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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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Terrifying Atypical Images on my Baby Girl’s CT Scan

I don’t know if I’m reacting the way a typical mother should. I don’t know what the “typical mother” should react like, feel like, process like.  I’m not paralyzed in place. I’m not gnashing my teeth, nor wailing like a banshee. I’m not ready to rip heads off strangers, or the roses in my back yard… or God.

I mean, that would be pretty typical, right? Blasphemous, yes, but typical — to be angry at God, right? And everyone else out there walking around perfectly healthy in His perfect image?  

Instead, I’m still going through the motions of my normal life… considering all the things I need to do for the day, the places and practices where the boys need to be, what I should make for dinner… even proceeding with this two-week trip to the UK. Surely that one is blasphemy, right? That’s definitely not how I should be acting is it? That’s not typical…

But then, what is typical anyway? 

Because my daughter surely isn’t the typical patient for this disease. This clear cell renal carcinoma that appears to have spread to her liver. As in Stage 4.

That diagnosis is typical of an older person… and a male. Bethany is neither old nor a man. She is a thirty-five-years-young mother of three, who was 33 when she first learned she had a tumor on her right kidney. Thirty-three when she had her partial nephrectomy. If they’d taken her whole kidney, would it have made a difference? Is that typically what’s done? 

No, none of this feels typical. So maybe my reactions don’t need to be either?  

Besides, we still don’t know for sure that’s what we’re dealing with. Although our family’s margin for error is much slimmer than for most. A typical patient’s family would only know that an MRI has been recommended to supply additional detailed imaging at this stage. (This stage. The irony of that phrase is not lost on me.) But we have our own staff of surgical oncologists as kith and kin. 

So while a typical patient’s family would have only been notified of the suspicious lesions on the CT scan, our patient’s surgical oncologist sister immediately asks for a cd of the scan, watches it remotely, knows what she sees, shows the images to her most-trusted radiologist and fellow oncology colleagues, along with every other physician friend she trusts and loves from all over the United States, (because it’s her sister, after all, and she really, really wants to have been wrong),  and they all agree the lesions are characteristic of metastasis from renal cell… so much so that the sister-surgical-oncologist  immediately has her sister’s treatment moved to the University of Miami where she practices and where her surg/onc partner is installed as caregiver, who then immediately orders a chest CT to make sure there are no additional mets in the lungs, along with a referral to an interventional radiologist for an immediate biopsy, as well as a timeline for immunotherapy and eventual (hopeful) liver resection.

No, a typical patient’s family doesn’t have all these experts and referrals and scans and biopsies and treatments fast-tracked to near hyper-speed. Most patients don’t have that privilege.

I understand how privileged we are. I am grateful. So grateful. 

But I’m also here to say it doesn’t feel like privilege. It feels like awfully bad fortune. My daughter faces a terrifying fight. And while the storm howls all around us, I’m doing my best to focus on the tasks at hand. The rehearsals and practices, the dinners and laundry, flights and itineraries. Doing my best to move forward. 

Because there is a slight, oh-so-slight chance, that the spots are perfusion abnormalities. That the contrast pooled. Or that they are solid, but not malignant: hepatic adenoma, hemangioma, or follicular nodular hyperplasia… all benign.

And even though 10 out of 10 experts believe that’s most likely not the case, we are praying for and believing in a miracle.

Most patients and their mothers would do the same. At least on that, I’m pretty certain we’re typical.

Miracles aren’t typical. That’s the nature of miracles. If they were, they wouldn’t be miracles. They would be ordinary occurences. As in, typical. But my daughter, her diagnosis, the whole situation, isn’t typical.

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Building a Collected Space for (and from) my endless stacks of words

There are words I love for their sounds, like pixelated, Appalachian, alchemy.

And names I love for their looks, like Dierdre, Ariadne, Fizzy Dianthus, for instance.

And then there’s phrases I swoon for thanks to texture and taste, like green glass goblin, mist-spangled sea oats, and bumblebees tumbling through wildflower banks.

They all tickle my brainstem like mothwings in incomprehensibly wonderful ways, so I collect them like fireflies, then leave them floating like flotsam in a file — a file I call “poetry snippets” — thoughts fleeting, but recorded, pinned in a dark corner, piled up in heaps of broken images. I round up the parts, construct nothing of substance, then go out and gather some more, flitting through fact and fiction storehouses in my mind, snatching scenes, sketching silhouettes, silent stacks clustered in the cloisters of my laptop:

the dried and pressed blossoms of innocence,

               the reclaimed wood of childhood,

                              the trawled testimonies of trauma,

                                             all the tapestries woven not even half-way…

sonorous symbols, signifying nothing.

I so want to craft these trinkets into treasure… but like a painter who never paints her own house, it seems I’m a writer who never writes her own world.

