Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

In the dark theater, made darker by the wood paneling and Elizabethan flourishes, I prayed. Hard. I didn’t care about anyone seeing me, eyes closed, hands clenched tightly, lips moving quickly and noiselessly. What mom wouldn't understand my praying right now?

Jack’s class was about to take the stage at the Folger Shakespeare Library to perform an abridged version on Macbeth. Jack, who had just turned twelve, was playing Macbeth. It was almost more than my nerves could take.  “Please don’t let him forget his lines. Help him not to be frozen like a deer in the headlights and then run weeping from the stage. Help him!”

 When Jack confided the night before during snuggle time that he was afraid of getting up on that stage, I dished out my regular fare. “Your nervousness just means you care about how it goes. That’s adrenaline. It will help you focus and do well. That’s always how it works with me,” said the woman who had never, ever graced a stage unless you counted delivering one line as Tiny Tim in a church basement production of A Christmas Carol “God Bless Us Everyone.” Indeed.

“God, please bless Jack. Now!”

The spotlights turned on. Jack hit every line and nailed his entrances and exits. He even had to go with a change of plans when time was short and change from one shirt to another on stage versus offstage.

Acting was Jack’s sweet spot.

Even though in conversation he spoke so quickly he was sometimes hard to understand, in acting he enunciated clearly. When I’d pick him up from school or a sporting event I’d find my mother heart asking, “How did it go?" but really meaning, "Was it a disaster?” but when I’d pick him up from theater camps, it was like picking up a mini rock star. “Hey Jack’s mom! Jack rocks!” counselors would yell across the parking lot.

We didn’t record the whole play, but Tim did turn on his phone to capture this famous soliloquy:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Act 5, scene 5, 19-28

It guess it was Shakespeare’s version of our 1980’s mantra, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” It’s tough to watch any movies with Jack in them, but even more so as he delivers such a depressing indictment of our short, meaningless lives, only 3 months before his accident.

I have the hope of heaven, and like many bereaved moms, I operate with one foot here and one foot there. Death holds no sting or fear for me at all anymore.

But what about now? But what about the in between time, when I'm charged with continuing on, with living? Did Macbeth get it all wrong? Is there meaning in this life? Is there vitality and spirituality and significance right here? Right now?

I believe there is. Our lives may be short, but they are not meaningless. I don't  know what I plan on doing with the rest of my days, but I know I don't want to just strut and fret my hour on the stage. And I'm guessing watching reality tv and eating ice cream, which are my current past-times, are not quite the meaning and significance I'm thinking of...

What about you?

What are you doing with your awesome, hard, significant hour?

Birth and Rebirth

I became a mom in March, 15 years ago. He wasn't supposed to be here until April, April Fool's Day actually, but he made his entrance early, after my water broke in the middle of the night, and Tim grabbed a plastic shower curtain to make sure I wouldn't mess up the upholstery of our new green minivan on the way to the hospital.

Jack's birth turned March into an occasion in our home. Something to celebrate after the long, cold winters. But now, when March comes, I feel like somehow I'm the fool. I see beautiful purple crocuses popping up, which must have been hidden by snow just 2 days ago, and I instantly think of rebirth, and beauty, and hope. And I know that hope is there, always, even when it's covered up, or hard to recognize. But now it's married to despair. The despair of a mom who thought life would turn out differently for that baby-- so smart, so beautiful, so winsome-- I mean, how could it not?

The despair sucks energy out of me, even as the days are getting longer and the sun shines brightly for the first time in forever. So in March I put fewer things on my to-do list each day, and I scheme about how early is just too early to climb into bed to gorge on ice cream and Netflix. When a show ends, I reflexively go right to the next episode, staying up far too late trying to get lost in the lives of characters so loathsome and despicable I must ask myself why they get to live-- even frozen inside a flat screen-- for 20, 30, or even 50 more episodes, why they merit time and attention and space in the universe, when Jack has floated off into the ether?

And I think ahead to September, when my book will finally come out. September, with its smell of new school supplies and the excitement of new beginnings. September, which took Jack on a sultry yet dangerous afternoon. This book, Rare Bird, was birthed out of Jack's death. And it provides a little something to look forward to in that once promising yet now despised month. I wonder if for me, and maybe for someone else, it can be like a crocus, hearty and determined, peeking out of a mound of wretched, dirty snow.

The Season

NOTE: Mary Dawn Carrier, you won the beautiful Holly Lane Designs pendant. I haven't been able to reach you. Please email me so I can send it to you.

