I Feel

I cry through every scan. 

The last several tests have delivered the best kind of news, but still, hot tears trail my face through the sting of the needle, the careful touch of the technicians, the whirring and clanging of the pristine tube, then the pleasant robot woman’s voice: “Hold your breath . . . breathe.”

I breathe.

Clara comes home red-eyed with a yearbook full of signatures. It’s almost the last day of junior high, and she has inherited my sentimentality. It’s been a difficult year, but today, many teachers are cherished and just-classmates are friends. I read her a text I received from her favorite teacher, and my voice is suddenly gone. We sit on the couch, my arm over her shoulders, paging through her eighth-grade memories and laughing with a box of tissues nearby.

Every day, I gag down five rough and chalky horse pills. Three in the morning and two at night. Sometimes they get stuck or come back up. I dread the ordeal and despise the way they make me feel. They are saving my life. 

Jacob lies next to me on my bed at night and talks about his future. He’s almost a high school senior. He has plans, and stressors, and everything he needs to become the best kind of man. He shares with me the outcome of his tennis match, careers he’s been considering, the details of his recent dance date, and his thoughts about why people turn out to be certain ways. I tell him he makes me proud.

My heart feels strange. The MRI reported that it functions just fine, but it seems to carry me weakly through my days. I give it the deference it deserves, but I long to feel its strength again. A strength I never noticed before. 

Ellie came home from college for a few days. The mood of the whole house is lighter. She has grown so much, learning to live on her own with bravery and her characteristic brand of stoicism. But she likes it here. We like her here. We gather in the living room after dinner.

I’m in a happy, hazy state, absorbing the scent of lilacs through the open window as I rest my head against the back of the couch. The kids lend their harmonies to our familiar Beatles playlist. Time stands still; their voices are easy, unbothered.

I want her everywhere

And if she’s beside me 

I know I need never care

But to love her is to need her everywhere

Knowing that love is to share

Each one believing that love never dies

Watching her eyes 

and hoping I’m always there

I will be there

And everywhere

Here, there, and everywhere

My heart feels strange. And full of everything.

Wanting

I have now spent exactly one year living with my longest lurking fear. I’m here. I have no words for any of it, but I do have some hopes for the future. I think I dare to write them down.

My scans are clean forevermore.

The chemo pill fills the measure of its creation but cools it with the side effects.

I figure out how to swallow five monster pills a day without gagging or choking or making a whole big thing of it (“High-five me! I did it!”).

I never do another 90-minute stint in a narrow, noisy MRI tube with IVs in both of my arms.

I gain 25 pounds (please, please).

I never again faint in a public place. Or a private place.

I never again get wheeled into an ambulance.

My lonely kidney keeps on killing it.

I don’t contract any bacterial infection that a spleen is meant to conquer. (Who knew spleens had a purpose? We’ve been lied to.) 

My partial pancreas pumps out enough insulin to keep the diabetes at bay.

I get to keep the rest of my organs.

I feel like a million bucks the day I turn 50.

I eat as much as I put on my plate.

I run a day’s worth of mundane errands without getting dizzy.

We take the planned trips to Europe we’ve been forced to scrap, and I walk down miles of cobblestone and back. I gaze at flying buttresses and cloud-topped Alps. I eat pastries that are works of art, and they don’t taste like plastic.

I cook a whole Thanksgiving dinner without having to lie down in the middle.

I look in the mirror and recognize myself. “Ah, there you are!” I say.

My heart beats in such a strong, steady rhythm that I hardly notice it—but I welcome every ache and swell.

I laugh so hard my kids get scared and I have to cover my face. 

I go on a girls’ trip with the perfect mix of wonderful women.

I grow tomatoes.

I run up the stairs to grab something I forgot. 

I complain about hauling real Christmas trees into the house and then bask in their memory-stirring scent.

I get choked up when my kids silly-sing in perfect harmony in the car.

I go gray in a dazzling way.

I hold hands with my husband in 214 new and old settings. 

I’m there—I’m right there—at every graduation and wedding.

I answer every text and call from my four favorites.

I see another musical or two on Broadway.

I continue to marvel at the people I made.

I blow up birthday balloons until I’m 80.

I find a bag of Cadbury mini eggs every time I look for one.

I cradle a newborn grandchild for hours while its mother sleeps.

I read every last book on my nightstand. 

I watch generations of tulips push through the dirt.

I help a family of immigrants. I learn their language.

I ask “Why can’t the mountains stay snowy and the valleys stay green?” 72 more times.

I feel the apple-crisp thrill of that first hint of autumn. 

I spend an afternoon studying Emily Dickinson at a sun-drenched table in the back corner of a library. 

