tears and transfiguration

Last Wednesday morning, as I woke to the pale sun coming up over the mountains, I realized that more than 3,000 miles away, Caroline Kennedy was being buried by the people at St. Nicholas Parish in Portland. How fitting, it seemed, that Caroline's funeral would fall on the feast of the Transfiguration.

Caroline was a magnificent planner in all regards. She wore elegant hats to the services and did not neglect to coordinate them with her husband's bow ties. When she and Alex had us for tea, everything was artfully arranged--there were the crustless cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, real tea, pungent and earthy, poured from a fine tea pot into delicate china glasses that jingled on the saucers. She and Alex were gracious and warm and put us at ease. They were also pillars of the community at St. Nicholas and Caroline's death created a gap that no one else could fill.

It grieved me, that morning, to be so far away and to miss her funeral. But during those first moments of the day, when I was lingering at the edge of sleep, as I lifted my head from the pillow and saw the green mountains against the pink sky, I didn't feel so far away. I felt like I was "there" for just a few moments, an experience that is both sweet and odd and seems to occur more often around funerals.

It was also Anna's first day of first grade, which seemed another genius stroke of planning. What better day for her to start "real school"? Because it was the feast of Transfiguration, I didn't just have to remember Anna's medical forms, vaccination records, emergency supply kit--complete with flashlight, non-perishables and a family photo and note--as well as her backpack filled with her sharp new pencils, unused erasers, squeaky clean tennis shoes, socks and lunch and snacks, but, also, just as I was headed out the door with Anna and her heavy backpack, we stopped to gather our fruit into a basket: mangoes, papayas and limes.

As I drove up the winding road to the school, a teacher was waiting for me. She leaned in my window. "How are you this morning?" she said, smiling at me despite the cars behind me. She showed me where to park. Then Anna and Natalie and I walked up the hill, where the assistant principal greeted us, followed by another teacher, with a camera. "Would you like me to take a picture?" she asked.

I was glad that the teacher wanted to take a photo because Anna was not very cooperative with my attempts to capture her on film. In fact, she seemed downright embarrassed by my camera, which caught me off guard. Just a few weeks back, it I was was still pretty much the center of her universe, but that morning, I was a liability. She was ready for this and she wanted to face it on her own, without the cumbersome distractions of the mama paparazzi.

Her school is a small charter with an emphasis on project-based learning. The classrooms, which were designed and built by the teachers and parents are like small houses, dotting a lush field surrounded by Hawaiian gardens that the kids tend. Anna's room as a huge lanai for stories and cubbies, just ten feet from a gate where cows graze and moo. She's also a stone's throw from a "butterfly house" teeming with tropical flowers.

Here is Anna beside her cubby, on that first day:


The moment Anna stepped into the classroom, she was focused on the teacher, eager to see what would happen next. She didn't even glance back as I stood in the doorway with the other moms, which was a good thing, because tears were streaming down my cheeks and I couldn't do a thing about it.

Fortunately my cell phone rang. It was John, who was already at the church but had run out of wine. So I was pulled back to the feast, with all its concrete, earthy details. I rushed home for the wine and corkscrew, and then headed back up the mountain to the church.

Just a few of us were at that service, and Natalie was terribly out of sorts after seeing her sister off to school, so I was a little distracted. But by some grace I did get to hear the sermon and it was a good one. John said that Transfiguration is the day that the Glory of God shone through Christ, but only to the extent that the disciples could bear it. He said that God is so kind that way, just showing us a little bit of himself at a time so we won't fall down dead from his fierce glory. But, he said, this day is also a challenge to open ourselves a bit more, to carve out a more space each day so that we can increase our capacity to bear and reflect this light.

And then, he sprinkled holy water on our little baskets of fruit, the humble offerings of a fledgling community, picked from the imperfect trees on a small island in the middle of a vast ocean, barely visible on most globes. He reminded us that this custom comes from agricultural societies, where the farmers had been nurturing seeds for months, praying and laboring for a good crop. This was the day that the hope bore visible fruit that everyone could see and celebrate. And this year, for us, it was the day that our own first fruit started first grade, and also the day that our old friend, Caroline Kennedy was laid in the ground to await her own transfiguration.

fear of death

Natalie, at 19 months is determined to swim on her own. She fights my hold on her, kicks, flails her arms, and she imagines that she will swim just like Anna. And yet the moment I let go, she sinks. I watch her body slip just below the surface of the water, and then I grab her, and she comes up sputtering, elated, ready to try again, wriggling out of my hold.

After an hour of this, I was exhausted. I brought the kids up to the house and cooked some alphabet pasta. Then we cut open a mango and munched on some berries and yogurt. Both the kids were water weary and I knew we needed an early bedtime, but then John called from the gallery he was working at and asked if I wanted to go out to eat with some friends.

