The bed is back and better than ever with a very fancy new mattress.  So fancy is this new mattress, that we have had to order little stair steps so both Sherod and I can get in and out of bed safely.  Right now, the maneuvers to get in and out of it are fall on the floor and laugh till you cry pathetic.

The string of starlight will probably not last long.  But when we put our bed in María’s room the first time, when she was about 7, I think I was as entranced as she by the string of twinkling lights we strung all around the bed.  I’d lie with her each night to tell her a story about the adventures of Spot the cat, comforted by all those little points of light.

A few weeks ago, I said I’d be reflecting on Miroslav Volf’s book, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation as part of a conversation with my friend James whose son has been diagnosed on the autism spectrum.  James and I share a curiosity about theology and now, our children challenge us with all kinds of theological questions.  I had read enough of this book in the past to think it might give us a foothold into good conversation.  I had not anticipated that I would be so absorbed by the grant proposal I was preparing, so emptied out of words.  I am coming to the project very late, but at any rate, here I am, and it begins with the bed.

In my last post I wrote about this bed, wrote about it on a day of considerable rawness.  Late last night and early this morning, I lay in it and finally got back to Volf’s book.  The following sentence just jumped out at me:

The will to give ourselves to others and “welcome” them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity.

It was wasn’t hard to welcome María.  We had spent two years, and literally, tens of thousands of dollars working to bring her home.  There is a lot about those two years that’s a blur but this isn’t:  When it was clear in January of 2001, that soon and very soon, she’d be home, I finally allowed myself to do what I had practiced hundreds of times with my baby dolls.  It started with the baby showers given in our honor and any number of absolutely delicious outfits we were given.  Then I went to Target and bought these teeny-tiny little girl panties, t-shirts and socks, so small they truly seemed made more for a doll than a child.  I washed them and after laying all the new clothes out on her freshly made bed that waited patiently to receive her, I hung the outfits and dresses in her empty closet. Carefully, reverently, I folded her underwear and put them in their drawers.  For days afterwards, I’d go in and open the drawers, pick up a little t-shirt and smell it, put it back and close the drawer, only to open all the drawers all over again.   No, we had been waiting for so long to welcome her. That wasn’t hard.

Giving myself to her, readjusting my identity to make space for her–that has not been so easy.  After an initial “honeymoon” period, she began to challenge, to oppose, to resist, and especially, to rage.  It wasn’t just her behavior that astounded me.  I was far more disturbed by my own responses, my own insistence that I should control and dictate and determine what she should do and be.  My own behavior was magnified and laid bare by the extreme tantrums and rages our daughter brought with her.  Had I given birth to a child, raised a little one who did not have all the issues María brought, I suspect I might never have had to confront so directly all the ways in which I resisted being changed by my daughter.  Most of the changes I had to make, almost all of the pieces of myself I had to let go of, were surrendered not as a tranquil act of a generous will, opening me to the preciousness of a new life.  They were wrenched and torn and ripped away from me by the desperate love I had for this little girl.  It was brutal. It hurt. It had nothing to do with the fairybook story that was implied in all those beautiful dresses, the delicious little wisps of sturdy Hanes underwear I put in her drawers.

Now that she is gone, now that part of my task is regathering some of the pieces of my life and carefully glueing them back in place, I am surprised by the extra bits and flotsam left in the wake of the past twelve years.  One is a far deeper appreciation for the darkness than I ever had before.  And right there, with that new comfort in the places where I can’t see or know things with any real certainty or clarity, is the awe I feel when I see a tiny little light shine bright.  The bed is ours again, and not María’s.  I would gladly return it to her in a heartbeat and I know that I can’t.  Instead, what I can do is let that string of insignificant stars have its place in our room, strung on our bed.  Lighting the darkness in my heart.

