Gratitude

My first good friend with disabilities, though hers were invisible, was my college friend Jenny. She had childhood-onset diabetes, which affected her ability to see, especially at night. She was also color-blind. She wanted to go into medicine, but she could not see the little flags on the pig in the Biology lab to identify body parts, so she took a long road. Now she’s a psychiatrist, and she’s thriving after a kidney transplant.

Jenny came to visit after my surgery, and she told me that one day I might be grateful for my tumor. I inferred that she is grateful for her diabetes, and I admire her wisdom, but at the time I was not yet grateful.

Though I still would not choose a life touched by tumors, almost five years after neurosurgery, I am grateful for so many gifts in my life, gifts that I recognize more now than I did before my tumors.

Like my other inspirations, Jenny has a great spirit and a delightful sense of humor. One night when we were in college, I called her on the phone for emotional support. She lived in a dorm on another part of campus, about a ten-minute walk away, and she said she’d be right over with a cup of tea.

When she hadn’t shown up after an hour, I started to worry, but Jenny finally arrived, a mug of cold tea in her hand. She had miscounted her steps as she was walking in the dark and turned off a path into a tree. She had long hair and got tangled in the tree; when she finally extricated herself, she couldn’t figure out how to reorient herself. The cute boys on the porch who watched  her wrestle with the tree helped her to point her toes in the direction of my dorm.

She laughed hilariously as she told me this story. Then she apologized that my tea was cold. I laughed, too. Her sense of humor helped me to gain some perspective on my own troubles.

Little Brother Matt asked me recently how my spirit has remained so strong in the days with these tumors and my disabilities. I have puzzled about this strength of spirit myself. Where did this spirit come from?

Today's sermon, titled "Dayenu", from Hebrew meaning, "It would have been enough..." made me think about gratitude and its role in facing life-changing struggles.

Our minister cited Brian McLaren's book Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in Twelve Simple Words (the book's about 80,000 words...so maybe those twelve words aren't so simple).

McLaren posits that gratitude may be our greatest road to happiness. He also tells of a time when he experienced insomnia and took that time to picture all that he was thankful for. I gather that gratitude helped with his insomnia.

My primary emotional response since the brain tumor diagnosis has been gratitude: for a loving partner-a rock in my life, a family generous with care and support, communities and circles of friends and colleagues who seek to help me use my skills and experience meaningfully, professional care-givers, health and disability insurance, the flexibility of administrators and directors in helping me continue my education and work in schools as I recover, wonder in the world's extravagant beauty and a faith that cradles me and gives me hope.

The closing of Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality" reminds me of the miracle that remains, of the joy in living even in--and maybe especially in--times of loss, the power of natural beauty to overwhelm me with a sense of this miracle that is living. Wordsworth writes,

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Perhaps I have found strength in this gratitude. My life has changed, and I am grateful for the life I had and for the life I now have.

I am grateful for you, too. Thanks for being here. Mary

March 13, 1964

On the day I was born, Mom’s forty-five minute public bus ride to Grady Hospital in Atlanta must have been uncomfortable as she rode to give me birth. (She was nine months pregnant and thought she was having intestinal distress.)

I hear the hours of labor were no luxury cruise either. (Carol Burnett once compared giving birth to blowing a bowling ball out of a nostril.)

I was born on the thirteenth floor of Grady hospital’s White wing on Friday, March 13, 1964, so I have always considered thirteen my lucky number. For me, being born was lucky.
 My parents, because they were White, took the front entrance while African-Americans took a back entrance into the hospital. President Johnson signed “The Civil Rights Act of 1964” that June, and though racial integration comes slowly in the South, I’m pretty sure that little White babies and little Black babies can now lie in cribs next to one another. How strange the separation of the babies seems now.

I am the first child of two first children, so in my first years, my parents and I are a young family of type-A personalities: perfectionists, anxious about success, planners committed to a plan. We control our destinies. It is our responsibility to be good and to do good in the world.

When I was born, Dad was a 27 year-old pediatric intern in the Air Force, and Mom was 22 years old, an army nurse released from her duties because she was pregnant.

The first thing my dad said when he saw me was, "She's a beautiful girl. With a big nose." You will be relieved to know that I have grown into my nose over the last 47 years. In fact, now my nose is remarkably small.

Lots of other things have changed over the years, too. I'm taller and wider than I was then. I have a larger vocabulary. Though we didn't know it, I had a brain tumor then. I don't now.

Here's to this lucky life!

Mary

Strength of Spirit

"Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune." Max Erhmann, "Desiderata"

Little Brother Matt asked me yesterday how my spirit has stayed so strong through these brain tumors. I do not know.

If I did know, I would bottle it and sell it for a very low price so that anyone could afford it. I would call it "Strength of Spirit." I don't know what would be in it: maybe banana, orange juice, plain non-fat yogurt, faith, and magic.

I asked Ann last night why she thinks I have had such a strong spirit. "I don't know," she said, "but I've been surprised. You've been stronger dealing with these brain tumors than you used to be when you had the flu."

Before my tumors, when I got sick, I channeled my Dad. When he gets sick, he lies in bed and moans. He used to have a bell by the bed to summon Mom when he wanted something.

Once, when he was lying in bed moaning, he wanted some Sprite with some ice in it, so he rang the bell and asked Mom for his Sprite with ice. She nodded and delivered it to him. A minute after she left, he rang the bell again. "Could you bring me a cold wet washcloth to put on my forehead?"

She delivered the washcloth and placed it gently on his feveish forehead. Then she ripped the clapper from the bell.

Yep, I used to channel Dad. Now, I channel my Grandmother Matthews.

My maternal grandmother grew up in a poor Southern farming family during the depression. Her mother died when grandmother was five years old. Her aunt hanged herself from the rafters in the family barn when grandmother was a child. Her beloved "Papa," who sold the family cow so that grandmother could have a winter coat, died when grandmother was a teenager. Grandmother was the second of four children and put her siblings through college, though she wasn't able to attend college herself.

Grandmom was tough, and she had no patience for softness. Whenever my granddad was doing one of his favorite things, like watching Westerns, playing horseshoes, or eatin' a good t'mater, she would holler at him, "Robert!" She did not drawl. She yelled quickly, the way you might yell to a frog, "Ribbit!"

Perhaps with these tumors, I have channeled my Grandmother Matthews. Like her, I am a survivor, but I don't yell so much.

Maybe I would call that solution, "Grandmother Matthews." Like me, Matt carries her name, though I am named for her first name and he for her last. He named his oldest son for her maiden name, Hayden.

Her name and her spirit run deep and wide in our family. We have her to draw on. She's a guardian angel for us.

