I do a majority of my thinking and praying in the shower; but on days like today, when I am not afforded the luxury of twenty minutes of good water pressure and the white noise that muffles the voices of fighting, crying, or (on a good day) playing children in the other room, I do my thinking in bed, as I lay between Elias and Keziah, waiting for them to fall asleep. And so tonight, after Elias got done telling me how he wished he was born like the little boy in his Sunday School class who can't walk and gets to ride in a cool remote control wheelchair, I watched Keziah as she unknowingly discovered the art of shadow puppets. Her fingers moved slowly as she hid her thumb and wiggled her chubby fingers, watching their mirrored reaction on the wall. I felt like I was watching Peter Pan lose his shadow. I felt for a moment like Wendy, taking it all in and believing it, letting child-like naivity and simplicity settle down ino the part of me where inspiration and beauty are intertwined. The part of me that says it's time to write.
I remember seeing the mountains for the first time. I was something of eight or maybe ten, and we went to visit my aunt and uncle in Montana. My uncle, my dad's brother, embodies every last one of his parent's short genes, standing a mere five feet four inches (with cowboy boots on). But for what he lacks in vertical stature he makes up for in creativity and humor. The guy is seriously funny. He reminds me of Robin Williams, his absurdity and sensibleness entwining into a personality that is both likeable and infectious. Hence, I'd have to name him my favorite uncle.
But about the mountains. So I remember looking out their picture window and being mesmerized by the mountains that seemed a mere one hundred feet away. I asked my dad how far they really were. He said they were some twenty or thirty miles away. I was sure he was wrong...that if I ran to the end of my uncle's long driveway, I'd certainly begin my ascent into them. And surely it wouldn't take long to reach their snow-capped summits.
It all looked so fake, as if someone had pulled down a backdrop and landed it right behind my uncle's wooden fence, a little ways down the wintry hill that was, in actuality, a mountain in his backyard.
When I returned home, no longer a virgin to the west, I would pretend that my flatland home embodied a moutainous landscape. The clouds in the distance were mountains, the blue sky the ocean. And when they met in the sky, exchanging their blue and white hues, overlapping just as the waves when they meet the shore, I pretended it was a reflection of the Hot Springs where we swam a few weeks prior. The world was now wide open to so many possibilities. Why, if that backdrop in Montana were truly real, surely anything, even the flatlands of Indiana, held in them the promise of mountains and waterfalls and sunsets so pink and orange that not even the African plains could compare.
Thus my journey for something beyond the cornfields began. And while the illusions of mountains in the sky soon dissipated, I was left with a yearning for something outside of my surroundings. Different illusions were to follow. Illusions of fulfillment in friends, boyfriends, popularity, money, and lots and lots of material things. And when humility finally slapped me upside the head, I had the teenage audacity to believe that the ocean would heal all things broken.
So when I moved to Florida at eighteen, the ocean offered me nothing more than the reality that I was slowly packing on fifteen pounds and quickly realizing that the vision of me running, blonde and tanned, along the sand, perhaps in a swimsuit, maybe even a bikini, was something of yet another illusion. And all the true Florida girls that had the waistline that still makes me want to die, gave me a reality check day in and day out, as they flaunted their tanned bodies in tiny tank tops and shorts, all day, every day.
I left Florida a year later with a desperation for God. Of course I'm always in essence desperate for Him. But at that time in my life, I was so incredibly broken and confused, having faced one of the biggest personal battles of my life (yes I'm being vague. This isn't my diary for the love). Feeling defeated, I went back to the only place that has ever been truly "home" to me, no matter my location. No matter my struggles.
My knees.
Clinging to my Bible, like my daughter with her "silky blanky," I memorized Scripture and wrote out countless prayers, prayers that spoke of my helplessness and of my desperation for the Father to remain with me, through the storm, through the laborous and tiresome journey to simply do what was right. Most of all, I waited in hope that He would heal my heart.