I talk about real things around a campfire at night. I step away to stare at the vivid universe, then fall asleep somewhere indoors.

I see the aurora borealis (and not just through an iPhone).

I am a witness when my childrens’ dreams come true and a comfort when they don’t. 

I learn to write poetry.

I cry at live choral music several times a year.

I cry hearing Sara Bareilles sing in person.

I cry at the symphony.

I wear grooves into my piano keys.

I hike.

I bake.

I sing.

I breathe all of it in. I fill my hearty lungs with it.

I live until I’ve had enough of life.

Is that too much to ask?

Out the Passenger Window

A shock of yellow flecks the side of distant crags, their gray spread thin by palette knife against a wash of layered blue.

The cliffs stand firm as up-close aspens

pass us by in bright parade and wave their leafy coins,

all trembling light, then fall away.

I could reach out and touch their trunks; so close we swing

to let by all the hundred cars that crowd this tight paved road 

and snake through flame-lit slopes. Instead

I slump against the seatbelt, fingers pressed to pounding temple,

stomach rolling, gaze fixed straight as

color rushes,

traffic pushes,

endless trees rise up, recede.

I was not made for motored motion, holding on 

as beauty blurs in the periphery.

No. Let me stop.

I’d stand on ancient dirt in dappled air to hear

the wooded whispers overhead.

If I could spin one spotted leaf and somehow

breathe in deep the misty light

would it come real? All of it—

This briefest flash before the dimming.

If I stood completely still

Would it be real?

Springtime 2020

You were dressing for the theater when the world shut down—

for dinner, for a stroll through peopled shopping space and 

gold-lit outdoor fountains.

Instead your plans popped out like pushpins one by one,

letting the inked-in calendar float to the floor 

as you stood by in heavy quiet

and time turned feral.

Outside, they said, a threat—a tiny thing but monstrous— 

crept uncontained.

You stayed behind your doors and blessed the walls, the roof, 

the floor that held you. 

Then one dim dawn, the floor itself shocked you awake, 

sent cracks through your illusion of steady ground below.

Earth sways with zero notice. It tilts and jolts and growls. It growls.

Did you know?

Earth quakes in fits and starts and leaves you shaken, wary, watching.

But no, this isn’t news. Not to you. 

You felt your world drop out before it ever fully formed.

Loss ran through your veins as you grew.

You knew.

So here’s the solid truth: things heave that should hold strong.

Plans set in stone melt in a moment.

People stay until they can’t

and your clenched fists? They have no say. 

But look; be still for now. That snow-soft tree is buzzing

and the old air stirs and brings you living scents from people passed.

And while you waited, frozen, forgetting how to fill your lungs,

Spring came back anyway.

Relocation

These flies are relentless, dive-bombing me as I wipe off the empty pantry shelves. There’s no time to stop and swat them.

“Remember when Jacob used to hide in here with the door shut?” My voice echoes off the bare walls and my teenage daughter murmurs mmm-hmmm and keeps sweeping the floor of what used to be our living room. 

We’re the only ones left here after the flurry of commotion over the last two days. My husband is at the new place waiting for the cable guy; my son is on his way to a three-on-three soccer tournament in the next town over. My youngest daughter is outside somewhere, soaking up her last free-roaming play time in the only neighborhood she’s ever known. We’re moving a mere ten minutes north, but to her it might as well be a hundred miles.

“Why are there still pine needles on this floor?” Ellie asks, and I catch a vision of the room at its best, a plump fragrant evergreen twinkling in the corner, a Christmas quilt on the couch, small pajama-clad people twirling and giggling across the rug.

Remember all the trees we dragged in here over the years? That one that dried up way too soon and the one with the slippery trunk that refused to stay upright? And every year I’d hold the tree straight while Jer lay on the floor trying to tighten those blasted metal bolts, and then we’d switch places and try some more, and we’d always say maybe we should think about going artificial, but the next morning we’d walk down the hallway and be stunned by the scent and we’d do it all again when the season returned.

The new owners will be here for their walk-through soon. We just need to empty the last of the food into this cooler and . . . oh, right. The fridge looks a lot dirtier with nothing in it. Ellie and I start to take out shelves and scrub the inside. Remember when we bought this fridge? It was our first major purchase, besides the house. We put our toddler girl in an orange cart and walked up and down the aisles of Home Depot, feeling like big time homeowners. And then we had to wait a week for the fridge to arrive so we lived out of a cooler. Remember that luxurious twinge of joy when the fridge was installed and it started making its own ice?

“Mom? What time are they coming? We need to get out of here.”

