I’ve written about spring before. I do it every year, actually, as I feel so profoundly grateful and moved to share that gratitude by pounding it out on the keyboard. Thank you, spring! Thank you, warmth! Thank you, lions and lambs! I love you, both, but damn if I don’t feel moved to tears and reflection every year when the lamb overtakes the lion.
It is so unexpected, so David and Goliath, when that lion has a firm hold on you in January and February, to think that sweet, gentle lamb even stands a chance. You pine for that lamb, but wishing and hoping sometimes get lost in the dark and the cold and the ice and the relentless UGH of the formidable lion’s jaw you find yourself in.
This year, the lamb has arrived early in Chicago. Thank you, Universe!
Spring is a beautiful and profound and sacred return. It is confirmation that light and warmth follow cold and dark. Always. Spring is our annual reward and promise as human beings that things do, in fact, get better, even in nature. As a family who has buried one of our children, this promised and expected annual return to life and growth and hope is so very needed.
As time passes after the death of our daughter, my need to find hope seems to increase. Hope is like food, water, or air to me. I need it to survive. I need to feel and believe that the bad times subside, that life overtakes death, that even when it seems impossible, we will get through whatever it is we are needing to get through.
Spring is a tangible reminder of that for me, especially in the absence of a religion that assures me of the same thing. My religion is the growing light, the warming temperatures, the melting ice, the fading cold and dark days of deep winter.
Spring lifts me up when I need it most. It reminds me that life is a cycle, full of good and bad, both of which pass. When things are bad, you must hope and trust that good will return. And when things are good, savor it, enjoy it, knowing that things will shift and you will find yourself challenged again.
Life, folks. It is what it is. Sometimes it roars like an angry lion, and sometimes it gently rests in the growing grass, like a sweet lamb. For right now, I am grateful that the lamb is back, bringing warmth and light and Reese’s chocolate peanut butter eggs with it.
Love to you this fine spring day (not technically, of course, but mentally and emotionally, yo). xox
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If you need another dose of spring, read this beautiful reflection by my fellow ChicagoNow blogger, Amy Litterski DeSario.
Today is Donna Day — it’s the fourth annual Donna Day, actually. Donna Day is a made up thing, really, but then again, what special day isn’t? At one point, Valentine’s Day was just February 14 and Mother’s Day was one gal’s idea to honor her own mother who had just died. So, yes, Donna Day — it’s real to me and I will champion it as long as folks will indulge me.
Happy Donna Day, girl! Your mama misses you so very much. xox
But this year feels different somehow. Donna Day, in a very real sense, is no longer about Donna, just as Mother’s Day is no longer about Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis from Grafton, West Virginia. That is both sad, I think, but necessary, too.
Long story short, Donna Day was created as a blogging campaign to raise funds for the St. Baldrick’s shaving event created by a gal who was so inspired after reading Donna’s Cancer Story that she felt the need to do something. $290,609 later, I would say we’ve been pretty successful. But our work is not done.
In late October last year, I had a message from a friend I had met through blogging (where I seem to meet so many amazing people). We live in the same Chicago neighborhood and had both performed in the 2013 Listen To Your Mother live lit event. I liked her. A lot. She was sweet and warm and open and completely lacked pretension. She was also wicked funny and made me laugh.
She was thinking about cutting her hair short and donating to a good cause, could I recommend a reputable program? This gal has an amazing mane. Like, amazing amazing — thick, wavy, what might be described as a horse tail. Any person to wear a wig from her head of hair will be profoundly lucky.
The conversation looked a lot like this:
Friend: I had a question I thought you may have the answer to – what is the best organization for donating one’s hair to be made into wigs for cancer patients? I am looking to shear it shorter for a great cause!
Me: Cool! I think Pantene has a recommended program, but let me check. Also, if you want to raise some $ for kids with cancer, you can wait until our March St. Baldrick’s event. Also, I am shameless.
October turned into November and before you know it, winter had descended. BOOM. This winter will go down in history as one of my worst ever. An endless series of hospital visits with my Dad, anxiety, fear, sadness, bad news after bad news. Yuck. Screw you, winter.
My friend reached out to me in January and that conversation looked a lot like this:
Friend: Question – I have yet to cut my locks because it got cold and I liked the insulation. I don’t know if I am up for shaving completely, but could I raise funds by waiting and chopping it off on the 28th [our St. Baldrick’s event]?
Me: So, YES, you can absolutely set up a fundraising page to cut rather than shave. We have had a few folks do that. Only caveat is that the shavers (licensed beauticians) will chop, but not cut or style your hair, so it would require a trip to your usual place of beauty. Make sense? I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE YOU ON BOARD!
Friend: Got it! An earlier slot would be great. Thanks!!!
