If you hear fabric rustling at bedtime, it’s me climbing up the robes of God. I grab onto the towering folds of white cloth and pull up, fist over fist. What I’m after is a glimpse of that rope belt through the blinding light above. Woven lengths of golden jute. A sign that I’m getting somewhere, going up.
My kids are onto me. I tell them in simple terms that I’m sad. “Mommy and Daddy are worried about their work. And we’re grieving for the Japanese people.” We haven’t told them yet that their school is closing its doors in June because of the economy. We’d never say that we’re exhausted from seven years of parenting with no local support and no days off. That we’re up at night worrying about retirement and saving for their college.
Cool drinks of water come in the nick of time, in unexpected, unhonorific places. In the grocery store bathroom, a woman in the next stall hears me instructing my daughter. “Never sit on the seat. It may look clean, but you can’t see germs. And remember, push down.” When we come out, the woman says, “It is a pleasure to witness good parenting.” My battery recharges.
But it drains again between 3 and 6 pm. The kids fight and cry because they’re tired and hungry. Everything in the pantry requires an overnight soak and four hours of simmering. I send three texts to babysitters and four emails to friends trying to secure just one hour of childcare so I can attend a teacher conference. At the last minute, a fifth friend offers to turn her afternoon into a pretzel to spot me.
I fall into bed after reading too many stories about Japan. Count my blessings. Say prayers for the suffering. Climb the robes.
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Image from Titian’s “Annunciation.”
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
–Wendell Berry
We had an AFS student live with my family long ago when I was in high school. Hiroyuki -from Japan. When the earthquake hit with all of the accompanying despair, we connected -Hiroyuki and his American sisters. His daughter had been in Costa Rico, wanting, trying, climbing the robes, to go home. Here, the sisters gave email addresses, cell phone numbers, back-up plans, offers of home here. She has arrived in Tokyo, same and sound and is sleeping now (or awaking now) in a hotel to begin her journey to her father and mother. In his last email, Hiroyuki wrote, “It seems that I have given my daughter a global family who will watch over her where ever she goes.” Isn’t that what we are doing? Through the awful grace of God.