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in an instant

9 Comments

Sitting at my desk, working on words of loss, I watch a thousand cottonwood seeds drift by the window. White wisps rising on the breeze, lifted from my sight. Summer’s snow globe, shaken and set to spin.

I remember noticing them, as if for the first time, the summer after our twins died. One afternoon the blue sky was filled with a million floating puffs, light and airy. As I stumbled staring up at them, circling, I could see, startling: it’s like every small soul who’s leaving this side of life and rushing to whatever comes next. Right before my eyes.

Suddenly I could see. The flash of an instant when the tiny and the cosmic connect.

They weren’t nothing, these babies we lost, so many of us, millions. They weren’t just seeds either, mere possibility and potential.

They were life, they were hope, they were real, they were all around us, they were too many to count.

We wanted them to stay, but they floated just beyond our reach, and every time we grasped after them, the breeze lifted them higher.

Each year in these blooming summer weeks when the cottonwoods flood the air and trees and yards with soft blowing seeds, I remember: it’s happening again today, everywhere and always. The loss, the grief, the lifting of another soul to heaven, the letting go of a life.

People ask me to pray for them, their babies, their friends, their family, their miscarriage, their stillbirth, their loss. All I can do is hold these stories, bless them for an instant, and send them back.

Prayer can feel like a thousand puffs of air. But some days it bursts through like perfect sense: seeing the truth of each soul, clear as day, surrounding them with love, whether here or gone.

Grief changes our vision, permanently. Now I notice the small, the least, the forgotten, the overlooked.

On the dark days when I want to hurl it all back—the insight or growth or perspective or wisdom, any of the consolation prizes that fail next to flesh-and-blood—I remember. I could not see like this if I had not lost like that.

And if paying attention is the beginning of prayer, if love means seeing each other, if healing starts with opened eyes, if we are called to come and see—can I dismiss even this? A thousand million trillion rushing hoping sparks of light reminding me that life is fleeting, fast, fragile but real, so real?

Look up. Look down. Look all around.

Whatever we call heaven is the other side of here. I can almost hear it breathe. Whatever we call hope is rising right before our eyes.

. . .

Why not dust off the ol’ blog in honor of two months sans posts? Also: in my ongoing wrestling match with social media, I started wondering why I share all my thoughts on Instagram these days & not on my own site?

Bloggers are always bemoaning the death of the blog, but the ones to bring it back would be…us.

Call it a summer experiment. Call it flash non-fiction. Call it a reward for the social media hold-outs. Whatever you call it, I’m glad you’re here.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sara says

    16 July 2019 at 8:39 am

    I’m here! And agree with you 100%. Thanks for continuing to share your hard earned, beautiful wisdom with us.

    Reply
  2. Val says

    16 July 2019 at 9:21 am

    I don’t have time to f o Instagram (though I’m a writer, photographer, and fiercely creative: I’d bw good at it). I also am nomadic without proper work space or any computer beyond my phone right now after my tablet inexplicably died a wek ago. I get it. I have three blogs (I’m St. Val the Eccentric and St. Val the Urban Monastic on WP), and all I want to do is write. But life lived moving every three hours with thoughts as elusuve amd mysterious as cottonwood fluff (even to me, they don’t ever stop to take up residence in my brain very often) keep me from writing. Write on, we’re reading. xxxxx

    Reply
  3. Kay Rindal says

    16 July 2019 at 9:56 am

    Thank you for writing here again. I don’t do Instagram, but I love reading you. I was just telling two friends about you yesterday , so I’m forwarding this to them. Peace, Laura — and I hope you continue writing here. Kay Rindal

    Reply
  4. Mamie says

    16 July 2019 at 10:12 am

    Yay! I’m not on social media, and I get really excited when I receive an email notification that your blog is active 🙂 thank you!!!

    Reply
  5. Vern says

    16 July 2019 at 11:10 am

    It’s good to have you back. Your writing is always an inspiration for me to go deeper and be a part of a “deeper society” (a little of David Brooks, “The Second Mountain: the Quest for a Moral Life.”

    Reply
  6. Laura Pearl says

    16 July 2019 at 6:57 pm

    Beautiful post!

    I have been thinking a lot lately about how much more I enjoyed blogging and blog reading than I do Instagram posting and scrolling. I feel like blogs have gone the way of the dinosaurs—but there’s one way to bring them back! We have to just do it!

    Reply
  7. Jenni Ho-Huan says

    16 July 2019 at 8:40 pm

    I have stayed on blog (and like you, it sometimes gets dusty). IG seems great fun but the temptation to ‘show up’ is too great. I totally love this post. Your posts often causes me to pause and pray (for you too, after I met you and found you are a smallish person like myself, a strange comfort I know)… and sometimes to share the wonderful turns of phrases which carry such a wallop of wisdom. Thank you Laura!

    Reply
  8. Amanda says

    16 July 2019 at 9:06 pm

    What a beautiful post! Sorry for your losses.

    Reply
  9. Virginia says

    16 July 2019 at 9:48 pm

    Thank you for your writings. They are truly a gift.

