“The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving, ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe…There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true…” – J.R.R.  Tolkien , ‘On Fairy Stories’

I was huffing and puffing my way through a whirlwind cleaning of the twins’ bedroom, not particularly pleased with the books and dirty socks and ballet bags on the floor—or their owners. Just when I was sure the purpose of my thirteen-year-old daughters’ existence was to make messes expressly for me, I stumbled across a spiral notebook, sitting open on Maggie’s nightstand. I dropped my armful of stuff and sat and read her words, apparently written late one night after we watched Pirates of the Caribbean. What a sweet way for God to pierce through my martyr-of-the-moment syndrome…

Dear Jesus,

I’ve figured it out! Thank the makers of Pirates of the Caribbean.

This life is a real action story about princesses and a Prince, sons and a Father—and the best part is,  it’s absolutely, 100 percent true. I’m living in a fairy tale, devoted to my True Love.

My name is Princess Margaret. My goal is to bring honor and fame to the One who rescued me. The King came to this faraway land with a purpose, which was to save the ones He loved, even if that meant He would be killed. The Rescuer would have still let those (whom He made) abandon Him on the island (which He created) if it could save their souls. He still would have done it if it were only me. That bring tears to my eyes at this very moment, knowing someone out there loves me that much. He is so humble and gracious.

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“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time—waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God—it changes me.” ~ Jack

Yesterday contained all the ingredients of a Jonah day: a marathon schedule bookended by meetings, with a doctor’s appointment stuck in the middle. Add a dash of an annoying bank error and a smidgeon of humiliation, and, voila: one big stress sandwich.

First was Sadie’s annual Individualized Educational Plan, where I’m told the goals set for her at school. I brought something baked and hoped for the best. Noticing a box of tissues in the center of the conference table, I thought about the moms who’ve told me they cry during IEPs. I guess things don’t always go smoothly.

But I’m always humbled by the team of teachers and therapists sitting around telling me what they do for Sadie, the ways they love her. Yesterday their faces shone with the fact that our girl is back after a year of being in a seizure-induced fog, isolated and alone and angry and scared. She is delighted and delightful and in our faces and full of funny things to say and do.

We talked about last year versus now, and I wondered how we made it through, how I didn’t walk around sobbing. I would search Sadie’s eyes for spark and find none. I would hit the steering wheel with my fists and talk “Do you remember when she could…” with The Spouse. I don’t want to go back there, but I know the other shoe could drop any minute.

I almost needed a tissue.

I got in my car and remembered to remember there was grace, and it doesn’t run dry.

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 Sadie, our eight-year-old autistic daughter, has taught me more than anyone about how I can do all things through Him.

Adventure Girl was avoiding the ocean, I was sad to see during the beginning of our Boggs-clan beach trip to St. George. Why was Sadie under the tent with the old ladies (including me) instead of trying to swim to Mexico? We’d tied a rope to her lifejacket, anticipating her usual zest for the water.

But here was a nervous Sadie, a quiet Sadie, like Tigger without his bounce. When, on day four, Sadie dipped in a tentative toe, I seized the chance and plopped down in the shallow waves, motioning for her to sit on my lap. All I had to do was seat my fanny in the wet sand, but it was no small thing, since my policy has always been to STAY OUT, way out , under-the-tent-with-the-old-ladies-out, away from anything that could possibly nibble or brush up against or bite.

When Sadie finally sat, it took my breath away. There was no turning back, and it seemed the only thing to do was start singing—hymn after hymn. Sadie smiled big when she heard His name.

She kept smiling for almost an hour, squishing her feet in the muck and splashing with her fingers and asking for more music. “Want to do again,” she would say, putting her hands on my face if I stopped. We eventually headed in for supper, shriveled like raisins but happy.

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 “Good things come, but they’re never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.” ~ Betsy

I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Back during spring break, I started fretting over the prospect of three whole months with no big yellow bus appearing at the end of the drive each morning.

“You’re the sort who worries you’re going to have a horrible time at the dance and then has a ball,” a friend told me.

I hoped she was right.

A funny thing happened on the way to summer this year. Luke flew his basement coop and got himself a job downtown. The Monday in April he was to drive off before dawn to write for the fizzy water folks became my new day of dread. How would I manage on my own? More precisely, what would I do with Sadie, our special needs bundle of joy?  I whined to friends. People at church prayed for me. I worried I’d grow to resent Luke’s absence so much I couldn’t stand his presence.

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Blood drips fast on bricks and I stare at bright red is disbelief. Whose blood is it, Sadie’s or mine? I check her all over, even inside her mouth—I think I remember grabbing her there as three adults tried to pry off raging child in the waiting area. No, it’s my hand—my watch pinched when Sadie and I scrambled.

Even though she sees lots of autistic kids, I’ll bet the doc has never done a psychiatric intake on the front stoop before, I think, sweat beading on my forehead. Sadie’s sobs ebb and she sits criss-cross in hot sun, basking. I breathe out and try not to cry in front of this stranger. Her eyes burn sympathy, though.

“This is so hard,” says the doctor, a mother also. “I’m so moved by her right now.”

Sunshine and lemonade and a wad of tissues later, we coax Sadie into the doctor’s air conditioned office. It is dark and cool with a couch and a shelf full of toys. Sadie’s not crying anymore, but her little leg is shaking nervously. The doctor notices. She looks into her eyes.

“She is so beautiful.” I know—that olive skin, those curls, those dark eyes framed by eyelashes enviable.

