What a happy hug
Yesterday morning, I heard Khalil wake up and find Honeypuppy. He got very close to her face and whispered, Happy Mother’s Day Honeypuppy, and gave her a big kiss. A few minutes later he found me and shouted HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA!
He picked out a necklace for us both to wear. When we put the two pieces together, it forms a heart. I had something similar in 7th grade but this one made me cry. He turned into a real director about the whole thing — holding the two necklaces in the air and then demanding that David and I kiss next to the silver heart. What a happy hug and kiss. What a beautiful dream of Mama and Daddy.
He truly has no idea what Mother’s Day is.
Speaking of being a mother, I was on the inimitable Judy Heumann’s podcast last week to talk about disabled parenting. You can find it here or anywhere you listen to podcasts, just search for The Heumann Perspective. If you haven’t yet watched Crip Camp on Netflix, consider this an official and heartfelt plea to do so. The Oscar nominating committee can’t be wrong. And Judy looked like a total queen at the ceremony.
Spring is exciting here in Canada. The people who owned our house before us were gardeners and it’s been one gift after another to see all the flowers blooming. To add to our optimism, we both had our first dose of Pfizer and hope to get our second sooner than later (currently, Canada is spacing doses 4 months apart, like the UK).
We are crossing all of our fingers that it’s safe for Khalil to start school in the fall and we can once again experience the joy of childcare and other people. But in the meantime, there are good moments every day.
Today’s poem is courtesy of my friend, Nataly.
The New Nobility David Whyte
The tawny gold of the first chantrelle
beneath the rough wall of fir bark,
a gleam in the undergrowth
to ignite the eye and ennoble the imagination.
Everyone is waiting for breakfast
to which I bring this husk and this holiness
of the newly grown and the newly found.
White plates are laid along the table,
on each of them the omelettes
rest steaming, deep and rich,
the eggs brought from a friend's farm,
the chantrelles nested firmly
in their hot buttered interiors,
and the basil flecked
through them, plucked from the last
tangy stems of a summer garden.
Perfection is a fragile, ice-thin ground
that barely holds our human weight,
one false step and everything cracks
black to the edge. In this perfection
no one dares mention the waters
of the Saratoga Passage shining through glass.
No one mentions our present happiness;
though the last dead century of grief
and misery has barely dropped from our grasp.
Outside the window, the children are playing
in borrowed clothes. One throws
back her head, sleeves trailing on the ground
and laughs in the sunlight,
and we laugh in witness, for in the midst of history
we are happy like them and all before them.
In their happiness everything still bears our weight.
Timelessness is the new nobility.