I have been silent the past few days because worry has crept up like fig roots in a well or vermin in the coop. It has been eating my quiet morning hours, and instead of writing I pace the house folding laundry and watch the rain turn to sleet. Fat wet flakes arrow to the ground. The sky is white. Tree branches glisten. The road is slick with mud eight inches deep. Cars get caught in the grooves and the only way forward is to cling to the wheel and not press too hard on the gas pedal. The mud pulls the car where it will. Oncoming traffic is a hazard. You just have to keep going.
I remember when I thought worry was something you could avoid, like the flu, or falling off of rooftops, and the answers were easy and obvious, A or B. I remember a time before having this baby, or the other one, now a coltish four-year-old whose skin has become translucent with winter and illness.
It makes me quivery, watching him. His eyes are dark, and the glands in his neck swollen, just slightly. Fluid in his ears has become a perfect haven for repeated infection. He’s been sick for months, but last week was the worst. Recurrent fevers. Antibiotics are bullshit for this. Worry. We’re all doing the best we can; just trying to keep going.
“What?” He asks after everything, his eyes watching my lips move. “What?”
The world sounds like it is under water to him, and feels like it is under water to me.
This is what it is like: your heart out there beyond you, beyond your control, caught in the nook of a small boy’s fleeting smile.
I want him to be okay. I know he will be, eventually, and I could kneel and kiss the ground in gratitude for that. But still, it has been a long time. Long enough for his hearing to have temporarily diminished by almost twenty decibels. Long enough for winter with its carpetbag of ailments to have gotten under my skin.
Other people live temperate places where winter and summer are not equal, fifty-fifty, half the year. They live among trees that are not bare sticks until the end of May. They do not know how the summer sun feels like an addiction when it finally arrives with a frantic ruckus bursting of bloom and bush, blurring the memory of snow. But here, winter stretches out until it feels like forever. Until it is impossible to remember the color of new leaves, or sunburn, or a healthy boy with sun gold skin and bare feet, carefree, without congestion. Here, the light is weak and pale for so long the body hungers for it. The craving is vicious and intense.
I used to live in more temperate places, where the ocean wasn’t far and winter was more like a shrug than a death grip. I used to be single, then coupled, always self-reliant, defiant, determined. I used to imagine that the way you avoided regret was by plunging ahead; doing whatever it was that you thought you wanted without looking back.
I used to have a plan for everything. I remember, in fact, when plans seemed more real than the moment, and I harbored the idea of a self unaffected by the world. I remember really believing that if I played it cool, struck first, kept my bags packed, played hard, and kept my head up, I would always be ahead of the game and safe. I thought I could outwit the wolf, keep the poignancy of life biting me and leaving its mark.
I hadn’t dug in yet. DH and I hadn’t been together for all that long then. We lived in a small beach side bungalow with a yellow dog. The tides came in and left. Sometimes they came up high and an siren sounded and everyone would leave their houses and find their cars and drive them up to higher ground, to garages or further up side streets as the tide came licking up over the seawall, filling the streets with salt water and debris.
When we came back from a staying at lakeside cabin in the mountains where he proposed and I said yes, we found that fleas had infested our house. I remember unpacking bags in the laundry room; bending to pick up rumpled towels and bathing suits and finding that fleas had sprung onto my legs. We drove together to the store for those a couple of those toxic flea bomb canisters, set them off, and drove away again. Stayed somewhere else. Laughed.
Things could have fallen apart then and I would have shrugged. Picking up and moving on meant throwing my favorite pair of jeans into a bag with a couple of pens and a notebook. Sure, it meant heartbreak, I loved the man I’d just said yes to, but I could have gotten over it then.
It was all about staying in motion; keeping my open. I expected, maybe, to marry him, but I also expected that I might not. I expected the other shoe to drop. I never expected that my heart would know a love so fiercely beyond the tensile of that early affection that I would find myself here.
Now I look at him scrubbing a pan in the sink and want to sob. His back is to me, and suddenly he so beautiful I hardly know what to do with the moment. His muscles ripple under his blue cotton shirt. He turns, dries the pan with a faded red and white towel, places it on the stove, drizzles olive oil into it, and turns the gas flame on.
I wonder if we could have become this without our boys, without this place here that we’re trying to make year by year into a home.
