The moments that your heart holds tight….

It’s the small things in life that seem to hold the most real estate in my heart – not from birthdays or weddings or special holidays, but rather, the moments from every day life that surprise me and have me wanting to push the pause button and absorb it before it moves past.   I had one of those moments on my last morning in Colorado, while staying with my daughter, son-in-law and 10 month-old grandson.

I was sitting on an ottoman that I had pushed up in front of the windowed door to the deck with my grandson,  Arlo, on my lap.  It was early morning and the sun was still making it’s last climb over the horizon, leaving a soft yellow glow in the house; that very peaceful time of day when everything seems to move a bit slower, including 10 month-old babies.  A herd of 20 or so mule deer were slowly making their way across their land, close enough to the house that they were easily spotted by both of us, even though their coats were camouflaged against the color of the winter grass.  When Arlo spotted them, he quickly looked up to me to insure that I also saw them, then pointed his small finger at them,  looked up at me again and smiled.  Arlo is a very busy, very mobile baby, so the  moments seemed borrowed in a way and I held onto them as long as I could as I knew while it was happening that it was a moment and a feeling  I’d later savor.

We sat there  for several minutes, quietly watching as the deer slowly made their way across the land behind the house, Arlo’s eyes wide with fascination. When he had seen enough, he turned his attention towards me and  grabbed my necklace, as he often does because he’s a baby and that’s what babies do, but this time he held it in his small hand as if he was really examining it, rather than simply trying to pull it off of my neck.  It’s a small silver disc with  the words “protect this woman” surrounding a small turquoise piece in the center.  I’ve worn it continually  around my neck for the past 5 years.  He seemed very curious about it.  Someday, Arlo, I will tell you about the day that I found the necklace in a small shop in Leadville, CO.  I will tell you that in the previous months, I had climbed to the top of five 14,000 foot peaks, by myself, and although I have a weakness for silver and turquoise, it was the words on that small disc that had me buying it without hesitation.  I’ll explain how even though it is only a piece of jewelry that I wear around my neck, somehow, it makes me feel just a tiny bit safer.  I’ll show you, someday, what it felt like to climb those five tall peaks and will give you the handful of tips I discovered  as we climb them together.

I will also tell you about the first morning after my young family had moved into our new home,  when your Mom was not even three,  and I saw a huge buck circling the large cedar tree in the front of our house and how mesmerized I was by the site of him and the fact that there he was, right in our own front yard. There’s just something about watching deer so close to where you live in the early morning hours.   I’ll tell you that those 5 acres that surrounded our new home made me feel like I was living on a ranch as I had never lived in a place with so much land around me.  You’ll laugh about that one, no doubt, as living with a lot of land around you is all you have known, but that’s ok.    At some point, I’ll  tell you the rest of my deer story… the part where the deer could wipe out days of work in my garden during their early morning feedings and how I spent countless hours and endless experimentation trying to deter them.  Even so, that morning when I saw the buck circling the cedar tree, just feet from our front porch, still wins on the deer memories for me.  Did I mention that it was snowing lightly that morning?

As I sat there in the quiet house, with Arlo  on my lap, I felt the awe of the role of Grandma that I was blessed with a short 10 months ago.  It’s a role that I covet dearly, first, because I am a mom and to see my baby take on the very role that shaped the biggest part of my life is beyond miraculous to me.  Second, because of my own grandparents and the important role they all played in me becoming who I am today.  My love of knitting, sewing, gardening, photography, writing and love of travel were all introduced to me by my grandparents, whether directly with a hand reaching over mine as I held a red plastic knitting needle as it formed stitches or indirectly, simply by exposure.

The silver bangle that I’ve worn on my right wrist since I was 16, is one of many continual reminders of their influence  in my life.  I can remember my maternal grandmother, always with an armful of silver bangles, and the noise she would make when she entered a room.  Her granddaughters were each given one of her bangles when she died and I’ve carried that little bit of her on my wrist ever since.  There are other reminders that come in flashes – the first bloom of the iris in the spring, a well-written, witty letter, a bolt of fabric with its limitless possibilities when a sewing machine and a lot of patience are added, skeins of yarn and needles and the hope of sweaters that will fit and the ever present  camera that resulted in boxes and boxes of  beautifully captured photographs.  These are the pieces of my life that have given me my sense of passion and have pushed my creativity in ways that continue to challenge me. If I can contribute in  a similar way to my own grandson’s life, I will feel like I’m not only sharing some of who I am with him, but I’m giving thanks to my own grandparents in the process.