I want – I need — to give them a home. Is it possible for me to rearrange and repurpose them, strip and paint and polish them ‘til the treasures I’ve stored up adorn every floorboard, enliven each corner and window and door? So, when I’m done, I’ll have erected the coziest, most comfortable little work of art with carefully crafted characters living in whimsy and purpose, surrounded by gleaming pewter sentence sets and winks of wisdom?

Where they’ll flourish and feel at home — my characters, yes, but my readers too?

That’s the prose and poetry I pray I can piece together in this next chapter of my life. A collected space – my favorite kind of space — that visitors will return to year after year with a cup of coffee and some introspection.

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You had me at Burrow

I just read a headline from House & Garden UK that says cottagecore has given way to burrowcore. I’d say, they’re speaking my love language.

I’m a lover of little havens full of favorites, both my tribe and my trappings. A good book, a soft throw, a mug of coffee or glass of wine, my family gathered all around is heaven to me. Add soup on the stove or scones in the oven and I will never leave.

I bought into minimalism when we first purchased our house – or as minimalist as I could ever get. I painted nearly every surface alabaster white (which I still love, btw… see my kitchen above), but my favorite room in the house is my office, with its dark bronze walls, books stacked to the ceiling, daybed piled with pillows, and the heavy, muted rug my dear Aunt Jan gave me underfoot. 

My truest loves are comfortably cluttered and full of flavor. Always have been, and always will be.  I love my home like I love my literature, full of moody tones and blowsy sentences. I love my decor like I love my food, full to bursting with spice and dense layers.

Minimalism is sparse. It feels deconstructed. Like Hemingway details, sharp and dry. Like food plated by a Michelin-starred chef: angle of substance, line of nourishment.

Maximalism, on the other hand, is overwhelming. Too many things competing for attention. See me! Pick me! Exhibitionist energy in big, bold colors, heaps of fussy meringue on display. Like a great big bowl of Eton Mess. A saccharine toothache.

But burrowcore… THAT’s my speed, my flavor, my jam.

It’s introverted, homey, cozy, layered. All soft spaces, lit with lamps and candles and sunny windows. It’s equal parts shadow and sun, forest flavor and fragrant meadow. It’s collected, gathered, connected, maintained. It’s family hand-me-downs, antique shops and internet finds. It’s Beatrix Potter making best friends with Faulkner. It’s comfort food served warm from the stove.

Here’s to burrowcore forevermore.

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Bowl-Backed, Empty-Bellied Still Life

wrapped in rough fabric in slanted light,
hollow, wire frame pressed tight,
beaded spine resting in the space between,
like a bowl-backed mandolin that no longer plays
the music gone still.
soon silent.

only this is no instrument.
he’s a child.
an empty-bellied, innocent child.
a dying child.
his mother there too, eyes closed...
in prayer?
in defeat?
in suspension of disbelief?
the unreal reality of us closing our eyes 
to him,
his frail body, 
his fledgling hair, 
the delicate loops and whorls of his crown -- 
a fingerprint of our hands-on, hands-off approach to people
in this war
between 
the right ways and wrong ways to occupy land
between 
the right ways and wrong ways to worship god
between
the right ones and wrong ones to care about
to support
to feed
to lend aid
to weaponize
to fire bomb
to shoot in the street as they try not
to starve

this is a picture of a mother holding her child
not an instrument 
of war
please may the war stop.
not the music of this little boy's heart.

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Hello It’s Your Daughter, I’m Doing Just Great

I sift through the last-recent pictures of him, 
listen to his one remaining voice mail. 
Hello, it’s your Dad. I’m doing just great. 
No problems whatsoever.

I like hearing that. I suppose now, it’s true.
I’m sure he keeps counsel with his favorite 
cold war space race physicists at some marble-
topped table in heaven, the holy trinity in attendance.
His parents and sister there too. 

A month before we lost him, he was worried about losing her. 
When the time comes, will you drive me to her funeral? 
Absolutely I would have, but he didn’t make it. 
And she couldn’t make it to his.

This Father’s Day week, I thrilled at the Strawberry Moon
with Mercury, Jupiter, Mars all in tow. Even Venus joined
the party. The night sky is the love language I learned from 
my dad. I remember standing barefoot in crabgrass, scarcely 
knee-high to a June Bug, constellations wheeling above us, 
as he pointed out stars, taught me the planets, conditioned 
me to swoon over lunar events. 

The moon vanished the weekend we buried him,
slipped away into Earth’s shadow as I facetimed 
his twin sisters, one wrapped in the bedsheets she’d
never again leave. 

They watch me now as I write, he and my aunt --
a pair of cardinals (if legends hold true) appearing each dawn – 
wings a brilliant Mars red, eyes mercurial dark.
I do my best to reassure him. 