Little did I know that the Midwest, namely Indiana, had a tiny jewel in its otherwise mundane topography. Bloomington, Indiana. Home of Indiana University, for those of you who remember the infamous Bob Knight (who I witnessed giving his final speech on campus, right after he got fired!). Having transferred to I.U. sort of by default (ie. it made the most sense), I arrived relieved to be only an hour or so from home and without the year-round pressure to derobe at any given moment in order to reveal a perfect swimsuit body. I never truly appreciated the Fall until that year. The changing leaves and autumn air reminded me that life turned in seasons and indeed this was the season for renewal in my personal life.
I met some great friends, fell in love with photography, learned to play the djembe', and took some amazing classes about Judaism, philosophy, psychology, writing and graphic design. I experienced community amongst roomates and met homeless people in parks. I interviewed people and heard their stories and took their photos. I dreamed of being a photographer and became obsessed with Sebastian Salgado and James Nachtway. I came to realize that my camera could tell the world of injustices that were being executed in Africa, India and in our own backyards.
As a perfect counterpart to the illusions I had as a child, I became conscious of the fact that Indiana had its own oceans and mountains and waterfalls and sunsets. I drove. Drove to lakes at sunrise. Nature parks in the middle of the day. Coffee shops at night. And allthewhile, I clung to Jesus, like He was my co-dependent boyfriend. Ours was the only relationship in which I felt truly known and secure. Loved. Adored. Treasured.
When I think back to that time, more than any other time of my life, I can feel Him in the car with me, like I felt the sweet breeze through the windows as I drove through the hills toward Lake Lemon. I can feel Him at the parks where I'd lay out my Mexican blanket and listen to Moby while working an art project. I can feel Him in even my closest friendships, those late nights at Taco Bell with Liz or at Jimmy John's with Jozee, the night we found out we had a bazillion things in common. I can feel Him at Soma, the night I went there in the rain and sat in the far corner, right under the speaker where "Ring of Fire" played through the speaker right above me, loud but strangely soothing.
Those three years offered me grace, redemption and the reality that the Father never leaves or forsakes His own, no matter how big the battle, how many the falls. Sometimes I long for that closeness. On other days, I feel it. It is the backdrop of my life, a mountain that is both near and far, a paradoxical union of ordinary and supernatural. While most things we hope in will fail us or prove, as they have in my life, to be an illusion of one kind or another, it is in losing our shadows in the Almighty and finding ourselves in His (shadow) that we can believe and hope for a future that is brighter, a healing that is greater, and a love that overcomes every shattered dream, every disheartened soul, and every broken heart.
Jan 18, 2009
Jan 1, 2009
A Christmas Toast
I have never been to Hawaii, but I imagine it would be like listening to Sufjan Stevens sing “Amazing Grace,” the banjo lulling me into a peaceful trance as I place another poorly wrapped gift under our burnished, ribbon-laden, and memory filled tree. I have always loved the hymn, but there’s just something about his version…
A guy in New York City committed suicide today. Something about a big financial scheme and losing lots of money. And I mean “lots” as in a billion. Though, the way the government throws around “billions of dollars” these days, like the lady at Costco giving out free chocolates at Christmas time, one billion doesn’t really sound like that big of a deal. Not that I’m into talking politics. I would risk sounding like my father discussing a woman’s menstrual cycle or better yet, afterbirth. That is to say, I would sound pretty um… how do you say it?
Dumb.
And mortified.
But more or less…dumb.
And I get that same uncomfortable feeling when discussing politics with people that my father gets whenever he is telling “us kids” goodbye and my husband is standing within three feet of him. I see his square jaw line tense up and a knowing smirk appear, it trying desperately to hide behind all 180 pounds of his seriousness. Then, he avoids eye contact with Thomas and embraces me until his three feet of personal space ensues…until he is no longer cornered by an oblivious Thomas. Apparently, this is the universal signal that hugging another man would indeed mean he is gay, or in the very least, to quote Mister Gepetto, “A real boy.”