    Reply

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About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

Mother, writer, wonderer.
Seeker of God in chaos & life with kids.
Author of Everyday Sacrament & Grieving Together.
Glimpses of grace & gratitude.

thismessygrace
Woke up tired of tears, ready to move, Psalms in m Woke up tired of tears, ready to move, Psalms in mind. Who’s with me?
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving h I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be,
for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen,
the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve.
And I am not resigned.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge Without Music.”

Margaret Susan Fanucci,
2-27-16 - 2-28-16.
Abigail Kathleen Fanucci,
2-27-16 - 2-29-16.

Thank you for walking these days with me. For your love, your kindness, and your generosity.

We will never forget them.
Now you'd be three, I said to myself, seeing a chi Now you'd be three,
I said to myself,
seeing a child born
the same summer as you.

Now you'd be six,
or seven, or ten.
I watched you grow
in foreign bodies.

Leaping into a pool, all laughter,
or frowning over a keyboard,
but mostly just standing,
taller each time.

How splendid your most
mundane action seemed
in these joyful proxies.
I often held back tears.

From "Majority" by Dana Gioia, a poet-father who knows.

2.27.2016.
Always a birthday.
Even when not happy.
I am standing in a fluorescent-lit gym, dingy mesh I am standing in a fluorescent-lit gym, dingy mesh tank top hanging off my scrawny shoulders. I am eleven years old, listening to a grey-haired coach with a whistle round his neck.

"Here is how you pivot," he says, grabbing the ball & crouching down. "Plant your foot, solid like a rock. Don't ever move it."

I am trying to learn, because basketball is cool & I am not. I desperately want to be good at shooting, scoring, stealing, anything. But he is teaching me something I will not forget.

“The power of pivoting is you can turn any way you want. You can move where you need to go. You just have to keep this foot planted."

Today I pivot.

One day between birthdays. 24 slim hours to turn from joy to grief.

Yesterday the bouncing babe turned a whole year old. He has seen all sides of the sun by now. He gets to keep going: an ordinary miracle.

Tomorrow his sisters would have turned 5. A ghost of a birthday, shared by twins, lost to us, held & gone all at once.

All I can do is pivot.

Here is my foot planted firmly in the ground of now. I can turn in any direction I want: from joy to sorrow & back again. This is the only power I have, but it is enough for today.

I will wobble. I will feel the frantic rise in my throat of attack coming at me, blocking my view, trying to steal what I hold. For a few desperate moments I will want to pick up both feet & run far away, run fast as I can from what I never wanted.

But my pivot foot is stronger & steadier. It will stay where I have asked it to stay, from when I learned deeper truth.

Pivoting is still movement, still freedom, still control over a small corner of here. You are the one who decides to stop & plant your foot.

And the pivot is not forever. It is part of a move, not the end point. It is an interim, a passage, a survival strategy.

Part of me is forever awkward & eleven, scrawny & uncertain. But more of me is almost-forty, scarred & stronger. Knowing I can stop when I need to stop & go when I want to go, even in a full court press out of my control.

Today I pivot. I never want to forget the strength here too, the potential to turn between all that comes at me. The power of knowing this is not the end.
One day I’ll tell him the story. How after days One day I’ll tell him the story.

How after days of long labor, sick & scary, heaps of drugs to save both our lives, I stared bleary-eyed at the hospital clock: ten to two, clear as night, & made a decision.

How with no midwives in the room—unknown OBs now, nurses we didn’t know, no familiar face among them—and the clock ticking, I had to do what all those strong women I trusted had taught me to do.

How I decided to midwife my own birth.

How with no strength left, I struggled up through fog & pain, fumbled for my phone, scrolled through the dark until I found the song, & turned it up to rise above the beeping & the monitors & the awful alone sounds of awake at 1:50 am in the hospital.

How I closed my eyes & waited for the beat to come & prayed for the strength. To be my own midwife.

Drop beat. Beat drop. Pause.

The battle of Yorktown. 1781.

I cranked one weary smile. Closed my eyes as the song picked up. Turned my clumsy body to the left side to bring on a contraction.

Gotta meet my son.

Breathed through the pain. Timed it. Heaved to the right side to bring on another wave.

The world turned upside down.

Smiled when the night nurse came to check, surprised. Feigned shock when she raised her eyes that things were changing.

How as soon as she left the room, I glared at the clock, hit repeat, turned to one side, then another, kept contractions coming & coming, coaching my body hour after hour to do what I knew it could do.

History will show that this child was born from pitocin for induction & magnesium sulfate for preeclampsia & a failed epidural or two & eight shots of epinephrine when maternal blood pressure tanked.

But I will know that he was born from sheer grit & the strength of every midwife I’ve loved & the back beat of Hamilton at 1:50 am in a lonely hospital room.

The world turned upside down, then 100 more times in the tumultuous first year of his life.

But I did what I had to do & what I could do & I did it all for love of him. That day & every one that followed.

That is a story worth telling.

His birth. (Mine, too.)

2.25.20
A story and a word of thanks. You are amazing huma A story and a word of thanks. You are amazing humans.
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