The Dead Animal

We got a lot of great Christmas gifts, but maybe the best conversation piece is the dead animal that Ann got in her stocking. It's not really a dead animal. It's really a furry throw from Restoratin Hardware, but it looks like a dead animal.


The night before Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve Eve?), when we were sleeping at Sister Jen's house, we heard the family dogs Ranger and Rosie barking up a fit and then we heard a high pitched wail.


The next day, when my brother-in-law Todd went out to the yard, he retreated quickly inside, "Oh, God! There's a dead animal out there! I don't know what it is. Maybe it's a possum playing possum."


Dad went outside to scoop up the dead animal and throw it over the fence. Todd trailed behind and hid himself behind Dad in case the carcass jumped back to life.


Dad explained that he didn't think it was a possum playing possum: "It didn't have a rat-like tail, and it didn't have a face anymore. I don't think it's coming back to life." Dad probably has such insight into life and death because of his years as a pediatrician, but Todd wasn't taking any chances. He stayed inside for the rest of the day.


Christmas morning, Ann opened her gift from Todd and Ranger and Rosie: a throw to keep her legs warmed that looks like the pelt of a giant squirrel.


Mostly, I must admit, Ann can't use the dead animal because I'm huddled under it in front of the fire. Last night, I forgot to put the dead animal away before our 91 year old neighbor Annabella came over for dinner.


When Annabella saw the pelt, he eyes opened wide behind her big glasses, and she said, "Good Lord!" Then she crossed herself, as any good Catholic woman would. "That's creepy."


She summed it up.

Twapped

When our nephew Sam was three years old, Ann and I took him on an amusement park ride at the beach one day. We circled the amusement park five times on our little train, and each time we got to the spot near the arcade, he would point and yell, "Twapped! They'we twapped!" He seemed upset by this, but we couldn't figure out what he was pointing at.

Our final loop around, we noticed a painting of monkeys in a cage on the arcade's facade. Twapped. Indeed they were. Twapped. How sweet of him to feel their pain.

Sunday, we got six inches of snow. Yesterday and last night, we got more. Today it's an ice storm. Lots of people are without power. We have power, but we don't have televison. Apparently, our dish froze. The governor, hearing about our dish, has declared a state of emergency. I  have not left the house since Saturday, and Ann has been inside all day today.

Twapped. We'uhwe twapped.

Ann has cleaned organized the nut drawer in the kitchen. She has consolidated multiple bottles of fish sauce and soy sauce. She has found long lost jars of chutney. Unfortunately, she has already organized her sock drawer, she told me, so she can't do that.

Even I am feeling twapped. I'm cleaning out my inbox (I'm now down to nine pages of messages from my original 36 pages.)

I've written four essays for a scholarship application, and I have only two to go. But I simply cannot write about myself again at least until tomorrow.

That's twapped.

Maybe Not

When I called to talk to my parents last weekend, as I have every weekend in the four years since surgery, Dad went to wake Mom from a nap. I heard him ask, “Do you want to speak to Mary?” and she asked, “Who’s Mary?” (By the time she answered the phone, she remembered me.)

I have always believed that I am the favorite. Maybe not.

The Talker and The Reader Growing Up

This summer when we saw our nephews Willie and Hayden at the beach, we were especially surprised by how much they've grown up since last year. Though they've just moved one year, from ten year old to eleven, they seem to have aged out of childhood and into early adolescence.
They were constant companions this summer. It's fun to see their friendship developing.
“What are birds' wings made of?” That's my sister's youngest son, Willie, when he was three years old. He's always asked the most amusing questions. He's a talker.

He's always been a fun one to watch. When he was small, he would crawl into my lap when we played board games with his older siblings. I lost significant years with him when I had my tumors, which is hard, but he's too old to climb into my lap anymore anyway.

Last year, on the way to our wedding, Willie lost his favorite quarter, so Ann and I sent him a new Canadian quarter when he and his family left. He wrote us the first thank you note we've ever received from any of our nieces and nephews: “Thank you for giving me what I really wanted.”

On the drive from New York to the North Carolina beach last year, Willie said he didn't like carrots, and--bored with the drive--his mother, my Sister Jen, told him she had been putting carrots in his cereal. When he doubted her, she said that she had been bleaching them and cutting them into cereal shapes for years. He was flummoxed. “That seems weird, but I know my mom wouldn't lie to me.” Such trust, even after the tooth fairy betrayal.

This summer when I played Scrabble with Willie and his older brother Jack, Willie decided that it would be better if we didn't keep score for him, so that he could just learn to play. He talked aloud to himself the whole time: "OMG is a word now!" and "I could do 'BIG E' (my dad's nickname.)

Like his siblings and his father, Willie loves tennis. Sister Jen says that when Willie plays tennis, he talks to himself the whole time. She quoted him: "Okay, Willie, I'm going to say this one time and one time only. No double faults!"

I wonder if he listens to himself.

Willie's cousin Hayden is my brother's oldest. He is blond, blue-eyed and beautiful. He is a big fan. Last summer, even though all of his cousins love the Red Sox, Hayden wore his NY Yankees hat the whole time he was at the beach with all of us in North Carolina. For the World Cup, he bravely cheered on the Netherlands while the rest of us cheered for Spain. That takes spunk.

When Hayden and his younger sister Lucie were looking at old pictures a few years ago, they saw one of the two of them together when they were younger. In the photograph, Hayden’s young arm was wrapped affectionately around little Lucie. Hayden said to Lucie, “See, Lucie. I used to like you.”

Hayden’s always got his nose in a book, a characteristic of his mother and his aunts and now of his father.

I suppose he'll Scrabble royalty before long.

Heather's Book

Ann and I spent last week at Emerald Isle, a beach in North Carolina, with my parents, Sister Jen and her family, and Brother Matt and his family.

This place is as beautiful as any place I've been, with long white sandy stretches that are flat enough for walking, water that is grey or brown or green or blue--or all of those--depending on its mood. Waves crash with that rhythmical regularity that's mesmerizing. Sea oats wave in the dunes' breezes.

It's the one week each year that we gather together as we have since my parents' children were Gretchen's age, five, and skiing on the sound whenever we could. It's a time when we relax together. Someone's always reading; someone's napping; someone's eating; someone's on the beach. We're together.

It's our annual pilgrimage when we gather to remind each other that we are family, and we are here for each other.

This year, Sister Jen read aloud to me the novel, Under the Mercy Trees, by my childhood friend Heather. Heather's Owensby family, a dysfunctional lot living in the North Carolina mountains, became part of our family this year. They're dysfunctional, but they're endearing, and I'm glad they came along with us.