Last week, I was in a baby store shopping with someone who I’ve called my best friend since I was 15 years old.  She was shopping for her  6 week-old grand son, and I was shopping for Arlo.  We hadn’t been there long when it hit me and in between the oohs and ahhhs and is this cute?  too cute?  and how big will he be in 6 months?,  I stopped,  pondered the reality of the moment, and commented.

“Look at us….friends for 3/4 of our lives, you living on the east coast for most of it,  and me in the midwest,  and here we are, in a baby shop in Breckenridge, Colorado, shopping for our grandsons.  Could you even have begun to imagine that out of all the searches we made together… the clothes,  the parties, the guys, the fun the beer and the cheap clothes and babysitting jobs to pay for those cheap clothes and maybe someone with a fake ID to buy the cheap beer, that someday our search together would be for baby clothes… for our grandsons???”

A beautiful passage of time seemed to have had us both in its collective hug and the 46 years had brought us to a moment that I think caught us both off guard.  We became grandmas for the first time 9 months apart and after sharing so many firsts, we’re sharing one again.

So, Arlo, that moment we watched the deer with the sun rising at our backs, tucked away in the quiet of the house  with you seated on my lap,  was one moment of countless moments to come.  I have so much to tell you and share with you and if just one of those many moments impacts you enough that someday you’re sharing it with your own child or grandchild, or really anyone, then I will have succeeded and that yarn of all of our collective experiences will continue to knit the stories that will connect the generations.   We  are all a part of the creation of something quite beautiful – stitch by stitch, row by row, that continues to grow.

Stories for my Grandchildren

Today,  I am seated on the same blue couch I sat on a year ago, looking out of the same picture windows at the same spot on the Oregon Coast.   I remember the story I wrote that day after being moved by what I had seen earlier at the beach.  The story has stayed with me and has become far more relevant and meaningful over the past few months than the day I wrote it. 

I had witnessed a small gathering of people standing shoulder to shoulder at the water’s edge with their faces and attention all towards the sea.  I was drawn to their stillness and connection to something I couldn’t see but could feel.  As I got closer, close enough to see the individuals in the group, while respectfully maintaining my distance, I saw someone seated in front of the group who appeared to be younger than those standing.  She wore a yellow raincoat.  The person at the end of the group moved next to the girl, squatted down, put his hand on her back, and handed her a box.  The girl held the box to her chest, then returned it to the man, picked up a stick, and began carving something into the sand.  When she was finished, the man returned the box to her and the group slowly walked away from the water in a single file, with the girl in the yellow raincoat trailing behind. I had walked away from the group, not wanting to intrude, and when I returned, I saw the letters MA carved into the sand.  The tide may have erased the first part of the word,  or maybe that was all she wrote.  Was it MA?  Or were they the last two letters of MAMA?  I wasn’t sure, but the image drawn beside it was unmistakable—a heart.

I may not have gotten the details right, and that didn’t matter, but what I did get right was the witnessing of love that the line-up of people had for someone who was no longer with them. It made me think of my three children and what they would look like had it been me who they were honoring and mourning. A year later, that is not the story I’m telling.  Instead, it is my two sons and I who are metaphorically standing at the water’s edge, mourning the passing of my sons’ only sister and my only daughter. It’s not the order of life we expected, and we still grapple with the reality that it happened. My daughter, Emery, who was not even as old as I was when I gave birth to her, is no longer with us. Of course, Emery’s metaphorical lineup at the water’s edge would be much larger than just me and her two brothers and would include her father, her husband, her two children, and her two sisters-in-law, for starters.

Emery was always my first text after I’d post a new blog.  She’d praise my words, noting specific parts that moved her or made her laugh, indicating that she had read the piece and wasn’t just giving me a quick “ I loved it!” acknowledgment. I remember her text after I posted my story of the lineup of people on the beach, and I could quote her exact words if I felt brave enough emotionally to scroll through her texts, but I don’t.  She later told me she could see herself and her brothers doing exactly what I said in the piece…“Talking over each other and interrupting with stories about Mom because there had been so many, but she should be here telling them because she was the storyteller.” I won’t get her response to this post.

Witnessing what I did that morning had me thinking about my death and how my family would react.  It’s not something that I think of often, but after seeing the group of people mourning someone they loved and leaning into each other in sorrow, thoughts of my death were softened by the love that has woven us together as a family.   I never thought it would be the youngest family member we would be saying goodbye to first.

This morning, a year later, I thought about the girl in the yellow raincoat, who I guessed to be a young teen.  She was the one I related to, especially after seeing the letters MA  and the heart carved into the sand.  As a Mama who said goodbye to her daughter, who was also a Mama, I became the girl in the yellow raincoat.  The oldest and the Mom in our family of five made an unlikely connection with the youngest in the lineup of people on the beach because of a heart drawn in the sand and two letters that I have turned into the word Mama for the story’s sake.  She missed her Mama, and I am a Mama who misses her child.  We have a connection.