Yesterday turned out to be achingly sad—and as always, in ways I could neither anticipate nor prepare for. María had it rough at school. Again. Part of the problem is the school’s plan for managing her behavior. Despite our best efforts to share what we know works for her, there is an astounding amount of condescension toward her behavior support team from ARC/BARC and us. There’s also the fact that a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that Sunset is closing. Won’t even bother to go into the details of that whole drama, but faculty, staff and students are up in arms and my daughter feasts on drama. The reasons go on. But the bottom line was the same. We couldn’t see her. She spent time in isolation time out. The chaos that is so addictive and so toxic to her won the day.

I thought it fortunate that we had some work to do around the house that would keep me busy–that is, until it became its own archeological dig that reached way down deep to the places of pain I try to forget about. If this were a movie, the scene would shimmer and fade and we would find ourselves standing in María’s room in 2001. When she first arrived, I had fixed up the brass bed I slept in as a little girl. It was funny and winsome, and represented all those hopes and illusions mediated to a person like me about bringing home a daughter. It didn’t take long to realize that arrangement would just not work. María hated sleeping alone and I was still operating from the school that says puppies and children are allowed to cry themselves to sleep because that’s the only way to train them to do right. A very Nordic approach, that. In psychological parlance, this is called “allowing a child to learn how to self-soothe”. It made sense. But it was totally wrong for our child.

The next attempt was to bring the twin mattress from her bed into our room. During the day, we’d slide it under Sherod’s and my bed. At night it would come out and María would sleep at the foot of our bed. That only worked for a short time. Desperate for sleep, beginning to understand the enormity of the shadows we were moving under, we disassembled the bed that Sherod and I had shared since early in our marriage, a bed I simply loved. We got a frame and a decent king sized mattress and box springs. It was utilitarian but it gave María room to sleep with us.

I was horrified to watch myself allow that to happen. But night after night, in those first months, I would wake up to find this tiny little waif of a girl lying on top of me, clinging to me, even in her sleep, like her life depended on it. Over time, she learned to sleep in the middle and Sherod and I simply accepted the reality that this was the only thing that worked. In fact, a couple of her therapists along the way were complimentary of our willingness to do this for her. Occasionally, we’d try to move her out. We took down my childhood bed and set up our bed, the one I loved, instead. It is a four poster and we strung little twinkling lights on the canopy frame. Her room looked magical at night and for a while it worked. Until it didn’t and she was back in bed with us.

Finally, in 2009, when Carol E. came into our life, we had the help we needed to break out of this pattern. But to get her in her room took purchasing yet another bed, this one a loft bed that she called her “Condo”. This time the move was permanent. Then in late 2010, when her behavior was actually as good as it had ever been and we were able to remove her timeout isolation space from her room, she asked to get the four poster bed back. One more bed was disassembled, the other rearranged. In the days and months after she moved to BARC, I would go by her room, or even sit in the room, grieving. The empty bed was a reminder of such enormous losses, for Sherod, for María, for me. Back when we first took that bed apart and put it away to make room for our girl, we lost so much.

A few weeks ago Sherod and I started talking about moving our old bed back into our room. As things worked out, we were getting a new mattress set today and we had to get the bed moved back into our room yesterday evening. A lot has changed since that was Sherod’s and my bed. I remember when we bought it. Sherod was always incredibly competent at guy kind of things. I think I pretty much got in his way, twittering and tweeting all around him as he put the bed together in Memphis all those years ago. When the bed was finally made, I dove into it and lay looking up at the ceiling, grinning from ear to ear.

Last night, I had to do a really big chunk of the work. Sherod’s back hurt too much for him to do the things I would always have expected of him. There was some small satisfaction in knowing that I could step in, but, really? I wanted to push back time. It was late and what we had was a job to do. Yes, there were some new sheets and our beloved bed was back, but there was also the ache that it was María’s “Gotcha Day” and we had not seen her. I couldn’t stop thinking that time passes, our bodies become frail, the limits of what we are capable of stares back unblinking, even with a relatively simple task like this. I kept it all together until the very end. We had been keeping the loft-bed mattress under the four-poster in María room. I pulled it into our room and got ready to shove it back under the bed. In an eyeblink, I had gone back in time—the motions, the light, everything was almost identical to what it would have been like getting María ready for bed 12 years ago. I finally slumped down on the floor and just wept.