The novel's beautifully written. Here are a few snippets:
In describing a copse of bent trees, a young woman records, "Some trees had rotted and laid down tired in the undergrowth, but some still sat....eight ladies murmuring a welcome.... She wondered if the ladies minded the kinks in their trunks as they remembered the trauma that bent them, or had they gotten on with things....Maybe we'd grow crooked, too, if we got hit in the middle by a storm" (19).

Later in the story, another character remarks, "Bacon is a gift from God." Heather attributes this thought to the character Hodge, but I know it's really Heather.

The book's a gift, as is the beach. I recommend both the beach and the book to you. The book is cheaper.

Mary

Happy birthday, Ann-a-Plan!

Ann calls me “Sweet Mary,” and I call her “Ann-a-Plan.”

Ann's nickname is descriptive, as Ann loves to have a plan. The name has internal rhyme and hints at an iambic meter, as do so many of Shakespeare’s sonnets. That’s what gives the name its poetic ring.

When we said our vows at our wedding, Ann addressed me as "Sweet Mary" and I addressed her as "Ann-a-Plan." That way, we were sure to know whom we were addressing.

How did I arrive at such a perfect nickname? In the car one day, I was trying to create a palindrome, an expression that reads the same forwards and backwards, like "A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama." Ann likes to make plans, so I started there: Ann a Plan. But backwards that reads Nalp a Nna, so instead I made her name a poem: "Ann-a-Plan; Eat a Banana; Drink a Cherry Coke." Every now and then I call her "Eat a Banana" or "Eating Bananas," and we get funny looks in the grocery store. I've never called her "Drink a Cherry Coke.” That would be wrong.

 One of the great things about Ann is her laughter. It is always kind and always at the right place and time. We laugh together often, and she understands intuitively when something about my tumors and their symptoms will be funny to me.

Soon after my surgery, we went to an outdoor concert to see the Indigo Girls sing their harmonic tunes. It was cool outside and the sky threatened to drizzle, so I put on my Gortex rain jacket. When I tried to take a sip of water, I missed my mouth and poured quite a bit of water down my front. Ann noted, "At least you're dressed for drinking." We both laughed.

In a recent iteration of night violence, I sat up in the dark of the night and grasped a corner of Ann’s pillow in each fist. Then I yanked it out from under her. She awoke, startled, to hear me say to the pillow, “You are not my pillow.” The next morning, as she told me this story (I didn't remember it), we laughed together.

More than a decade ago, Ann and I worked with a few other members of our Methodist church to apply for a“sister parish relationship” with a community south of the U.S. border. In the application, we provided a description of our church and its mission, and in that description we explained the church’s central mission, to “reconcile” with GLBTQ persons.

Ann and I laughed about the possibility that any Latin American community would read our profile and choose to partner with us, but we were quickly paired with a community in El Salvador. We theorized that they must not have read our documents, but as we got to know this community, we learned that our assumptions about Latin America, like so many peoples' perceptions of the American South, were oversimplified and did not allow for the complexity that we would find there. What we found on our first visit—and in subsequent visits over the last decade—was that we had much to learn about our own country’s role in their civil war, and that they were willing to learn with us, too. We have laughed at ourselves for our doubt.

Last Christmas, I agreed to brave an ocean crossing for the first time since radiation, though I was not quite ready to leave the United States, so Ann and I went to Maui.

Our first day there, we tried snorkeling. When I tried to get in the water with my flippers and mask on, I was washed back to shore by a large wave, scraping the ocean floor as I tumbled to shore. I scooped up so much sand that I was still finding small shells in my belly button the next week. Others on the beach tried to help me, as I suspect they feared I might drown. I survived, and Ann and I laughed with our whole bodies, but I didn’t try snorkeling again. We still laugh about me rolling about like a fish caught in the shallow surf.

In the year after my surgery, we loved the way that children around the age of three responded to my eye-patch. Once, soon after going home from surgery, we went to Children's Hospital to visit some friends and their child. (Their young child had undergone several heart surgeries. She looked great and continues to thrive.) Her mother was telling us how many entertainers came through Children's to entertain the young patients. They had seen singers with guitars, puppeteers, people with puppies, and so on. As we were leaving, Ann pushed me in my wheelchair down the hall and a boy about seven years-old came out of a nearby room, nonchalantly raised his hand in greeting and said, "Hi Pirate," as if he was not at all surprised to see a pirate in this hospital. We laughed.

Another time, when I was waiting in the emergency room, a girl of about three came bravely over to ask me if I was a pirate. "Yes," I said, "I am a pirate. What are you?" Without hesitating, she said, "I'm a cat." And to this I wisely responded, "I thought so. That must be why you painted your fingernails." She simply nodded seriously and raised her hand to show the nails—bright pink with little white kittens—as proof to both of us.

Our niece Gretchen was not so amusing. She took one look at that patch and wailed in fear. She sobbed so powerfully that she had dry heaves, and my brother looked to the heavens, "Please, please, don't throw up." The next year my sister-in-law asked, "Gretchen, are you sad that Auntie Mary doesn't have her eye-patch this year?" To this, Gretchen responded seriously, "No, I am not sad that Auntie Mary doesn't have her eye-patch this year." Ann and I laughed and nodded in agreement. We weren't sad to miss that patch, either.

Ann and I have a long history of laughing together. Before my surgery, we visited our sister parish in Guarjila, El Salvador. The first morning there we awoke to a squealing in the yard where our family lived. When we had arrived, a young pig—perhaps a piglet—was tied to a stake in the yard like one might tie up a dog.

That morning as the pig squealed for an hour or so, we worried that this family might be slaughtering its piglet for us, but when we emerged from bed, the piglet was in the backyard, unfettered. When we asked why the pig had been squealing (remember that our Spanish is not too good, so this was a challenge), they laughed. The pig was new to them, and young pigs will return to their mothers, but if you run them around the house three times, they get confused and will stay at their new home. We laughed at our own confusion.

Ann has a kind heart. She is especially gracious to a soul in pain. She is kind to me, to students, to our families, to strangers and to our neighbors' pets Violet and Hector.

Ann is kind, but she is not perfect. She is also tidy. (In my book, tidiness is not next to godliness.) I feel at home in a certain degree of disorder, so at home Ann has created places where I can be messy in a way that doesn't bother her. It works, as no one who visits sees my hidden mess, and neither does Ann, but I get to make piles.

Did I say Ann is tidy? A few years ago, when my parents were visiting, Ann bought Dad some oatmeal for his breakfast. He didn't eat any the first day and left it on the counter. She gave it to the postman for the annual food collection for the food banks the next day.