I told him no, I wasn't hungry and the kids needed an early bedtime. He told me that he was very hungry and I promised to make him some Indian food when he got home. By Indian food, I meant a package of Amy's Natural Palak Paneer. Because I buy these at Costco and he'd already had a few this week, he was none too eager for my offering.

The battery on my phone had died, so our "chat" took place on Gmail, and that last I heard from him, he had said, "I'm coming home soon." If you were to sit him down he would tell another version of the story in which he said he would be home at seven. But I digress.

Our conversation took place at 5:39. He was about 15 minutes up the mountain, so I had no reason to believe he'd be home any later than 6. But 6 came and went and he still wasn't here. I contemplated how windy and perilous those roads are. I loaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, wiped down the table and crawled around on the rug picking up small plastic beads from Anna's most recent project. It was 6:45 and John still wasn't there. I tried to remain calm, but this just didn't make sense.

I called his phone, and got a message. That fit well with my growing theory that he'd been a wreck. Of course he couldn't pick up the phone if he was unconscious. It was now seven. I decided I might as well go out on the lanai and eat his Indian food. I watched the sun set over the ocean, listened to the birds calling to each other from the palm trees and thought of how much more enjoyable the sunset would be if he was with me.

Where was he? I thought perhaps it was time to call the police, but I would have to wait for Anna to fall asleep, as she would surely be alarmed by the questions I would ask. I wondered where I should bury him--Hawaii seemed fitting, as he is blossoming here. And yet, if he were to die, why would I stay? My purpose here is tied to him. I guess I'd be wiser to box him up and ship him back to Minnesota, where we could tend the grave. It occurred to me that I would also have to update my Facebook profile, from "married" to "widow."

And then I thought of how sad it would be to tell the folks at the mission, who have waited so long for a priest, that their priest was no more. In particular I thought of an elderly woman who told me on Sunday that she is relieved that John will be able to do her husband's funeral, when the day comes. What would I tell her?

Now on the bright side of things, we could just put this whole Ph.D. business behind us. What a headache that has been! And yet, I don't want to give up any part of this life of ours, I want to be right where I am living this life, with this man--and where, or where is he?

Finally Anna called out, "Dad's here." John came up the stairs. Relief turned to rage. "Where were you?" He countered that he said he'd be home at seven, that I had said that I wasn't planning on a family meal. "But I said I would cook Indian Food for you," I said. "But I didn't want another meal out of box," he said.

Now I was seething. "The last thing I expected, when you returned from the grave, was that you would insult my cooking!"

"Next time I come back from the dead," he said, "I'll try to accentuate the positive."

And then, I heard a soft knocking at the door. I looked out the window and saw a plumeria lei hung over the rail. I opened the door, and there was our houseguest, a cave dweller from Maui. Our squabble would have to wait.

"What's with the lei?" I said. "Well, I wasn't sure you would want it, so I left it outside," he said.

"I would love a lei," I said, bringing it into our home and placing it before the icons, a fragile circle of flowers around the lampada, catching the light and holding it there.

goodbye Hyde Park

As I write, I'm surrounded by half-packed boxes of books and the chaos of our dismantled home. Where there were photos, there are only empty nails. Friends come through the house, sizing up our furniture to see what will fit in their home. Freda has been adopted out, half-used medicines left in a plastic bag outside my neighbor's door. Each time a friend comes to take something else off our hands, I am both relieved and grieved--I want all that we have to be used and loved, and yet it feels so strange that it won't be used by us. As friends struggle out the door with our sofa and bookshelves I want to call after them, "We're not dead yet."

And yet this does feel so like dying. But the death now creates a way to the new life to come. It is as inescapable as the meal-less flight and the luggage and the juggling of children and shoes and laptops at the airport security checkpoints. None of this is pleasant, yet all of it is leading toward something good.

Being back in Hyde Park has been more emotional than I expected. When I was in Kona, I could barely feel anything for this place that we'd lived for five years. I could scarcely convince myself that a place so different actually existed. When Chicago friends would send photos of the snow-covered fire escapes I would look out my own window at the blue Pacific and waving palm trees and try to remember what it was like to nest in for the winter, the hum of the radiators, sipping coffee in the glider before my icons as the snow fell outside, the windows rattling against the howling wind.

It is strange being here in all sorts of ways I could not have anticipated. First comes the realization of what we had here, as I walk with my kids and bump into friends at every turn. Dare I generalize and say that most everyone is Hyde Park is interesting? A friend here shows me her husband's office, his photos of Mars and the blue light of a nuclear reaction. She gestures casually at the blue photo, saying, "If you're familiar with Nuclear Physics, you'll know what that is."