Sorry to shout. I just really want Mary Dawn to get her pendant.

So, how's it going?

There's so much hustle and bustle all around, I wonder if we are even reading blogs this close to Christmas? I am. But I'm not all that hustle-y or bustle-y this year, so I may not be a good one to ask.

Right now I'm more p.j.-y and avoid-y. I don't have many presents to buy, which makes me feel down, and it's not helped by all of the frantic ads on t.v. which make me feel like I. NEED. TO. SHOP. NOW. for my full and bountiful life! I headed out to Bed, Bath, and Beyond yesterday, with no agenda but clutching my 20% off coupon in my hand. Before long, I found a bunch of stuff I wanted... for myself. Spirit of giving, I say.

I decided not to send cards this year, so that doesn't feel very festive, and I've been in a bit of a holding pattern with book revisions, which may or may not be freaking me out. So, I've spent December thus far watching a lot of tv and going to various yearly doctor's appointments. Oh, and buying new tires. I never realized I had oversized, fancy tires on my car until it was pointed out to me at three different tire establishments (ka-ching!). Please notice their radiant beauty if you see me around town.

This weekend our family will attend a play together, our fourth year doing so. I think that may get me in the mood. I haven't done anything for Advent, and I can really feel the difference in my spirit, and not in a good way. It's so easy to lose any wonder of the season and see the Christmas Story as, well, just another story.

So today I'm sharing a beautiful post written by a blogger and frequent reader of An Inch of Gray. Kelly Cone, from The Cone Zone, writes how she saw Christmas in a new way while sharing the Christmas Story with her foster children.

You will love it! Seriously, go read it! You and I can catch up more later.

I hope you are doing well, whether you are feeling overwhelmed or, like me, kind of under-whelmed this month.

Along Came Sally...

When I found out I was having a boy, it took me a while to get used to the idea. I've already written about being a high school teacher, and keeping my male students a bit at arm's length, at least when I was a young and single. But because of those very same high school boys, I didn't just picture mothering a BABY boy; I pictured mothering a TEENAGE boy, with all of his tender, tough, confident, needy awkwardness.

My mother seemed to get a huge kick out of parenting teens and I expected the same to be true in my own mothering. "Of course I loved you all when you were babies, Anna, but I liked it so much more when you became real people!" she said. Sounds weird, but I got what she meant. Each year that passes a mother gets to see her child grow into the person he is meant to be, and she learns to relate to him in a new way.

A note I found tucked in her jewelry box after she died says a lot about the kind of relationships she fostered with her 3 teenagers, even though it deals specifically with my older brother.

It was scrawled on an index card and had been left beside the yellow wall phone in the kitchen by my brother one Friday night:

Mom, If  a girl calls, and it's Sally, tell her I'll be at Steve's party. Do not, I repeat DO NOT ask, "Is this Sally?" Let her tell you who it is. I don't want to scare any new ones away. Love, John

Mom got a kick out of my brother, my sister, and me even when, or maybe especially when, we were teenagers. I felt it and I knew it.

Jack should be entering high school in a few weeks.

High school.

Yep. High school.

Our relationship, built on love, respect and trust, would be entering a new phase if he were still with us, a phase of increased freedom and responsibility, a phase that we'd have to figure out as we went along. I had a great model in my mother about how to parent a teenage boy, and I was really looking forward to it, despite the challenges I know it represents.

Tonight we got back from a week at a vacation house and two of our family members were 14 and 15 year old boys.  I loved talking to them, joking with them, being with them. But it was hard. Seeing how they went from surly and disconnected to loving and cuddly in a millisecond and then cycling back again. Eating everything that wasn't nailed down. Flexing muscles that weren't there two years ago. Having real conversations about things that matter. Hugging their moms whom they'd already passed in height.

I'm having a really hard time not knowing what Jack would look like, what new things we would be talking about, and what issues we would be dealing with, if he were still with us physically today.

And it is crushing me that I'll never receive a note (text, whatever) like the one my brother left my mom that ordinary night almost 30 years ago.

Because you only leave a note like that if you're close to your mom and she really "gets" you.

So tonight is a double whammy as I miss having a mother who "got us" and miss the chance to mother my teenage son.

Turn Down Service

I just cleaned the kitchen counters. Well, not really cleaned, but recycled the piles of papers that were stacked up. I put the cereal bowls from the counter into the dishwasher instead of into the sink, that black hole of a waiting area that all family members add to and add to until someone finally gets fed up enough to load  the dishwasher.