In another example of excessive tidiness, a carpenter, Sailor (I don't know why her name is Sailor and not Carpenter), remodeled our downstairs bathroom so that it is now more accessible for me. Sailor put some extra tiles and plumbing parts in an old trashcan and moved it to the basement to get it out of the way. Ann emptied the trashcan when she was straightening the basement that afternoon, and our parts were driven to the dump during trash pickup the next morning. Oops.

I am perpetually amazed that I get to live my life with Ann. Though she is twenty years my senior, we are soul-mates. Often, people see our closeness, but perhaps because of the age difference, our relationship seems unclear to them. Ann has beautiful white hair, while mine is auburn. I walk slowly with a cane, while she trots about town. I hold her arm while I walk.

Ann’s age coupled with my disabilities often confuses people. They think she should be the one who needs help. As we entered the hospital one day, me holding Ann’s arm on the left and my cane on the right, Ann overheard one of the volunteers say, "I don't know which one is the patient."

This has happened to us before. Early in my radiation treatment, we were crossing the street in the crosswalk as we left the hospital, and an elderly woman wearing her bathrobe and fuzzy slippers (to protect her from the winter cold) turned to me and said, "Thank you for taking such good care of your mother." When she noticed that I was the one using the cane, she looked confused and shuffled along.

Once again, we laughed together.

Ann, like I was, is a high school teacher, but I taught Humanities sorts of things (Language Arts, History, Journalism), and she teaches math (Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and such). Like I do, Ann finds teenagers compelling: she laughs with them, delights when they discover an idea new to them, and cries when something awfully good or awfully bad happens to them. She loves to spend time with them in the classroom (during or before class) and in the outdoors (camping and hiking).

Ann’s earliest teaching experiences were with the Peace Corps in Haile Selassie Secondary School in Debre Berhan, Ethiopia. A few years ago, when we were travelling in Ethiopia, we visited her classroom, which had changed little since her time there 45 years ago. The old blackboard was still there. I sat in a student’s desk while she stood by the chalkboard, raised my hand, and said, “Algubunyum” which means, "I don't understand." I waved my arm repeatedly (and somewhat desperately) and said, “Algabunyum” so that the visit would feel like old times.

 One of my favorite stories of Ann’s teaching in Ethiopia is her story of her first day. She stood before her middle school students, each of whom had studied English as a foreign language throughout elementary school, but they were taking their first core courses in English. She introduced her West Texas self in her West Texas drawl and told the students something about herself. They all nodded and smiled, but at one point, she said something that should have elicited a response, and they still nodded and smiled. She slowly said, “If you understand what I am saying, raise your hand.” One student raised his hand, and the rest nodded and smiled. She turned to the board and started writing numbers. They seemed relieved. (Apparently, she had an easier time being understood in Ethiopia that she did in Boston, where she had her training and where her Texas accent confused the Bostonians.)

Once in Ethiopia when we visited a market, a herd of children followed us. One tried to sell us a plastic bag, but mostly the children were just watching what we white people might do. An older woman selling produce in the market said in Amharic to the children, “They’re human, you know.” Ann translated for me. We were relieved, as we had been watched and followed so closely by children and adults that we had begun to wonder.

Ann taught thirty years (egads) in Washington public high schools. When she retired, she worked for five years as a consultant, but she missed the classroom. Without the energy to teach the kind of load of public schools, she’s teaching now in a small private school that is committed to building a respectful community. She loves the work, and those in the school seem to love her. Colleagues, students, and Ann seem to thrive: a win-win-win.

I feel so lucky to be living this life with Ann. Today, I'm celebrating the fact that she was born to make so many of our lives so much better. I love you, Ann-a-Plan!

Happy Father's Day!

I thunk and I thunk, "What should I get my dad for Father's Day?" Something homemade would be nice. Sister Jenn made Mom that nice straw kitchen necklace. I could do that, and Mom and Dad could have a matching set. Dad would never wear his, though, since he never goes in the kitchen. Maybe a couch necklace. No. The necklace would just get in the way of the remote control when he's lying down. Besides, my age is now in double digits, so the necklace, even though it would be made of those patriotic red, white and blue straws, wouldn't be so cute.

 Perhaps I should think about Mother's Day gifts. Flowers? No. A poem like Brother Matt's poems for Mom on Mother's Day? That's an idea worth considering, but let me keep thinking.

What does Dad really like? He likes to exercise in his boxers. Maybe a stationary bike that he could ride at home so that he could wear his boxers when he rides? Oh. He already has one of those.

 Investments! That's what Dad really loves. I could call him and ask him to talk about investments all day. He would love that, but since it's his gift, I would probably have to listen. I just can't do that. Hmmm. I know: I'll pay attention to all of the investments I've made through the years. I'll make a list. That will make him happy.

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Love from your daughter who just cannot get interested in the stock market despite your best efforts. I love you. Mary

Practically Nekkid

My mom, reading of my adventures in the trauma center because of Tuesday's car wreck, worried about the state of my dress. She asked what any good Southern mother worried about her daughter's modesty might ask, "It sounds like they cut off all of your clothes except your underwear, so you were practically nekkid. What did you wear home?"

It is true that all of my clothes, having been cut off of me, were no longer wearable, and my shoes, too filled with glass to be salvageable, were destined for the trashcan.

What does a good Southern girl wear home from the Emergency Room at midnight? The hospital social worker found some paper clothes, extra large unisex. (They would have fit my 350 pound granddaddy, but I was glad to have them.) I was glad it wasn't raining so that the paper didn't stick to me. On my feet, I wore those hospital socks with treads so that I didn't slip. The social worker (bless her) also found an old black sweater that had been donated that I could wear over my paper top.

When I clean out my closets for summer this year, I'm going to donate my clothes to Harborview Hospital's Emergency Room. If you live near a hospital, I'll bet your hospital could use some of your clothes, too.

Mom's birthday

"Your mom is so beautiful." Friends, teachers, and strangers often said this to me when I was growing up. The other thing that people often said to me was, "You look like your father." No one said Dad was beautiful. Though no one else put these thoughts about my parents together for me, and though I'm no mathematician, I can use the transitive property as well as the next geek. For those of you less advanced in mathematics, I can put two and two together: I heard these people say, "You don't look so much like your beautiful mom."
Mom and I are not alike in other ways, too. I can look right at something that I am looking for--maybe my keys or an earring--and not see it. Mom can go into a room to look for something I've lost and say, "I feel it's here somewhere." She'll pick up a sweater and a shoe and presto: my keys. She's psychic. Unlike Mom, I love to travel, to visit new places with new people. The more different a place is than places I already know, the more I like it. My mom, on the other hand, likes to stay home, or if she's travelling she wants to go home. (My dad calls her E.T.)

