IslandRoar

Winter Solstice

 
  

It's 12 years this month that The Ex and I split.

Yes, I asked him to leave in December. Nice timing, huh? But really, there's never a good time for these things, so December it was.

I hadn't thought about the darkness. How it descends the first three weeks of December and hovers like a mo' fo'.

My kids were 3, 6, and 10. Dinnertime was the hardest. For some reason, planning what to make, getting it ready and on the table, then sliding into the cleanup, homework, bath and bedtime ritual, seemed, for a long while, hopelessly overwhelming.

I had to find ways to let in the light.

I began collecting recipes, planning menus. Playing music at dinner. The kids took turns picking the CD's. One night might be West Side Story, the next, Britney Spears.

We'd raise the volume while everyone helped clear the table, even three year-old Daughter #2. Most nights we wound up dancing. I'd grab a kid and jitterbug. Or tango. Daughter #1 would tap. It was amazingly therapeutic.

Still, the darkness hovered.

I stole an idea from some woman's magazine on celebrating the winter solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year. I planned carefully.

Each older child was allowed to invite one friend. We lit a fire and ate dinner (homemade pizzas they topped themselves) by candlelight.

Everyone had to pick a poem from one of our many books of children's poetry. Preferably one about winter or the dark or the light. But any one would do. Each child read their poem at the table by the light of the candle flames. I read Daughter #2's. Then one I wrote myself.

I'm not sure if they got it. But they listened to me, to each other, respectfully. Suddenly kids were begging to read "one more" poem. Then another.

"We celebrate because today we've made it through the darkest day of the year," I told them. "Every day after this, the sun will move a little bit closer, and there will be a little more light. The days will grow longer and longer. Right up until the first day of summer."

It became a tradition. Each year: a friend, candles, poetry. I worried there might be some grumbling in high school. Instead, 16 year-old boys shrugged, decided to stay for dinner, and pored through books, looking for a poem.

Some of those other traditions that pulled me through survive to this day. Whenever all three kids are home, they still take turns picking our dinner music. And we frequently find ourselves dancing during cleanup.

And yes, it's still amazingly therapeutic.

 

A Life Well Lived

 

A friend of mine died last week. She was 87. At first I was really sad. But then I started to think about the celebration her life had been.

Meg was a poet. An only child, she'd married a gifted, eccentric artist and had five children. They lived in a huge mansion in Connecticut that they couldn't afford, because everything was sacrificed to her husband's whim and he wanted the house. The more frustrated he grew with his struggling career, the more mentally and emotionally abusive he became.

Her own work was buried by his, but when the children were grown she decided she'd had enough. Already in her 60's, she found the courage to leave him. She walked away with nothing and wound up taking a job as a house-mother at a women's college in Connecticut. There, she was able to take classes and save a little money. Most important, she was finally on her own.

Eventually she decided to place a call to her old friend and family pediatrician, Dr. B. His wife was dead, and he was at least 15 years her senior, but he was still practicing medicine in a rather dubious section of Brooklyn.

They dated for a while, and then Meg moved to Brooklyn and they married. Somewhere along the way, they bought a house on the Vineyard, and it was here that they came when Dr. B finally retired at age 90. They had 12 happy years together before he died.

Meg stayed on in the Vineyard house. She traveled and cooked and returned to her early love of writing poems. It was through poetry that she came into my life. She hosted fabulous parties with all her many friends: artists, writers, professors; she had an eclectic assortment of people that she collected and held dear.

A few years ago she moved to Boston to enjoy the conveniences of city life. When I went to stay on weekends, it was clear she'd already developed a network of friends. She was swimming and had season tickets to the theater. She'd started a Facebook page to keep in touch with her younger friends and family. I wasn't really that surprised the day I received her "friend request."

She had her own table at several neighborhood restaurants, and she'd published a book of her poetry. She even told me about her steamy affair with a man little more than half her age.

Two years ago she took her granddaughter to Europe. And, despite a broken hip, cardiac bypass surgery, and stomach cancer, all in the last year and a half, she was still living alone and planning a trip to Greece this winter. And she was gathering poems to publish a second collection.

She'd called me just a few weeks ago to invite me to her annual New Year's Day party, and we were making plans to get together on her next visit to the Vineyard over the Jewish holidays. But she never made it.

I'll miss Meg, but I was blessed to have her as my friend. She found joy in everything, and no matter how many years had gone by, she never gave up believing there was even more joy to come.

But she put it best herself:

            Our lives were always a little less and more than that which we had 
        bargained for.

And:

            Light is fading; we must go. Oh world, oh world, I love you so.

Spin Cycle: What Are YOU Good At?

 

For this week's Spin we're supposed to post about something we're good at.

Right away I thought of my writing and poetry. So please forgive me if I post a poem as my Spin. I wrote this about working nights as an RN on a pediatric unit, something I did for many years, something I also think I was pretty damned good at.

 

Nights on Pediatrics

One-year-olds with their knees
folded under their chests,
backsides high in metal cribs

shrouded in croup tents
hissing drops of mist.
Toddlers tossing with fever.

Adolescents clawing the sheet in search of
the next decent breath.
Kids with cancer swallow Tylenol

in their sleep while
fat drops of blood fall
from the bag through their veins.

The high-pitched screams of septic babies
blend with the deep-throated moans of sickle cell in
a young adult.

Nights on Peds.
We stroke their hair.
Tuck up covers.

Watch chests rise and fall with sleep,
brows wrinkled in dreams.
It’s all that we can do.

                                            *************************

Now you can go on over to Sprite's Keeper and check out what other bloggers have to say about the things they're good at.

 

 

Spin Cycle: Kids

A Poem

This week's Spin is kids. Now, I write about kids a lot, maybe too much. But I couldn't think of anything I wanted to post. Then I put up my Weekly Poem, which I post on another page of this blog, and I thought, "Aha, this is it."

I wrote this poem when Daughter #1 was 10. Already she was the independent, trend-bucking, intellectual girl she is today. A poem is really often nothing more than just a moment caught in time, and this is a tiny moment I will always treasure.

My Daughter Going to Town

She wears layers of clashing
flowered shirts,
her purse carefully thrown
over her head and one shoulder.

Inside it I know
are plans,
concoctions large enough
to barely contain themselves
in a roll of lifesavers,
a zippered change purse,
a round pot of gloss.

She throws her chin up,
strides a half step ahead,
toes not quite thrust into sandals,
tongue intent through clenched jaw,
her cheek still round with little girl dreams.

And I, unable to stop myself,
place a hand on her head.
Startled she turns,
smiles,
and I ache at her
magnificence.
                  -mdh

For those of you (and I know there are many) who don't respond enthusiastically to poetry, I apologize. I promise not to invade this page with poems too often. For more Spins on kids, go check out Sprite's Keeper.