Authors: Maria Housden
HANNAH AND I CAME HOME THE FIRST WEEK IN JANUARY.
She returned to preschool a week later, wearing her Christmas dress and a black velvet hat with a garish pink bow that kept slipping off her bald head and knocking the paper hospital mask off her nose. Her friends at school had exclaimed over her dress and hardly seemed to notice her lack of hair.
Today, Hannah was wearing her Christmas dress again, because, as she had explained to me, “this is a very, very
special
occasion.” Nurse Katie was coming for tea.
Katie was one of Hannah’s favorite nurses; she worked at the hospital where Hannah had her surgeries. In her early twenties, barely five feet tall, with short dark hair and dancing eyes, Katie had never seemed distracted by something else when she was with Hannah. She always seemed to genuinely care how Hannah was doing, and was never too busy to be silly.
The two of them used to play their favorite game every time Katie came into Hannah’s hospital room.
“Is there anything I can get for you, little Miss Hannah?” Katie would begin, trying to look as serious as she could. Hannah would grin and fold her hands in her lap.
“Yes, there is,” she would say, barely able to finish the sentence before she burst out laughing. “Nurse Katie, could I please have a tomatie?”
Katie would lean toward Hannah and, in a solemn, serious voice, say, “I’m so sorry, ma’am, but the Katies have eaten all the tomaties, although we still have plenty of bananas for little Miss Hannahs.”
Now, Hannah was setting the tea party table herself. Walking slowly and carefully, she carried an eclectic assortment of china plates and cups, one at a time, from the kitchen to the coffee table in the living room. She ordered the cups and plates into a lopsided circle and set a white plastic daisy and vase from her Barbie tea set in the center. Three leftover birthday napkins, a Winnie-the-Pooh and two Little Mermaids, were joined by one that said “Happy New Year,” lined up end to end “so we can see the pictures on them,” Hannah explained.
She had decided we should pour the tea from the “grown-ups’” pot. The one from her Barbie set was already stuffed with an impressive collection of Band-Aids. Because we used so many of them, we had become aficionados. Buying anything but the “regular” ones, we now had boxes of them in every size, pattern, and color.
As I watched Hannah arrange and rearrange the items on the table, I held myself back from making any suggestions. It wasn’t easy. There was a part of me, I realized, that
was overly critical of everything, that wanted to teach people, especially my children, about the “right” way to do things.
Hannah was smiling and humming, every once in a while stepping back to survey her work. She was in no hurry, and seemed completely unconcerned about the way a tea party is “supposed” to look. I watched her quietly, savoring the joy she was experiencing and the care she was giving to everything that she was doing. I longed to bring the same attention to the busy-ness in
my
every day, to do something simply for the joy of doing it, without worrying whether people noticed or liked it.
Joy, I realized then, is not concerned about being messy, mismatched, or unloved. If I was serious about living life more fully, I was going to have to let go of my need for everything, including myself and others, to be perfect.
I HAD TAKEN DOWN THE CURTAINS AND OPENED ALL THE
windows, letting the warm spring breeze chase winter’s mustiness out of the house. Claude was outside, raking and seeding the yard. Will and Hannah were helping me wipe woodwork and furniture with slippery lemon oil. We made our way through the downstairs and had just started on Will’s room when I heard a vehicle pull into our driveway, its horn honking loudly. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was. The kids didn’t, either.
“Pastor LJ,” they screamed, running to the window.
I heard Laurajane’s laugh and got to the window just in time to see her blowing kisses from the front seat of her topless, bright red jeep.
“Hey, that looks cool,” Will said, leaning dangerously out the window.
“It
is
cool.” Laurajane laughed. She lifted her Phillies cap off her head. “Hey, what are you guys doing? Can you go for a ride?”
“We’re cleaning,” Hannah said, holding her dust rag up for Laurajane to see.
“Cleaning???”
Laurajane shrieked, as Will and Hannah laughed. “You tell your mom there is absolutely, positively no cleaning allowed on a beautiful day like this. You two get down here right away and tell your mom she’d better come, too!”