There are lots more differences: Mom's either been going on or off a diet for as long as I've known her; and I assiduously avoid knowing the calories in anything. Mom rolls her hair in curlers and sits under one of those old school hair dryers that look something like a moon suit, and I leave the house with wet hair every morning; Mom has the soprano voice of a songbird, but I sound more like a jay bird when I sing.

I have always wanted to be more like my mother, and in some ways I've succeeded. Mom's nickname is Sweets, a nickname that she doesn't like because she thinks it's insincere. Really, though, she has a sweet disposition. People say I'm sweet, too. Ann calls me "Sweet Mary." This compliment from Ann and others mystifies me, but perhaps there's something to it. I like the idea that Mom and I are both sweet: not saccharine and not sugary--just sweet.

Like Mom, I fight gender roles and stereotypes even while I live with them--and sometimes I take advantage of them. We were both raised in the Southern belle tradition, and we learned our role well. If I need something heavy moved, for example, I become an instant damsel in distress, and a big strong man moves it for me. I'm not consciously manipulative; the role just comes to me naturally in the way that your adrenaline might surge when a tiger runs at you. I think people want to lift heavy things for Mom just to see her smile.

Like Mom, I like to think of myself as assertive, not aggressive. Mom took an assertiveness training class back in the days when she and Dad were more newly wed. (Dad says his life changed on the day she signed up for that class). I got my assertiveness training growing up.  I have needed no course. I have my sister to teach me.

Mom has influenced me, and perhaps I have influenced her, too. She was just 23 when I was born, so she learned to become a mom just as I learned to be a me. Like Mom, I am getting older, but she is even older than I am. Today, she is especially old. Tomorrow is her birthday, and even in our advancing age, I watch her and strive to emulate such grace.

Mother's Day

One of Ann's eighth grade students was fretting during class earlier this week about what to get her mom for Mother's Day. She wanted to get her mom something special. Her friend suggested flowers, and her eyes lit up at this brilliant idea: "Flowers! I'll get her flowers!"

Wanting to be thoughtful and get our mom something special, too, my sister Jennifer, brother Matt, and I have arranged for a woman who cleans homes to help Mom out at home. I thought about suggesting that Dad and I do a trade: I would let him talk to me about investments, and he would help Mom clean the house. I know, though, that even if Dad tried to be helpful he'd end up reading the newspaper on the couch, and Mom would do the cleaning, so I enlisted Dad's help with research instead.

To motivate Dad to do his research, I made a bargain with him: I would research one of my investments, and he would talk to the neighbors to get suggestions and contact information. To my delight, he got right on it. Now I've got to do my research.

At last, Mom will get some well-deserved help with the house. The Good Lord (that's what we call Him) knows that her children weren't ever much help. And her husband? The Good Lord knows about him, too.

I can't help but wonder if being a mother is all that it's cracked up to be. Mom had to give birth, which Carol Burnett once compared to blowing a bowling ball out of a nostril. Mom had to help each one of us learn the basics, like going to the bathroom in the toilet and eating our food with utensils, and then she had to go through those lessons and all that patience again after my brain surgery. She probably had to teach my sister after her brain surgery, too. Matt's only had to learn once, so he thinks he's advanced. Mom went to all of those ballet recitals, sports games, and parent conferences. She survived teenage angst and driver's licenses. She travelled "out west" with Dad and the kids, and begged for Cheetoes and milk when we got to Yellowstone too late to get any food.

When my parents took me to college for my first day, Dad cried when he said good-bye. Mom cheered: "One down. Two to go." She clapped her hands and did a little jump. I couldn't blame her. We were sort of a pain.

Through it all, though, she has maintained that she loves us. She has always been there for me. When I fainted giving a mini-sermon to our large Southern Baptist congregation, she was at my side when I opened my eyes. When I was tall and thin and awkward, she told me I was beautiful, (and I believe she meant it). When I came out as a lesbian, she told me that I would always be her child and that she would always love me. When I spent a month in the hospital recovering from brain surgery, she slept many nights on the sticky cot next to me.

She's there for me. She always has been. On this Mother's Day, I'd like her to know that I'm there for her, too. I hope she likes her present.  I love you, Mom.

Always your child, Mary

O, Pioneer!

If I had lived in the time of U.S. Westward expansion, I would not have been a pioneer. I love to travel and to see new lands and new ways of living, but I also love bathrrom facilities and timely, balanced meals.

I wonder if people got wagon-sick as they crossed the plains like people get car-sick now. With all the tedious bumping, I would have gotten wagon-sick. If I had been in the Donner party, I would have been the first to go. I would have gone before the horses. I just can't skip a meal.

Pioneer women got up before the crack of dawn to lug in the firewood and get the home fires burning. They tilled the rocky soil, planted and nurtured their gardens, and split wood for their amusement. I like to sleep until 10 a.m., watch a hummingbird flit about the garden while I sip a glass of fine wine, and lie by the gas logs fire (cleaning ashes is for pioneer women and Cinderellas, and I'm neither) while Ann reads me a good book.

I have surprised Ann on our travels. Since I have loved to travel in somewhat remote developing areas, Ann was surprised to see how squeamish I was about toilets in Tanzania and Ethiopia and El Salvador. I'm also squeamish about honey-buckets.

My friend Chris talked this morning about how she could manage rural Mexico's squat toilets (really a hole in the floor) because of the years she lived in Asia, but she just couldn't get used to paying the lady by the door per square of toilet paper. Chris's Spanish isn't so good, so she just flashes fist fulls of fingers and hands over all of her money.

Chris wouldn't be a pioneer either. In fact, she and I would probably still be in Europe somewhere if we had been born back in the pioneer days.

I think about this often. In fact, I divide my friends into the people who might have been good pioneers and those who would not. I admire those who would have been good pioneers, but I would not have travelled with them.

Ann would have been a good pioneer: she pops up in the early morning dark ready to take on the day. Marie, too, is a hardy soul. She likes to backpack, and years ago she told me that she hauled a 60 pound backpack around a mountain. She wasn't bragging, but I thought to myself, "I'll bet she was a nice pioneer lady in another life." My maternal grandmother could have been a pioneer woman, too, but she was an exception in our family. The rest of us would still be in England with Chris.

I'm glad for all the hardy souls in this world. Thank you for making my life better. Mary

Imagine my Surprise

Imagine that you just learned that your little brother won the Kentucky Derby. You don't have a little brother? Imagine that you just learned that you have a little brother that  you didn't know about and that he won the Kentucky Derby. Your brother is not the rider or the owner. You brother is the horse. Surprised?