It is the truth of grace for me that there is always, always that paradox of harshness and breath-taking tenderness in moments like this. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, I woke up and the man who I have loved just about all my adult life was lying right next to me, his warmth my warmth. In the king sized bed, in the time when we were struggling so hard to do right by María, I often felt so lost from him. Last night, he was right there. I could cling to him, like I needed to, until I fell asleep again.

Twelve years ago, today on a cold day in Ciudad de México, that little hand slipped into mine.  My girl is having a rough time of it again and we only got to spend a little while with her at BARC on Saturday.  We may or may not see her today.  Be that as it may, I hold on tight and don’t let go. Because she is the best thing that ever happened to me.  The very best…

I have been working for two weeks to finish a major grant proposal.  It has been grueling, grinding work and I have had no energy to do much of anything except keep plodding along. I play catch up today. I help to funeralize a dear, dear friend tomorrow, and I hope write a sermon for Sunday. Sunday is Sunday–the relentlessness of the Sabbath.  Monday is booked solid.  It will get better but right now, this is what I feel like…

I am so busy writing grants my head spins right now.  I’m way behind on most of the things that matter to me.  The day I have to turn in the biggest, most high-stakes grant we’ve ever applied for is María’s “Gotcha Day”.  Out walking tonight, I thought about that.  Then I got to thinking about her name and something I wrote a long time ago.  It is good that I will be busy all these days leading up to that day, now that I also know only too much about the day you have to let go.  What I wrote all those years ago still stands.

My mom wasn’t given a choice.  Her mother informed her that her first-born son would be Hans Knut, in honor of his grandfathers.  When I was born it was likewise:  Rosa Vera, even if my mom had hoped she could call me Caroline pronounced in the Swedish way, the rolling r, the emphasis on the last vowel and “line” pronounced “leen”. It sounds like music.

I don’t know if my grandmother Rosa’s name suited her.  She died long before I was born.  Vera’s name fit.  Hard sounding.  It has to do with truth.  Vera knew some truths.  She knew that the sheets in the VIP suite at the hospital where she died were butt ugly and beneath her.  So she sat and waited for 2 hours, life slowly ebbing away despite her strength, while her driver fetched the ones she liked.  Only then did she get in the hospital bed, so she could be true to herself even unto death, a death that came just moments after she lay down.  I don’t know that Vera knew anybody else’s truths, but she certainly knew hers.

I’ve always felt sad for my mom that she could not name me.  I tried not to pay too much mind to a set of names I wished I didn’t have.  I turned instead to think of what I might name a little girl-child of mine.  And then, the daughter given to me by God brought with her a name of her own.  Luz María.  Light.  Light shining in the darkness. Mary. Like that brave young woman who said yes to the impossible.  

I would never have dreamed of such a hopeful name.  Her name was not my gift to her.  Her name has been her gift to me. 

Because some days this is the only song that works, even if it’s corny…

She’s fed up with throwing in the towel
She is pulling herself bit by bit away from the cobwebs
Hasn’t slept all night and isn’t tired
Doesn’t need a mirror to know she’s looking good
Today she’s put mascara on her eyelashes
Today she likes her smile and isn’t estranged from herself
Today she dreams what she wants and refuses to worry
Today she’s a woman aware of her soul.

