An end, a middle, and a beginning

We said a sudden and sad goodbye to Grace last week. My husband's mother was 87 and was going to move into a brand new ( to her),  freshly-decorated (by me) apartment in the assisted living section of the retirement community where she'd lived for eight years. She fell ill quickly and suffered little, thank heavens. My husband was with her in her last moments of awareness. She never saw her new little place---and though it seems minor and beside the point, I wish she had.

A few days later, last Friday, I had a surgery that had been on the books for months. It took me that long to find time in my life for it. It wasn't the most serious type of surgery. It wasn't the least. It was, like me, in the middle.

Yesterday, my daughter Kate came to stay all day in case I needed help. I didn't, but I loved being with her and her Jonas, who is now three months old.

Here's Jonas, that adorable cupcake of a boy, looking for all the world as if he's saying hallelujahs in his sleep.

And here are the red tulips my husband brought for me to look at while I struggle to be patient. I'm better at being impatient, of course. Holding Grace in my heart, and Jonas, too, I'm looking forward to being on my road again.

Comments

[Katherine]

Are you going to do a book of sketches of Jonas for Kate? Your sketches of him have been so delightful

[Laura]

Thank you from my deepest heart for you kind comments. Let us hope for better, easier days ahead for all of us.

[Paris Parfait]

So sorry for your loss, dear Laura and David. And I hope you are on the mend and feeling much better very soon. Gorgeous baby and tulips! Thinking of you, dear heart. Lots of love, Tara xoxox

[lindsay]

I wish you well at this moment of intersecting feelings and challenges. Sending you warm thoughts.

[Cathy (Kate) Johnson]

What a lovely, touching post, dear heart. Who is to say that Jonas isn't saying halleluja in his sleep? Babies have much to say that about!

I had to smile about your waiting to find time for surgery! I did the same thing...and I'm glad you're through it and feeling better.

Your tulips are lovely...but let's hear it for back on the road!

[marly]

Watch out for red tulips in hospital rooms--remember that Plath poem?

It seems grace indeed to have had a mother-in-law like yours, one who mattered to you. And how like life to tangle up "good-bye" and "hello," Grace and Jonas.

***

You are a woman with great health of mind and would never see your beautiful red tulips this way, but I'll send a piece of it anyway--though you probably know it already.

from "Tulips"--

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.