That's how I felt when I received an email from my brother Matt on Sunday saying that he had just read Mary Oliver's poem "The Journey," and it made him think of me.

My little brother is reading poetry.

When we were young and went to the beach and the mountains each summer with our family, Mom, Dad, Jennifer and I would read. Once, we were reading the engrossing story of North Carolina's Green Beret Geoffrey McDonald, who murdered his family and disguised the murder to look like the work of a crazy religious sect. We were enthralled. We took turns reading the book. I remember setting my alarm for 2 a.m. so that I could read for my assigned slot that night from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. Brother Matt didn't take a turn.

Brother Matt didn't read much. I believe he was a senior in high school the first time he read a whole book on his own: The Catcher in the Rye. The family celebrated his great progress.

I've known for years that Brother Matt's become an avid reader. Now he's reading poetry, poetry that I love, and he found it on his own. I'm delighted and stunned.

Not one for poetry? You should check out Mary Oliver. Brother Matt and I find solace in her. Mary

Lecturous

Because my dad has often given me unasked for advice, and because we lived by the "Do unto others..." rule, I thought for a while that he wanted me to advise him as well. When I returned from a tough day in second grade, I reported to my father that my friends and I had been guessing our fathers' ages and that my friends thought he was old, maybe even forty. I recommended Grecian Hair Formula. Now that we would both take forty as a compliment, his hair is bright white. I guess he assumed that I, living by that golden rule, wanted him to ignore my advice as I so often ignored his.

When Sister Jenn was in junior high school and Dad was advising her, she asked him, "Why do you have to be so lecturous?

When Dad and I travelled to Alaska with elder hostel (he was elder and I was hostile), he arrived at the bus that was to take us into Denali National Park wearing a plaid shirt and khaki pants. This outfit seemed sartorially inappropriate for a hike to me, and I said to him, "You look like you're dressed for the movies." Later that week, he went into town and paid more for a poop-colored pair of zip-off hiking britches than he had ever paid for work slacks.

Last weekend, on our weekly phone call, Dad begn to tell me a new theory about women: "What I've noticed about women is..." I interrupted him, encouraging him to pause and to think because his sentences that begin this way gernerally lead him to the dog house, and he always seems surprisedto find himself there. Ignoring my admonition, he continued.

I cannot blame him for ignoring my cautions. I have often ignored his.

For all this, I have in many ways been inspired by his life and sought to emulate him. Ralph Waldo Emerson's often quoted  “Letters and Social Aims” works in Dad's favor: “Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”  Dad's deeds speak loudly of a commitment to the value of every individual, to the importance of saying thank you, and to the belief that we are here to make the world a better place.

Dad had two overtime jobs for most of his work life: one a job that paid and the other a job of social conscience. I, too, have often overworked, though since my surgery some would argue that I overnap, and like him I have worked for social justice. His work was on behalf of children, many of whom lived in poverty, without health insurance. All children, he argued as President of the American Academy of Pediattrics, have the right to health care. Following in his footsteps, I have worked on behalf of underserved children, many of them poor and immigrants to the United States, though my work has been in the educational arena.

When I was in junior high school, I went with Dad to the small town where he grew up to pick up a carload of children that he was sponsoring to go to summer camp. Like my father, I sponsor children to go to camp, though the camp I sponsor is for older children and is called "college."

When I was in high school, my dad gave the sermon at the church in the small town where he grew up. We, his children, counted the number of times he said, "Um," but I also heard his message. He thanked each person in that church who had helped to raise him. Like my dad, I seek to say thank you to those many people who have made my life better.

After attending a conservative church in Wichita Falls, Texas, when Dad was in the Air Force during the Vietmam War, Dad determined that he would never again attend a church where everyone was more conservative than he. Sensing that he had much to learn from liberals, he and my mom chose a liberal Southern Baptist church to attend and in which to raise their children. I am certainly more liberal than my father, so for me understanding another perspective means respecting and trying to understand those who are more conservative than I am (that's most people.) I am not so fully committed to this broad-mindedness as he was, as my current church is clearly on the left as was the church of my youth,  but I do seek to enter into friendships with those whose backgrounds and experiences, including those who are conservative, give them different perspectives than mine.

In this time of tumors, I have relied heavily on Dad for advice and support, and I have also relied on him to know when not to give me advice. I am sure that this has been hard for him. More important than his advice, however, has been his constant support and love, his dedication to helping me live a full life. Just as Dad has sought new venues for play and passion in his retirement, I seek new venues for work and play as I learn to live fully with these darn disbilities. Dad and I are perhaps both old dogs learning new tricks, though he is older. Today is his birthday, so he is even further over that hill.

Happy birthday, Dad. I love you. Mary

Brother Matt

Brother Matt is kind and funny. He's got swag, especially with his bicycle onesie. He is a good athlete, a good dancer, and (as far as I can tell) a good father. Today he is diving into his forties instead of just perching on the rim. Welcome to the deep end of the pool, Brother Matt.

Brother Matt is six years younger than I am, so I remember when he was born. This is how I remember it: Sister Jenn and I went to my parents' friends, the Ellis's, home. When Dad called to say I now had a baby brother, I got to talk to Dad on the phone. I said, "I bet I know his name. His name is Matthew." Though this statement shows no particular brilliance or talent for language, for some reason I remember that this is exactly what I said. After the phone conversation, Sister Jenn and I went to the field with the Ellis children, and Dirk ran over Jenn's dainty leg, breaking it.

All three children in our home had our own bedrooms, lined up down the jetway that Mom called "the zoo." Matt was assigned the back bedroom down a long hallway in our home deep in the woods. It was scary back there. For the first years of his life, Brother Matt crawled out of his bed during the dark of the night and into the hall and slept in a sleeping bag on the blue shag carpet in the hallway next to Jenn's and my rooms every night. So that Brother Matt could not drag himself and his sleeping bag into her room, Jenn started locking her door, the closest one to his room. He crawled his way onto the yellow shag carpet in my room. Mornings when I awoke, he was often there, but before being scolded, he snuck his way back into the hall. I once told Mom that she should have given Matt the first room on the hall, since he was the youngest. My room was not so scary. She started packing my suitcase and told me that if I didn't like the home, I could just leave. I laughed. I don't think that was the right response, but I stayed home in my yellow room.

I liked to dress Brother Matt up when he was young. I must have thought of him as a large doll. Once, he was Santa Claus. Once he was an elf. Another time, he was a very pretty young lady. I took pictures of him each time, but lost track of the roll of Matt the pretty young lady. Mom later found the film and had it developed. As she was looking at the pictures, she showed me one of the photos of young Matt and said, "Now who is this pretty girl?" I told her, "Look closely." She shook her head. Nope, she didn't know this girl. "Look again," I told her. Nope. "That's your son." Mom went ashen.