“I know, let’s finish this and mop the floor in here and we’re done.” Remember when we had this floor put in? It used to be that ugly weird linoleum and that awful beige carpet right under the table. And then it was laminate and one-year-old Clara was pushing that huge broom around and we all laughed. Remember one-year-old Clara? The sheer force of her? I’d sit right there at the computer trying to meet a deadline and she’d hang on my knee and bounce and shriek and I’d despair of ever having silence again, ever having time or space, ever being me. 

“Mom. Can we go?”

The house is cleaner than it’s been in the last twelve years. Clean and empty—except. How can an empty space feel so full?

Ellie takes a load of cleaning supplies out to our minivan and I just stand and look. Remember when we brought tiny Jacob home and Ellie held him? And we laid him on a blanket right there and the two of them just stared and stared into each other’s eyes? Remember how much music and yelling and burned food smell and laughter and crying have filled this air? And all the unfolded laundry and mountains of library books and snow pants and puddles and stashes of Halloween candy spread out and sorted and science fair projects and stockings and tantrums and prayers, right here on this floor?

My dad helped us move into this house. He looked around and called it a “good little starter home” and it was. He came and helped us lay sod out back. Right here is where I was kneeling when he called and told me his bad news. And that’s where I stood when I got the other phone call, the one about the end. And that room down the hall is where I went after, and where I wanted to stay. Remember? My lamplit little nest of seclusion? But Christmas came and children grew and life rolled on and that tree out the window kept blossoming and dropping its leaves and that front door kept letting people in and seeing people out and I felt it all, right here in this space.

“Mom.”

Yes, okay. Let’s go find Clara. I put our house keys and garage door opener in the drawer by the oven, turn off the lights. Turn the lock. Remember that time I locked us out on accident and had to borrow the neighbor’s ladder to climb through that bedroom window?

This time I lock us out on purpose. We don’t live here anymore.


Thirty minutes later I’m standing in the beating sun on the sidelines of Jacob’s soccer game, sweat dripping down my back and exhaustion inching in around the edges. “Heads up!” someone shouts, and a soccer ball sails in and smacks the back of my thigh. The sting is sudden and sharp, bringing up tears behind my sunglasses. I try to turn my focus back to the game, but something has been shaken loose. The tears keep coming; salt water and snot are streaming down my face. Ellie and Jeremy are peering at me. This is not about a soccer ball.

“Go home,” Jeremy says gently into my ear. “I’ll stay until the end.” 

Home.

I wander back to the minivan feeling rootless. Upheaved. I drive to our new house and sink into the mattress we left all haphazard on the floor, surrounded by boxes and bedposts in a house with no memories. Tomorrow we’ll start to make some. But for now I sleep.

Father's Day Talk (for those who asked)

Hymn number 296 in our hymnal is a poetic prayer to God. The text addresses Him as “Our Father, by whose name all fatherhood is known.” As we sing the second verse we are pleading with our Father:

“Our children bless, in ev’ry place,

That they may all behold thy face,

And, knowing thee, may grow in grace.”

When Jesus Christ cried out to His Father during His darkest night, He prayed for us, saying, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

So many scriptures and songs express this longing--to know our Heavenly Father. In his conference talk in April 2018, Elder Brian K. Taylor said, “Coming to know our Father changes everything, especially our hearts, as His gentle Spirit confirms our true identity and great worth in His sight.”

When I think about coming to know God, not just know of Him but really know Him, I can feel a little overwhelmed. I mean, God can seem so ethereal, so big and mysterious and unknowable. To try to understand this concept I turn to something more instantly relatable to me, something I do know--my relationship with my own earthly dad.

My earliest memories of my dad are just glimpses. A giant work boot at the door, so big I could stand in it with both of my feet. A thrilling shoulder ride so, so high off the ground. Thick-rimmed glasses, scratchy whiskers. Rough, hairy hands strumming a guitar, hammering a nail, turning pages in a bedtime book. An underlying sense of safety.

I didn’t really know my dad, right at first. Knowing who he was and how he was took time and growth and maturity on my part. As I grew I learned that the man unashamedly loved a good play on words. He lit up when he got to make music. He could build anything, including bunk beds for my dolls, built-in benches for our enormous kitchen table, even the very house that sheltered us. He was quiet and reserved and yet he loved playing comical parts in community plays.

But even knowing all these facts about my dad did not mean I fully knew him. The times when I felt closest to him, when I think I saw his truest nature, were the hard times when I reached out and he was there. That night after my longest, hardest, hungriest high-school day of finals and after-school rehearsals and evening drivers’ ed in the rain, when I slumped into the kitchen for some Tylenol and there was my dad. He read my face and took me in his arms and the bad day melted away. Or that time at a family reunion at Aspen Grove, when I was about to leave on a mission and I was sick with fear, and I asked my dad for a blessing and we went into a little cabin and we talked about his life and my life, and what we had in common, and trusting in God’s answers and following through on scary things. And he gave me a blessing and the peace that filled that A-frame taught me more about my father’s love for me than I had ever known before.

