Like Seeing Green for the First Time

The last week before my mother died, she acted so differently.

I was taking her for rides daily. With the windows down and the wind blowing in, from her passenger seat she'd stare at the sky and ask, "Have you ever seen such a blue sky? So pure and clear." When we drove past the many farmers' fields in my small town, she'd tell me to look, "See that green? The grass is a green like I've never seen." One day when the temperatures were in the 90's, I started to roll the car window up so I could put the air conditioning on for her, she asked me to leave the windows down, because "The air is so fresh like water on my face."

One of her favorite things to do had become for me to take her on a rustic road where wild lilies grew. She'd ask me to pull over and pick "just one" and she'd hold it, staring at its center, saying over and over in Spanish, "What a beautiful flower. Have you ever seen such  glory?"

With my children at the lake, she'd marvel at the clouds and loved sitting and staring at shapes. Excited, she'd point and call to my son, Xavier, "That one looks like a little rabbit!" She had stopped talking in English to the children about two weeks before then, and it was all Spanish now. When I spoke to her, I'd catch her staring at my face like she had never seen me before, the way she would look at the paintings at the art museum where she would take us when we were little. My heart fell when it occurred to me that possibly, she was beginning to not recognize us anymore, but her answers back to my questions were quick, witty, and right on track, and she knew it was me she was talking to. 

The day before she passed away, I remember being surprised to the point of laughing out loud, when I told her one of our shared, secret pleasures: gossip on a thorn in my side woman. My mother had been semi-conscious for several days, and I leaned in, telling her the latest antics on this less than kind person, when in the quiet of the room where you heard nothing but the small fan whirring, cooling her face, she burst out with a "Ha!" At that moment, I had never felt more grateful, more honored, more proud, to have the gift of humor. 

She laughed, like laughter had become her oxygen. Our youngest, Auggie, would dance for her, wiggling with his butt facing her, and shouting "Activities!" and she'd almost choke from the sputtering joy. It became so important for her to hold my hand while I drove. Equally important, she had to touch my children's faces every day that she saw them.

She acted like she's never acted before, serene, tranquil. She took notice of everything, it was as if her prayer that day had been, Be aware. Be Aware.

One day while driving, as she said so softly to herself in Spanish, "The green of that grass... look how green, like emeralds," I remember my stomach clenching, as I realized it. I looked at her while she stared out of her window, and I remember thinking, in disbelief at how soon it was going to be, she knows she's going to die. Because she hung on to everything as if she knew she'd never see it again. But it wasn't desperation, it was wonder. I opened my mouth to ask her, but I was too scared.

It's so sad, with all I've had to do, I haven't had time to reflect on the days before her death.

I kept a notebook of this time with her because I knew I had to -- the air felt lit, magical, and no doubt I was in the thick of something rare. One morning, with eyes closed, she pointed to something behind her. At 4 a.m., the day before she passed away, she reached for my face while I was reading to her, and though her eyes were closed, her hand found my chin, and she held it, making a croaking sound. I will never not remember it.

She tried without success to open her mouth and say something to my children the day they came to say good-bye; as weak as she was, she willed herself to put her shaking hands together in prayer and made a whimpering sound. I saw the corners of her mouth turn down, in sadness, and it broke me. She didn't want to leave them. I keep saying over and over, She doesn't want to leave them.

When my mother and I were alone during those last days, I lay next to her and stroked her hand, telling her, "Mama, the books the nurses gave me here say you can hear me. I'm so sorry for your life. I'm sorry for the childhood you had. I'm sorry your husband killed himself and you were left alone in a new country, with six children, one of them just born. I'm so sorry you came to the United States where your life has always been too hard for you. I'm so sorry, mama. I love you, and thank you for taking care of us, for being so good to my children, for saving me from post partum depression. You had newborn Alec crying in your arms, and me crying on your shoulder. You came to see me every day when I didn't know how I was going to make it through the next hour with that first baby. Remember? You saved me, mama, from the most terrifying time in my life. You saved me. Thank you, mama."

And when I finished, there was silence, except for her dry tears being the only sound.

 

Her last days were complex, and simple, and astounding.

The end of the indestructible woman that my mother was.

When we called her church of over forty years and told them of her death, you could hear their reaction from across the room, "Leonor? Oh, no!"

I wanted to say, "I KNOW. None of us can believe it."

Who can believe it.

I still don't. It's the abruptness of death, no matter how slow it is in coming, that leaves me bewildered. Even as I sit, sorting through the packed boxes of her things as evidence around me that she is gone, I shake my head hoping something falls into place, that allows the permanency of this condition, to sink in.

