Halloween

Handing out Halloween candy to trick-or-treaters is one of my very favorite traditions, and not just because I get to eat some while the kids are out. I love the no-rules fun of the night, the attitude of abundance I feel when I get to let go of my normal ideas about what are the "right" and "wrong" things to eat. I love urging the hesitant little ones to get an extra piece, and helping the greedy ones find the special pieces at the bottom of the bowl.

And that's when I notice something, well, perhaps spooky. It's the parents. They scoff, they scold, they laugh uncomfortably, they even yell at their littles about the missteps they make. One girl pauses on the way up to my door. "Run!" her dad tells her, "hurry up!" and laughs a little, uncomfortable that she's making me wait. Some parents remind them to say "thank you," but some say it in a way that makes me cringe, with a tone of voice I know they'd never use on me or someone they respect.

Kids know that, too. They hear that it's important that they don't bother me, that they don't take too long, that they say things just right, and if they don't, it's clear what's most important in that moment to the parents.

And in between knocks on the door, I'm enjoying a rare (um, extremely rare) moment without kids, without dishes or laundry or other chores to do, and I find myself tidying up. Some silly bands left around (okay, everywhere), some Duplos on the play table, a stuffed animal napping in the corner, playsilks strewn about.

Wow, I think, I could do this every night if the kids would just go to sleep on their own, at a decent hour. And then I could enjoy these moments, the quiet dark, I like to call it. The clock ticking in the silence, the house easy to tidy up with no little hands pulling on me or pulling out more toys. And maybe they would even go to sleep early, on their own. I hear there are ways to make your kids do that.

Ve have vays of making you talk.. I don't even know what that's from, but we said it as a joke so often.

And I think, these things are connected somehow. There's a sense of deference that we still, strangely, have for adults, for adult things. For bedtimes and tidiness and not lingering before a scary front porch on a dark night while a grown-up waits to give you candy. Reverence for independence even in sleep, for letting someone shine a flashlight in your face and tsk-tsk over the candy you've smeared on it.

I know, though, that one day I'll be tidying up my house in the quiet dark and wishing that just once I could go back, step on a duplo, have the dishes so many people used in the sink, stay up lying in between two warm little bodies listening to them breathe, wake up to them pulling on me in the morning.

It must be that most people think that the purpose of children is to become adults. I wonder if the purpose of adults is to support children, to hold them sacred and respect them and love them.

Stolen Moments

Every once in a while something happens which reminds me that all of these moments, even the ones I hate, are stolen moments.

A while ago (3 years and 3 months, actually), I almost died. Well, I wasn’t really in danger of dying, but the thing that stuck with me was that I could have. I would have, in fact, if not for modern medicine. I was pregnant. Or, I thought I was. What really happened was that I won the genetic lottery (1 in 2,000 chance of winning!) and what was supposed to turn into a baby turned into a growing mass of pre-cancerous cells that put out the HcG hormone that pregnancy tests look for, and I spent 2 months happily thinking I was pregnant.

And much of it bleeding and lying down trying not to. And then there was a blur of doctors, ultrasound machine, sterile white rooms, and that chilling moment when I said, “So will we hear a heartbeat...?” and the doctor said nothing. Just stared at the monitor. Looking somewhat taken aback.

And then I learned that I had a molar pregnancy, a rare condition wherein, well, bad stuff happens. And if my body didn’t spontaneously abort this “pregnancy” completely, I would have bled to death slowly. That is, only if it had happened before the development of the dilation and curettage procedure. Or perhaps some part of it remaining in my body would have metastasized to my lungs or heart and killed me even more slowly.

While I’m sure this is gruesome to contemplate (especially for my mother), at the time, wrapped up in that morbid attitude that surrounds tragedy wherein the most frightening things become light, even funny, I was buoyed. These are stolen moments, I thought, stolen from death. Everything from here on out is something I was never supposed to have. Every time I kiss my son, every sunrise, every splinter, every dirty dish. I realized that all these things I would now see, my son getting married, my husband growing old, the rest of my life, were a bonus.

Also, perhaps less romantically, it gave me a new appreciation for medical care. Sure, for most of the conditions for which I’ve sought care (pregnancy, muscle aches, depression, sinus infections) I have been happier with the treatments from alternative practitioners (midwives, chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists), not to mention the benefits of preventive care offered by alternative medicine.

But life-threatening monster grape-clusters of pre-cancerous cells in my uterus? They were ON IT. And they kicked its ASS.