How We Do It: Part LIII

So, it's Women's History Month, I think, or something like that. I'm not one for the holiday marker on a day. It's enough sometimes, just to get through them, much less mark them. This is also the last week that Sophie is in her teen years. She'll be twenty years old on Sunday. I used to have muscle memory of each year that passed. I remember the sixth was a particularly difficult one. The Husband a few years before had said confidently, I think she'll be talking at six. Even before that, though, some magazine like Time had a picture of a window on the cover of an issue about brains, and somewhere inside some scientist stated that the window slammed shut at three years old. Those years are blurry to me, now, except when they're not. The muscles have atrophied. I might be making up the cover of the magazine, but I'm not making up the window. I heard it slamming for years before They (it's always They, isn't it?) discovered it actually stays open well into Old Agedom. I think the tenth year was another one where the muscles ached. Sophie was sick then, so sick. I didn't think she'd live. There might have been some muscle aching at twelve and maybe some temporary paralysis at fifteen, and every year in between and afterward seemed a cause for celebration. There was incredulity for each one, though, and not a small amount of gratitude. My muscles don't seem to have memory now like they used to. I've always hated to exercise. So, Sophie will be twenty years old on Sunday. The window is open, and it looks beautiful outside.

The Weighing

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

Jane Hirshfield

June 14, 1995

Sophie was diagnosed with infantile spasms on this day, nineteen years ago.

I'm not much a one for "anniversaries" -- all that "never forget" blather.

We really don't ever forget, do we?

It's been a long, freaking ride.

Muscle Memory

I felt it only vaguely today and recognized it only once. On June 14th, 1995, Sophie was diagnosed with infantile spasms, and I left one life behind and began another. I am struck this eighteenth evening by the peace of the sun going down, again, the neighbor speaking sharply to his dog, the chitter of the squirrel, the sway of a palm, an errant siren that speaks of city, and Sophie's eyes.

Eighteen Years

May 21, 1994 - Mollis, Switzerland

I don't want to throw in my lot with the marriage-is-hard-work crowd, the ones who suggest you see a couples counselor before you send out the invitations, who seem to support the entire advice-book industry. I was never one of those women who tell you that their spouse is their best friend, that they're always on the same page. I feel like you're ahead of the game if you're even in the same book.

 Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake 

Happy Anniversary to The Husband, with gratitude for being in the same book for eighteen years.