* * *

A Semblance of Normal

For the past year, I've been living life in a grabbing at time whenever I can get it way. Taking care of my mother in hospice, my life has become one built around my daily visits to her. She needs me, and she is in the front seat of any activity or anything else going on in my life. Someday, when there's time, I'll tell you of the gratitude I have for my mother, who brought my grandmother to this country to escape what she was barely surviving in Colombia.

But not today.

Today, I'll tell you how I did nothing off of the 100 page I-need-to-do-this-today list and instead, I floated.

I floated on the gentle waves of the day, never breaking the fragile surface's tension to dive down to return emails, make phone calls, or get any rearranging of shelves done. All of that, I left far below... as I drifted, my hands trailing softly along in the sweet current of today. Early morning began with a walk with my youngest and turned into a wheezing filled attempt at a run as I tried to keep up with the lungs of a ten-year-old boy, something that made him double over in delicious laughter.

Today, our small town held its Mayberry R.F.D.-like annual 4th of July parade, and my family and I were there in our chairs to watch the local boy scouts and soccer clubs march through our ten block business route, tossing out candy to the crowd. Half way through the parade, I always end up telling my children to stand because the Special Olympics representatives march past and when the State Champs of anything pass us on the route, we acknowledge them.

I did no cleaning, no errands. My shoulders were made tender by the sun, and I smelled summer in the hamburgers that my husband and oldest boy grilled. I tasted the moment of this suspended time in the roasted corn that burned my fingertips as I pulled the cobs off the coals. We laughed as we looked at my youngest's pile of corn cobs on his plate that could have passed for a lumberjack log jam. In the middle of our backyard table I had placed my grandmother's sweet mandarin orange and carrot salad, a favorite from when I was young, and now it's my children's. There wasn't a single spoonful left.

We left in the early afternoon to visit my mother, and at one o'clock, we held a miniature parade for her outside on a 70 degree perfect day, the three of us waving the small flags we had brought along. We high stepped past her in her wheelchair, as she stifled giggles watching my oldest son salute her. He had found drum and bugle corps music on the iPad and we played it loud. Her eyes grew wet with the joy of the day. Come July 20, we'll be back here for her and we'll hold an Independence Day parade for her country, Colombia -- on their day of celebrating freedom. We'll leave here now, and tonight, when we're back home, we'll watch fireworks from the hill where they launch and we'll marvel, as we do every year, at how the bursts of rockets fill the sky.

Snatching at time when I can, thinking of nothing else while I'm in these days of caring for my mother, but trying to remember every heartbeat of our moments. This has become our semblance of normal as we all tend to her.

This season is a bittersweet one of marking our days, everything resonating in a deep awareness. Like how her hands are still as soft as silk, like my youngest son's are, as she tells us good-bye and taking our hands, presses them against her face. Her eyes closed, I see her trying to imprint these days as hard as I do.

Dusk arrives, and with rolled up blankets under our arms, we find our place on the hill at the park. Anticipating the thunder of the opening fireworks, my son's small hands slip into mine, his back against my chest for support. The excited crowd's chattering rises as the sky grows darker, and my little boy leans into me, both of us whispering how our favorite part is when the fireworks first break open, the colors zigzagging like fireflies.

We sit, eager for the celebration tonight, propped up on our elbows on the maroon and green plaid picnic blanket my mother gave us 18 years ago when my oldest son was first born. My hands feel the familiar fabric, and tears slip down the sides of my cheek as I remember the number of times she sat with us on this blanket while on picnics and trips to the park.

A hush falls over the crowd as we hear the whoosh of the first rocket launched. A glorious firework as large and full as a chrysanthemum bursts open and a million lights fill the expanse of the velvet sky. The boom from the first flash cracks in the night sky, and twinkling embers slowly trail away in the darkness, then flicker away with an echo settling deep in my chest.

My mother today on our visit July 4, 2013

Feeling nothing but the weight of my little boy against me, my eyes follow the drifting dust tails of a thousand white diamonds that shimmer across the black sky, illuminating the night with what once was.

* * *

*I'm stopping back here to say, that less than three weeks later, my mother has passed. Thank you all, for sharing, and holding me up, through this time of caring for her. I am grateful for my community.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss

I can remember being in kindergarten and falling in love with the sturdy book in my hands. Bright clean colors within contrasting dark lines, the BIG BLACK FONT, all trademarks of a Dr. Seuss book. The box of new books had just arrived in our classroom while we were out during lunch, and we stood huddled around our teacher's oak desk, our tip toes up so we could see over each other's heads as she pulled the sealing tape off the brown box.