I don’t know why I brought up the guy in New York. I guess it caught my eye because it seems Christmas, perhaps more than any other time of year, brings with it such a contradiction in terms. The Christmas cards, cookies, carols…the lights and laughter and the feeling that love is in the air, all imply that we are living on the set of The Brady Bunch.
Certainly, just for the month of December, the food fairies take food to the millions of people who are starving to death in Africa! And I’m quite sure the psych wards, just for a couple of weeks, will send all their patients home so that they can eat sweet potato pie with their “functional” families. Oh and let’s not forget the homeless folk down the street. Or the pregnant teenager out on her own. The AIDS patient. The child with leukemia. Her family. The grieving husband. The orphaned son. The unemployed single mom. The falsely accused inmate. Surely the holidays will offer them reprieve. Nothing a little mistletoe and fruitcake can’t resolve.
Sometimes I lament the delusions I had as a child and adolescent. The world was safe, people were on my side, leaders were trustworthy, and only kids on After School Specials did drugs. That’s back when drugs meant alcohol or cigarettes. When the problems on Seventh Heaven were the real problems of the world (admit it…we all wished our dad was a little more like Rev. Camden). Back when I thought that families stayed together forever. When the term “children are starving to death” meant nothing more than that kids were to clean their plates.
In one of our first years of marriage, Thomas and I were doing this no-carb diet thing. For me, a vegetarian, this left me eggs, cheese, and natural peanut butter. Oh, and vegetables (but they can be so darn boring). One of the items we could eat, however, was pork rinds. I am not a pork rindish kind of gal, but one day when Thomas brought a bag home from the store, I thought I’d throw back a few. Just as I placed the fifth or sixth one in my mouth, Thomas turned to me and said, “You eat pork rinds?”
I knew that very second that the name implied something. “Rind of pork.” “No, this can’t be…they aren’t really made from pigs? Are they?”
Thomas laughed at me, perhaps harder than he ever has before…or after. He was taking great pleasure in the shocked and disgusted look on my face and the fact that I had contaminated my meat-free body with fried pigskin. Sure enough, I turned the package around and there on the ingredient list read, first, “Pork Rind,” as if the pig himself were smiling at my ill-informed dieting scheme. I wanted to vomit. Like when I accidentally drink my toddler’s backwash.
Needless to say, I was ignorant.
Plato said, “Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil.” While it is bliss when we are children, as adults we must own up to the problems in our world. In our cities. Our neighborhoods. Our families.
I, for one, am a product of an ethnocentric culture. We truly believe that the U.S. of A. is the latest and greatest thing since pickled cucumbers. More than that, I personally have “middle-child syndrome.” This is my self-diagnosis of what is otherwise known as narcissism. So getting outside of myself is my biggest challenge in life. Oh oh oh. Did you know that there is such a thing as “Truman syndrome?” It’s true. Heard it on CNN (is that a paradox?). It’s when you think people are following you around, like the paparazzi or something and that everyone knows who you are…basically an exaggerated version of egotism. Well golly gee willikers, as my papa would say, can you believe, in our culture of overdone reality TV, glam ads, and rags to riches sagas that people would actually think that the world revolves around them? I like to think I’m pretty normal (on a good day, which is about 182.5 days out of the year), and I still struggle with thinking that the world owes me something. That this life is actually about me and my comfort and my adaptation to all things surrounding me. It’s my own little “Cristi Show” right here in these four oddly shaped walls.
So I have to force myself out of these pathetic patterns. I actually have this self-talk thing I do in moments when I am thinking the whole world is against me. On a typical day, one where I have to be around people, it starts in the parking lot. I used to pray for a good parking space. And then I realized that Jesus probably wanted me to get some exercise. So I stopped praying and started my own little Norman Vincent Peale session right here in my own pint-sized brain. For instance, if it’s cold out I say to myself, “There will be a parking space close to the store.” I speak very kindly to myself, like I’m talking to a newborn or a dying elderly woman. As I’m having this conversation with the little kid inside of me, I feel the virtue of patience fastening itself to me, like a good bra. I drive. Ho hum. There will certainly be a good parking space.