Back in the mid-70s, when I was getting my pilot’s license, I became close friends with Leigh, who was also in her late teens, working on her pilot’s license.  Leigh and I connected with our experiences, enjoying each other’s stories far more than anyone else would.  Several times a week, we’d return to the fixed base operation at the small regional airport where I worked after closing. She’d park her car at the edge of the tarmac, and we’d lay on the car’s roof, looking at the stars and watching the lights of the planes as they descended onto the runway while passing a bottle of Cold Duck back and forth. It was a rich environment for sharing dreams, most of them in the skies.  Our conversations were punctuated by “this will be something we will tell our grandkids” because we thought it would be our role as grandmas to share stories that would have our grandchildren on the edge of their seats. It became our tagline and our push to do things that scared us — more stories for our grandchildren.  I had no idea at the time that the stories I would be telling two of my grandchildren would not be about my flying escapades but rather would be stories about their Mama, some that only I could tell them.  I will tell them the stories their Mama won’t be able to tell them. I will be the one to tell them she loved red shoes as a little girl, twirly skirts, and could French braid her hair when she was in kindergarten.  I will tell them she had a deathly fear of silverfish, and it had nothing to do with the holes they made in coveted sweaters.  I will tell them that for many years, she would only eat yogurt if it had goldfish crackers in it, and so that’s how I prepared it for her.  I will tell them I sang to her at night until she was old enough to sing along, and it became a nightly show rather than a peaceful transition to slumber.

In the same way, I would sit with my Dad in his last few years and ask for more stories, so afraid he would die before I had them all, I need to make sure Arlo and Muna have all the stories I can remember about their Mama.  It will be healing for me and information for them. I will feel Emery’s presence as I ramble on to Arlo and Muna with stories about their Mama. I will feel her beside me, nodding and smirking, then saying, “Well, that’s not exactly how it happened…”. And I’ll look back at her with raised brows, and she will correct herself and say, “You’re right and some exaggeration is OK because you’re the storyteller and you have a captive audience.”  At least, that’s what I imagine.  In telling my daughter’s stories, the edges of the missing part of my heart will soften. Salve to my heart will become information for Arlo and Muna.  I thought about the “stories we will tell our grandchildren”  while walking on a beach a short drive from where I’m staying. A few minutes later,  I noticed I had missed a call from Leigh.  We hadn’t talked in over 15 years.  I sat on a rock to listen to her message and saw a heart-shaped rock in the sand, directly in front of my boot. I looked up, half expecting to also see a red-tailed hawk, but only saw a seagull.   Emery is with me, and she’s making sure I know it.

As I returned to my car,  a couple reading the trailhead map at the edge of the parking lot stopped me and asked me if it was a hard hike down to the beach.  “Hard?  No, not at all.  It’s very easy and quite lovely.”  They thanked me and were on their way.  I paused, wondering why I had done what I did, responding to their question with the information they wanted but with a definite British accent.  I don’t normally respond to people I don’t know with a British accent.  Actually,  I’ve never done that before in my life, but there are many things I’m doing now that I’ve never done before as I’m navigating an unpredictable path. The only explanation I could come up with is that during these heavy days of sadness and grief, I don’t always want to be who I am.  I don’t want to be a Mom who has endured something that no Mom should ever have to endure.  Instead, I became a British woman, perhaps on holiday, enjoying a short hike and an afternoon at the beach.  Maybe someday, that will be added to the long line-up of stories I’ll tell Arlo and Muna.  The story of grief being so difficult to maneuver that their Laudie pretended to be someone else and spoke with a British accent. 

Many of the stories I will share with Arlo and Muna were recorded when they happened in journals and essays I’ve written and collected since the day I found out I was pregnant with their Mama.  As I sit here today, on the same blue couch, looking out of the same picture window to a part of the country I’ve come to love, I think about the girl in the yellow raincoat.  I wonder if, a year later, the raw edges of her grief have been softened and if she asks the others who were with her that day to tell her more stories because when there is a finite number, they hold more weight and importance than ever imagined before.  The words I write today,  tomorrow, and for the rest of my life, will be the stories l tell my grandchildren when the time is right. They are words inspired by my beautiful girl, Emery, written by the one she called Mom while in the throes of grief that I never could have anticipated.  

Once upon a time, your Mama…” I’ll say,  and Arlo and Muna will lean in, holding onto every word then will carry them as their own.