Will and Hannah dropped their cloths and flew down the stairs, throwing themselves into Laurajane’s arms. Planting a loud kiss on each of their cheeks, she lifted them over the side of the jeep and buckled both of them in. As the four of us backed down the driveway, Laurajane beeped the horn. Claude paused, grinned, and waved.
The sun was high in the sky and warm on our faces. Laurajane stepped on the gas.
“Faster!” Hannah yelled from the backseat as the wind whipped through the open jeep.
Laurajane and I glanced at each other and grinned. Her eyes were bright and wild. I knew mine were, too. Laurajane stepped on the gas. The jeep shot forward. We all whooped with glee. This was the most fun I’d had in a long time.
“Hey, Mom!” Hannah screamed. “I can feel the wind in my hair!”
I spun around to look. Sure enough, I could see it for the first time in the bright sunlight. Hannah’s bald head was now covered with the slightest brush of down, and every wisp of it was standing on end in the stiff breeze. Hannah ran her hands over her scalp.
“I have hair,” she screamed. “I have hair!”
“Yahoo!” Will whooped, leaning across the seat to give her a hug.
I started to cry. Laurajane did, too.
I mouthed the words “Thank you, thank you.”
She reached across the front seat and gave my hand a squeeze. As we hurtled around a bend, Hannah shrieked again.
“Pastor LJ, Mommy. That’s where I’m going to live!”
I looked where she was pointing. There, on the corner, was the pinkest house I had ever seen; every inch of it was painted light rose, except for its deep maroon trim.
“Yuck, Hannah,” Will yelled. “That house is totally pink!”
Hannah giggled and screamed in his ear. “I’m going to have a pink car with no top on it, too.”
Will shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Girls,” he said.
SUNSET LICKED LIGHT FROM THE SKY. IT HAD BEEN
another warm spring day. The air smelled ripe and muddy. Claude and I held hands and walked while Will and Hannah ran ahead. I was now six months pregnant, and I could feel the baby shift and settle into the rhythm of my stride.
Will’s friend David was in the driveway of his house, playing basketball with his dad. Alan and Claude had coached a Little League team together and sometimes played pickup games of basketball with other dads on Tuesday evenings. David’s little brother Michael, who was a few months older than Hannah, was squatting in the front yard, poking a stick into the dirt. Will cupped his hands and shouted to David, who grinned and hurled a long pass to him. Will caught the ball, dribbled to the hoop, and missed. Hannah, meanwhile, found a stick and joined Michael in the dirt. Alan saw Claude and me and waved. By the time Claude and I reached them, Alan, ducking and wheeling around the two older boys, had faked a few misses of his own.
“I need some help here, buddy,” he called out.
Claude laughed and joined in. MaryAnn, Alan’s wife, poked her head out the front door.
“I was wondering what all the commotion was about,” she said, grinning.
She motioned for me to join her on the front step.
“Hey, Michael,” she shouted. “What are you two up to?”
“We’re looking for bugs,” Hannah said.
“And worms,” Michael added.
“Yeah, and worms,” Hannah said.
“Oh, great,” MaryAnn said, rolling her eyes. “I guess that means a second bath for both of you tonight.”
It was right then that it happened. It was such a strange and glorious thing that if I hadn’t experienced it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible.
I forgot that Hannah was sick
!
I wasn’t even aware of having forgotten. It was as if I had been sucked out of the story of cancer, treatment, worry, and death. Hannah was playing in the dirt, and I was visiting with a friend. It was a moment of nothing special, of nothing going on.
In a flash, whatever had sucked me up spit me out again. Even so, something felt different. Although I remembered now that Hannah was sick, some part of the stillness had remained.
Later, I sat on the front porch, in the residue of that stillness, peeling away the layers of night sky. I noticed first the moths, beating their powdery bodies against the bulb of the
porch light, then bats, with aerial precision, whiffing past. Beyond the bats, the moon, with its huge, unblinking face, then the planets flickering and galaxies spinning on an endless carpet of stars.
Listening to the night, I felt poised on the edge of greatness, certain that the silence I was feeling was God.