Eventually.
I drive some more. By this time, I’m stopping for pedestrians, letting cars go in front of me, smiling for no apparent reason, feeling like I just stepped out of the North Pole, like Buddy, and into the donut shop with the "world’s best cup of coffee." In reality, the donut shop is an overcrowded mall and the coffee is water dressed in brown. But by this point, I don’t care. I’m waiting on my destiny. And then, in my peripheral I notice white lights, the sign of a car in reverse. Right time. Right place. I just won myself a front row parking space. I park and nearly skip to the entrance. Never mind the fact that I just lost the opportunity to burn a few calories. It’s cold out, for the love. Jesus probably didn’t mind the cold like I do. After all, He patented it.
If this is as easy as it is to subdue my self-absorption, I am wondering why I don’t do it more often. It feels good to serve. To be a part of something outside of myself. I have noticed, even in our marriage, that if Thomas and I serve someone (or something) together, even by picking up trash on a walk, we are much more apt to be kind to one another. Serving allows us see beyond the interior, with its monotonous sounds and smells. When we look at the infrastructure of humanity, that every person deserves to be loved and that God created the earth for us to care for, serving becomes the wheel of change. We are hands and feet, fashioned for good. Period. Bottom line.
On a few instances I have lost one of my children in a store. I remember one time, in Chicago, Thomas and I were in a kids clothing store with Elias, who had just turned two. We were both looking at clearance racks, I guess thinking that the other had the boy, and suddenly we looked at each other and said, “Do you have Elias?”
“No,” we said, in unison.
We started searching the store. Calling his name. There is a timeframe that those of you who are mothers or fathers or owners of a beloved dog or cat or maybe even a ferret, are familiar with, when the child or pet disappears. At first you are like, “Oh, I’m sure he’s around here.” You call his name, expecting him to respond. Nothing. You walk around, eyes darting to and fro like someone on an acid trip, waiting for him to appear. Still nothing. Panic sets in. Headlines news scenarios rush into your mind. “Stay calm. Don’t panic. He’s around here somewhere.” Your motherly impulse overrides sanity.
And just as I started to lose it, there, out from behind the clothes rack on the far left side of the store, crawled a smiling Elias, as if he had performed a successful circus act, expecting us to be excited at his newfound passion for hiding. We hugged him, my hands shaking, heart pounding, still haunted by the thought of losing my baby boy. I kissed his neck, that little crevice between his shoulder and cheek that’s made for a mama’s lips. I smelled his baby-fine hair and then gazed into his huge eyes that have always looked ever so serious, and said, as every mother does, in my best mother tone, “Don’t you ever do that again.”
I have vowed in my heart that if a mother loses her child, I won’t just stand there and stare at her turning into a volcanic mess as many people have done when I have lost one of my kids. While I am a natural pessimist and would quickly believe that others simply don’t care about the fact that I’ve just lost my child, I think the reality is that they don’t know what to do. Again, I think this is partly because of our cultural apathy. We believe the problems of others aren’t our problems and thus we have been trained to keep to ourselves…to not be a part of the solution.
Last weekend Thomas and I ventured to “Christmas at the Zoo” with not only our three kids, but my sister’s three as well. The first stop in the sea of lights and creatures, and more than that, people, was the butterfly garden, which was transformed into a big train exhibit. As our kids peered into the tiny villages of snowcapped mountains and covered bridges, I noticed a mother next to me calling for her son. “Jess,” she kept saying, “Jess!”
Her voice became a little more troubled. Panicked, really. “Jess!”
