WordSisters

Category: Family

  • On Being a Parent

    credit to www.maddiegdesigns.com
    credit to http://www.maddiegdesigns.com

    In the early morning hours I woke to a death squeal. I stood with my ear pressed to the bedroom door. I didn’t want to open the door and have whatever was making that noise escape into our room. I also didn’t want to see what lay on the other side.

    If this was Antonio or Crystel needing me I would have been upstairs in a moment.

    Either this was a cat injured or another animal.

    Jody hadn’t moved from the bed. She sat upright watching me. To her credit she is often upstairs first in the morning and has to deal with any carnage brought in during the night by our three young cats.

    I heard rustling, then quiet. I waited. I turned the knob, peeked out the door.

    “It’s a bunny,” I said, relieved. I brushed away the cats. Took a piece of paper and touched the animal. It didn’t move.

    I opened our garage, retrieved a snow shovel that hadn’t been put away for the summer, and scooped up the cottontail. In the darkness I flipped it over our fence into the athletic field next door and went back to bed.

    That same morning, I was reading the Sunday paper. I could hear the dog barking in the backyard. I took another sip of coffee and thumbed through the Variety section.

    Jody came downstairs from the upper level. She had been on a work conference call. Maybe the barking got to her.

    “The dog has a bunny,” she said looking out the patio door.

    I went outside. This baby bunny was still alive. It was smaller than the one last night. I picked it up and held it in my hands.

    Antonio came up behind me. “Here, I’ll take it.” He held out his cupped palms.

    I handed the bundle carefully to him. He used his swimming towel to make a nest for the bunny in a small cardboard box and took the bunny to his room.

    His being up complicated matters. In crept the concern about how he would regard my actions with this injured animal and how I wanted to raise him as a compassionate person. There would be no flipping this baby rabbit over the fence.

    I Googled how to raise bunnies. It didn’t look good.

    “Antonio, it says that you should put the bunny back where you found it. Maybe it will go back to its den.”

    He took the bunny and lay it under a bush. Ten minutes later the bunny still hadn’t moved. Antonio retrieved the bunny and felt its body for the injury.

    “Should we wake Crystel?” he asked.

    “No.” I was hoping I would have the situation resolved by the time she awoke. I went through a list of possibilities and ended with the idea that taking the bunny two miles to Woodlake Nature Center and leaving it by the bird feeder would be the most humane act and something that Antonio could live with. Maybe a hawk would swoop it up.

    “It’s the circle of life,” I told Antonio on the drive over.

    At Woodlake we sat on the bench watching the birds fly back and forth to the feeders. Antonio cradled the bunny in his arms. I pulled up dead grass and made a nest for the bunny near the feeder. Antonio lay him gently down.

    Once home, Crystel met us at the door.

    “You didn’t wake me,” she accused.

    Back at Woodlake, Crystel picked up the bunny and petted it. “Can we keep it?”

    “No, Crystel. This is the best thing.”

    She carried the bunny away from me singing, “It’s the circle of life little bunny.”

    Cradling the bunny in the crook of her arm, she pulled dead grass with the other to fluff up the nest.

    “His mother won’t find him,” she said.

    “You’re right. Not this time.”

    The bunny lay on her soft white polo sleeve.

    “Hey, that’s my jacket.”

    She laughed. “I know.”

    I gave her a cockeyed glance.

    She knew me well enough to know that I loved being her mother and that I wouldn’t mind the hours I spent on this tiny bunny because it had to do with her and Antonio. Even though it meant that the Sunday paper would end up in the recycling bin unread and I’d be doing an extra load of wash later that day.

    I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  • Pondering Easter Traditions

    Growing up, Mom was the creator and keeper of Easter holiday traditions. She helped us color eggs, and after we were asleep, she hid the Easter baskets. Each one had a name in it so the four of us wouldn’t fight. She made sure we each had the same amount of candy and eggs. She bought my sister and me Easter hats, dresses, shiny patent leather shoes, gloves, and spring coats. My brothers had dress shirts, pants and ties. It was always too cold for the summery clothes we wore to church. But every year she lined up the four of us next to the tulip garden for a photo. Year after year, she made ham, au gratin potatoes, fruit salad, and Mimmie, my grandmother, brought coffeecake. It was work, but all I saw was the joy Mom took in those traditions.

