A Vanilla Shake Afterwards
During Babysitting Co-op, Noah fell off of a swing, four feet in the air, landed on his head, and bled more than I've ever seen any human I knew bleed.
He's fine.
But it. was. awful.
maybe-probably the worst thing I've seen with my own eyes (not, of course, represented by television or movies).
One moment we had been playing and having fun: running the obstacle course, making a little movie, eating chicken nuggets, wearing ridiculous costumes, eating peanuts and learning how to play croquet...Jeff pushed him, I pushed him, and then....
he just let go.
.
I'm not sure if this time of year means the same kind of re-acquaintance rituals for everyone in academe, but i'd been noticing that each face to face encounter prompts the same sort of mundane inquiries:
"hows it going?"
"what's happening?"
"how was your summer?"
"what's new?"
And while:
"Good. Fine."
Is a totally appropriate answer in such moments (which maybe are less about inquiry than finding an interpersonal rhythm?), it always makes me reflect upon the quotidian dimension of my life.
I usually give a totally rambly inappropriate answer to these questions when prompted...and i've been thinking how much this summer, this season of life, this last month, has been....
"business as usual"
or:
"normal"
i've been thinking that in that exchange of answers, we gloss over the world of questions and possibility and value and hope and disappointment that have been swirling in our heads or our everyday talk, to offer the requisite "fine" because we know that when our lives feel:
"normal,"
that's not always a bad thing, because something or another will erupt and upend that normality.
.
When Noah was falling off the swing, it happened so fast that it, too, seemed normal. It seemed completely in keeping with the upward sweep of the swing that there would be a downward sweep of his little three year old body. Because at the front peak of swinging, children are rendered upside down, it was completely normal that his upside down body would fall gracefully four feet toward the railroad tie at the edge of the play area.
.
So within the day, this has been normal:
a student / friend disclosed some heavy, difficult questions that are affecting his life and his development and his relationships over late night coffee.
a friend / alum-student, just embarking on his Ph.D. in Cambridge went into a six hour heart surgery and emerged 20 hours later -- brain dead.
Noah bled and bled all over Jeff and my shirts while the other kids shrieked and cried as we soaked our ugly floral dishtowels that used to match our kitchen ten years ago with blood, stopping the flow of blood.
A parasocial blogging friend wrote about the shape of her life in an honest, horrifying way that charted just how cruel relationships and intimacy and commitment can be.
.
Noah just turned three. He has a delightful way of saying "Androo!" Whenever he sees Addison they exchange shouted greetings of each other's names (most poignantly across the church sanctuary after the liturgy has already began:
"Noah!"
"Add-son!"
He loves vanilla shakes, and has huge brown eyes, and a funny eager run, and papery white skin.
.
He was laughing before we got the minivan past Cinema Four. By the time we arrived at the hospital and Linda slid the door open and gathered him in her arms, he was smiley and delightful and most of the blood had been transfered to seven crumbled up diaper wipes.
And he's fine. He's really doing good.
Jeff and Linda and Noah and I all had shakes at the McDonald's in Mercy Hospital Lobby afterwards
But the tense feeling in my body and the adreniline in my stomach felt like they strung me through the day on a highwire.
.
The balance between delight and horror is too close to our skin. We're all too frail and regular to survive the depths of meaning and emotion that shoot through our littlest tasks and conversations and habits.
Every keystroke feels precarious, every post-it-note seems a hyper-link to a world of hurt or possibility, every telephone jingle a harbinger of all-that-we-never-thought-to-speak-of.
No wonder we need comfort. No wonder we seek:
peace~
He's fine.
But it. was. awful.
maybe-probably the worst thing I've seen with my own eyes (not, of course, represented by television or movies).
One moment we had been playing and having fun: running the obstacle course, making a little movie, eating chicken nuggets, wearing ridiculous costumes, eating peanuts and learning how to play croquet...Jeff pushed him, I pushed him, and then....
he just let go.
.
I'm not sure if this time of year means the same kind of re-acquaintance rituals for everyone in academe, but i'd been noticing that each face to face encounter prompts the same sort of mundane inquiries:
"hows it going?"
"what's happening?"
"how was your summer?"
"what's new?"