Now, I must admit that I also have a superhero complex. I’m sure it’s intertwined into the middle-child thing, but mostly this one is used for the good. I even caught a guy at the Disney Store in Chicago last week as he stuffed a bunch of clothes into his huge black coat and darted for the door. I ran to the store clerk and yelled, “That guy just stole a bunch of stuff.” She ran outside and caught him just as he was about to step onto the “getaway” city bus. It was beautiful really. I half expected the whole store to put me on their shoulders and shout “hip hip hooray” just like they did on the Smurfs. But it’s Chicago, so I accepted my husband’s pat on the back and continued shopping for an Ariel doll and a Power Ranger.
My “mama empathy” rose up as I watched the mother wait for her son to return. I noticed no one was even paying attention to this woman. The ones that were sort of looked at her like she was an alien and then walked by, caught up in their own children, their own experience here in train land. I approached her, thinking simultaneously that I would probably lose one of our kids in the meantime. “What is he wearing?” I asked, knowing her mind was already to the “what-if” stage.
“He’s African-American and he’s wearing a striped hat and a black Zip up hoodie with a red shirt underneath and jeans. He’s five.”
Wow. “Good description,” I thought. This chic was on it.
“He was right behind me. And then I turned around and he was gone.”
“I’ll go look upstairs,” I said.
I went to the top floor and scoured the place, thinking the “what-if” question but mostly believing that he would show up. I was just starting to pray when I heard her say, in a stern but relieved sort of tone, “Jess. Oh Jess, where were you?”
I made my way down the stairs, eased at the sight of them together.
“Thanks,” She said, her countenance completely different than before.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ve totally been there,” I offered, an overused but true proclamation of understanding.
In the moments before this occurred, I had been frustrated with Thomas about something. I think it was his passivity. Feeling like the zoo idea was mine and he was simply being strewn along, like me when my daughter talks me into playing “baby.” (“Now you pretend to put me in bed. Now pretend to feed me. Now let’s go shopping and I’ll be the baby and you be the big sister and we can go to Chuck E. Cheese and I’ll have ice cream and then you are frustrated with me because I’m crying and then you spank me. She reaches for her doll and acts this out for me, announcing to the baby she is getting spanked and then hitting the poor thing and throwing her on the floor. That’s about the point when I tell her that mama is done playing baby and offer to put a movie in. And I don’t spank babies…or throw them across rooms, for the record...).
But after helping this woman, feeling as if I’d acted on a thought instead of just letting it dwindle, I was okay with Thomas. Of course, he still drove me nuts with his complaining about the cold and his obvious annoyance with pushing our ridiculous, and I mean ridiculous, double stroller. But I no longer let his attitude affect me in the way it had before. And by the time we left the zoo and made our way down to the Monument Circle for ice cream at our favorite chocolate shop, he was playing silly games with the kids, chatting it up with strangers, and being kind to his exasperating wife.
It began with getting outside myself. Announcing to the bratty middle child within that a) the world isn’t against her and b) that if she’d look in her peripheral she’ll find someone in need (or in the very least, a good parking space). Both of these things point me to the reality that this life is beyond my pendulum-ridden moods. There will always be someone in need. Always a bigger cause outside of myself and my circumstances. And to this, I raise my eggnog latte’ and give a Christmas toast:
May we suppress Ignorance and every excuse we have for her. May our eyes be open and our hearts be primed so that we can see all 360 degrees around us. May we embrace the narcissistic child inside of us, but may Kindness forever win out as we seek to serve and care for those in need.
Heaps of peace, abundant grace…and the small subtle nagging feeling of discomfort… to you and yours.
Cheers!
A guy in New York City committed suicide today. Something about a big financial scheme and losing lots of money. And I mean “lots” as in a billion. Though, the way the government throws around “billions of dollars” these days, like the lady at Costco giving out free chocolates at Christmas time, one billion doesn’t really sound like that big of a deal. Not that I’m into talking politics. I would risk sounding like my father discussing a woman’s menstrual cycle or better yet, afterbirth. That is to say, I would sound pretty um… how do you say it?
Dumb.
And mortified.
But more or less…dumb.