There were so many books, no one who wanted one, had to go without. I remember reaching for If I Ran The Zoo because of its stark white cover and haphazard black letters that almost filled the entire space. I flipped through the pages and the crazy pink skies and unheard of blue grass and a six foot tall polka dot cat, was it a cat? and trees that looked like spray painted ice cream cones had me running for the reading corner, where I could sit, uninterrupted, and read. Reading never felt like work in that classroom.

I learned to read with Dr. Seuss, something I've never forgotten. When my children were a year old I bought them each their own six book starter set of Seuss' books. Since my boys were only a year and a half apart in age, we quickly had a full dozen Seuss books in the boys' shared bedroom. They'd make their way over to their short book case every night and pull out their favorites for me and my husband to read. But many times I'd catch them on their own, tucked into their chairs, a Seuss book in their laps, imitating the words they'd hear when we read to them. In their wonderfully childish voices, they'd mimic "Da B book. B is for big brown banana boxes..." and one that I love still, "Are you my mudder? Are you my mudder?"

Yes, my children learned to read on Dr. Seuss books too. And that floods me with warm memories.

Happy birthday, dear Dr. Seuss, you made me think of myself as a reader.

If you have a little one, or know of someone else's little one, and they've got a special day coming up, gift them with some Seuss. Remember the silly loveliness of Seuss' illustrations and the rhyming ease that helped you guess at words so you'd feel accomplished and like you were reading, even though you weren't.

My children pretended to read two years before they actually could. And they did it with Dr. Seuss books.

Here's an awesome link to the best the Doctor has to offer, from his website, Seussville.

Thrill a child, let them think they're reading before they can. They're called self fulfilling prophecies for a reason.

* * * 

**TAKE your kids to the coolest interactive website EVER: Seussville.
(Games, clothes, puzzles, classroom aids, projects, printable sheets. Oh, and maybe one or two books. xo)

photo credit: charliecurve via photopin cc

The Trinity Complex

We have three children, a boy who is ten, and two older boys: 15 and 17 years old. This past weekend, after the boys worked as hard as my husband with the mulch and the wheelbarrow and the spades and the rock moving outside, I knew it was time.

After a dinner of three hamburgers each, a gallon of lemonade, and two packages of Ore-Ida curly fries, I made up my mind. They were man enough. Definitely man enough. I turn to them at the table and ask in a low voice along with a direct unwavering gaze,

You guys ever hear of a movie, Matrix?

Yeah, they say, I think so.

Know anything about it?

It's in the future or the past, or the future that looks like the past. Like Steam Punk. Robots take over and it's all grey and dirty like industrial London.

Well, it's my favorite movie of all time, and tonight, my children, we are going to see it.

I walk to the living room, I silently kneel in front of the shelf where we keep John Gray's Children Are From Heaven and William Bennett's The Book of Virtues. I reach behind and pull out the DVD of the greatest kick ass movie of all time.

I can barely talk when I think of that movie.

When I saw it for the first time, I dreamed, for days, that I was Trinity. I have made it through the toughest situations in my life by being Trinity. The leather bracelet around my wrist is stamped WWTD.

When Matrix hit the theaters in 1999, my poor husband had to endure my round house kicks to his butt and karate chops to his throat as I roamed around our house, hiding behind corners, in black wrap-around Neo sunglasses and a duster coat. If I could have squeezed my pregnant body into liquid latex back then, I would have.

If you have no idea who Trinity is, or who I'm talking about, well, I don't want to stop being your friend over it or anything, but still ... Just. Watch. Her:



The only thing wrong with that clip is that it needs to be about eight times longer.

With the DVD in my hand, I take a deep breath. There is no tip-toeing to the edge of the cliff with this movie. Seeing Matrix is a full blast all engines wide open leap and no going back.

Get ready, boys.

Yeah, whatever mom.

Silence. For the entire length of the movie. (yup) Afterward, fully satisfied, I turn to my offspring, hopeful -- looking at those faces that are so much like mine it makes me ache to share everything with them. Every time.

Well? I ask. Best damn movie or what?

And as if out of some picture perfect world where all dreams come true, my boys jump up, grab black sunglasses and my husband's rain coat and start beautifully spin kicking the air and trying for somersaults.

If there was ever any doubt before, there no longer is now: I lead a charmed life.

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