Matt played a lot of soccer, so Mom and the other moms did a lot of carpooling. When he was in junior high school, Matt, three of his soccer buddies, and one mom were in a car collision with a truck. When Mom and I arrived at the intersection, not far from our house, Matt and the others were still in the car, which was in the ditch. Matt was okay as it turned out, but he had a laceration over his eye and quite the gory waterfall trickling down his face. He was trapped inside the car, but when I walked up to the window, he gave me his trademark thumbs up. He was okay.

Brother Matt lives a charmed life. Every other potential close call turned out fine, too. When he spun out the Camero on the beltline, no semi-truck was coming. Thumbs up. When he decided to brave the New York City winter and sleep outside one night when he got mad at Sister Jenn, she went to get him. Though he was a very pretty little girl, he's all boy.

When I came out as a lesbian, and my parents welcomed me home but not my partner, Brother Matt talked with them, telling them that if they really wanted me to be in their lives, my partner would be, too. His advocacy invited me into the family as a full member once again.

Matt and his girlfriend at the time, Kristin, now his wife, came to visit Ann and me in Seattle. At the end of the visit, they had an intense argument about whether or not he would join Krisitn in the trip to North Carolina to adopt their dog, Stella. As they argued in the back room, Ann said, "They're getting married. There's no way this would be such a big argument otherwise. They're practicing for children." Now they re married and have three children. Sadly, their chocolate lab Stella Blue passed last year.

After my brain surgery, Brother Matt came from New York City to Seattle to stay with me one week-end. I think he liked the naps, as he doesn't seem to get a lot of rest at home. I liked having him here.

Brother Matt has a blond-haired, blue-eyed wife and three blond-haired and blue-eyed children. He loves his family, and his family adores him. He is, to tell you the truth, easy to adore. Imagine Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump only cooler, groovier or filthier (depending on your age). Adorable.

I love you, Brother Matt. Happy forty-one. Sister Mary

Recalculating

My Auntie (pronounced "On'tee) Myra says that my dad had planned his life by the age of seven and that he has followed that plan for his life. Though I believe him when he tells me that he decided to become a doctor after he went face first through the car windshield as a teenager and the doctors put him, like Humpty Dumpty, back together again, I suspect there's  a lot of truth to Auntie Myra's observation.

Dad is a planner. He succeeded in schools, went to Duke Medical School, married my mother ("the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen"), went to Wichita Falls, Texas, instead of Vietnam, and had three lovely children. He a had a successful pediatric practice, taught medical interns, lobbied for health care for all children, and became president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. All my life, he worked two more than full time jobs, and now that he's retired, I had been concerned that he might get bored, but retirement seems to have been part of the plan. He travels across the ocean and around the country to see his children and his grandchildren. On pretty days, he plays golf. On not-so-pretty days, he plays competitive bridge. He seems busy and seems to be having a great time.

I suppose having kids was part of Dad's plan but also challenged his life plan. He says that having kids keeps him humble. He also says, "It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am."

I'm pretty sure that my decision to come out as a lesbian and my two brain tumors were not part of my dad's life plan. I have to give him credit, though. He's adjusted admirably to the challenges. He struggled mightily with both, but now he loves me and my partner, and he's been a great support to both of us throughout my treatments for brain tumors. Like the Access van direction-finder whose driver seldom heeds oral directions, my dad has recalculated.

For a long time, I followed what I believed was Dad's plan for me. I played Dad's sports, did homework like him, and went to his alma mater for college. I believed that he had a life plan for me, born before I was born, and that it was a good plan as it was crafted by someone who loved me and wanted the best for me, so I needed to follow that plan.

As I began to grow up, however, I began to deviate from that plan. First, I did not go to medical school though I believed that was part of his plan. I did not even become a lawyer or an engineer. Instead, I went into teaching high school English. Though I did not believe that teaching English was part of his plan for me, I did immediately find joy in the teaching profession and came to believe that sometimes I would need to deviate from his plan. This was my life, after all.

After high school, I dated two tall, dark, reasonably handsome and remarkably smart guys of good pedigree. This, too, was part of the plan. I was to marry one of them until death do us part. That part of the plan didn't work out. Seeking joy, I again deviated from Dad's plan for me, came out as a lesbian, and married the woman I love. Perhaps recalculating, finding my own plan instead of what I perceived to be my father's plan, was part of growing up.

My tumors have required me to recalculate again in so many ways. I now ride a trike instead of a bike. I read on my Kindle instead of on the page. I hike on level, paved paths with help.

Now in my work life I'm trying to follow in my father's footsteps again and again recalculate. Because of disabilities from tumors, I do not think that I can follow my earlier plan to be a public school administrator, and I do not think that I can continue along my teaching path.

In my work, I have recalculated once already since the tumors and have been a literacy coach, working with teachers who want my help improving their teaching practice. I love this job, as I get to work with teachers and their students in a way that I am now able and in a way that seems helpful to both teachers and students. Now, however, all of these budget cuts may leave me again needing to recalculate. This week I'm exploring how to publish and market my book and am also exploring the world of teaching English to adults, generally immigrants to the United States.

Much of my life since brain tumors--and much of this blog--has been about re-envisioning my life as it unfolds, about recalculating. My life has been about learning that I am not in control, and seeking the grace and the faith to live a life meaningful to me and to others by finding ways to live still in the joy that is life's miracle. My challenge, as I have attempted to relate it here, has been to see still the amazing beauty, the amazing grace, in the fragility of it all.

Though unlike wiser souls, I am still not grateful for these tumors, I am grateful for the compulsion to recalculate, for the gift of continuing to participate in this life, in this world, and for the grace of seeing now that, even as I must recalculate and must learn that I am not in control, still this is a beautiful world. Still, I strive to be happy.

As a teenager, like so many teenagers, I loved Max Ehrman's poem, the poem that exhorts us to "strive to be happy," and perhaps I sensed as a youth that the only possible plan is a plan of the spirit, a plan that Ehrman so gracefully penned. For years, the poem hung on the bulletin board of the desk where I never studied as I was growing up, then in my college dorm room, and then on the walls of my classrooms. I have pasted the poem below in case you do not know it.

The poem invites me to "go placidly amid the noise and haste," to "speak [my] truth quietly and clearly," to "be gentle with [my]self," to remember that I am "a child of the universe," and that "With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, / it is still a beautiful world." For all the career planning that business gurus would have us do these days, it has been the love in my life and the poems of my life that have lead me in this time of great change, this time of recalculating.