I HEARD HANNAH PADDING UP THE STAIRS. I OPENED MY
eyes and stretched. It was time to get up. I heard the shower running; Claude had managed to get out of bed without waking me. God bless him.
The door to our bedroom burst open.
“Mommy,” Hannah cried, “isn’t this a
great
day to be alive?”
She had stopped in the doorway, bright-eyed and beaming, her pink blanket dragging behind her. A puff of inch-long, fine blond hair stuck out every which way on her head. Her cheeks were full and pink. I noticed, for the first time, that the ruffled hem of her nightgown no longer pooled on the floor. I could see tiny, pink-polished toenails where it brushed the tops of her feet. As I smiled at her, she let go of the doorknob and her blanket, ran across the room, and flung herself onto the bed. Crawling toward me, she burrowed under the covers and nestled her head in the space between my neck and shoulder.
“Yes, Hannah,” I said, burying my nose in her hair. “This
is
a great day to be alive.”
JOY IS THE MAGIC
and stillness that stand on the threshold of every moment, the experience of giving and living fully, without expecting anything in return. Because joy knows no rules, it isn’t afraid to be imperfect, and it can surprise us even in the darkest places.
from “my will be done”
to “thy will be done”
Every time that we say ‘Thy will be done,’
we should have in mind all possible
misfortunes added together.
—Simone Weil
IT WAS A GLORIOUS SPRING DAY, A WEEK BEFORE EASTER.
Hannah and I had decided to walk to church. Will had ridden his bike ahead, and Claude, who had slept in, said he would join us later. Hannah and I held hands. Bulbs and buds, dormant all winter, were bursting into life. One magnolia tree, in particular, caught my eye. It was taller than the houses on either side; its branches, covered in enormous white-and-purple blooms, stretched upward, into forever.
“Mommy,” Hannah said, pointing to it, “those are the flowers I’m going to have at my wedding!”
“They’re beautiful, Hannah,” I said, exhaling a prayer for it to be true. “Who are you going to marry?”
“Daddy, you silly.” Hannah laughed.
These days, Hannah looked too healthy to be sick. She had already worn through her first pair of red shoes, and when we went to replace them, her foot was a half-size bigger. In the three and a half months since her transplant, our lives had once again settled into a deceptively normal
routine. I wanted to believe it was going to last, but I smelled the not-knowing in the air. Dr. Kamalaker had scheduled a routine X-ray and CT scan for the following week.
Sitting in church, I stared at the huge cross that hung from the ceiling behind Laurajane. I had never appreciated more fully the Christian story of the Easter resurrection. If God was capable of raising Jesus from the dead, couldn’t He save Hannah, too?
And if He could, what was He waiting for?
“Thy will be done,” I prayed from the bottom of my heart, knowing even as I said it that what I was really trusting was that His will was also my own.
CLAUDE’S SNORES WERE COMING FROM HANNAH’S ROOM;
the two of them had fallen asleep halfway through her bedtime story. Will was waiting for me to tuck him in, and I knew why.
Less than a week ago, a few days after Easter, Dr. Kamalaker had slid a piece of film under the clip of a light board and pointed to the spot where the cancer had metastasized. At the time of Hannah’s transplant, Claude and I had made a commitment not to subject her to any more treatments, but that was then; we asked Dr. Kamalaker to schedule another surgery immediately.
Early this morning, Claude had loaded our suitcases, Hannah’s and mine, into the minivan for the trip to the hospital. I had walked Will to his friend Jeff’s house, given him a kiss, and reminded him that Lili would pick him up after school. But when school was over, Lili was not there; Claude, Hannah, and I were waiting instead.
Now, as Will tossed his pile of stuffed animals onto the other twin bed to make room for me, I could see he had
been crying. Easing my pregnant body next to him, I gathered him into my arms.
“Oh, Muffin,” I said, kissing the top of his head, savoring his little-boy softness.
“Mom,” he said, his voice muffled against my chest, “why didn’t the doctors do Hannah’s surgery?”
Part of me was desperate to avoid this conversation, but I knew Will was trusting me to be honest with him, and he deserved to know.