    My husband, sons and I don’t live close enough to be a part of my parents’ celebration and our own observances are hit or miss. When my sons were young, my husband and I traveled to his parents, and I bought the Easter clothes and candy and sent the greeting cards. We all went to church despite my ambivalence about Catholicism.

    Over the years, the old ways had begun to seem hollow instead of joyful. I told myself that it was better to lighten up and let go. We would invent new traditions and keep the day simple.

    In the last ten years since my father-in-law died, we have stayed home. Now that Mom is gone, I feel even more unmoored from Easter customs. I have quit pretending to be an observant Catholic. Easter is a low-key affair. No church. No dress-up clothes. My sons and husband are relieved. None of the four of us likes ham, so we make a big Easter breakfast instead. Mimmie’s coffeecake is the one thing we always have.

    FullSizeRenderWe have gone our own way and simplified our celebration, but sometimes I wonder if I’ve let too many of the old ways slip away.

    Keeping up those rituals tied us to generations of family who did the same things—put on new clothes to symbolize renewal, ate special rich food after a period of fasting, and came together as family because that’s how you strengthen bonds.

    What remains in our minimalist Easter ritual is that my family of four spends the day together, eating good food, talking and laughing. There is little history or religion in our day, but I believe our celebration has what’s essential: it strengthens our ties with each other.

  • What To Do When Your Editor Has Your Manuscript

    ostrich-with-head-in-sand 2Surprisingly enough, I don’t have any nervous energy waiting for her response. I’m looking forward to her feedback. And, as soon as I receive her comments, I know that I’ll stick my head back into the manuscript and write, revise, and write.

    An ostrich doesn’t bury her head in the sand but she does dig a hole in the dirt to use as a nest for her eggs. Several times a day, the ostrich puts her head in the hole and turns the eggs.

    Since winning the 2013 – 2014 Loft Mentor Series in Creative Nonfiction, I devoted my time to babying my book. Every spare moment I had went into the work that would result in this baby growing into a manuscript worth publishing. I had a vision. I purged what wasn’t working and kept writing what was.

    With my newfound free time, I turned my attention to the cat room. It had become a stockpile of possibly useful stuff. Every time I walked into this room it bugged me. I’m a purger by nature. I don’t like stuff.

    Transforming this room became a creative process. I had a vision for the room. I knew that it could be more than it was. Focus, hard work, and purging would bring my vision to fruition.

    I’m the purger in our house. That’s my role. I enjoy it. For me it is creative. When Antonio and Crystel get to the point that even they can’t stand their bedrooms, they’ll turn their rooms over to me. I’ll go through every slip of paper, every drawer, every pencil box and organize, toss, give away, and rearrange. At the end of the day they have bedrooms they don’t recognize as theirs.

    Of course, there are those moments when I discard something I shouldn’t. Crystel asked me where her grocery bag of papers were. She said, “They are in the memory box like the pictures you took down off the wall, right?”

    Sorry, honey, I thought. That paper bag went straight in the trash.

    “Ms. Hutton said we’d need those later in the school year.”

    “Oooooh,” I replied.

    Jody, also enjoys when I get in this state of mind. I can bring orderly to chaos to any kitchen cupboard or linen closet.

    Maybe I am a good purger because I don’t have an attachment to stuff.

    There isn’t much that I won’t give away. I am one of twelve children and my mother would stack our clean clothes on numbered shelves. We each had a number that corresponded to our birth order. As the fifth child, I was number five. Even so, one day I couldn’t find a pair of blue jeans that I got for Christmas. Finally, I figured out that number six brother was wearing them. Possession became ownership.

    173314-stock-photo-sky-movement-head-sand-power-forceI tackled that cat room with the same intensity and focus that I used to write my book.

    Within three days, it wasn’t recognizable and I had a new sitting room.

    Soon, I’ll be burying my head back into my manuscript. I’ll be a mother to my words. Turning each one over and over. The only difference being … will be where I’m sitting. The cat room has become my favorite creative space. I’m confident I’ll emerge with a book worth reading.