And then, just four days later, this arrived in my inbox:
Friend: Um, could you please call me ASAP. I am at XXXXXX and just got word that my daughter has a mass in her brain. I could really use your support and knowledge.
Fuck you, cancer. Seriously. Fuck you.
Before I called my friend, I wept some tears. I wept for her daughter, I wept for my friend, I wept for Donna, and I wept for the loss of innocence and naivete this family had just experienced without even knowing it. When cancer strikes your child, you are changed, forever, regardless of outcome.
You learn, on a deep and cellular level, that life is not guaranteed. Control and safety and normalcy are illusions that parents hold close to get through their days. We need to. I get it. But my family, and now my friend’s family, has been robbed of the unconscious security of “this doesn’t happen to me.” Because it does, and it just did.
Again, I say, fuck you, cancer.
Pin courtesy of St. Baldrick’s. Do you want one of your own? Sign up to volunteer at our event as a shavee and I will personally pin it on you!
St. Baldrick’s informs us that a child will be diagnosed with cancer every three minutes. On that cold night in January, that child was my friend’s daughter.
Most of you who are reading this right now will not have a child with cancer, but some of you will. And those of you whose children are healthy, the truth is that they might not be tomorrow or the next day. That sounds like fear mongering, but it’s not. It is truth and that is why I work so hard to support the important work of St. Baldrick’s, the number one private funder of pediatric cancer research in America.
I started this post with my sense that Donna Day is less about Donna every year. That is a tough pill for this grieving mother to swallow, another harsh truth, but as time passes, it is harder and harder for me to ignore. My beautiful Donna died of cancer, but just in the time that I wrote these words, 20 children around the world were diagnosed themselves. Most of them (in America) will survive, yes, but they will be marked in a thousand different ways and live a life where cancer’s shadow will hang over them indefinitely.
Time moves forward, change is constant. This year I know, I feel it in my gut, that Donna Day is now and needs to be Edgar Day and Mia Day and Sophia Day and Rosie Day and Drew Day and Gregory Day and Jeremy Day and Lucy Day Nick Day and Sam Day and Brendan Day and Daniella Day and Kyler Day and Jenna Day and Abby Day and Insert Child’s Name With Cancer Here Day.
Please consider honoring Donna, the seed for this important cause, and all that she has done to inspire Good Things by making a donation to our St. Baldrick’s event. We need you and we need your generosity and we need your caring and we need your compassion, and yes, to put it as basely as possible, we need your dollars. $5, $10, $20, $100 — we are not picky, we like all the dollars! You can donate HERE.
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At the top of our stairs is a digital frame that we got just a few days after Donna died. We wanted something for the memorial service to show our favorite photos of Donna. Her little four year old life, from birth to death, captured on an electronic screen.
The photos have never changed. Several times a week I find myself getting caught up looking at them. A rest after climbing 14 stairs, a pause before I get on with my day, a memory captured that confirms once upon a time I mothered a daughter.
One of my favorite things when people visit our home is seeing them stealing glances at the photos, or outright just looking at them, unselfconsciously. Our girl is missed by many. That is a gift.
Donna had one brother when she died. Now six years old, he was a wee little 10 month old baby at the time. Each night before we tucked him in, part of our nightly ritual was to stop at this little corner of our home and say, “Night night, Donna!” At some point that stopped, I don’t know when.
Now she has another brother. There was no overlap of their lives and they share no biology, as he came to us through adoption, but still, he is Donna’s brother. The truth is that he looks more like Donna than her brother that shares genes with her ever did. Our youngest son has the exact same shade of golden hair. He has the pink pillow lips and almond shaped blue eyes, too. His smile calls Donna to mind more every day. People who knew Donna will whisper to us, “He looks like Donna,” as if saying that is a breach of adoption etiquette.
He does look like Donna. That both fills me with joy and makes me ache in equal measure. When he sits in my lap and eats his morning breakfast of oats with grape jelly, just as Donna did, I am transported back in time when my little girl with her chicklet teeth did just the same. It is a thin thread that connects my oldest and my youngest. I am grateful for that thread.
A few months ago, while doing dishes — where so many of my most profound thoughts seem to occur — the baby was sitting in his height chair close by nibbling on something or other. I noticed in that moment that his eyes were on Donna. His eyes stayed on Donna. I finished the dishes, I swept, I wiped down the counters. His eyes never once stopped looking at Donna.
Since then, I often pop the baby in his height chair with a few nibbles and roll the chair in front of that screen where digital Donna ages right before his eyes. His sister’s lifetime passes by while he eats a fistful of Cheerios, transfixed. It is as close to babysitting as Donna will ever get. I am grateful to see my children together, even virtually.
Mary Tyler Mom 