“Well,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “Hannah’s lump is in a different place this time. It has grown very close to Hannah’s spinal cord and is wrapped around some very important veins. The doctors can’t take this one out.”
“But, Mom,” Will cried, lifting his head to look at me, “can’t they at least take out part of it?” He paused. “If they don’t,” he said slowly and deliberately, “Hannah’s going to die.”
My eyes filled with tears. I took a breath and choked them back. I wanted to be with Will in his pain. I didn’t want to overwhelm him with my own.
“The truth is, Will,” I said, picking my way slowly through the darkness that was threatening to engulf me, “no matter what we do, the doctors think Hannah only has a few months to live. If we do surgery, even to take some of the lump out, it means Hannah will be in a lot more pain between now and when she dies than if we do nothing.”
Will threw his arms around my neck and sobbed. I felt as if my heart might drown in his pain. Waves of anger
surged through me. Wasn’t it enough for God that Hannah was going to die? Did He have to take Will’s six-year-old innocence, too?
From infancy, Will had seemed more mature than other kids his age, but now, I would have given anything for him to know much less than he did. Months before, when Hannah first got sick, I had given him a blank journal and encouraged him to draw his feelings in it. For a long time, he hadn’t made any entries. Recently, though, he had begun to share some of his pictures with me. The earliest ones were mostly intricate sketches of wounded or bleeding baseball players or American Indians, but just before Easter he had drawn an elaborate cross alongside what looked like a war memorial with an American flag. Underneath, he had carefully printed Hannah’s name.
“I am so sorry, Will,” I said when I finally felt able to speak. “I wish I could have told you anything else, but I believe you deserve to know the truth. That way, you have the same chance that Dad and I have to appreciate Hannah while she’s here.”
“It’s just not fair,” Will cried, shaking his fists in the air. “Hannah wants to be a big sister so much. Is she going to live long enough to see our new baby?”
“I don’t know, Will,” I said, amazed by how much he had already thought through. “The only thing I know to do is pray that she does.”
“I
have
been praying, Mom,” Will cried, “but how can God expect us to believe in Him if He’s going to let Hannah die? I’ll hate Him if He does.”
I nodded, admiring his courage for having said it out loud, but offering a prayer to God just in case. I was feeling less and less sure of my faith. I wasn’t about to run the risk of pissing Him off.
“Mom, does Hannah
know
she’s going to die?” Will asked, his sobs subsiding.
“I’m not sure, but I think she does,” I told him.
“Well, I don’t want anyone to tell her, because I don’t want her to be scared.”
“I can appreciate that, Will,” I told him, “but I also believe that if Hannah doesn’t already know, she’s going to figure it out. If she asks me, I’ll have to tell her the truth. I don’t want her to know she’s going to die and not be able to talk to someone about it.”
Will thought for a moment. “Yeah, I guess that’s okay,” he finally agreed. “But Mom, when you know that Hannah knows, will you tell me? I want her to be able to talk to
me
about it, too.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, hugging him.
He was quiet.
“Mom, if all of our grandmas and grandpas are still alive, who is Hannah going to know in heaven?”
“Hmm,” I said, shaking my head, “that’s a good question.” I paused. “Well, your great-grandparents are in heaven, right?”
“Yes, but Hannah probably won’t know them.”
“I guess that’s true,” I said, thinking as fast as I could. “I wonder if Bub, our kitty that died, will be there?”
Will rested his chin in the palm of his hand and stared into space.
“Yes, I think Bub will be there,” he said finally, “and I guess, if you believe the Bible, Jesus will be there, too.” He sounded skeptical.
“Don’t forget the babies you miscarried, Mom,” he added, his eyes wide open with excitement at the thought. “Even though we never met them in person, they’re our brothers and sisters, too. Wow, that’s
cool
! Hannah’s going to get to meet them before we do!”
He threw his arms around me.
“Thanks, Mom. I feel a lot better.” He was quiet for a moment. I waited.
“Actually, Mom, I’m
glad
you told me,” he said finally. “You know how Hannah always wants to sleep in my other bed and usually I say no? Well, from now on, I’m going to say yes whenever she asks.”