When I reflect on these memories of my dad, I realize that coming to know my Heavenly Father is similar. I can know all the facts about Him that are available, but I can’t really know Him or feel His love for me until I reach out to Him and come to rely on Him.

Elder Taylor elaborates on how we can begin to know our Father. “God walks with us along the covenant path as we seek Him through prayerful pleadings, scriptural searchings, and obedient strivings.” So we can look at coming to know God as a threefold endeavor. We talk to Him (or plead with Him, or cry to Him) through prayer, we learn of Him in the scriptures, and we do our best to obey His word and live as He has taught us. I like how Elder Taylor says that as we do these things, our Father “walks with us along the covenant path.” He is not some distant judge sitting at the finish line, wondering if we’ll ever show up. He is with us as we walk.

I want to quote another hymn here, because hymns often teach me doctrine better than anything else. This is “How Firm a Foundation.”

“When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o’erflow,

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”

And then listen to verse 6, which is less well-known but which contains an image I love, of people who are older still needing to feel that safe, parental love:

“Even down to old age, all my people shall prove

My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;

And then, when gray hair shall their temples adorn,

Like lambs shall they still in my bosom be borne.”

This verse speaks to me, because I can see as I grow less and less young that our yearning for Heavenly love and care and acceptance never goes away. I believe what this hymn says, that He will be with us through rivers of sorrow and fiery trials, through sickness and health, in poverty and wealth. I admit that it’s hard to feel Him near sometimes, and that this life is messy and hard and we can often feel alone. But I have felt my Heavenly parents’ love for me enough times to know that it’s always worth it to keep striving and seeking.

My earthly father passed away 4½ years ago. But even though I’m separated from him now, I’m still getting to know him. I have his journals and other writings to read. I have my own evolving experience as a parent, which brings new understanding and amazement about the ways he parented me with all he had to deal with at the time. I have five brothers who came from him and who all have their own similarities to him that I just love. One of them makes beautiful things out of wood, each more impressive than the last. One shares my dad’s sincerity, humility, and love of corny jokes. One has discovered an affinity for community theater and is doing my dad proud on the stage. He also looks so much like my dad it can stop my breath. They all have musical talent and they aren’t afraid to share it. They are wonderful brothers and fathers and I know exactly where that goodness comes from.

Elder Taylor said, “Learning of and following the Savior helps us come to know the Father. ‘Being . . . the express image of his [Father],’ Jesus taught, ‘The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.’ Christ’s every word and deed reveals the true nature of God and our relationship to Him.”

We may not have many details available about our Heavenly Father, but everything we learn about His Son gives us greater understanding of Him. Jesus Christ and His Father are one in purpose, and one in love. The Father gave us His only begotten Son. He loves us that much. It is our lifelong privilege to learn to feel and accept that love.

On this Father’s Day I give thanks for my own father. He instilled in me a sense of my own worth and a firm foundation of love that cannot die. I’m thankful for the father of my children, this hardworking Idaho farm boy who daily shares with his kids his love of good food and good music and good jokes, who supports them and protects them and shows them what the love of a father feels like. I don’t think they know yet how blessed they are to have him. But they will.

I know that not everyone gets to grow up with this sure, strong love from a good father. It goes without saying that life is not fair. I know this day can be hard for people for a variety of reasons. But I know that all of us, every person in this room, has been given a strong foundation of never-ending love and infinite worth that comes from before we were born. It’s a matter of striving to tap into it. Elder Taylor said, “I love the God of my fathers, ‘the Lord God Almighty,’ who weeps with us in our sorrows, patiently chastens our unrighteousness, and rejoices when we seek to ‘give away all [our] sins to know [Him].’ I worship Him, who is ever ‘a father of the fatherless’ and a companion to the companionless.”

I have felt my Heavenly Father’s love for me many times throughout my life. I’ve felt it fill me up when I’ve fallen to my knees. I’ve felt it as I’ve served His children. I’ve felt it as I’ve mourned my parents and welcomed my newborns. I know it is real. I know He is there.

I close with these words Elder Taylor quoted from Brigham Young:

“When you . . . see our Father, you will see a being with whom you have long been acquainted, and he will receive you into his arms, and you will be ready to fall into his embrace and kiss him.”

May we continue to seek Him and to feel His great love for us until we reach that day.