Worry tempers the heart. Worry is the murder of crows in the tall poplar shrieking at the lone hawk that swoops, alights, preens. Worry, because now there is so much to loose. Because their small hearts are my responsibility, and Bean is still sick, and because no one has the answers (and antibiotics and allergies and preschool ailments have created a wicked sucker punch.) It is an unfamiliar anatomy, this worry. Like someone come to visit me in the pitch black, and all I can do is reach out and hold on, and let my hands discover its shape in the dark.
Great post… Possibly because I feel like I can relate; still learning to set down roots myself. Mostly because of your (always) beautiful writing. Thanks for making me think a little.
Love the photos as well! The boys are such cuties!
hang in there honey!!
we’re in wisconsin and I can relate to you in so many ways with the weather being the answer to so many questions….and we had also lived in warmer climates and states which makes this place so hard to swallow sometimes….
anyhow….has the doctor mentioned tubes for your little boy’s ears ? my daughter went through 5 surgeries for tubes/tubes and tonsils/tubes/tubes and adenoids and tubes again for the last time at age 14…..she had a ear that just didn’t want to play by the rules and antibiotics just wouldn’t work for her…..
experienced motherly hugs to you…as I’ve been there…..
I understand the anatomy of worry, though our worries are different. This is so well-written.
Sending good thoughts to you, and healthy ones for poor Bean.
I feel your worry too, but also about different stuff…and for other people. A mother’s worry, will it ever end? You just want to do anything and everything to kiss it and make it better. I hope this ends soon for you and Bean. And those pictures, precious!
Poor Bean, poor mama… hope sunshine and warmth find you guys soon.
you have a wonderful way with words. hoping bean feels better soon. and your worries lift, too.
my god, your writing is breathtaking
your worry seems almost tangible and I truly feel for you
I get the feeling you once had about staying in motion, at times now I feel stuck and I’m not sure I like it, I wonder if I could leave it all and how that would feel
the sun will find you again with its “frantic ruckus bursting of bloom and bush, blurring the memory of snow” (gorgeous!) and you will cherish those days and still probably know worry, but you’ll have another perspective on it, one that is dappled in summer mornings and warm breezes
You write like no one else. This post is … yes, breathtaking.
What is it about worry, that you suddenly get very productive? Well, at least I do, it’s as if you can get everything perfect, then what you’re worrying about won’t happen, after all.
I’m so sorry Bean’s still sick. I know it is rough on you and those who adore him, not to mention the poor little guy, too. I’ll be sending up prayers of healing. And you are SO beautiful, with both your boys.
Oh that worry, that mothers’ worry. Lovely writing. Jack suffers from allergies and seems to be sick as long as the weather is damp (which on Vancouver Island is most of the time). This year was better, but we have endured never ending ear infections, croup three times a year and a cough that goes away for short periods and then returns. So many nights I have laid awake worrying that it was something more than what the doctors see (so frustrating when none of them seem as concerned as you are or dismiss it as what happens to kids this age).
Your writing is just perfect though, and oh those boys are beautiful
“when plans seemed more real than the moment,”
when you write
i always find a bit of myself
within your words.
and you amaze me with your writing,
your pauses and breaks…your wording,
your train of thought….
hope your boy is feeling better soon…
and that the sun bursts through
{i live in a land of long winter as well}
an extremely well written post and I wonder if your Dr. has mentioned tubes for your son’s ears? I know my nephew had recurring ear infections at that age and had little tubes inserted in his ears and they helped the ear drain. Just wanted to mention it. Hope Spring finds you soon!
I am so sorry your Bean is so sick.
I hope he gets well very soon so you can not worry quite as much. My daughter was really sick in kindergarten that she had strep throat 6x in 9 months and once it was so bad she had a 105 temp and was just laying there and couldn’t even move. Hang in there and just do what you need to do to get through all of this.
tara
Poor little bean! Tell him we got the robot picture today and the kids thought it was great. I hope he feels better soon. XOXO to you all.
I’m so sorry to hear that you all have had such a rough winter!
FWIW, both my boys had a phase like that when they were Bean’s age. The combination of pre-school germs and Michigan winters just dragged them down and they were non-stop sick for what seemed like months on end!
Although the worry probably shortened my life by 10 years they don’t seem to have suffered any ill-effects. I think that their immune systems were just overloaded at that moment, and once they’d run the gauntlet life went back to normal and they were fine! We’re now several years further and they’re strong and healthy and happy. (knock on wood!)
I’ve noticed this same phenomenon with other friends’ children as well– unfortunately this seems to be a normal right of passage…
I hope Bean has now filled his quota of infections and illnesses and can get back to being his old happy self! Hang in there!