Sassafrass

One more June 29th

In 2002, this was a beautiful, blue sky, sunny day. I was finishing a paper I had hanging over my head, long overdue and necessary for me to finally, finally finish a graduate degree I'd technically completed three years earlier. My parents were sitting on the deck at their lake house. My brother was riding his motorcycle on a long road in Virginia with a few of his friends who had just rounded the bend ahead of him.

I won't ever forget that day because it is the day I logged off the dial-up internet service at my parents house and the phone immediately rang and the hospital chaplin told me my brother my brother had been in an accident, was being transported from the ER to the ICU, and yes, that it was very, very serious.

[My brother and I last summer at my grandmother's 100th birthday. We are blessed to share the genes of many fighters.]

You may know the story. I've talked about it many times here and other places. That day changed the course of the lives of everyone in my family and so this day is one that need to acknowledge.

[My brother at age 11 or 12. Such a baby face. I mean...so cool.]

I call this day my brother's Survive-iversary. I occasionally envision my brother in his toughest moments --- swollen, marred by road rash, stapped down and cuffed by a neck brace and countless tubes. Fitfully unconscious for days. Crying out in confusion and pain when the coma began to recede. Taking his first steps after re-teaching his body to walk. Sipping rootbeer floats in celebration of being released to do rehabilitation in Chicago, then to return to school again months later.

Even those celebrations were hard. The constant process of letting go of someone so vulnerable made my parents and I ache, even as we toasted rootbeer floats back at him, even as we thanked God when his skull, jaw, teeth, tracheotomy wound, scars, and pieces of his life mended.

The balance of that is that we did find joy, laughter, and amazingly, some good times in the midst of all that pain, in the harsh light of the hospital. In the years since we have found ways to do that again and again when the road ahead of us is uncontrollable and bending, grieving and healing, crying and laughing in turn.

Last year, I didn't write about my brother's survive-iversary here. It was just too much at that time for me. But like we do every year, he and I shared a moment together on the phone. Just like it all began, we stopped what we were doing and focused in on that moment in time.

[My family, last summer in Virginia.]

This year, we exchanged acknowledgements on Facebook before we found each other on the phone. The messenger may be changing but the message is the same. This year, unlike others, I did not cry. But on this beautiful, blue sky, sunny day, I did feel the same rush of relief I did when I finally got there, became the first family member to arrive in the ICU seven years ago, the same rhythmic prayer of thanks:

He's alive. He's alive.

It was enough. It was everything. It was June 29th.

Our own little public service announcement: My brother suffered a traumatic brain injury and was wearing a helmet. We still advocate helmet laws in every state, angering some commenters and connecting us to others. You can read more about our efforts to promote helmet laws and helmet use here and here.

Just a peek in to (another) fascinating conversation between my brother and me

From: Seth
To: GrrrlfriendJess
Subject:  Corporate whore

You should call these people and see if they'll send you a sample to blog about.

Seth

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From: GrrrlfriendJess
To: Seth
Subject: re: Corporate whoredom

HAHAHA! I saw those. That is crazy shit, man. Can you imagine LIL E in that thing? He'd be bitching and bitching and bitching the whole time. But damn, he'd look cute!

Corporate Whore

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From: GrrrlfriendJess
To: Seth
Subject: re: Corporate whoredom

I am putting this conversation in a blog post.
Come up with a witty reply. And quick. I've got deadlines to meet and PR people to kiss up to.
Mama needs a Swiffer. And some cushy heel inserts for my whore heels.

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...and then, 17 days later:

From: Seth
To: GrrrlfriendJess
Subject:  Corporate whore

When did you travel to Long Island?

If you are the praying kind

I was up too late last night again, but I was laughing and talking politics and kids and other good stuff on the phone and so it felt good and fun and worth the hours that slipped away from my sleep. And when I got off the phone to finally go to bed, I did what I do on most nights just before I turn off all the lights, wash my face, get a glass of water and check in on the boy one last time -- I breezed through my email, Twitter, Facebook.

My calm came to halt when I saw a post from the daughter of a friend asking for prayers for her mother - a young, vibrant, busy, amazing woman - who suffered a stroke yesterday. This friend has, without hesitation and with the kind of heart most people are afraid to reveal, supported my family during the toughest of times and during this past year.  I still have a calendar of Maya Angelou quotes and a beautiful votive candle with a sweet, spiritual quote inscribed on it that she sent when my brother was unconscious and we were all very scared about what would come in the hours and days and weeks to follow.

I lit that candle last night for my friend. Once a single mother herself, she's now the mother and stepmother of nine kids. She is kind and honest and so close to my own age that I had a moment of panic all parents have at all the unexpected things that can and do happen. I also know this woman is strong in body and spirit and faith, which I hope will reassure the many family members and friends I am sure are surrounding her today.