And I get that same uncomfortable feeling when discussing politics with people that my father gets whenever he is telling “us kids” goodbye and my husband is standing within three feet of him. I see his square jaw line tense up and a knowing smirk appear, it trying desperately to hide behind all 180 pounds of his seriousness. Then, he avoids eye contact with Thomas and embraces me until his three feet of personal space ensues…until he is no longer cornered by an oblivious Thomas. Apparently, this is the universal signal that hugging another man would indeed mean he is gay, or in the very least, to quote Mister Gepetto, “A real boy.”
I don’t know why I brought up the guy in New York. I guess it caught my eye because it seems Christmas, perhaps more than any other time of year, brings with it such a contradiction in terms. The Christmas cards, cookies, carols…the lights and laughter and the feeling that love is in the air, all imply that we are living on the set of The Brady Bunch.
Certainly, just for the month of December, the food fairies take food to the millions of people who are starving to death in Africa! And I’m quite sure the psych wards, just for a couple of weeks, will send all their patients home so that they can eat sweet potato pie with their “functional” families. Oh and let’s not forget the homeless folk down the street. Or the pregnant teenager out on her own. The AIDS patient. The child with leukemia. Her family. The grieving husband. The orphaned son. The unemployed single mom. The falsely accused inmate. Surely the holidays will offer them reprieve. Nothing a little mistletoe and fruitcake can’t resolve.
Sometimes I lament the delusions I had as a child and adolescent. The world was safe, people were on my side, leaders were trustworthy, and only kids on After School Specials did drugs. That’s back when drugs meant alcohol or cigarettes. When the problems on Seventh Heaven were the real problems of the world (admit it…we all wished our dad was a little more like Rev. Camden). Back when I thought that families stayed together forever. When the term “children are starving to death” meant nothing more than that kids were to clean their plates.
In one of our first years of marriage, Thomas and I were doing this no-carb diet thing. For me, a vegetarian, this left me eggs, cheese, and natural peanut butter. Oh, and vegetables (but they can be so darn boring). One of the items we could eat, however, was pork rinds. I am not a pork rindish kind of gal, but one day when Thomas brought a bag home from the store, I thought I’d throw back a few. Just as I placed the fifth or sixth one in my mouth, Thomas turned to me and said, “You eat pork rinds?”
I knew that very second that the name implied something. “Rind of pork.” “No, this can’t be…they aren’t really made from pigs? Are they?”
Thomas laughed at me, perhaps harder than he ever has before…or after. He was taking great pleasure in the shocked and disgusted look on my face and the fact that I had contaminated my meat-free body with fried pigskin. Sure enough, I turned the package around and there on the ingredient list read, first, “Pork Rind,” as if the pig himself were smiling at my ill-informed dieting scheme. I wanted to vomit. Like when I accidentally drink my toddler’s backwash.
Needless to say, I was ignorant.
Plato said, “Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil.” While it is bliss when we are children, as adults we must own up to the problems in our world. In our cities. Our neighborhoods. Our families.
I, for one, am a product of an ethnocentric culture. We truly believe that the U.S. of A. is the latest and greatest thing since pickled cucumbers. More than that, I personally have “middle-child syndrome.” This is my self-diagnosis of what is otherwise known as narcissism. So getting outside of myself is my biggest challenge in life. Oh oh oh. Did you know that there is such a thing as “Truman syndrome?” It’s true. Heard it on CNN (is that a paradox?). It’s when you think people are following you around, like the paparazzi or something and that everyone knows who you are…basically an exaggerated version of egotism. Well golly gee willikers, as my papa would say, can you believe, in our culture of overdone reality TV, glam ads, and rags to riches sagas that people would actually think that the world revolves around them? I like to think I’m pretty normal (on a good day, which is about 182.5 days out of the year), and I still struggle with thinking that the world owes me something. That this life is actually about me and my comfort and my adaptation to all things surrounding me. It’s my own little “Cristi Show” right here in these four oddly shaped walls.