If you are a long-time reader, you may remember that Tim's inexplicable premarital request was for "Clean Counters." He later attempted to renegotiate and request something a little more frisky and a lot less practical, but I was not up for it. A deal is a deal. So I've pretty much kept the counters clean all these years.

But this week, a week where it seems as if everything I try to do ends in crushing disappointment, I just let things pile up. I didn't write. I didn't straighten. I took off my clothes  at night and threw them on the floor. I considered wallowing. It's hot as heck outside, so grumpiness and wallowing might be in order even if I didn't seem to be running up against brick walls at every turn. A workman left the back door open one day, running up our electric bill and filling the house with mosquitoes and I could barely muster an, "Oh well."

One morning, a 30 second burst of gumption hit me and I stripped Tim's and my bed. I washed and dried the sheets and deposited them back in our room. That night, Tim was out late at a softball game. Come bedtime, I looked at that pile of sheets and knew there was no way I was going to be able to do the tugging and pulling and humping of the king-sized mattress necessary to get even just the fitted sheet on, so I crawled on top of the lovely bare mattress pad and fell asleep.

At various times yesterday I thought of putting the sheets on, but other things took precedence. Like yelling at Shadow that it was NOT time for her nightly meal at noon. And giving in and feeding her by 2 pm. And celebrating my beautiful daughter's 12th birthday with lunch out and a long anticipated trip to the mall for a  CELL PHONE!

When I headed to bed last night, way past my bedtime, I pulled back the covers to find crisp white sheets and a sleeping husband. Tim had made the bed. And I got to experience that rare and wonderful feeling of crawling into a bed made by someone else. It's just different somehow, isn't it? This transformed my messy bedroom with piles of clothes on the floor and a few wayward mosquitoes into a hotel. Maybe not a luxury hotel, but at the very least a La Quinta Inn.

The sheets felt great, I slept well, and I awoke with the will to de-crapify the kitchen counters once again.

Sometimes it's the little things.

Uncommon

When I started teaching, I was just 5 years older than my oldest students. Despite student teaching and subbing, I knew little about teenagers aside from my own stint as one in the very school where I now taught. How wise I thought I sounded when I’d stand up at back to school night speaking to the tired 40-somethings who sat yawning in the one-armed desks in front of me.  I had a know -it -all attitude and truly thought my students’ lives revolved around 10^th grade English class.

And then there were the boys.  They were loud. One disruptive boy could send the whole lesson plan down the toilet. Their papers were crumpled, and they forgot to turn things in. “Miss Whiston, everyone knows you don’t like boys very much,” a particularly gutsy student told me one day. What? That was ridiculous!  

Sure, I kept a professional distance from the boys because I was a young teacher and I didn’t want any tinge of impropriety on my career. Word on the street was that at least two of my young colleagues were teetering on the edge of that very precipice at the time, and I wanted no part of it. It was just easier to get close to the girls. I understood them. They liked me. They kept track of what outfits I wore, noting to me in a most “helpful” way when I got to my first clothing repeat. I could read their handwriting. They cared about their grades.  Pulling late night sessions in the windowless yearbook office was easier with girls around, too.

Oh. Crap. I guess the accusation was correct.

But as I got my teaching legs and that 5 year age difference crept up to more than a decade, I became much more at ease around the boys. I loved how the brightest, most awkward ones would stand by my desk, jostling each other to be the first to tell me something. Maybe they’d encountered one of our vocabulary words out in the world. Maybe they had a pun to share. Girls were not yet digging these boys, so they weren’t self- conscious about being brown-nosers hanging around the teacher’s desk. By the time I stopped teaching, the afternoon before Jack was born, I was as comfortable with the boys as the girls.

Jack. At our 20 week sonogram, the technician announced, “It’s a boy.” What?! I got teary, and not in a good way. I didn’t know what I would do with a boy. My fondest childhood memories were of special moments with my mother, and I hoped having a girl would mean we could somehow put balm on the painful scar of losing my mom too young.

What if this baby… this boy…and I couldn’t share those experiences together? I like words. I don’t like running around. I’m totally cool with potty humor, but I wish someone would just go ahead and paint the football neon orange so I could at least pretend to follow the plays. Besides, isn’t it much more fun to talk about the outfits and the cheerleaders' moves and the band than actually watch a game? And the lists of baby names scrawled in my high school notebooks were all for girls. For some crazy reason, I’d convinced myself that only another vagina was going to come out of this vagina.

My sister, 9 months ahead of me on the parenting journey said, “At first you’ll pray to God for A child. After he’s born, you’ll realize you had prayed to God for THIS child.”