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Emma ran out onto the screened porch Wednesday night, green spiral poetry notebook in hand, to capture the oncoming weather with words. Dinner was ready, and then it was shower time and bed time, but she begged to be excused. Poetry earns a pardon around here.

An expection,

a whisper—

the air is tense.

Trees converse in nervous murmurings,

The white of heated iron

is in the wind and sky.

The heavens give a gusty sigh,

The earth rises up to meet it.

Trees seem to bend to the will

of an unearthly being.

Waves of the sea are in the land,

invisible yet.

A breath, a blow

scattered here and there.

The forests are found in contemplation,

wondering which of the green giants

will be the first to relinquish their glory.

Pine boughs are curving up

reaching skywards,

hoping for hope,

wishing for something to wish on

and dreaming of something—anything

to dream of,

For their fate seems decided.

Certain branches are stretching out,

unfurling their ravenous claws,

because these trees only live

for the blackened, sinister skies

of cruel, dark eyes

and innocent cries,

For a storm is coming—

tonight.

When I’m grown up and married I’m going to have two horses, a white one and a dappled grey, and three dogs and a garden with only pink flowers and maybe purple, and I’ll have three curly girls named Nora and Faye and Nellie and they’ll wear white, and I will too…

So go the ramblings of my thirteen-year-old daughters, the stuff of their dreams spilling out with the joy of beauty and the lives they hope to lead. Anyone who can remember thirteen knows this: they are dead serious.

I know I was. I was determined to live loveliness and poetry, and hang everyone else. What was this adult pragmatism, this worry over bills and mortgages and disease and all the rest? All that was spoken in Charlie Brown’s teacher-talk.

My girl-dreams were woven with books and old houses and walks in the woods and songs about love and magazine pictures and, I think, TV. There were the Bradys and then the Cosbys and Keatons with houses always tidy—all those kids didn’t even bring in backpacks from school and dump them on the floor. Their hair was forever brushed, and they were snappy dressers with no problems that 22 minutes couldn’t neatly solve.

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The Spouse has gone and gotten himself a fancy job downtown writing for the folks who make fizzy black water, leaving me at home to shoulder the load of kids and carpools and trips to the grocery store.

By three days in, we’d run out of milk and toilet paper.

Funny, because I’d prepared for this week like a Boy Scout, I thought. For some reason, in my mind, the Spouse’s drawers needed to be cleaned, his car, his closet. Off he went before dawn Monday, freshly brewed coffee in hand and crisply pressed handkerchief in his pocket.  

It wasn’t until the other night, when I was giving Sadie her bath, that I fully realized how upside down and topsy-turvy things had been around here before The Commute. There were days, too many of them, when I couldn’t tell if I was my husband’s helper—or he was mine.

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Young Emma’s saga continues with the second section of Chapter Two…

The elves in the offices below the Great Room of Treek’s Top were hearing a lengthy lecture about how important the Pascere’s helper was. It sounded very much like this, dear reader, and after a bit I will stop because I don’t want to bore you as Malcrux did to them.

“We all know how important it is to be the Pascere’s assistant, who would watch the children on Sundays at Chapel and would have to announce the choir coming in and who would have to do every little thing that the Pascere needs to get done for him because his assistant is a helper, a servant, a High Leader. He would be so important that he would get paid very much and be well respected. The Pascere’s assistant must be good at preparing things at the last second, following instructions— and he must be able to change diapers. He must be able to…”

And here I will stop because I am sure that was very tedious.

At the end of Malcrux’s speech, he went into a smaller room at the side and began to interview elves one by one to see who may be qualified to become the new Pascere’s assistant. Nobody came very close to his standards, and he became highly annoyed. Every interview started to look like this:

 An elf would come in through the door and stand politely by the entrance. Malcrux would hastily motion to a chair, but before the elf could even sit down he would be attacked with questions such as, “Are you a citizen of the Woody Glades?” and “Have you lived here all your life?” and “Are you good with children of all ages, even when they make crumbs and slobber on you?” The poor elf could hardly get a word out, because after only a short pause Malcrux seemed to grow impatient and he would say, “That will be enough from you—just exit over there.”

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We do it every year.

It’s always there, the unspoken expectation that this Christmas will be bigger and shinier and sweeter than the one before.

By the end of the Christmas Day, when the shreds of paper and ribbon are picked up off the floor and we can’t possibly eat another morsel, if the topics of politics and religion have been successfully dodged and no one got sick and everyone is feeling fat and happy, we might look at each other in triumph and breathe, We did it. We had the best Christmas ever. Again.

But every Christmas has its cares. Sometimes the pain is acute, and we feel cheated. Other years we find we can’t conjure up feelings of good will toward men, not when we’re in line at Wal-mart, at least. There’s always somebody or something missing, even if we can’t put our finger on it. What do you think about when the church lights are dimmed and you’re holding the little candle you’ve been issued and you’re trying not to get wax on your Christmas Eve finest as you sing ‘Silent Night’? Why the lump in the throat?

After my grandfather died one December, I shared a hymnal with my Nana during service and heard her voice crack with fresh grief. A few years later, when she was gone too, my sad ‘Silent Night’ was for her. Or was it? Maybe it was relief, in some strange way, to have a reason to be melancholy. I’m not talking about being moved by the symbol of the Light in the darkness. I’m talking poor me, a sense that all is not right with the world at a moment when it should at least seem to be.

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