Today you will discover that the world is just for you
That no one can do you harm, no one can do you harm
Today you are going to understand
That fear can be broken by slamming a door
Today you’ll make others laugh
Because your eyes are tired of being of being lament, of being lament…
Today you will discover that the world is just for you
Today you’ll even find the way
To laugh even at yourself and see you made it
That, today, you will be the woman
You damn well know you can be

Today you are going to care for yourself
Like no has before
Today you will look forward
Cause looking back already hurt too much.
A brave woman, a smiling woman
Look how it unfolds
Today the perfect woman they were waiting for was born
She has broken without shame all the rules that made
Today she’s wearing her heels to make sure her steps are heard
Today she knows her life won’t be a failure

Today you will discover that the world is just for you
That no one can do you harm, no one can do you harm
Today you will conquer the sky
Without looking down to see how far it is from the ground
Today you will be happy
Even if the winter is cold, and long, and long.
Today you’ll find the way
To even laugh at yourself and see that you made it.
Today you will discover that the world is just for you
That no one can harm you, no one can harm you.
Today you will understand
That fear can be broken by slamming a door.
Today you will make other laugh
Because you are eyes have gotten tired of being lament, of being lament
Today you’ll find the way
To laugh even at yourself and see you made it.

I don’t intend to diminish what I accomplished yesterday in any way.  It was a wonderful moment in my life.  I had originally intended to fly into Birmingham on Saturday, pick up my bib and timer, meet my walking buddy Marsha, have a nice dinner and hit the sack early to walk the next morning.  I planned all along to catch an afternoon flight back to Fort Lauderdale.

Then I remembered that my mother-in-law would be less than two hours away and it wouldn’t take much to see her.  I changed my flight plans and got to her assisted living facility at about 3:30 on Friday. The afternoon was beautiful and she was having a good day.  She’s muttered during recent visits about the fact that Sherod’s truck is impossible for her to get into.  I had a brand new Toyota Camry rental so we wrapped her up and I took her for a drive.  We went to see a part of town where old buildings are getting renovated.  Juanita was curious and wanted to check it out.

Then she wanted to drive by the house she and Papa Earl built when Sherod was in Junior High.  As we drove over, she told me that she’s heard that there are 5 or 6 shoot-outs most nights in her old neighborhood.  The beautiful trees and roses she and Papa Earl planted and tended to have all been cut down. The house looks forlorn.  Then she wanted me to see where her mama lived so we drove a few block over.  Juanita stopped and visited her mother just about every single day of her adult life.  We talked about the fact that both of us think of our mothers daily–she told me there are still times she wants to reach for the phone and call her mom.

From there it seemed only natural to go on to the cemetery where Earl is buried, on the outskirts of town.  She couldn’t walk to his grave but she wanted me to go look for his gravestone and wave when I was standing next to it.  I found a discarded plastic flower between some tombs and put it on Earl’s grave. Juanita liked that.  Then we stopped at the Live Oaks Cemetery, in front of the Derryberry plot where she could look at the large tombstone that marks the spot where her mother, sisters, and brother all rest.  We went back to dinner and on our way home she told me the most delightful story I’ve ever heard her tell.

She needs a walker now, and is frail.  Sometime in the past week, she was headed from the dining room back to her little efficiency apartment, walking side by side with Dr. M. She explained he had once been her surgeon.  Then she told me he looked at her and said, “let’s race”.  She assented and the race was on.  At first she didn’t pick up the pace much and she let Dr M. get ahead of her for a good part of the way.  But then, when they were getting really close to the finish line, she gave it her all, got past him and won fair and square.  Juanita is not one I would ever describe as impish.  But she had the most impish smile on her face imaginable.  She’s a chess player, that one, a smart competitor who beat her surgeon at a race when she was 96 years old and dying of lung cancer.

Then there is Mrs. M., pictured above, trapped in a body that is so worn out it can barely stand.  Mrs. M starts out for the dining room a good 15 to 20 minutes before each meal.  The hallway is not long–I can certainly get from one end to the other in under a minute.  But for Mrs. M, each and every step is a victory of epic proportions.  Each requires that she stop and rest and regather the strength to take the next.  She does it quietly, she walks with dignity. I have watched her any number of times and I have never seen her complain or look sour.  She just gets on with her life which includes this journey she must repeat, over and over again.

