Thanksgiving 2018
We gather around my dining room table to eat our turkey dinner with urgency. Unlike other years, the turkey is not the main event. My daughter, who is 5 months pregnant with our first grandchild, has decided that on her favorite holiday, surrounded by family, she will find out the gender of her baby. We all take our guesses and video them for prosperity. She opens the envelope from the ultrasound technician. It’s a boy! Cheers all around! This first grandchild of the family is a grandson and we are one step closer to imagining his place at this table.
Christmas Eve 2018
Next year’s generational shift will give us new titles: Mommy, Daddy, Aunt, Uncle, Gigi, Poppy and four Great Grandparents. But this year, for one last time, we are simply who we have always been to one another and it gives our gathering a certain preciousness. I assemble my grown children on the staircase for the annual “waiting for Santa picture.” They have outgrown this tradition but for nostalgia’s sake I insist. We move to the family room for drinks, appetizers, conversation and the leisurely opening of gifts. We reminisce about when they were the babies in this room and wonder how this new child will make our gatherings different.
Thanksgiving 2019
It is all different, but in ways we didn’t see coming. The loss of one of those four great-grandparents this summer feels like an open wound as we gather for a holiday meal without him for the first time ever. The sadness of seeing that empty place at the table is softened by the smiles and laughter of an 8 month old in a high chair, oblivious to our pain.
December 2019
This year the decorations dragged down from the attic are assessed for possible risk. At my daughter’s house, this is what leads to a gate bungee corded around a fireplace and a Christmas tree placed behind a couch. It’s less of a compromise at Gigi’s house. I place all the decorations in their normal locations and then allow him to explore with me. I keep a close eye on his hands as I watch him take in all that sparkles and glows.
Christmas Eve 2019
I take the staircase picture. It is more crowded this year. Everyone seems a little more enthusiastic about it, mostly because they are coaxing smiles from a 9 month old. We proceed to the family room. We are most excited to show off to one another the gifts we bought for the baby. He is most excited by a random box amidst the torn wrappings on the floor.
The Holidays 2020
All the grown people are eager to gather with the 1 year old this holiday season. His innocent joy reignites our sense of wonder. We smile more, we laugh more, we get down on the floor and play. We shake off the chill of December and are drawn to the warmth he radiates when our little one shows up at Gigi’s house.
He says hello to the little ceramic bird figure that sits on the shelf at eye level, (his), opens the cupboard I store his toys and books in, (and then ignores them), plays with the switch on the cable box underneath the TV, (because a blinking blue light is more interesting than toys), walks into the dining room to open and close the door that leads out to the sunporch, (because that feels powerful), walks over to the piano to play a few notes, (because he can reach them), and then begins to climb the stairs, (because they are there). It’s like he is going through a checklist in his head; “These are the things I must do when visiting my Gigi and Poppy.”
Hanging out with a 1 year old during a pandemic is a lesson in perspective. The macro of life becomes micro. News headlines and updates that come at me in a confounding disarray are replaced by board books that tell the same, comforting story with every turn of the page. We work together on learning the theory of gravity by throwing rocks, the biology of insects by observing the tiniest bug crossing the sidewalk and cause and effect by seeing what happens if food is dropped from a highchair tray to the dog waiting patiently underneath it. If only research were this simple in the realm of observational information vs randomized trials and vaccine development for the masses, the world outside these doors would heal a lot faster.
He is teaching me that even when times are hard there is room in daily life for love and laughter, smiles and giggles. Staying in the moment and only concentrating on what is right in front of me, (the block tower, the bouncy ball, the cuddly stuffed dog), keeps the unknowns of all that is outside these four walls from messing with my head. In a world that is screaming for attention from every platform available, his barely perceptible nod when I ask him a simple question is worth celebrating. We are communicating! We understand one another! Oh if it could be that simple in the comments section of any social media platform.
Cancer makes you feel small in an incredibly large and unfamiliar landscape. The first days of knowing the diagnosis felt surreal. Life was buzzing all around us yet we had a secret that was making our world stand still. There was a wall between us and everyone else in our lives and we were pressed up against it’s cold hard truth.
As my children were facing the hurdles of growing up I would often tell them to find the good in a bad situation. Discovering your spouse has cancer feels like no kind of good. It is the worst kind of fear, a lonely vulnerability and permeating sadness all unexpectedly dumped on your doorstep. The script of your life suddenly flips and ready or not you are taken down a path you never planned to travel. But there is goodness in the friends and family in our lives who are willing to show up and walk a piece of that path with us.
Anymore, so much of who we are is tangled up in each other. 5 years of dating and 33 years of marriage pushes the clock incredibly close to 40 years of us. I’ve been with you so much longer than I haven’t. Through the years there has been a part of me that has become lost in that. At times I’ve fought it, but more and more I’ve accepted it. Love is a tradeoff and I’ve traded some independence for an awful lot of comfort. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been close enough. It’s been surprising at times, this marriage of ours, but it has also been consistent and predictable.
There will be more hard times. I’m not brave so I am scared of them and long to dream them away. Our incredibly good life will be visited by the sadness, sorrow and pain that is just as much a part of a life-well-lived as the joy and laughter. I’m big into gratitude lately and want to believe that that is the best way to get through the trying times. And so, I start with being grateful for you, for the life we’ve made together, for the absolute promise of “for better or for worse.” and for our unending devotion to us.
If I had the choice though, I probably wouldn’t go back. There are things about this life I’m living now that I wouldn’t want to trade away. The mornings that often start with a cup of tea and the time to write, evenings that aren’t held hostage by chauffeuring children here, there and everywhere, the satisfying view from here as I watch all three of my children create their own life stories, the promise and absolute delight of an infant grandson figuring out his world bit by bit.
fills him up and comforts him when he asks for it and that right now, that is enough. It is this innocence and my knowing that it is a brief moment of his life that is drawing me in like a magnet. I look at him and I see humanity stripped down to its purist state: a person before the world eats away at who a person was meant to be.
Life feels quiet right now. But it is the kind of quiet before the noise. It’s the pause you feel when you know something big and momentous is coming soon and for us that something big is someone small. Our first grandchild is sweeping into our lives in about 3 short months and a couple of weeks ago we found out that it is a he. And all of a sudden, there are little boys everywhere. At the grocery store, on TV, at church, in restaurants. Everywhere I look, I see little boys and I wonder….”Will he look like this? Act like that?”
the Joyful Second Half 