Ghosts

I can't make a hamster mansion today. Wanted to. I wanted to play Sorry and talk about Pokemon and snuggle under blankets and whisper secrets. I really did.

You were the first, you know, the first one to take my breath away with your smile and make me feel like no one else could ever be as lucky as me. We used to sleep until noon in my bed, and you would stir and fuss and find me with your hand, and blissfully tumble back into your baby dreams.

You were why I wanted more children, our first years together were perfect, just perfect, and I wanted to add to that. Your brother had other ideas, though, and God did, too. Your brother screamed and your health problems began to emerge, and each day was less idyllic than the last. One more rugged pregnancy and health problems times three made sure those lazy days were gone for good.

Does it matter that I miss you, that my heart pines for you like a long lost first love?
You stand in the doorway with the game you wanted to play, watching me change a diaper while on the phone with the doctor and I catch your eye and give you an apologetic smile. I see sadness in your eyes that a note in your lunchbox just can't fix.

I love your brothers like oxygen, but there are times I wish it was just us again. Sometimes in my dreams I smell your two year old hair and watch you play in the yard with your imaginary friends, pooh bears of all different shapes and colors and sizes. Then I notice it is getting dark, and my belly is starting to swell, and I know our time alone is coming to an end. We say goodbye to your ghostly playmates, and I wonder if we will ever see them again.

That time is not lost to us Sage. That playground is right here in my heart, and I am keeping it safe, for when everyone else is asleep in bed, and the summer night is still, and we can go out and run among the ghosts of childhood once again.

Save Me

It is your intelligence that has saved you, says my dear friend. I take this as a compliment, and it is true, a little, that having a natural ability to comprehend things like Ristocetin Cofactor and autosomal dominant genes has made this little journey a bit easier. Later that night I knock on her door, though, and she stands there in her slippers looking at me quizzically.

God has saved me, I tell her, knowing how sanctimonious it sounds, but it is true, and I must say it. God has saved me.

Laying on the floor begging for mercy, save me God, please, from despair and bitterness and self pity and self doubt. Give me the courage to let my little boy run and climb even though the slightest bump could send us to the emergency room. Help me not to hate my neighbor because her child can talk. Help me to say my heart is broken instead of insisting things are okay.
Help me not to hate you God.
Help me not to miss it, the wonder, the joy, because it isn't what I planned.

Help me to say thank you.

That is what has saved me, falling to pieces and landing in loving arms. Miracles that are better than water turned into wine, the miracle of my sons, and mourning turned into dancing before my very eyes. So, I guess I don't care how it sounds. God's love has saved me, not from my children's health problems and bad genetics. God has saved me from the poverty of my soul.
He has saved me from myself.

Love Train

We can see the train from our window, and the Uptown theatre, too, when the sun sets behind it and makes our room all golden like nothing will ever make us sad again. Jude calls it the Love Train, he announces it so we know it is going by otherwise we’d miss it for sure. Tonight we will ride the train, Jude and his daddy and I, but Jude won't know that until we get there.

We walk past sad people and dirty snow and smell the fumes from the cars on Wilson Ave. When we get near the station Jude is so excited we can barely hold on to him and as we start to climb the stairs we feel the thunder. Jude becomes frantic, it’s the LOVE train and we are missing it, so HURRY and when we get there and the train is pulling away it is almost too much to bear. Another one is coming, I say, in just a minute but Jude doesn’t work like that. He cries until the next one comes and when it gets close we hold him tight, because there is nothing to stop him from running right onto the tracks.

The train takes off and Jude is flapping and yelling THIS IS GREAT and something about Thomas and Gordon at the top of his lungs. People look up, their damp dull reveries broken for a moment and some of them smile but most of them stare for a moment and look away. I hate them for their plodding mediocrity. They seem so small just outside Jude’s sparkling circle of light. I get to stand in it and they don’t. So there.

When the train slows down for Sheridan Jude starts to howl because he thinks the ride is over, and continues to howl until the train gets going again. He does this at Addison, and again at Belmont. No one is smiling now. These lumps of dreary humanity don’t get how great the ride is, so they don’t understand the anguish at the thought that it might be over.

We arrive at our stop and haul Jude kicking and screaming off the train. We spend an hour or two with some therapists who want him to string things and match colors and put his own socks on and quit screaming so much. We brought him here, it was my idea, I wanted them to teach him to participate and learn and be more like those fools on the train. We are all glad to leave and I suspect they are happy to see us go. Jude is far more subdued on the way home, looking out at the moon behind the dark buildings and bare trees. I can tell we are getting to Wilson because the trains always slow down past the massive cemetery, out of respect for the dead. Mustn’t wake them. Jude leaves the train without a fuss this time, perhaps realizing it just isn't the place for him.

Good bye love train, you have proven too much for us today. We will ride you again someday, when we are calmer, braver. Until then we will wave at you from our window in the golden sunlight, and yell out your name as loud as we can.