A beautiful link to blue school

I dont usually post unabashed links to other blogs, but this one is worthy of the exception. I talk a lot about Blue School, and how much these kids of ours adore it - and how much we, as parents, also love it and are so grateful for (and to) the community the school holds - so when I read the most recent post from Allison Gaines Pell, the head of the school, I was inspired to share it here. It is just one example of why we feel that jury-rigging our lives around giving our kids this opportunity is so worth it.

So, without further ado, here is Allison's beautiful post, entitled:  Jealousy

Dear Calliope: month 2

Dear Calliope,

Hello my dear, sweet girl. I love you so much, so deeply, so unimaginably immensely...you are sleepily nursing in my arms as I type this with one thumb on my iPhone, and the splendid, awe inspiring reality of you is more than I can take. You are so amazing, my super smiley, chipmunk cheeked little girl...I look back now to the time around when you were conceived, and I cannot believe that I ever thought our family was complete without you. Cannot fathom how I could ever possibly have feared your arrival. You, my dear, are an incalculably necessary piece in our family puzzle, and a part of my life that I simple could not do without. There is was a big blot of inexplicable emptiness in me that I used to try in vain to fill with new ideas, but now I find brimming with inspiration and ability...it was you, that's what I was missing...my third child, my little muse, who smiled and laughed right from the start. Who delights so much in being with her older sisters, who of course dote on her with such pride and love. Who will giggle at the tickle of her baba's beard and snuggle into the arms of the many people who love her so.
You, my little Calliope, have given me the gift of believing in myself in a way that transcends "impossible" like never before. I can't wait to see how you will grow, and how our family -and each of us individually-will transform as your gifts and strengths and fears emerge. We all love you like you'd never believe.
Sweet child, thank you for letting us share this adventure with you, and for sharing this journey with us.

I love you beyond forever and back.
Love always,
Mama

Mommy

My mom has a great laugh.

Historically, it's one of those things that you don't get to hear all that often.  She'll grin, chuckle, sort of giggle at things pretty often, but her full on, hearty laugh is a magical sound, one that makes your heart feel happy to the core, and it's an elusive phenomenon which gets obscured by stress, work, and her propensity for putting other people before herself.

It's this laugh that I intend to focus on from here on out.

Last night, mom's medical oncologist confirmed that she now has stage 4 metastatic cancer, the disease is no longer curable, and now it's a game of balancing treatment to prolong her life with restraint to provide her a quality of life worth living.

We don't know how long she has.  It could be weeks.  It could be years.

I, for one, am not ready to look at this as an end.  Not yet, anyway.  For now, I'm looking at this as a sign to shift gears; from here on out, let's try to make life as pleasant as possible, and hope we have the burden of keeping that outlook for years.

Let's make that laugh our new priority.  Finding that laugh will be our guide -whatever will bring us closer to hearing it is what we'll do.  Let's fill the world with as much of that sound as we possibly can.

Wherever she wants to be, I want to get her there.  Whatever she wants to learn, to eat, to experience, I want to find her a teacher, a chef, a friend.  Some things may be beyond comfort - tobagganing might be more painful than thrilling these days - but so what?  I don't care to focus on the "can't" anymore.  There is sooo much out there, so many other things that could generate such joy that it doesn't matter what she can't do now - there will always be something else that she can do, which may just tickle that laugh into existence.  And that is what matters.

So let's go forth, and enjoy.  There will be tears, of course-there will always be tears, but we will let them fall, and be glad that they can be shed, and then get up and return to our quest for that laugh.  And every time we find it, we'll count it as a triumph, and begin the search again.

I love you so much, mom.  Thank you, so much, for letting me share this journey with you.  I am so glad that I have such a wonderful role model in you, someone who taught me how to be a great mother to my own daughters, who let me grow and flourish in such a way that I never had the years of teenage resentment towards you that so many girls have towards their moms.  I am so thankful that I can still turn to you every day, for advice, for memory, for love, support or a joke...

I appreciate having you in my life so much - am so unbelievably grateful to have you in my life - in every moment, and I will continue to cherish every moment that I have with you for as long as I possibly can.  And I will still benefit from being your daughter long after that.  And my girls will continue to benefit from being your granddaughters long after I'm gone, too.

I wish you peace, in every step of this journey, and my heart will be with you for all of it, even where my feet can't follow.