And she was right.

Jack and I were made for each other. He wasn’t rough and tumble. He was charming and funny. He loved words and word play. He was loyal and smart. Our bond strengthened during long days together while Tim worked full-time and went to law school, but it somehow felt as if it had been there since the beginning of time. I read to him incessantly. Our house was small. Our world was small. No cable tv, no smart phones, no blogs. Sometimes it felt too small, but most days it felt just right. Just mom and Jack, seeing what the day held.

As I grew as a mother, and grew to love Jack even more as I got to know him, I thought back to my teaching days. I knew I would be a better teacher now that I was a mom. That doesn’t mean all teachers have to be moms, but I think parenting gave me important perspective on  homework and balance and boys that I sorely lacked before. I sent up a silent apology to all of those frazzled moms of boys for assigning their sons  Pride and Prejudice over summer vacation and so many touchy-feely journal entries.

I thought of the quirky boys who encircled my desk. The ones who would come up with weird facts and present them to me as a gift. Who, despite the surging of hormones and the burgeoning  facial hair, still seemed like enthusiastic little boys inside.  They reminded me of Jack, and I loved them.

I hoped that when Jack grew into himself and took his own charming quirkiness off to high school, he would encounter teachers who got a kick out of him the way I did. Teachers who would see his brains and his charm and his bursts of enthusiasm as a plus not just  a hindrance to the day’s schedule.

In 6^th grade, I got a glimpse of this possibility. His science class was studying rocks. On his science teacher’s  birthday, he found an ugly hunk of rock on the playground. After recess, he presented it to her with flourish, saying, “Here. I found you a Common Rock for your birthday.”

And his teacher, seeing that this common rock came from an uncommon boy, took it home and put it on her mantel.

 

Of Box Tops and Shoeboxes

Hi Sweet Friends,

Sorry I've been AWOL. I signed up as the "Box Top Mom" at our school this year, so instead of writing I've been clipping tiny pieces of cardboard along the dotted lines. On an unrelated note, I think I need reading glasses.

Guess What?

It's Shoebox time again! I hope you'll join me in assembling shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child in memory of Jack. Last year we sent hundreds of boxes, and underprivileged children all over the world received bulging boxes of goodies for the first time in their lives. These boxes are truly life changing. We will be packing shoeboxes as a family, with our church, and at Tim's office this year.

The Operation Christmas Child website gives you info on what to pack, such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, hard candy and small toys. You can even track where your shoebox goes.

Here's a short video made by blog reader Katie. She used it to inspire her church to send more boxes than ever last year.
http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play?p=youtube+do+you+know+jack&tnr=21&vid=&l=182&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3Dv.4653657955434582%26pid%3D15.1&tit=Do+You+Know+Jack%3F

My friend Ellie, a teacher in Illinois, packed a special box in memory of Jack last year and included all of his favorite things-- Legos, logic puzzles, etc. She did not track the box. However, this summer she saw a picture on the Samaritan's Purse website of a teenager in Haiti with a box that looked just like Jack's. Whether it is the same box or not, we'll never know, but the impact the experience had on Ellie is unmistakable.  Read about it here.

Packing boxes changes kids' lives, and ours too!

I hope your family enjoys packing these boxes as much as we do.

If you are unable to pack a box, but would like to drop off any supplies at my church, Margaret, Tim and I will be happy to pack them for you!

Completed boxes are dropped off at collection points around the country Nov 12-19.

Many thanks, much love, and happy packing!

YOU Oughta Be in Pictures!

I started getting Facebook and Blog messages last night that there was photo of Margaret, Jack and me on the NBC Nightly News! I had no idea that was going to happen! Last week, when I read a blog post called, "The Mom Stays in the Picture," I sent in a comment and a picture with the kids and said why I was so glad I had made sure over the years to "be in the picture." I didn't know that the post, about how moms are too seldom in photos with their kids, would go viral. The writer ended up on the Nightly News, the Today Show, and Katie Couric's new show. Talk about being in pictures! What a wild week she must have had.

As you know, I always tried to be in a lot of photos with my kids because when my mother died, we had so few pictures with her in them. I yearned for more glimpses of our life together than just what was in my memories. So, I made sure I was in photos so that my kids would have something to remember me by. Of course now, in the unexpected way my family's life has changed, those photos are really a gift to ME!

Here's the clip:
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/49396109/

And remember, no matter how your hair looks, whether you have a few extra pounds on you, or even if  your green dress has an awkward "dart" showing, you "oughta be in pictures!"