I believe - no, honestly, I have felt - the healing power of putting warm, positive energy into the universe. Whether you prayer or send up a good thought or meditate, will you please join me centering on this friend today? That her doctors and caregivers will be guided, her family will feel some peace and rest, and that she will get whatever it is she needs today to make her way back.

On a dark and rainy night 32 years ago

I was 4-1/2 years old, just a few months older than my son is today. It was dark and raining and I was in the gold and white Dodge van with my parents.

Because it was the Seventies, the back seat was latched in sideways to make extra room for Christmas trees and for kids to play on the floor during long road trips from our Lincoln Park apartment to the "farm" we shared with four other families in Indiana. Because it was that decade, we didn't wear seatbelts and I sat in the passenger seat on my mother's lap.

Rather, I sat on my mother's knees. Her pregnant belly took up the rest of her lap and soon that space would be occupied by a baby. She held me as close as she could as we drove downtown to my aunt's Gold Coast apartment.

My mother was in labor and I was going to spend the night in a big bed full of luxurious pillows and white sheets to wait out the arrival of a new baby brother or sister. We pulled up and through the sheets of rain, I could see my aunt waiting to take me by the hand, from the van and up to her place above the city.

My parents drove on to the suburbs where my brother came into the world many hours later. The story goes that my aunt took me to FAO Schwartz to buy him a gift and I pleaded with her to just buy something for me. It worked (sort of) and we chose a little something for him and (I'm sure) a sparkly something for me.

I wasn't even a kindergartner and I was already resistant. As time went on, there was naturally a lot more of that resistance. You know, sometimes, as every sister knows, it's hard to give up that space on the lap or knees or as the recipient of all things wrapped and shiny. It can even be hard when it's also fun to have another person to slide around with seatbelt-free in the back of the van.

But really, the gift -- the one of having a brother, not of whatever sparkly thing I got from FAO Schwartz (with the exception of when he held my bouquet on the altar as my Maid of Honor, he's never been very sparkly) -- has only grown greater and more valuable with each year.

We've been through a lot in our own lives and we've been through a lot together. And whether we're talking about those times over a coffee or in a hospital or airport or on the phone, I am always grateful for the person given to my life that rainy night in September 1976.

Happy Birthday to my brother, the good man who was once a baby on the way, who has brought a lot of crazy sunshine into the dark and rainy ever since.

If you love someone, set them free. And hope they leave behind their CDs.

Many years ago when my brother was still living in Chicago, managing a Great Harvest Bread store while he put himself though school, he dated a fellow dough-kneader named Anne.

I worked for him when I was home on breaks from grad school, selling loaves of bread to Lincoln Parkers while I let the feminist theory slowly seep out of my brain for a glorious month of nothing much else. On one of those breaks, I met Anne.

She had long, brown, stick-straight hair and a simple face with tiny pink lips. She seemed nice enough but she was a little strange. She wore mittens at a play and dinner with my parents. With a short-sleeved shirt. My brother liked her because she was quirky and because, although she was quite frail looking, had some junk in the trunk. That's how he said it, I swear.

I remember scraping the dough off of the hardwood floors one night while we were cleaning up at closing time. Anne and my brother and I were the only ones in the store and he put in a CD that Anne brought in a few days or weeks before. He wanted me to hear it and as soon as I heard the first few lines, I was hooked. Soon, we were all dancing around the locked store and I knew I had to have that CD.

It was the Barenaked Ladies. It wasn't the first time I'd heard them. I'd actually played one of their early CDs when I was a DJ -- I mean on-air personality -- at my college radio station. But their music had evolved and so had their audience and my taste in music was changing too.

I was off of a year or so of hating but listening anyway to the Grateful Fucking Dead and just coming out of a mandatory Women Studies period of listening almost exclusively to acousticy female folk singers my brother called women's whiner rock. I was willing, at last, to hear a little man music. I was praying for something lyric-driven and please God, no guitar solos that last longer than it took me to whip up a microwave popcorn dinner.

And there they were, Barenaked Ladies, courtesy Anne.

It's no surprise Anne wasn't around much longer than it took me to memorize the entire CD and get tickets to see them with my brother at the Aragon. It turns out she was not only quirky, she was also pilfering cash from the register on the sly (and that's not easy in mittens, my friends). My brother caught on, and she quit or was fired or something, and Anne's services were no longer (oh dear, I have to)kneaded (apologies).

My brother and I saw Barenaked Ladies many times in concert, sometimes standing in front of the stage and once way up in United Center and once from the way-back of what I think was Poplar Creek a bezillion years ago and is now named after a soda company or something. We had fun listening and seeing and dancing more to BNL, and today, so does Lil E.

