Susiej

The wooden trains have been buried in their storage tub since that sick day when he built an un-Christmas train last year.  I made a good-faith effort to pull out the train and placed the tracks under the real Christmas tree this year; but the train was not embraced. In fact, it was simply ignored.  I even slid the already-decorated Christmas tree right across the floor to allow more “building” room for the track.  (Not one ornament was lost in the move.) Space, apparently, was not the problem. He had a change of heart.  Just like little Jackie Paper, one day he just found other things to occupy his time, besides trains.

When we opened the book to Puff, and sang the song about the little boy who left his childhood friend behind, I never thought we were reading a story about us.

So I asked him, “You’re really done with this train, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he answered, without looking up from his latest Bionicle creation.

“Well, then, maybe we should pack it up , and find some other little boy who’d like to play with this train.”

“No, Mom,” he said. “Let me tell you how it’s gonna be.  When I’m all grown up, and I’m a Grandpa, you’re going to keep the train around, built all around your house so that you can remember me.”

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I caught his eye, and before I let the words out, his eyes told me to stop. Stop. Don’t say what you’re going to say. But I said it anyway. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss.

The words brought exasperation to his face — as if he had so much to explain about this death. Not I’m sorry — this was a celebration! I suddenly felt like I was wearing work boots at a black-tie affair with my sorrowful, mournful expression. My words, meant to be offered in comfort, brought darkness.

Maybe, he should have said “sorry” to me… because I wasn’t quite at the joyful, celebration-of life-stage that he was at… yet.

That was years ago…

Since then, I’ve been so warily careful of what to say to the bereaved.

Sometimes, we have our own grief to deal with — and then we feel compelled to try to comfort the others. Maybe we have no place to do such things; maybe we should just be in the moment, with them, and let life unfold.

Since the night I read the words “brain damage,” the world has felt slightly ajar, something out of place. I needed balance — and I found it simply by crying into my husband’s chest; standing up. As if by letting the tears out while standing, I would somehow grow new roots, and I needed to pull in some of the strength he had stored up in his arms.

I remembered fleeting moments of the past, when Seth was a little boy — the way I remember him — trying to re-carve moments in the past; to help myself understand, in retrospect, what a gift it was to have such a brief time with him. Now, I realize, we just brushed our sleeves with him — life is so quick. Did I, his preschool teachers, his classmates — did any of us realize who we were with?

And, thinking about how other-worldly wise he always seemed… His 4th birthday party was at Grater’s Ice Cream, and the little man handled himself so well, that I asked his mom to check his birth certificate — that maybe they were wrong — maybe he really was 5, and they missed a year. And he grew into such a cool dude.

I am bursting at the seams to say so much right now, and I’ve held back writing this because I care so deeply about the family. I fear I will say that just-off wrong phrase that will send their world off-kilter, and have to explain the way they see it, all over to me, draining their energy. I have much to say about a child taken. A child living with cancer. Parents left without their child. Baby sisters missing their big brother. His fight. His fierce courage. His beauty. Their strength. Their courage. Their grace. Their honesty. My sadness. My awe.

I can’t say anymore about the beautiful life of this little boy’s fight against cancer than his parents have already lovingly revealed to us here . This journey has transformed her into a courageous, heart-felt writer, as her world poured out onto the page, as we waited anxiously for her updates — living for them, in the end, by the minutes. Nor can I add to the wonderful expressions of support for the family that have appeared here.

Life upside down. The mother and father living life, again, without the presence of the child. How different each day will be for them, forever. And how, they will do their best to ensure that each day remains a blessing, with perfect grace.

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Years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, there was an email circulating, listing 10 reasons on how to tell if you’re ready to have kids. One of them was to throw broken glass all over the floor, and walk barefoot over the pieces. The experience was to prepare you for the pain you will encounter when you step on your kid’s legos. No amount of prep work can prepare you for that kind of pain.

My boys promise me that if I buy them plastic bins, they will sort each piece by color, and put them there every night.  (Yeah, right.)  Until then,

We spread them out on one big blanket. When they’re done, we just roll up the blanket and put them in a basket.

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Once his big brothers have left for school, leaving the kitchen in a scattered mess of opened cereal boxes, bowls of half-eaten cereal in soggy milk, sticky messes of milk spots all over the table, he pulls out his instruments and begins his morning work, creating worlds that are home to only his favorite colors.

