Twenty dollar grace

My mother, who declared, “you are making the biggest mistake of your life“ when I married my husband, many years later adopted him as her “very own boy”. 

When she began to need more care, I was still working and he was recently retired, so my husband took on all of the duties that I wished I could...mostly doctor visits and the periodic changing of a lightbulb, after which she always called me and exclaimed how amazing he was that he could change a lightbulb that fast.

As she entered her 90’s and started having a greater need for medical appointments and procedures, they developed a bonding routine. After every doctor appointment, she would complain vigorously about the treatment, he would listen, and then they would seek solace in the one thing she said was keeping her alive - a cheeseburger Happy Meal and an apple pie.

She was a fiercely independent woman, and so whenever my husband took her to McDonald’s, she would pull a twenty dollar bill out of her wallet and announce that lunch was on her, and he could keep the change for helping her out.  My husband would get her settled, go to the counter, and then he would pay for lunch with his own funds. At some point during their lunch, he would secretly slip her twenty back into her wallet for their next trip to McDonald’s.

I think that that twenty dollar bill made it back into her wallet for more years than I can count. And it was waiting there after her last doctor visit when she sat across from my husband at lunch for the last time and declared that at 95, she was done.  A week later, she transitioned from this planet to the next life.

After she died, we went through her wallet and found that twenty. As we laughed at the memory,  I looked across at “the biggest mistake I would ever make” and realized something about his gesture towards her all those years.

My husband was not hiding her twenty to save her money. He was giving my mother a sense of independence and preserving her dignity . He was letting her love him in the only way that she knew how – treating “her boy” to lunch to thank him for his kindness. And he was showing my mother grace - one twenty dollar bill, one cheeseburger Happy Meal, and one apple pie at a time.

Hope is a green duck with sunglasses

My German immigrant mother once reflected that I suffered from Weltschmerz growing up …a weariness or sadness arising from an acute awareness of suffering and evil in the world.

... a “world-weariness.”

Of course, a certain amount of that feeling was probably related to adolescence and the inevitable coming-of-age moments that color and shape our lived experience. But in these recent unpredictable and often cruel times, I have found myself once again battling that soul-deep discontent and sadness.

The only way I have found to keep that dark wave at bay has been the daily ritual of walking in natural places whenever I can. And that deep hunger for a moment of peace took me to Birch Bay State Park today on a very windy and cold morning. Since the campgrounds were closed, a walk underneath the towering cedars and firs was almost guaranteed to be solitary, and though the wind moved wildly through the tops of these trees, the air beneath was still and beautifully quiet.

During that walk, as the poet Rilke suggests, I tried to live the questions that occupied my mind, but in these days, the question on repeat was, “Why? Why? Why?“ Knowing the dangers of obsessive thinking, I tried the antidote: notice what is happening in this moment.

• My golden retriever was analyzing the world through her nose.

• The stream song was quieter today than the last time I was here.

• The frogs started a choir, and their practice songs were a warm blanket in the cool air.

In the middle of my noticing, I looked down, drawn to the sound of some small creature skittering around a tree, perhaps celebrating the arrival of spring. My gaze settled on the base of the moss covered trunk. Someone had perfectly placed a bright green plastic duck with sunglasses in a small opening in the tree’s bark.

Raw joy exploded from my heart before I could defend against it. It was as if the forest had been holding its breath, like a child playing a practical joke, just waiting for someone to discover this little intrusion into the natural world.

Emily Dickinson would tell us that “hope is a thing with feathers,” but today I tell you that hope is sometimes nothing more than a green duck with sunglasses hidden in the hole of a cedar tree, a moment of unexpected joy in the most unlikely of places.

And today, that was just enough to keep the Weltschmerz at bay.

The thing I do not want to know…

I do not want to know my expiration date. I would only obsess about what was coming rather than living each moment to the fullest. My Maker has already determined my last breath and because that information is being withheld from me, I have made peace with denial in this area.

I do not want to know when the rapture is coming either, and I do not want to know when the Cascadia fault is going to slip, causing an earthquake and a tidal wave.

So that begs the question -what do I want to know?

That is much simpler.

I want to know on what day the sun is going to start getting up earlier and by how much.

I want to know when the king tides are coming and how much the full moon’s pull will strengthen them.

I want to know where all the waterfalls are that are not hard to hike to, and I want to know if there are any river rafting companies that will let me take my dog.

I want to know the name of every single, smiling, gurgling, or sleeping baby that is rolled past me in a stroller, and I want to memorize the faces of the mothers who soak them in these songs of whistling trees and whispering rivers.

These things are worth knowing.

The thing I do not want to know is tied to my impending mortality. But the things I want to know are inextricably woven with threads of joy, beauty, and hope.

So, in the days that remain - however long or short - I want to befriend spontaneity and a perceived lack of purpose and a schedule that is never followed.

I want to just blithely follow the muses every day.

- the weather muse - the dog muse - the spirit of adventure muse - and a host of other muses I have not met yet.

No… I do not want a roadmap to the journey towards the end of my days.

I just want to bathe in delicious uncertainty until something or someone announces, “time’s up!” - knowing that then, and only then, will life truly begin.