Peace--Mary

Desiderata
-- by Max Ehrmann--


Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
or always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

The Quint of Luuuv

Ann's colleague Adina celerates  "the quint of love."  She pronounces it "luv" with an extended soft "u": "luuuuv." Since the this time period includes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday, President's Day (depending on the president), and Valentine's Day, the designation seems just right.

Unsure asbout what a quint might be? Is it A) an era: we had the quint of Bush and now we are in the quint of luuuv B) a metaphor from science fiction literature where time is a substance to be measured in "quints": It was a time of love, a quint of romance. C) (we all know C's the most common answer, so it won't be this): Is it a fifth of a school year, so that we have semesters, trimesters, quarters and quints D) Perhaps it's an age, as in the Quint of Acquarius or E) a very naughty word in Jamaican culture. The correct answers are C, a grading period which is a fifth of a school year, and E)  very naughty word in Jamaican culture. (Adina told me about the Jamaican meaning, and I confirmed it on the innernets.. I wonder if that's why their school, which has lots of students from Asian countries, has no students from Jamaica.) As a good reader, you can use your context clues to be assured that in this instance we are discussing a grading period.

In last Sunday's church service, the reading came from the sexy Song of Songs: "Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love" (New International Version (©1984) cited on http://bible.cc/songs/2-5.htm). For sure, it must be the quint of love: The Bible tells me so, and so does Adina.

On the radio last week, I heard a remarkable love story, a husband's retelling of the joyous moments of his wife's last days. She was home from cancer treatments, weak, in a wheelchair, and unable to speak. The day before she died, he noticed again how beautiful she was, and he asked her to marry him again. Though weak, she kissed him vigorously and repeatedly on his cheek.

Last summer Ann and I got married in a commitment ceremony at our church. I had survived brain surgery for a tumor and could no longer walk or dance as I used to. I could no longer smile with both sides of my face. My eyes were somewhat crossed. I can no longer hike up mountains or travel in developing countries. Still, she said she loved me. Still, she spends her days with me. Still, she asked me to marry her.

We had a great time. We practiced dancing to Exile's "She's a Miracle" for weeks so that we could dance, and I would not fall. Our families and friends celebrated with us. We shared photos of our lives together: from hiking up Lalibellas's mountainsides to watching waves crash on North Carolina's shores: if you look closely you can see not only that I am affectionately holding Ann's arm, but that she is holding me up. We said our vows and our siblings made toasts.

On this Valentine's Day, as on all days, I am so thankful for all of the love in my life: for friends and family, an astonishing world, our communities of faith and fun and work, and especially for Ann. My heart is full, as is my life.

All my love. Mary

My Sister Jenn

Today is my sister Jenn's birthday, so this entry is for and about her. This is her birthday present. I think she'll love it, though such a gift may be the adult version of making a straw necklace for Mom for Mother's Day. The thought's kind of nice, and pretty cute, but you wouldn't want to wear that necklace out of the house. As I remember, sister Jenn made such a necklace for our mother. To visualize this necklace, do not think of the kind of straw that's like hay that was in the baby Jesus's manger. Think about those red, white and blue straws you get with a soda at the old school soda fountain. The straw necklace sister Jenn made for mom was a patriotic straw necklace, and Mom dubbed it her "kitchen necklace," a necklace she would wear in the kitchen. Sister Jenn was thrilled that her gift had such a special appellation, and Mom never had to wear the necklace out of the house. Brilliant.

Sister Jenn was born about a month before my third birthday, so though there are picture of me before she was in my life, I only remember life with her. I was always aware, of course, that she was my younger sister, that I was the oldest, and that I was therefore responsible for her. I think she's turned out pretty well, so I'll take the credit.

Even though Jenn was younger than I, she was in many ways my mentor. When I was in high school and wore no make-up, Jenn noted that her friend had similar blue eyes to mine, and yet everyone remarked on her friend's blue eyes whereas mine went unnoticed. Jenn convinced me to wear eye make-up. In another moment, when I agonized about where to go to college, Jenn said she'd always thought I'd go to Davidson as it seemed a good fit, so that's where I went, and I wore my eye make-up there.

My Sister Jenn has always been exceptionally beautiful. People liked to compare her to Brooke Shields in the days of The Blue Lagoon, but I always thought Jenn was prettier. When I was first teaching in Dallas, a male student stole my purse, and when the purse was found in the boys' bathroom trashcan, everything was still there except my cash and a photo of Sister Jenn. Creepy.

Jenn's one of those beautiful people who is also smart, so I'm guessing she's inspired some jealousy in her time. As the older sister growing up in my younger sister's shadow, I might have been bitter, but because she was always so loving to me, I just felt proud of her. I still do.

About six years ago, Jenn had brain surgery--a couple of years before I did. Hers was for a traumatic accident, a fall from a golf cart, whereas mine was for a tumor, but still she could advise me: "Whenever they say morphine," she instructed, "you say yes." She also gave me the tip to keep a list of those people who say, "Let me know if I can do anything." That way, when you need a casserole or a car wash sometime down the line when not so many people are offering, you'll have a list to draw from. Maybe she learned such brillliance from our mom of the kitchen necklace.

After my brain surgery, Sister Jenn came to stay with me for a week. One day, when my headache was especially bad, she drove me to the emergency room, but she couldn't figure out how to fold up my wheelchair, so she shared the front seat with the wheelchair rammed in, and I sat in the back. It has just occurred to me that the hospital probably had wheelchairs I could borrow, and we needn't have risked life and limb. Since we've both had brain surgeries, though, we have built in excuses for such oversights.

Sister Jenn loves her four children and truly enjoys them, even though sometimes she says that they drive her to distraction. Her children, now aged ten through 14, used to be younger. One Christmas quite a few years back, Sister Jenn put a special trophy in her own stocking, and seemed delighted when she found that Santa had left her a trophy for the World's Worst Mom. That trophy she still displays proudly on the mantle beside the kids' tennis trophies.

I'm not sure sister Jenn knows how much we love her. When she had her brain surgery, we were afraid she might not live. I burned a candle to protect her spirit. Our brother Matt, in an outburst of love, slammed down his toilet seat and broke it. (I think this remains my sister's favorite story about him--or maybe about anyone.)

Sister Jenn is is alive and funny and having a birthday that is a multiple of eleven. What you can't see now is that she has some unresolved physical issues from the surgery: she cannot put a flip flop on her left foot without using her hand, and she cannot raise her right eyebrow. For that, she is going to physical therapy, but I don't think she has a caringbridge site yet.

Happy birthday to my dear little sister. Mary