And while:
"Good. Fine."
Is a totally appropriate answer in such moments (which maybe are less about inquiry than finding an interpersonal rhythm?), it always makes me reflect upon the quotidian dimension of my life.
I usually give a totally rambly inappropriate answer to these questions when prompted...and i've been thinking how much this summer, this season of life, this last month, has been....
"business as usual"
or:
"normal"
i've been thinking that in that exchange of answers, we gloss over the world of questions and possibility and value and hope and disappointment that have been swirling in our heads or our everyday talk, to offer the requisite "fine" because we know that when our lives feel:
"normal,"
that's not always a bad thing, because something or another will erupt and upend that normality.
.
When Noah was falling off the swing, it happened so fast that it, too, seemed normal. It seemed completely in keeping with the upward sweep of the swing that there would be a downward sweep of his little three year old body. Because at the front peak of swinging, children are rendered upside down, it was completely normal that his upside down body would fall gracefully four feet toward the railroad tie at the edge of the play area.
.
So within the day, this has been normal:
a student / friend disclosed some heavy, difficult questions that are affecting his life and his development and his relationships over late night coffee.
a friend / alum-student, just embarking on his Ph.D. in Cambridge went into a six hour heart surgery and emerged 20 hours later -- brain dead.
Noah bled and bled all over Jeff and my shirts while the other kids shrieked and cried as we soaked our ugly floral dishtowels that used to match our kitchen ten years ago with blood, stopping the flow of blood.
A parasocial blogging friend wrote about the shape of her life in an honest, horrifying way that charted just how cruel relationships and intimacy and commitment can be.
.
Noah just turned three. He has a delightful way of saying "Androo!" Whenever he sees Addison they exchange shouted greetings of each other's names (most poignantly across the church sanctuary after the liturgy has already began:
"Noah!"
"Add-son!"
He loves vanilla shakes, and has huge brown eyes, and a funny eager run, and papery white skin.
.
He was laughing before we got the minivan past Cinema Four. By the time we arrived at the hospital and Linda slid the door open and gathered him in her arms, he was smiley and delightful and most of the blood had been transfered to seven crumbled up diaper wipes.
And he's fine. He's really doing good.
Jeff and Linda and Noah and I all had shakes at the McDonald's in Mercy Hospital Lobby afterwards
But the tense feeling in my body and the adreniline in my stomach felt like they strung me through the day on a highwire.
.
The balance between delight and horror is too close to our skin. We're all too frail and regular to survive the depths of meaning and emotion that shoot through our littlest tasks and conversations and habits.
Every keystroke feels precarious, every post-it-note seems a hyper-link to a world of hurt or possibility, every telephone jingle a harbinger of all-that-we-never-thought-to-speak-of.
No wonder we need comfort. No wonder we seek:
peace~
posted by Redbaerd at 7:46 AM
6 Comments:
Dude! Just when I think your posts can't be any more stimulating, well-written and jacked up on beyond-this-world brilliance, you do it again ... Thanks for your blog ... cjv
that's ironical because when Liam split his head (requiring a staple of which he was very proud) we had ice cream afterward at TCBY.
A Mcdonalds in a hospital?
That's like selling cotton candy in a dentist's office
That's like having a keg party to celebrate graduation from the detox program.
That's like having a "christian book store" in a church...
seriously though... good blog.
Moron
andrew,
well in worcester there is a dunkin' donuts and a M-D's in the medical center. how's that for globalization? next thing we know Walmarts will be there too!
-beem
But the tense feeling in my body and the adreniline in my stomach felt like they strung me through the day on a highwire...it IS universal then. You so nailed it, right there and in the paragraphs that followed, I just started crying reading this entry of yours. Sitting in my hotel room, striving for those connections, I send up a prayer of thanks for words that capture, encompass really, the feelings that would sit like grumpy little trolls on our hearts if they didn't have a way to be expressed. You spoke of skin - that is precisely where my thoughts went this morning, to the delicacy of our skins.
Children. One day perhaps. The longing, I can't even tell you of the longing. This, like a secret spyglass into what could perhaps one day be. With all the blood, guts, and gory glory. And vanilla shakes, too.
Andrew, thank you.
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