So let's get started.

What would you like to do first?

An actual text message I had to send today...

Cadence and Hazel just turned off the Chinese pop dance music from the last decade, turned on Dies Irae, and started singing "ring around the Rosie"...How did my fun dance party get hijacked by mozart's requiem and a song about the black plague??!!?

(and after the requiem concluded, Hazel requested Nat King Cole by name...)

We have strange children. Wonderful, amazing, precocious children who are thoroughly themselves. I love them so much, quirky little beings. Their minds and souls are Great.

A Call to Art...

Sitting here, tears in my eyes, I can feel my heart quivering as the news of this terrible tragedy unfolds.

Children.  27 dead, and 18 of them were children. I'm still hoping that those numbers that are being so widely reported are gross exaggeration, 

***

That is as far as I got with the initial post I wast going to write.  Because before I was able to finish, before the news was updated to show that in fact 20 of those killed were children, my life happened...my own children - living, breathing, bickering still - interrupted and took my attention away, and I couldn't be more grateful for the fact that they are able to do so.  Or the fact of their mere existence, for that matter. When I remember to be grateful, I don't mind the interruptions in the least.  In this moment, I am ecstatically happy that I am unable to get anything done.

I know many people are beginning to feel over saturated and sick, despite the import of the conversations, and I am no exception:  My brain can't handle any more input from this just now.  Maybe it's because I'm so recently post-partum that I'm taking this so hard, or maybe it's because James and I had briefly considered taking our children back to his childhood home - in fairfield county, CT...or maybe it's just being a parent.  I cannot imagine...every time I think of these events, my empathy tries on the shoes of those parents, those kids, and my whole being shrinks back like a wounded animal and my brain shuts down...it's like PTSD, but it didn't happen to me at all.  If this is how horribly debilitatingly painful it is to me - a complete outsider, with no meaningful connections to the victims - then how, HOW, could any parent survive this? I cannot fathom.

My friend Sam responded to a post on my Facebook wall referring to this as an "extremely dark, relatively new kind of American violence" and asking "what is wrong with us? where does this come from?"

I think those are the questions just about everyone is grappling with right now.  Mostly, people are getting political about it, calling for immediate policy change, arguing about gun control, mental health, family values, the media, cultural glorifications, economic disparity...people from every side of all these arguments calling those on the other idiots, failing to effectively communicate and letting their passionate anger justify relatively shallow thinking...and part of my burnout on the topic comes, I think, from the realization of this, its futility, and the understanding that the truth - the real, underlying web of causes that led to these horrific events - is probably so vast and so complex that no single action or call to attention is going to make a dent in the issue anytime soon.

People often ask me if its weird to be in a relationship where each individual is on opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of careers - the artist vs tax lawyer paradigms - and answering that question has helped me to refine my understanding of the important symbiosis that exists between art and policy when it comes to making a tangible difference.  

So far the only place of true, clear understanding I've found in all this can be summed up in the answer I gave to my friend from our time as budding hippie art-makers off in the woods:

"I have no idea Sam, but I think its part of our job as artists to figure it out, and confront it, put it out there to make people think, so the problem can eventually be addressed and fixed."

On the last day of my 28th year, I am reminded of why I do what I do.

Cadence & Hazel's Christmas wish list: a trialogue.

Cadence:  I want blue whales to be saved.

Hazel:  I want penguins to be saved.

Cadence:  I also want some new christmas socks.  Um, that's all, I can't think of anything else for now.

Me: Hazel, is there anything else you want to add to your christmas list?

Hazel:  No!

Well, I guess we must be doing SOMETHING right!

Holiday Spirit

James is nestled into the corner of the couch reading on his nook, Cadence snuggled in, sound asleep, on one side, Hazel, also sound asleep, snuggled in on the other side, curled around a purring Carmen cat. I've got my tiny little Calliope cuddled in my arms. Lily and Puy are off in some cozy spot or another. The only light is from our humble little tree, and we've got the Christmas music my pare

nts would always play when I was little wafting softly through the room. Out the window, the world is drenched in a heavy white fog and the red line metro looks like a model train all lit up as it rumbles by.

This is what Christmas is to me. Happy holidays to all, whichever ones you may celebrate. I hope they all bring moments of bliss to you and yours the way this one has for me tonight. I am so grateful for all of this.

Comfort & joy, all.