"Is it not the spirit we share
rather than the time?"
- Anonymous
“This is from Mom,” she said, and suddenly
it all came rushing back. It was good,
because we were all together and the moment was cathartic…cleansing…in many
ways clarifying – you know, the way the comfort of Christmas season and
intimacy of loved ones does. Yep just
the three of us…a family of old, and in a way a family of new.
The three of us had been counting the days
for Mariah’s arrival this Christmas. It
seems she has been in school most of her life – in fact she has, so breaking
for a little family time during the holidays was good for all. Someone once said, “Our children begin to
leave us at their birth…” I was touched by these simple but profoundly
thoughtful words reflecting, in a different way, the words my mother had spoken
to me as a youngster.
When
I was a child…
“Teddy, you don’t belong to us,” she said.
“We prayed for you and God gave you to us.”
She continued, “We are blessed to be able to care for and
protect you until you are ready to live your own life, but you belong to God.”
At the time it seemed a natural thing to
hear from her. I wouldn’t have thought I
had been found by the roadside and taken in by a compassionate and caring
couple, or that my mother was, in some way, suggesting I was an unexpected and
unwilling obligation. No, she spoke
quietly as she held me in the safety and warmth of her arms as she had so often
done. She would remind me of another
mother who had commended her son to God, and a story in the scripture that
would be my favorite to this very day.
Samuel…
There was a fellow by the name of Elkahah
(el-cane-ah) who had two wives by the names of Pininnah (pin-knee-nah) and
Hannah – pronunciation unnecessary…
At any rate, while Hannah was the most
beloved of the two women, she was barren and for her this was a problem. The story goes that she prayed to God:
“…O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the
affliction of thine handmaid, and remember
me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child,
then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life…” (1
Samuel 1:11 – Bible)
A little later in the 19th verse
of that chapter, the favorite scripture of my favorite story says:
“and Elkanah knew Hannah his wife; and the Lord remembered her.”
As she had prayed, so God had answered with
the conception and birth of Samuel…He had “…remembered her.” In like manner, my mother believed her prayer
had been answered with my conception and safe arrival into the world.
Rather than feeling somehow unloved by her
comments, the setting, the warmness of her arms, the gentleness of her
voice…all made me feel special, deeply cared for…something, not clearly
understood, but something unique…something bigger…
Another
mother, another child…
When my younger sister came to live with
us, her daughter was still in process – cells dividing, and dividing once again
with amazing focus and deliberation.
They were following an ancient, but predictable recipe concocted in the
intertwined DNA of her conception. Like
the most wonderful of stews, by the most talented of grandmothers, the arrival
of the child came closer and closer.
There was little doubt, as I am certain is the feeling of impending mothers
everywhere, this new creature would be special, and from her perspective,
little doubt, a gift from God.
Eventually Mariah landed on the planet with
energy and oomph. As with most children,
I suppose, she would chart a course completely unknown, with nothing more than
a compass of curiosity – oh yes, and an appetite!
Nancy was a good mother…a bedtime
snuggler/reader…a fiercely vocal supporter of her daughter’s athletic adventures…a
great eye for dress and appearance…a diligent teacher of good manners and
social grace…a woman of faith who not only talked the talk, but walked the walk
of her Christian journey – providing example of word and behavior that would
shape her daughter’s life.
For fourteen years, we all lived together,
the four of us – Molly, Nancy, Mariah and me.
Oh, and lest I forget a few cats here and there.
And so the years passed with all of us
looking forward to the future…the future…
Unpredictable
– yes, that’s it…
The future, however, as the fickle
unwinding of time so often does, was not at all what we expected…it never
really is – is it? I suppose if we knew
what was forthcoming in life with all its granularity and intimate detail, we
might not feel we were up to the task. Imagine
for a moment all the food you have eaten in your life, and now imagine how
difficult it would be to believe you could eat all that stuff!!
I suppose the ‘softness’ of missing detail in
visions of the future and the incremental – small bites – is part of God’s way of
allowing us to take the next, yet unfamiliar step…you know, keeping us on the
lookout for a better day…
And so, in the “…missing detail…” of future
events, Nancy was taken from us in the most unforeseen of manners. Not suddenly through the precipitous loss
from an unexpected catastrophic event or accident, but slowly with the ever
present and mounting suffocation of her mind…until that gentle soul could bear the
burden no longer and slipped from our grasp.
The effect of my sister’s unanticipated early departure from this sphere
left me without a sister and Mariah without a mother.
From
the darkness, “…let there be light…”
I will try to express the nuance that is in
my heart on this issue…nuance…hearts – two very difficult things to express
when attempting to exact ‘feeling laden’ thought.
Since moving to the Southwest, Mariah has
visited us any number of times. The
operative word here “visited” in the slipperiness of the ‘vocabulary poor’
wordsmith. You see, she had a home…the
small nuclear family of she and her mother – rich, deep, meaningful beyond
description.
Now, in the most unwilling of ways, she has
been set free from one…but joined to another.
This Christmas season she DID NOT come to visit us in Southern
California…she came home. For now ‘we’
are her nuclear family…we are her home.
She is now ‘we’ in the most wonderful of ways. When we talk about our family, it no longer
means Molly, me, and the cats. For ‘we’
have grown by one, and the sum exceeds the parts in immeasurable ways.
This year, our family sat together
Christmas morning and shared small gifts with one another. They were, of course, not necessary to
express the love we feel…not filled with expectation as to what might be
unwrapped next, but rather the simple pleasure of watching each other smile at
the ‘thought’ that was put into a little brightly wrapped something.
But then, Mariah handed me a small envelope
and said, “This is from Mom.” In the latter
years, when she still had some attachment to the world from which she was
becoming ever more estranged, my sister gave little gift cards with which to
buy a book or some other small thing. In
the envelope was such a card, and in the remaining moments of our Christmas
morning there were not three of us…there were four.
In those brief moments we appreciated, once
again, that presence does not mean sight and touch. For we all felt that ‘fourth’ soul as though
she were sitting among us, for surely she was.
As our ‘Father’s spirit’ touched us, so did hers…
No doubt my mother had shared with Nancy, those same gentle words given to me…Nancy did not belong to her or my father…she
belonged to God.
…and so she does.
- ted
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