It is What We Really Know

Day 55, awaiting the call for Anna'a double lung transplant.

So many stories have danced through my mind, they have presented twirls and leaps, bows and curtsies, hopes and dreams. I want the performance to never end with its practiced pointed toes, pink tutu and its perfect uplift flight with the wings of a dragonfly. The magical ballet of my mind has given hopeful story and form to this experience. And in some ways has disguised the stage with its creative set director providing much needed diversions.

As time is passing it can get more difficult to hang on to the threads of the tutu spun from gossamer wings. We think we can make it continue by setting the stage with the introduction of the next act. "I feel it in my gut. It is going to happen today! I know it." We wrap our arms around any sense of knowing, any sense of the mystical element that will give us a glimpse of the unknown. And when we realize, that that knowing was just our hoping, our creation of dancing ballerinas for our diversion and pleasure, we are humbled.

What is true is that it is morning, 6:37AM. The sun is rising. I can see it across the street beyond the hills brightening the sky. That I know. The grapes are ripening in the vineyard. The sweetness of their juice danced on my tongue yesterday. This I know too. At the same time, I am wishing for something to happen in the timing that I want. It is something that has really nothing to do with me. I have nothing to with it. It will happen and unfold in its own timing unknown to me. I must stop this play of thoughts that seeks to know this mystery for my comfort. I must delve even deeper into what I know, the sunrise, the grapes, the dragonfly on the wall, the rich cup of coffee sitting next to me. This is where comfort must come from. The silly games, the wishful thinking, the stories of when, only divert they do not deepen. The temporaryness of their companionship sometimes leaves me with abandonment. I forget the sense of humor that is needed.

It is another lesson in being present, of humbling our crazy minds. Each of us in this family need this reminder. Each of us must be warned about lifting the skirt of the curtain before the curtain call. Every time we do this we may be missing something that is right before us. It is in the waiting moments where we find the comfort shawl. Our true knowings will not be taken from our shoulders when our predictions are not fullfilled. When we feel it in our gut it is truly the taste of a mother's hunger for her daughter's savior surgery; or the thrill of the promise for a sister to see her sister breathe and have a truly new day; or the poise of protection that a father feels when his family is in danger; or the real hope of healing and new lungs for Anna to hold in her heart. This all is to be savored and known with intimacy. It is this real experience and only this that does not fool us. This is where we can find the comfort that will last forever.

And yet, I know we will continue to divert and make up stories and predictions to make time go by. This is what we do. But, I hope that from time to time when it all gets a little over the top, we do not forget our sense of humor and we remind each other to look out the window at the sunset, reach out and touch each other, really feel our gut experience and taste something delicious to bring our feet on the ground that we know. This is what humility does. It brings us back to what is real.

Even those things that are real,
Those things that right in front of us
Are so very, very Magical
Isn't this life incredible?