In that time that we've acquired many more CDs and MP3s and then decided we liked them way more when they were insistent upon smaller venues, we've also talked about how that first song - I am pretty sure it was If I Had a Million Dollars, which gets the newbies every time - came to us.

We talk about kooky Anne with her thievery and eccentricities and how maybe, just maybe she stepped into that store just to deliver that music.

OK, so it's a stretch. But the real point is that people come and go. Sometimes, though, they leave behind some music that sticks.  For that, we will always be grateful to Anne.

Last week, someone else stepped out of the store where I am standing. And one of the reasons it's OK is that he left behind one song that has turned on some new music for me that I really love.

Turn up some Jeremy Fisher (who one friend called, quite aptly, I think, a "young Paul Simon") today and dance along with me while I work some more.

The first one's bittersweet. The second one's a bit more quirky.  And that one's just for you, Anne, wherever you're shaking that booty and baking that bread these days.

Almost naked

This month has come to a close in some strange and chaotic ways for my family. At the beginning of the month, a fellow blogger at Chicago Moms Blog, Mary Anne Mohanraj, wrote one of the most poignant, raw and courageous posts I've ever read. It made my heart swell up that women, mothers are using this venue to voice their true selves and that all the nonsense and exhaustion of building traffic and meta tags and whatnot could give way for even a few brief moments for such honesty and exploration. Mary Anne put her fears on to the screen and told everyone who read exactly what she was scared to write about. She made me think and weeks later, her post is with me as we three, Bruce and Lil E and I, tumble along in the tide of our lives.

We're having a tough time. I've reserved the details for my grrrlfriends and family and professional counsel-givers. While I'm not ready (nor do I think it is necessary or appropriate) to strip down completely, I do know that some good is coming out of this all.

I know that the work I did to undo my own stress and feelings of being overwhelmed at work and in my volunteer commitments and strapped schedule has helped me take the time and energy and focus to deal with our family issues. I also know that taking some small steps to take care of myself in the last few weeks has helped me to take care of myself in the middle of otherwise-upset. I was already in that frame of mind, so calling out to my tribe of women to please call me, email me, check in on me, surround me with their energy and advice and goodness and smart-assness and sense of humor and distractions and love, felt like a natural next step rather than an intrusion or unnecessary drama.

Of course, my grrrls saddled right up beside me and have been amazing. As has my family. We will be in a better place. Eventually. And in the meantime, I am reminding myself that just because this blog is named Sassafrass, I don't always feel that way and it is OK to be real here about that, especially when the full-body truth is now living right here in our home. 

I'm giving myself permission to work less because what I do requires focus and wit, and right now, I am not feeling very funny or snarky or clever. It is hard to write about potty training or Lindsey Lohan or Elmo or McDolty the new Bachelor when my mind is on much bigger, pressing things. And I am trying -- TRYING -- for that all to be OK too.

I am also repeating over and over to myself the words my brother reminded me of yesterday that I told him years ago: In the end, it will all be OK. And if it's not OK, it's not the end.

I don't remember who said that, but it still stands true. So there it is, my friends. As naked as I can be right now.

There are good things to come, I know. And gifts to emerge. I will try my best to share them as they too are revealed.

Survive-iversary (a replay)

Last week, on June 29th, my brother celebrated his fifth survive-iversary. That day five years ago was the hardest day of my life and yet, I am committed to celebrating it every June.

I thought this year, I would go into that celebration quietly. And then I interviewed and wrote profiles on four people in treatment for or recovery from cancer. I got so invested in the emotion of their stories, I could barely write anything else last week. And then I read that WhyMommy at Toddler Planet would be giving away her registration to BlogHer because she will need to give her time, attention, energy and body to chemo. She asked to hear some survivor stories and I felt compelled to share my family's story of just getting through. It is a replay, published last year on another blog, but new here.

So here is to the spirit within and the forces much greater than us -- kindness, God, good people, love, hope, some little moment in the future, the inexplicable, prayer, determination -- that get us through somehow, that make all of us who've been at that tough point in the journey survive.

Read on for Survive-iversary, 2006.

 

Today is one of those days when tears are out of both sadness and joy. Today marks the day that four years ago, my brother survived a very serious motorcycle accident.

Four years ago today, we didn't know for sure if he would survive but we did know that the doctors, nurses, prayers and great hope were already at work so that Seth would see many more days.

At the time, we all operated minute by minute, painstaking hour by hour. It was heart-wrenching to think beyond those small circles of time. In the moment, we couldn't envision what the next procedure might hold, let alone four years down the line. And yet, by the grace of God, here we are. Here we all are. 

Survive-iversary flowers, 2005