So I have to force myself out of these pathetic patterns. I actually have this self-talk thing I do in moments when I am thinking the whole world is against me. On a typical day, one where I have to be around people, it starts in the parking lot. I used to pray for a good parking space. And then I realized that Jesus probably wanted me to get some exercise. So I stopped praying and started my own little Norman Vincent Peale session right here in my own pint-sized brain. For instance, if it’s cold out I say to myself, “There will be a parking space close to the store.” I speak very kindly to myself, like I’m talking to a newborn or a dying elderly woman. As I’m having this conversation with the little kid inside of me, I feel the virtue of patience fastening itself to me, like a good bra. I drive. Ho hum. There will certainly be a good parking space.
Eventually.
I drive some more. By this time, I’m stopping for pedestrians, letting cars go in front of me, smiling for no apparent reason, feeling like I just stepped out of the North Pole, like Buddy, and into the donut shop with the "world’s best cup of coffee." In reality, the donut shop is an overcrowded mall and the coffee is water dressed in brown. But by this point, I don’t care. I’m waiting on my destiny. And then, in my peripheral I notice white lights, the sign of a car in reverse. Right time. Right place. I just won myself a front row parking space. I park and nearly skip to the entrance. Never mind the fact that I just lost the opportunity to burn a few calories. It’s cold out, for the love. Jesus probably didn’t mind the cold like I do. After all, He patented it.
If this is as easy as it is to subdue my self-absorption, I am wondering why I don’t do it more often. It feels good to serve. To be a part of something outside of myself. I have noticed, even in our marriage, that if Thomas and I serve someone (or something) together, even by picking up trash on a walk, we are much more apt to be kind to one another. Serving allows us see beyond the interior, with its monotonous sounds and smells. When we look at the infrastructure of humanity, that every person deserves to be loved and that God created the earth for us to care for, serving becomes the wheel of change. We are hands and feet, fashioned for good. Period. Bottom line.
On a few instances I have lost one of my children in a store. I remember one time, in Chicago, Thomas and I were in a kids clothing store with Elias, who had just turned two. We were both looking at clearance racks, I guess thinking that the other had the boy, and suddenly we looked at each other and said, “Do you have Elias?”
“No,” we said, in unison.
We started searching the store. Calling his name. There is a timeframe that those of you who are mothers or fathers or owners of a beloved dog or cat or maybe even a ferret, are familiar with, when the child or pet disappears. At first you are like, “Oh, I’m sure he’s around here.” You call his name, expecting him to respond. Nothing. You walk around, eyes darting to and fro like someone on an acid trip, waiting for him to appear. Still nothing. Panic sets in. Headlines news scenarios rush into your mind. “Stay calm. Don’t panic. He’s around here somewhere.” Your motherly impulse overrides sanity.
And just as I started to lose it, there, out from behind the clothes rack on the far left side of the store, crawled a smiling Elias, as if he had performed a successful circus act, expecting us to be excited at his newfound passion for hiding. We hugged him, my hands shaking, heart pounding, still haunted by the thought of losing my baby boy. I kissed his neck, that little crevice between his shoulder and cheek that’s made for a mama’s lips. I smelled his baby-fine hair and then gazed into his huge eyes that have always looked ever so serious, and said, as every mother does, in my best mother tone, “Don’t you ever do that again.”
I have vowed in my heart that if a mother loses her child, I won’t just stand there and stare at her turning into a volcanic mess as many people have done when I have lost one of my kids. While I am a natural pessimist and would quickly believe that others simply don’t care about the fact that I’ve just lost my child, I think the reality is that they don’t know what to do. Again, I think this is partly because of our cultural apathy. We believe the problems of others aren’t our problems and thus we have been trained to keep to ourselves…to not be a part of the solution.