Thankful for half-day kindergarten.

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Peas love cold weather, and I would have planted them by now if not for the icy mass of snow covering my garden spot. At the same time, I was thinking about all that money I can’t resist spending on that first pack of cool-season annuals – petunias and violas for my flower pots. (Which are edible, too, by the way) So, instead of planting those pea seeds in the garden, I decided to spend just a few dollars and plant those pea seeds in the flowerpots that sit at my front and back doors — the only snow-free spots around. Here’s a photo from a Container Garden Book that inspired me.

Those pretty flowers are actually sweet peas (seed packs available everywhere for under $2) that are mixed with the snow peas, which we’ll soon be eating for dinner.  Growing this is just as simple as it sounds. (Can I just tell you how great that dirt smelled?! Almost free winter therapy!) My containers were already empty from last fall, sitting in the garage, just waiting for spring. I filled the containers with potting mix, planted the seeds, and watered. I did not skimp on the seeds — they’re cheap, I want a full, lush basket, and I can always give away the extra seedlings if I have to.

Photo of nurturing gift to myself for the week.

This may not be necessary, but because it’s still very cold, just to be safe, and to give the seeds a head start, I covered the pots with plastic just to get them going. (See the snow in the background!)

There are actually quite a few cold-season varieties you can start planting in your pots — broccoli, spinach, lettuce, arugula. More photos from the book for inspiration:

Tulips, lettuce

Onion sets and spinach

When the weather warms up, and as the peas are done, I can begin planting the next crop of food:

Nasturtiums and Peppers. (Pepper plants will either be bought, or started from seeds indoors.)

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Her presence was a constant in my childhood. Hers was the big wide chest I snuggled on as an infant, the shoulder I cried on, the large lap I sat on with scraped knees and bee stings, and the sounding board against the bullies at school. She was my shield when my parents were too harsh.

She understood that childhood served one purpose; to eat all the sugary-home-made jam you could fit on a single piece of buttered toast.  Christmas was for popcorn balls, and yet she shooed every child in her kitchen out when the hot syrup was just about to be poured on the marble slab on the days she made hard-tack candy, for fear that someone would get burned.

When the men’s work pants, shirts, or the sisters’ summer dresses became too worn for patches; she used her seam ripper to take off every single button, to save them in a tin. For what? For the odd button that bounced off a blouse?  She had oodles of buttons – beyond the limit of what she could actually ever use.

As I run my fingers through these tins, the discs slip between my fingers like satin against my skin — can you hear that sound of applause they make as they clink against each other? I wonder now if maybe Grandma had stepped out of her waste-not-want not mode with these buttons. Perhaps she saved them because she simply loved them; not because they were useful. These buttons glisten like massive jewels, and that would have been a luxury that was passed over by this depression-era girl that grew up working out in the onion fields. Her single indulgence. But, she never told me that.

She died while I was pregnant with my first son, in 1995. One morning, after pulling an all-nighter with my colicky baby, I learned that the young family that had moved into her farmhouse had a little girl; and Grandma, apparently, was looking after her. The girl’s favorite lost doll would suddenly appear the next morning in plain site – stuff like that.

I was crushed over this news. Grandma should have been there with me, to help me calm this baby. It was hard enough sharing her with my cousins and grand cousins — but now a complete stranger? It took some effort on my part, in those early days, to not associate every cry my son made with her absence in my life.

Although, she never did like to leave her house…

Since then, only one or two times, (this marks the third), have I ever let my mind drift to the reality that my little boys do not know about the taste of her jam, the feel of her lap, the comfort of her shoulder, the smell of her powder, and those eyes, so deep with compassion and love that just one look made you want to grow up and do only those things that would make her proud.

That loss is more than I can comfortably bear. I can search high and low in every toy catalogue, and never scratch the surface to come close to bringing what she could have brought into their lives. If maybe they knew her, then missing her would be more fun. We could easily say, “Remember that time when Grandma …”

So, I make these button dolls out of her buttons. I use pipe cleaners to twist the doll into shape, and then add the buttons, twisting the ends of the pipe cleaner at the end to hold the buttons in place. The flat ones make nice hats. Simply my way of leaving a little bit of Grandma around the house for the boys to see.

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