just the name of some strange great-aunt who always threatens to visit but never does – so we’ve heard stories about her but never actually seen her. But despite the fact that my mom continues to live her life in so many of the ways she always has (swimming, working, organizing, gardening, looking after everything), I can see that Carcinoid is there, in all these things and it makes me scared. So scared. But whether I look at it or not it doesn’t go away; I know why my mom is doing certain things, why she is taking a special care in things, why she can’t waste the hours in a day that I do. I also know why she feels bad on Tuedays and frequently throughout the week at any given time. So I don’t like to talk about and I don’t really like to think about it, because to be honest I don’t really know how. (Can someone please tell me what I will do without my mom?).
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
first words
What is there to say first of all else? There are so many things on top and underneath of each other and I am afraid to reach down and take just one of them up in case I suddenly have to look them all head on; eye to eye and face to face. No, I am not strong enough to really confront the thoughts I have about my 29 years and my mom’s 52. At least not anymore than a child who reaches out and dares to quickly run a finger through a candle flame - -they know that to keep their hand still would mean they’d be burned. So I don’t want to keep my hand in one place. I am not even fascinated with the flame. But I do want to brave for my mom. I want to not be so far away, because she goes to all these appointments all by herself and I just think it’s so lonely as it is to suddenly one day be left alone with a disease that won’t tell you where it’s taking you. I want to get in the car and drive with her. And I want so badly for her to know how beautiful she is. I want to talk more to my sister . . .
But it’s hard not to keep it all at a distance. Because it’s just so close. I remember last year when the seriousness of it was told to just the oldest of the kids and (I think it was a couple days later) that I put my head down on my desk and sobbed and sobbed. You know, I don’t know where things like this go inside of us. Because how can we carry something that seems so much heavier and bigger than we are? I don’t know how and I just pray that somehow I can reach down to that deepest place and know that I’m not going drown. Know that I can find my mom’s hand and hold it.
I will write other things next time. I feel like I’ve just turned on a washing machine inside myself. I am remembering and thinking about so many things: my dad crying at Christmas and saying how he didn’t even want to think about the possibility of there being a time when my mom wasn’t there, this Patti Griffin song that makes me so sad and cry and think of my mom, Patrick, my husband, saying that life is hard, how happy it makes me to read the things my mom is writing. Not everything can be said all at once. Wait for the feelings to find the words.
Naomi (2nd oldest, 1st daughter)
But it’s hard not to keep it all at a distance. Because it’s just so close. I remember last year when the seriousness of it was told to just the oldest of the kids and (I think it was a couple days later) that I put my head down on my desk and sobbed and sobbed. You know, I don’t know where things like this go inside of us. Because how can we carry something that seems so much heavier and bigger than we are? I don’t know how and I just pray that somehow I can reach down to that deepest place and know that I’m not going drown. Know that I can find my mom’s hand and hold it.
I will write other things next time. I feel like I’ve just turned on a washing machine inside myself. I am remembering and thinking about so many things: my dad crying at Christmas and saying how he didn’t even want to think about the possibility of there being a time when my mom wasn’t there, this Patti Griffin song that makes me so sad and cry and think of my mom, Patrick, my husband, saying that life is hard, how happy it makes me to read the things my mom is writing. Not everything can be said all at once. Wait for the feelings to find the words.
Naomi (2nd oldest, 1st daughter)
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