Hello, it’s your daughter. I’m doing just great. 
No problems whatsoever.



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June is a Teacher’s Jam

Ah, the heady, slow tempo,the sonnet of June --
with summer stretched out in a languorous tune,
her notes sweetly pedaled and perfumed with sighs,
she vows lazy mornings and evenings sublime. 

With a go-nowhere-fast song, she’s pool-water chill,
for screen-porch rain listening and napping your fill.
Crack open the book spines, the bottles of wine,
and relish her at-ease, adagio time.  

Wake up to slow measures, dipped silver with dew, 
as deer tap staccato while tiptoeing through.
At dusk, come the cymbals in lightning bug sets 
of quivering selfies that make you forget   

next month, bringing emails with pre-planning news,
and all the bleak back-to-school rhythm and blues.  
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Body of the Redeemer

Can you taste the tears
in her black forest torte?
how they clung to her lashes 
in long pregnant pauses --
before dropping,
embryonic cysts 
blooming bittersweet 
in layers?

Or how sometimes her sour
skittles its way into the cherry tarts?
The from-scratch crust, cut and rolled, 
pinched and pleated, 
thick-clumped with longing 
for things not fully formed?

All the tender, tangled 
undertones and shortcomings 
sifted and stirred into gifts chilling 
on the second shelf, stacked 
in tins and under domes,
reborn sweet and warm --
her heart served up with 
fork and spoon?

*Buttercream Baroness art by Tracy Porter; Porter Art Guild



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the anti-666 challenge

Seems about right,

this new walking fad comes to light

during the apocalyptic second term

of a cult leader ready to burn

all semblance of normalcy,

of decency, of democracy—

his policy driven by bended knee

to the almighty dollar,

his minions donning loyalty collars,

lapping up his Kool-Aid

praising every tirade,

every military parade,

banishment of any aid,

both foreign and domestic

as they bow and genuflect.

 

You’ll know them by their

orange passion and flair,

their unabashed disdain - 

insane rage - for the sage

value of any initiative,

or presumed derivative,

involving social diversity,

inclusion and equity,

and any sort of empathy.

 

They silence other voices,

take away choices,

arrest and deport,

rewrite history, report

falsities, deny science,

are completely defiant

of research,

disbelieving the experts

in favor of the perverts

of justice and truth

with their sawtooth

smiles and weaponized wiles.

 

They blaspheme and defame,

shame and blame the women

among us, denigrate the more-melanined

among us, belittle the neuro-divergent

among us, arrest the daring outspoken

among us, fire those who dare protest

among us, infiltrate the most sensitive

information about us.

 

Sheep carcasses are strewn

from Wall Street to the White House lawn,

as his followers applaud

the “gets worse before it gets better” lore.

Meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor

get whiplash trying to wrap their heads around

the crumbs tossed to the ground

from the wealthiest of these pockets,

holding onto the promise -- a return to greatness

to antiquatedness, to the adulterated-ness

of a lesser democracy, when liberty wasn’t free

for all of us.

Back to the times and crimes

and political climes

of bleeding women dying in back streets

and strange fruit hanging on southern trees.

 

But stories like these are lambasted,

then categorically blasted

from statue placards

and archival records,

from websites and libraries

naval academies,

elementary, middle and secondary schools

for everyone must follow his rules

or lose funding or worse

in this insanely alternate universe

we find ourselves in –

 

as impossible to comprehend

as me finding time to bend

60 minutes of walk time

at 6 in the morning or 6 at night

in my chaotic scene

of kids and work and chasing dreams.

As impossible to believe

as a nation that would take leave

of its senses to follow its leader/redeemer,

who loves wealth and self, is a schemer

a hyperbolic screamer,

a traitor, manipulator,

a tyrant,

aberrant

idiot, and absolute,

insufferable bore.

 

So Resist this anti-democracy, 

anti-christ-like 

blaspheming orange aberration, 

I challenge you.

Resist him, I beg you.

Resist him – today.
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Memento Mori


	Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that 			grabs at what it can.
	--Yann Martel, Life of Pi

we lug our guts around in our bag of bones 
and being
a ticking tangle of purpose and futility,
we seek to make magic of the mincemeat
we’ve been served,
to make art of our existence
before it’s gone too soon 
gone to ruin
our dance with life 
a composition
ending
in death
where decomposition
takes the final bow

meanwhile, the masters behind 
like the masters before 
the masters like us 
break
bread over the bodies 
of work we leave behind,
our dusty rewards raked together
in studied elegies
of the rise and fall
of form and function,
the composition
of the naked ambition
of all who came 
and saw
and were conquered
before 
begging,
more please my mentors 
more please for me.
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