the hidden place that heals

Over and over by us torn in two,
the god is the hidden place that heals again.
We are sharp-edged, because we want to know,
but he is always scattered and serene.

—Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Sonnets to Orpheus, XVI
Translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

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It is Bright Wednesday, or at least the dying nub of Bright Wednesday, and I am finally sitting down to write. All day a cool, steady wind passed through the trees out my window. Each time I looked the sky and river changed color as if trying on different outfits: clouds once low and thin above choppy gray water, another moment green and heavy over gold glitter.

It was a productive day, both children (finally) back in school after a lingering spring break. And I finally began preparing for Genevieve's eye surgery for esotropia next week. By prepare I primarily mean prepare myself—I have already spent plenty of time preparing Genevieve. My habit is to focus on getting through all the unpleasantness and anxieties by clenching in and checking out during the difficult moments. I want to be done with it all and take off her bandages and have her eyes see straight. I want the healing well underway. Just like I want to be done with packing and saying goodbyes and sorting the keeps from the throw-aways. I want to plug through without engaging the uncertainties; pit-pat, all squared away. But I'm learning is that while this method might have worked well for me at one point in my life, and may still function OK at times, it certainly isn't helpful for my three-year-old. (And, surprise, surprise, it isn't great help to me either.)

Fear of engaging the present moment in favor of waiting for a more serene future moment is in essence living in fear. This literally means that my back is tense, my neck and shoulders clench, and my derriere is tucked in. I am trying to keep it all together by walking around stiff as a board. And what's more: no one can keep it all together anyway. Not even God. Isn't that what we learn during Holy Week? Today the Redeemer of the world is slapped on the face. Those lines from Holy Friday always catch in my heart. I have to ask myself, was Jesus walking around stiff as a board for thirty years, dreading his crucifixion? Wanting to get this being human thing over and done with? As I recall, he only allowed himself one night of that.

Over and over by us torn in two / the god is the hidden place that heals again. To be broken and feel my brokenness, to sit with uncertainty and accept it—this is part of the goal. But more importantly I am trying shift my focus away from the things I am dreading. To instead regard the whole situation with curiosity and gentleness. To remember that we are having this surgery now because we have an awesome doctor here, a surgeon who is an expert in this procedure. I can't be sure nothing will go wrong, but that small fear is only a small part of a much larger picture. The vast majority of things in my life, and in Geneveive's life, are going incredibly well. I know that hidden place that heals again, I've been there before. Now I just have to trust and live, breathe, through it. To be there—awake—for both of us.

{ p o e t r y  w e d n e s d a y }

the onset of summer, with a little praise for rilke

B E F O R E   S U M M E R   R A I N

Rainer Maria Rilke

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something—you don't know what—has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

From New Poems, 1907-1908, 

translated by Stephen Mitchell

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It is summer, suddenly, the way that happens in New York City. When you wake one morning and spring is over, a blue-green haze hangs over the river and even the taxis' honking seems muffled after fighting through the humidity. There is a soft sensation of weight against your skin as you move.

Things are good. Genevieve is healing, and I notice she can hear better after the surgery. All that worry behind me, and the summer months nudging us forward. 

The poem above is one of my favorites by Rilke. I think I've posted it previously, but it bears reposting. Its four short stanzas paint as beautiful a description of the moments before a summer downpour as are written in English, and obviously German as well. What moves me most, though, is Rilke's understanding of how experience colors perception. It takes little imagination to see how a rain shower encompasses both solitude and passion. But here it also falls over the misunderstandings of generations in gracious, if not restrained, space—even grandiosity—, and reflects the way time slows in childhood, allowing fears to swell and settle upon a landscape.

 { more poetry wednesday }

nothing so beautiful as a word clearly heard

One day when I was a child     long ago
Mr Long Ago spoke up in school
He said
Oh children you must roll your r's
no no not on your tongue little girl
I N   Y O U R   T H R O A T
there is nothing so beautiful as r rolled in the throat of a French
     woman
no woman more beautiful
he said     looking back
                             back
                             at beauty

-- Grace Paley
Begin Again, Collected Poems

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Yesterday I took Genevieve to see an ENT doctor at Columbia Presbyterian, an excellent children's hospital conveniently located near us. As everyone who knows me already knows, Genevieve always has a cold. And, as her regular check-ups reveal, her colds are generally accompanied by fluid in her ears. At this point she likely has had fluid in her ears since November. The fluid itself is not the problem, though: it is her speech.

I've noticed for awhile that Genevieve is not learning many words. She is all about babbling and singing, but not so big on pronunciation. Of course she is only 15 months old, but by this age Ike had a much larger vocabulary than she has; he also made different sounds like ba and da and ga from a very early age. Genevieve does not. I've been working on getting her to say "nose" for months now. And while she knows where her nose is, and my nose is, and Ike's nose is, only occasionally does she try to say "nose"--and then she just says "nnnnnnn." She can say "mama" and occasionally "papa" but the sounds are pretty garbled. "Bye-bye" would be impossible to identify if it wasn't accompanied by a wave. She is big on gestures--shaking her head for "no" and "yes" and a lot of grabbing and pointing. I've been a little concerned about this, but I know all children develop at different speeds. And she is hearing two different languages, both French and English, and bilingual children often develop speech slower than children learning one language.

But our trip to the ENT yesterday revealed that her speech is most certainly affected by the fluid in her ears. She did poorly on her hearing test, and the technician told me afterward that a normal speaking tone is like a whisper to her. She is hearing as if under water. The doctor said that if a child goes longer than three months with fluid in their ears, it is unlikely that the problem will go away on its own. He recommended we consider surgery to insert tubes into the ears to drain the liquid. Additionally, he said she may benefit from the removal of her adenoids, which may be causing her chronic colds.

This seems like a lot of surgery for a mostly-healthy 15-month-old. And it's scary for me for many reasons: for example, she'd have to go under general anesthesia. And I don't know what else this could entail, with the surgery or without. I want her to be able to hear, to develop speech normally. But I also don't want her to have surgery unnecessarily. I bought myself another month to think about it, making an appointment for another hearing test in April. I spoke with our regular pediatrician last night, and am trying to find out all I can. I'm throwing out her pacifiers to cut back on the number of colds, and limiting sippy cups to meals as drinking while lying down may add to the problem. And maybe Spring, which seems to have arrived early, will help.