The Last Leaf

When I was twelve, I remember watching O. Henry’s The Last Leaf on television with my dad.  If you’re not familiar, the story tells of a young girl, sick with pneumonia, intent on watching the leaves on a vine outside her window.  With the separation of each leaf into the wind, so was her connectedness to life.  The stubborn vine, deeply embedded in the wall outside her window, quickly dwindled from holding on to many to just a single leaf. 

The single leaf was symbolic of her own mortality. 

At the end of O. Henry’s story, you learn the girl does not die, but not because of the tenacity of a single leaf.  The tenacity came rather from an elderly artist who believed that if he could paint his masterpiece--that single leaf--that leaf would give her the reassurance she needed to live. 

Perched on a ladder, in the rain and wind, by the light of a lantern, he painted.  In the words of O. Henry, “…he painted it there the night the last leaf fell.”

It’s ironic, how thirty years later, I’ve often deferred to this story, if by nothing else just visualizing that singular leaf.  Perhaps because it was one of those few bonding moments I had with my dad.  Now that he’s gone, I find comfort in it. 

It could also be that the single leaf has been the thread I cling to out of necessity.  When on the verge of giving up, I place my faith in something outside my control and it gives me hope.

I wish I were virtuous enough to say that “that something outside” is always God.  Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s God in disguise. 

And sometimes I have faith despite my attempts to discard it.

 

After my father’s death almost three Easters ago, I contemplated how I felt about life and the life after. And while his passing was tragic, I had to accept that I had no conditional right to withhold faith in God, because the cycle of life is just that. 

When it comes to faith, perhaps God is suggesting that the strength not come from the leaf that hangs on, but rather the vine that persists.  Besides, just because we can’t see the leaves doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Dog Days

Summer vacation isn’t nearly as fun as it used to be.  Now that I have children, long, lazy days with no beginning or end have lost most of their appeal. Summer for them rarely begins much before 10 (and for some as late as noon) and the list of chores I leave in the morning are really little more than suggestions for filling the lingering spaces between the hours of 9 and 4.  

I find myself oscillating between wanting a maid or a drill sergeant--the crux of many working mothers.  We are capable of doing it all but fail miserably at delegating.  And our children, somehow unforeseen to us, are quite comfortable in letting us do for them.  I can’t tell you how many times my kids have mindlessly picked up their feet as I vacuumed around them completely intent on what was happening on the video screen yet oblivious to my silent seething.

For everyone but Max, all summer routines have fallen to the side.  Each morning as I wrangle him to daycare, he balks.  

“Daycare’s hard,” he moans as I buckle him in his car seat.  

“So is being a grownup,” I return before promising him a chocolate bar as a reward for a day well served.

I’m mindful of how complex the balance of the world of work and the world of unrest can be.   Even my lunch breaks are booked.  With precise regularity, my phone will ring just before noon with requests from the residents of Morgan Street.

“We’re out of milk.”

“We have no food.”

“Can we go somewhere after you get home?”

When I think back to my own childhood summers, I don’t remember being so demanding.  But then my childhood occurred a long time ago before whole house air conditioning and pizza rolls.  And although I’m sure my siblings and I must have had our moments, my older brothers at least knew the repercussions of not completing their chores, because they did an impeccable job of coercing me into completing theirs for them. 

Lucky—or unlucky—for me, my kids haven’t resorted to threats of burning their siblings’ prized possessions—unlike my own brothers—because I often come home to a sink full of dishes, a couch full of granola bar wrappers, and an empty refrigerator.

But alas, summer can’t last forever.  As recompense, I think I’ll take my own summer staycation sometime in September, well after the kids are nestled back in school.  

And maybe I’ll share a day or two with Max.  We could share a bag of chocolate and shove the wrappers in between the couch cushions.  

The Sanitize Cycle

I’m on the other side of a three-day weekend. 

It was rough.  Seriously.  For the third time this season, a ubiquitous stomach bug has swept through the house.  My washing machine hates me.  I sense it.  It recoils at my appearance.   The steady diet of soiled bedding has it rocking off its pedestal.  I hate to break it to it, but these viruses tend to travel in pairs, if not paces (pace-defined-a collection of asses…aka my family). 

Stomach flu has always been this mother’s Achilles’ heel.  In my earlier days, it sent me to the gas station in search of a pack of cigarettes.  If my kids needed me and I couldn’t be located inside, there was a good chance they could find me hot boxing a smoke behind the shed.

Now older and cheaper, I’ve given up standing out back.  I can buy a decent bottle of wine with what a single pack of cigarettes now cost.  And though I’m sure there was some mental benefit from removing myself from my less-than-sterile environment, smoking is something I think I’ve finally outgrown.