I go to Cedar Hill frequently enough now to have a sense of connection with this community. I know it’s a bunch of old folks who each have their own foibles and eccentricities.  Their own deep flaws and sins.  I  watch them lose ground, become more feeble; some have died or had to move to nursing homes.  Perhaps I watch them so intently because I know now that all they are is a little further down the road.  There, by God’s grace, will it be I.

I did it.  Avg pace: 15:42; I finished the race in 3:25:42.  It was not as good as I had hoped–but way good enough considering how many Birmingham hills we went up and down, and up and down again.  At the end I was wheezing and wished I had an inhaler–it’s been a good three years since I had to deal with this kind of stuff. I guess the combination of all that climbing and cold  had my lungs confused. 
It is a strange and beautiful thing, this kind of event.  I wanted to jump out of my skin right before we started with 4000+ anxious people crowding in.  They kept referring to the those of us who were not running as “The Walkers”. That amused me. I kept weeping along the way and I could never figure out why, except this mattered a lot to me.  The people cheering you on is delightful. I wish I had had the time to stop and take pictures.  In the crystal clear air of a cold winter morning, from the highest vantage points of the race I felt like I could see forever.  Birmingham is sort of cool, especially around the Five Points area.  And now it is over.  I will spend far more time at airports today than I spent rocking the asphalt.  My feet hurt and if I could, I’d put them in a bucket of ice water.  But that is that; Marsha and I are talking about the next one.

I rented a car yesterday to drive from Birmingham to visit my mother-in-law. Selma’s about 90 miles from B’ham and the fastest way to get here is to go on I-65 down to Clanton and then cut across southwest, on a small country road. It has always been Sherod driving and I didn’t have to get to Selma at any particular time. On my own in this part of the world, I drove slowly enough to enjoy a sunny winter’s afternoon. The countryside is quite lovely and the glimpses I caught of daffodils and crocuses filled me with elation. As I came to one curve in the road, an old property caught my attention and I had to come back to try to take what pictures I could with my iPhone.

I love these drives more and more. I find buildings and structures that have been in a long, slow process of decay compelling as I glimpse them along the roads. There are lots of them out in these parts of the countryside. I get the sense that what went first was the fluff—all the trappings of purposes imposed on wood and iron and tin and brick by people. There are years, and years, and even more years, of being exposed to the elements, being stripped down further and further to the essential. The sagging when a structure no longer has the strength to stand up for that which others intended for it. The deep, rich colors that come from that strange combination of addition and subtraction—veneer is stripped bare, grit and grime and life gets blown and blasted into what used to be impenetrable.

Perhaps what I am most aware of is the resistance of what has been built up, what has been created, even if by human hands that know mainly about folly, to go back to the dust. Perhaps all those trees and minerals and dirt first accepted (really, did they have any choice?) and then embraced the transmutations required of them, all the ways they were cut and hammered and forged into edifices far beyond their individual possibilites. Once this new future was embraced, no matter how beyond them it was, there was no going back. I get the sense that all these places that served their purpose and now exist only occasionally, when someone drives by and sees them, will quietly, stolidly, stubbornly, rebel against the notion of once having been something and now being condemned to nothingness. So they endure. The tilt happens ever so slowly and with a grace that only comes with time. All the way to the very end, the bitter and maybe glorious end, they insist on giving witness.

Marguerite Duras, who wrote Hiroshima Mon Amour, is a powerful writer. My favorite of her books: The Lover. It has one of the most magnificent lines imaginable. Yesterday as I tromped around, looking at this abandoned place on the side of the road, I kept repeating it:

I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.

I simply adore this water tower. And the peaches here? OMG–20 years later I still miss them. Headed to Selma to visit the mamacita in law …