And it was, ultimately, the engaging conversations and friendships here that kept us afloat through the challenges of the early part of John's Ph.D. program. It was a gift, also, to mother my children in this context, and coming back I realize that so many of my early memories of Anna only become available as I meander along the sidewalk here.

Yesterday Anna begged to ride her scooter to the botany pond on the University of Chicago campus. There, so many memories surfaced. We came here for a summer when I was pregnant with her, and then moved here when she was less than a year. I can see her tottering down these streets here, stopping to examine every discarded bottle top and candy wrapper, forcing me to see the world in a whole new way.

When my friend Ser was here the other week, she said something that expressed some of what I felt on my bittersweet return to Hyde Park. She said, "It was here that we were birthed into motherhood." Hyde Park was a place of so many beginnings for me, as a mom, as a writer, as the wife of a new priest. Some of it was so painful, so far from what I expected or imagined, and yet now I see clearly--it was all gift, all of it.

And the other day, at Bonjour bakery, while munching on a chocolate-covered strawberry, Anna lost her second tooth. None of this seemed accidental, especially as I contemplate all the pieces of her childhood spent here. How right that she lost her first in Kona, her second in Hyde Park.

There will always be a little bit of the child Anna in both places. So on our last night together in Hyde Park John and I snuck out and buried that second tooth in the back yard. As we buried it we thanked God for all that had come to pass in this place and asked for all good things for our neighbors and for our years ahead in Kona, and we thanked God for this tooth, and for our beginnings as parents which will always be buried here.

that was then . . . this is now

One of Anna's best friends from Chicago came to visit. Anna and Haru haven't seen each other since they were three, but they've known each other since before they could walk. Although both are intense in their own way, they got on beautifully, as they did when they were tiny.

Haru still talks about the day they went sledding and laughed so hard that he began to cry, and both reminisce about the strange event that marked Haru's departure from Chicago--a huge rainbow over Midway airport, something I had never seen before and have never seen since.

When we met Haru and his parents at the airport, I was shocked by how old and lean he had become, by his changed voice and the way he expressed himself, casually mentioning his ex-girlfriends, for example. Anna and Haru refused to look at each other for the first five minutes at the luggage claim, but then, in the back of our rented minivan, they started to exchange suspicious glances. Anna broke the ice when she showed Haru the Praying Mantus she'd brought in her bug box.

From that point forward, the two were giggling and playing as if three years had not elapsed since their last encounter. They shared a bed in the loft both nights, and the first night, after they'd slipped under the blanket I asked Haru if he sleeps with a stuffed animal. "I collect them, but I don't usually sleep with them." he said, "But, I could use one tonight," he said.

"They still relate like an old married couple," Nobu (Haru's mom) said. And they did, each tolerant of (most) of the other's foibles, each thinking the other person's jokes were hilarious, and also scheming together against the rest of the world, in this case, against us grown-ups.

When we hiked to the lava tube, they even managed to share a hiking stick, at least until Haru was able to convince Anna that there are some things you just can't share. To be fair, there was one blow-up over a cocoa bean pod and Anna's attempt to appropriate it from Haru, but otherwise, they were like two peas in a pod.

We took Haru, Nobu and Alexi to see the flowing lava. When we finally arrived at the viewing area after our perilous walk over the lava fields, Anna glanced into the view finder on her camera, and then I heard a loud sigh. "My batteries are all used up," she said, her voice rising to a teary whine. "I need new batteries. Now." I looked around at the black lava on all sides, the streams of red flowing into the ocean and said, as calmly as I could, "You know, they don't actually sell batteries here."

But there was no stopping Anna's trajectory. She wanted photos and she wanted them badly. I tried to focus on the red rivers flowing into the ocean, the furious waves lapping the lava up, the sparks and shifting light and bright lava ridges. But Anna relentlessly tugged at my leg. "I need batteries," she reminded me. Haru unzipped his camera case, "Anna, you could use my extra ones," he said, handing his to her. And sure enough he had two extras, exactly the right size, which we slipped into Anna's camera, one more disaster averted.

But then Haru started getting agitated as he gazed through his camera. "How do you take a picture of lava?" he said. "All I can see are red dots. Just red dots." I wanted to take the two kids and shake them by the shoulders and say, "Have you ever considered just LOOKING at it? When did you two become the lava paparatizi?" But no matter. As I tried to focus on the site before me, Haru's frustration continued to mount as he rotated the camera for a better view. Finally, he sighed, "I'll just have to take them with my mind."

On the way back to the car, Haru held Anna's hand. And then he turned to me. "Gosh, Anna has changed so much," he said. He studied her in the gathering darkness. "Her hair is much longer, and her voice is different. And she's . . . taller." I glanced over at Anna who shook her head slowly, taking care to swing her long locks, clearly pleased that her old buddy had noticed. "Haru, you've changed much more than I have," she said, smiling shyly back at him.