Last weekend Thomas and I ventured to “Christmas at the Zoo” with not only our three kids, but my sister’s three as well. The first stop in the sea of lights and creatures, and more than that, people, was the butterfly garden, which was transformed into a big train exhibit. As our kids peered into the tiny villages of snowcapped mountains and covered bridges, I noticed a mother next to me calling for her son. “Jess,” she kept saying, “Jess!”
Her voice became a little more troubled. Panicked, really. “Jess!”
Now, I must admit that I also have a superhero complex. I’m sure it’s intertwined into the middle-child thing, but mostly this one is used for the good. I even caught a guy at the Disney Store in Chicago last week as he stuffed a bunch of clothes into his huge black coat and darted for the door. I ran to the store clerk and yelled, “That guy just stole a bunch of stuff.” She ran outside and caught him just as he was about to step onto the “getaway” city bus. It was beautiful really. I half expected the whole store to put me on their shoulders and shout “hip hip hooray” just like they did on the Smurfs. But it’s Chicago, so I accepted my husband’s pat on the back and continued shopping for an Ariel doll and a Power Ranger.
My “mama empathy” rose up as I watched the mother wait for her son to return. I noticed no one was even paying attention to this woman. The ones that were sort of looked at her like she was an alien and then walked by, caught up in their own children, their own experience here in train land. I approached her, thinking simultaneously that I would probably lose one of our kids in the meantime. “What is he wearing?” I asked, knowing her mind was already to the “what-if” stage.
“He’s African-American and he’s wearing a striped hat and a black Zip up hoodie with a red shirt underneath and jeans. He’s five.”
Wow. “Good description,” I thought. This chic was on it.
“He was right behind me. And then I turned around and he was gone.”
“I’ll go look upstairs,” I said.
I went to the top floor and scoured the place, thinking the “what-if” question but mostly believing that he would show up. I was just starting to pray when I heard her say, in a stern but relieved sort of tone, “Jess. Oh Jess, where were you?”
I made my way down the stairs, eased at the sight of them together.
“Thanks,” She said, her countenance completely different than before.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ve totally been there,” I offered, an overused but true proclamation of understanding.
In the moments before this occurred, I had been frustrated with Thomas about something. I think it was his passivity. Feeling like the zoo idea was mine and he was simply being strewn along, like me when my daughter talks me into playing “baby.” (“Now you pretend to put me in bed. Now pretend to feed me. Now let’s go shopping and I’ll be the baby and you be the big sister and we can go to Chuck E. Cheese and I’ll have ice cream and then you are frustrated with me because I’m crying and then you spank me. She reaches for her doll and acts this out for me, announcing to the baby she is getting spanked and then hitting the poor thing and throwing her on the floor. That’s about the point when I tell her that mama is done playing baby and offer to put a movie in. And I don’t spank babies…or throw them across rooms, for the record...).
But after helping this woman, feeling as if I’d acted on a thought instead of just letting it dwindle, I was okay with Thomas. Of course, he still drove me nuts with his complaining about the cold and his obvious annoyance with pushing our ridiculous, and I mean ridiculous, double stroller. But I no longer let his attitude affect me in the way it had before. And by the time we left the zoo and made our way down to the Monument Circle for ice cream at our favorite chocolate shop, he was playing silly games with the kids, chatting it up with strangers, and being kind to his exasperating wife.
It began with getting outside myself. Announcing to the bratty middle child within that a) the world isn’t against her and b) that if she’d look in her peripheral she’ll find someone in need (or in the very least, a good parking space). Both of these things point me to the reality that this life is beyond my pendulum-ridden moods. There will always be someone in need. Always a bigger cause outside of myself and my circumstances. And to this, I raise my eggnog latte’ and give a Christmas toast:
May we suppress Ignorance and every excuse we have for her. May our eyes be open and our hearts be primed so that we can see all 360 degrees around us. May we embrace the narcissistic child inside of us, but may Kindness forever win out as we seek to serve and care for those in need.
Heaps of peace, abundant grace…and the small subtle nagging feeling of discomfort… to you and yours.
Cheers!