I’ll make him a book, I thought, a book of those moments. So I bought a small unlined journal and began to draw pictures and write simple prose, like a picture book for children.
“My father has big happy cheeks and warm brown eyes that twinkle,” I wrote on page one. Then I drew a sketch of his happy, big-cheeked face.
“My dad is a teller of tales and a singer of songs. He played the ukulele and sang ‘The Big Feet Blues’:
I’ve got the big feet blues
Don’t know what to dooz
Get up in the morning
Can’t put on my shoes.
“Summers with Dad: He took me to Phillies games, where we cheered and ate hot dogs with wonderful mustard . . . On July 4th he grilled the best cheeseburgers I ever tasted and drove us to see the best fireworks . . . And when I was really young, he played with me at the seashore and held me up to jump the waves.”
On it went, memory after memory, page by page. Sometimes I cried while I wrote it, but it made me laugh too, and it was working: The pictures and words were holding the love to honor him and say thanks.
My father, who rarely wrote or phoned me, sent me a letter when he received the book. He said he was “reading and rereading it” and that “reliving all the things we had done together” made him feel young. “I will cherish it forever,” he wrote. “I love you very much.”
He died seven months later. Now I read and reread his letter. I will cherish it forever. I love him very much.
Part Ten
THIS, TOO, IS TRUE
You can change in an instant—
and so can your life—
moment by moment by moment.
JOY
“What are you writing?” my daughter asks, as we walk to the beach holding towels and pails and holding on to the hands of her two young sons.
“Little true stories,” I say. “Recipes for a sacred life.”
Elise gives me one of her knowing looks and gestures toward Eli and Isaac.
“You should write about your grandchildren,” she says. “They’re sacred.”
SUMMER 2009
In the glow of the setting sun, Eli, just four, and Isaac, almost two, race in circles on the dirt driveway by their farmhouse while I vigorously chase them. Round and round we run, all laughing nonstop, as if this is the funniest thing in the world. And whenever I pause, gasping for breath, Isaac looks at me appealingly and says, “Maw! Maw!” Then we’re off again, round and round, running and laughing.
Jenna Rose, at five and a half, tosses her long hair—shiny and golden like her mother Cindy’s—and asks if she can brush my shorter, darker tresses. She kneels behind me on the bed and brushes with long, slow strokes. “I’m making it grow longer,” she says earnestly, and it feels so nice, as if my hair is truly growing with each stroke of the brush.
I’m sitting on the sofa reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, a favorite book from my childhood, to Tony and Cindy’s son, Brendan. Tall and lanky, he just turned seven but still leans into my arms like a kitten when we read. He likes the book—“Not as much as Harry Potter,” he kindly explains, “but it’s good too.” He curls up happily and gently strokes my arm, and I feel the warmth of him and our love.
John walks over to the driveway to join the chasing game, pitching Eli and Isaac to a near-ecstatic state. Round and round we run, belly laughing, until loud honking sounds ripple above us, moving through the sky. “Geese!” Eli shouts. “Geeze!” Isaac shouts. And we all stop and gaze upward, like a moment of prayer.
There was a time in my life that seemed so painful, I feared I was falling apart. So my mother came to New York to be with me and help me take care of my kids, her grandkids. “Hang in,” she said. “Be strong. Because the good times will come back, I promise, and you want to be ready.”
KINDNESS—RANDOM OR NOT
Many years ago a book came out called Random Acts of Kindness, and soon there were bumper stickers all over VWs imploring you to do the same. Next came a random kindness website, a random kindness foundation, and—no surprise—a random kindness movement. But even with this overdose of random kindness (that no longer seemed that random), it always inspires me to hear stories about people who do something spontaneous, generous, and compassionate—without witnesses or acknowledgment.
One story I enjoyed was about a man who put extra coins in meters for cars parked near his own, especially those about to expire. I liked picturing people’s faces when they came out to their car and saw they’d been saved by a mysterious stranger. I bet he liked picturing that too. But what made it extra nice was he didn’t need to see them or be seen himself or thanked.
Sarah and I were talking on the phone about doing good things without talking about them and why that seems to be the higher way . . . but how some things you just have to tell. She then promptly told me one she had done, and we decided it was okay just telling me, as we often decide it’s okay just me telling her.
Then she said that over the weekend her teenage son, Dane, told her that he tries to do one random act of kindness each day.
“That’s cool,” Sarah said. “Like, what do you do?” “Mom, I can’t tell you. That would kind of negate it, you know?”
“Oh, yeah. But do you really do one a day?”
“I try to.”
“Like what?”
“Mom!”
Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.
—THE DALAI LAMA
FOR DAYS WHEN IT’S HARD
