I’m moving in a week, and I spent all of yesterday going
through the very scary place that is my garage. I was doing pretty well until I shifted a box of sporting
equipment that hadn’t been used since our last move six years ago. Behind it, wedged into a corner and
warped beyond repair was my son’s height measuring stick, the one with the
cheerful train at the bottom and the different markings: Ari at 2, 2 and a half, at 5, at 8. Without knowing how I got there, I was
standing in my driveway sobbing.
We
bought this house when our landlords neglected to let us know they were in
foreclosure, and we were forced to leave a home we’d grown to love. To console Ari, I told him we were buying a house so
we’d never have to move again, that we could plant trees and watch them grow,
and his children could come and we’d build them a swing. Michael had just been diagnosed and we
were full of hope that we would find our way through the maze of his cancer,
and my mother had just died. It
was my mother who bought the little train measuring stick.
So
much information in such a simple piece of wood. Everything I’ve lost was there -- all the potential,
everything we thought we were building as a family, my mother’s support, the
unquestioned devotion Michael and I had for our son, and Ari’s sweetness and
innocence at 2, 2 and a half, at 5, at 8.
Michael did not survive, Ari -- a little angry -- has gone off to college, and I’ve sold our
house.
I
cried until I was done, then put the stick on the pile of things going to the
dump. A friend asked, “Did you at least
take a picture?” but I didn’t need to.
If I’d taken a quick photo with my phone, it would have ended up in the
digital garage that is my computer.
What will last forever is the memory of recognizing that stick and
knowing what it represented; in that moment all the love we shared was
transferred to my body, each cell holographically storing the image. I can make all the copies I want. I am that stick.
This
morning I looked at the trees I love all around this house and for a moment I
became their patience, their capacity to witness and record everything around
them without needing to interfere.
I felt their encouragement to walk through life this way -- loving, aching, celebrating, and enduring beyond smaller lifetimes. I stood tall and let my life be measured against this
stillness, tolerating the marking of events like the carving of initials, or
the occasional hanging of a swing.
Odd
to feel grateful at a moment like this.
With love,
Mia