My demeanor is such that a few months ago when John came down with a stomach malady at work, he phoned to say he wouldn’t be coming home.  His office, equipped with a couch and a bathroom, seemed more appealing to him than the comfort of his own home and his Lysol-wielding wife. 

I should have been ashamed of myself.  Surely, a husband who fears his wife in times of sickness puts my soul at risk for an eternity of caring for my family while infected with the stomach flu. 

Kenny’s latest bout was, if nothing else, interesting.  For two days his skill at hiding his sweatpants (as he still abhors wearing underwear), was so advanced, he even fooled himself.

“Come on, Kenny,” I coaxed.  “I won’t be mad.  I know you couldn’t help it, but you have to show me where you hid the evidence.”

Before my new front-loading, music-playing washing machine, I might have just thrown those soiled casualties away.  But with a sanitizing cycle, I figured my HG was up to the challenge.

But like something out of the Twilight Zone, I think I heard my machine threaten me from the basement Friday night.  Like Talking Tina, it informed me in no uncertain terms, if I kept feeding it shit it was going to find a way to get even.

Thankfully this morning, Kenny for the first time in a few days eagerly ate his breakfast of French toast. 

I’d love to relay his answer when I asked him how he was feeling, but John recommends that some responses are better left undocumented.

As for the dejected machine in my basement, I hope to have at least a couple days of reprieve before I have to test its limits again.  After all, there are still two people (myself included), who have not yet experienced the pleasure of the flu this season.  

I wonder,  might the sanitize cycle work on people too?

And Other Reindeer Too

This year, I’ve misplaced my Christmas gusto.

I have a box of Christmas decorations missing somewhere in this Bob Cratchit-sized house and the few decorations that have been taken out are missing some of their crucial parts.

On the back of my kitchen sink stands an action figure of Darren McGavin with his hands outstretched and eyebrows furrowed.  I can’t help him.  Our cats have taken off with the leg portion of his lamp.

Though sadly lagging in our pursuit of holiday light displays, we have (for the first time in over a decade) caught up with the big guy himself.  Without plan or promise we found ourselves third in line for a Claus consult.  Five of the six Thompsons were able to visit with the Ed Asner of Lorain County’s finest. 

“Are you guys good to each other?” he had asked from behind his elastic banded beard.

“No,” they all but Max responded.

“That’s what I thought,” he flatly replied before sending them off with a coloring book and candy cane.  Had he pushed him off with the sole of his black boot, I would have merrily skipped with him all the way back to the North Pole.

Since his sighting, three-year-old Max has developed a consuming fixation with a fold out version of Twas the Night Before Christmas.  Almost daily I find him rolling between the pages as he earnestly tries to implant himself within the magic.  The gingerbread house counting book has the same effect. Either the kid really loves Christmas or he just needs a break from us.

And Kenny, for as hard as he tries, he just can’t seem to get all of his Christmas facts right.  With his trademark lisp, he sings and hums most Christmas songs from the back of the van.

He’s also convinced Santa’s seventh reindeer is Donger.

The tree has been cut, the presents have been purchased, and the stockings have been hung.  Most important, my sanity remains marginal.  For now, I’m reminding myself to “stay here” and not think about just how long January is going to feel.  Like the Ingalls, I fear we will experience our own version of The Long Winter.  I hope Santa brings me ample cookbooks on both egg and hen preparation, regardless of what comes first.  Our funds may be low, but in poultry we are flush.

Outside the snow is falling and the presents are wrapped. And though the halls may not be fully decked, experience tells me Christmas will come regardless.  The optimist in me can acknowledge this past year was much like our July vacation—a few rough patches peppered with a little of “this doesn’t suck too much.”  For 2013, I cautiously hope for much of the same. 

May all your Christmases surpass all expectation. 

God Bless the Coward

I am an ostrich with one ear in the sand and the other eye closed. 

I watch the news, but with the sound off. 

I scan headlines, but I don’t read.

This is my view of the world. 

I am a coward in a world of unknown heroes, angels, and monsters. 

My children, the ones that will let me, I hold close.

And the smaller ones, whose hands I hold, tell me I hold too tight.

But each morning, I let them go, and I watch them separate from my world into another. 

I am aware that the unimaginable has been imagined. 

I am aware that life will continue…or it won’t.

I am relieved that my miracles are intact.  And with the next breath, I feel guilty that I’ve been spared.  But torture exists between my breaths as I think about if and when the time will come.  To live in fear is to not live fully.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”

But in the midnight of their darkness, I can only imagine how faint their light must be.  In the darkest of winter, and in the stillness of this season, I pray for that spark to light the way. 

God bless the roughhewn souls who feel damaged beyond hope.  In their brokenness, may they eventually find some peace.

And may God bless me, a coward.  Just grateful for one more day to hold tight to the hands of my children.