Homemaking

When I first bought my little condo, I had a five month old baby and big plans. Friends helped me paint before I moved in. I was so happy to have a place of my own, and I painted other rooms, took down wallpaper, and furnished it almost entirely from thrift stores. Baby number two came along, but I still had an interest in keeping up with things. I loved entertaining and one of my favorite events of the year was our annual St. Clare's celebration in honor of Claire's name saint.

As Elizabeth's mental illness became more obvious and more acute, there was less time and energy to devote to homemaking. Still, friends helped me paint and lay new flooring. One summer, I sent the girls to my parents, and an amazing number of friends participated in doing a room makeover for them. Someone sewed pillows, someone else made a valance, people painted walls and ceilings, and several helped with new flooring. There was new art and new bunkbeds, with new comforters and sheets. When I'd put Claire to bed at night, she'd look around and ask me to remind her who did what. It was community at its best, and their room was a happy and safe place, at least for a bit.

But a home doesn't remain happy and safe when a family member has mental illness, especially one that causes such violence. It's one of the most isolating things about mental illness. The toll it takes on family members is mirrored by the toll it takes on the house, and I stopped inviting people over out of embarrassment and shame. Elizabeth threw furniture and ripped doors out of their frames. Anything could become a weapon and often was. During her rages she pulled books off the shelves, emptied boxes of papers, threw plants, and pushed over bookshelves. I gave up having houseplants, always a source of enjoyment for me. When the water heater started leaking, I had neither time nor money to deal with it and so I ignored it. A rug covered the buckling and peeling laminate. The broken house seemed to be a fitting metaphor for our broken family.

It's been a good year. Elizabeth has spent the last sixteen months stable and productive. It's been a long time since we've had an entire year with no hospitalizations and no police calls. She lives in an alternative family living home, with a kind couple and two other developmentally disabled children, but she comes home almost every weekend. Elizabeth does well in school, so well that school staff look puzzled when I talk about her past difficulties. She turned 18 this year and I've applied for guardianship so I can manage her finances, talk to her doctors, and help keep this vulnerable young woman safe. We go before the clerk of court next week.

Claire is doing well. She is getting married in March and her fiancé meets with my unqualified approval. She continues to teach at JRA. I enjoy the many facets that our relationship holds, and I love that she lives just down the street.

This has been a good year for me too, one in which I've been able to address and correct many of my own health issues. I've resumed walking and light weight-lifting. I've improved my diet and cut out the sugar. I feel the best I've felt in years.

I'm not sure it's a politically correct thing to say, but I like the empty nest. As much as I love my girls, I love that they have their own lives that make them happy. I love that my house is once again my own. This year I decided to make my house a more accurate metaphor for my calmer life. I started by hiring a handyman to rip out and replace the damaged flooring in the hall. He and his sons began working as I read in the kitchen. I couldn't understand the words, but I began to sense that there was a problem. Finally the one who spoke the best English came apologetically to explain. The problem wasn't just with the flooring. It was with the supporting beams. In the words of a friend, it was house cancer.

He covered it up with plywood and left, refusing to charge me for anything but the wood. I talked to the contractor who does our work at school and he fit me into his schedule, replacing the rotted beams. He charged me far less than the market rate, but it still was expensive and there was nothing left for the flooring. But I no longer worry about falling through the hall floor, and he repaired the guest bathroom plumbing while he was there.

2017's big project will be a new heat pump. The floor will need to wait a bit longer. In the meantime I'm working on smaller projects. The school contractor has made me a great offer to tile the guest bathroom floor. I have items to repair: a lamp, a drawer, the washer, some furniture. I'm going to paint all the rooms. And I've attacked the clutter with a vengeance. So far this week alone I've taken three loads to the thrift store and gone through a whole box of trash bags. There is NOTHING under my bed, except a cat exploring this unfamiliar territory. And I'm slowly bringing the houseplants back.

It's a source of joy, this reclaiming of my life and my house, all the better because it's so unexpected. I thought my life would always reflect the chaos of mental illness, and the peace of healthy children and a calm home is such a gift. I don't mind that the house reclaiming is a slow process; I enjoy the puttering and planning. I hope 2017 will be the year I allow people to visit my home, at least the ones who don't mind a plywood floor. It feels safe and happy here once again.

Triduum

Maundy Thursday: The first service of the Triduum begins. As always, we begin in the remembered light of Palm Sunday, proceed to washing feet, continue in darkness as the altar is stripped, and end in silence. As a three year old, Claire dissolved into tears as the service ended: "Why is our church so sad!?" It's a service that invites introspection tinged by grief and it does again tonight.

Tonight I sit by myself, my children absent, which makes it a little more melancholy. Many of those I raised babies with are similarly alone or with spouses only. My friend Leslie, also without her kids tonight, washes my feet and I hers; she hauls me up from where I kneel because it's harder now I'm older. I feel no shame about this in front of her, as she's seen me at my worst and this is hardly it. We have logged many years together; she was one of the first people who greeted me when I visited Holy Family for the first time in 1989. She was the first one I showed my positive pregnancy test to. She called me when I was in labor, asking, "Have you not had that baby YET?!" I was a witness when she was married in front of the justice of the peace. I went to her mother's funeral. She's hosted birthday parties for me and is Claire's godmother. I have no doubt there will come a time when we compare adult diaper brands. This friendship is repeated many times, mine and others, as I look around the nave.

Tonight, as the altar is stripped, we sing the Taizé hymn "Stay with me," a meditation on Jesus's plea for the disciples to keep him company during that dark night. They failed miserably. I must say that we do better than they did. I look around the room and realize how many people there stayed with me through the years of Elizabeth's mental illness, how many of us stayed with Ed's family as he died and after, how many divorces, deaths, remarriages, kids' drug problems, spouses' and kids' illnesses, job losses, and moments of despair are represented in that room. Our friends and former parishioners Laura and Thomas and their kids came from Miami to be with us for Holy Week, still reeling from Thomas's recent cancer diagnosis, all of us knowing this is where they need to be. Staying is the ultimate act of love when things are hard.

As the service ended, the young woman in front of me fainted. It was hot and she hadn't eaten much. The nearest medical professional came and attended. I stayed because she is my friend's daughter and because I have known and loved her from birth. As I looked around the nave, I realized most people had stayed to make sure she was okay, even those who did not know her. That's what we do.

Good Friday: I was working so I could not go to the noonday service, but that evening, Lisa and Jim host a party for Laura and Thomas. Yes, it's Good Friday and there is some concern about the impropriety of a party on that solemn day. I am surprised at my lack of consternation as I tend towards the pietistical in my celebration of liturgical seasons. Part of my rigidity comes from working with the children at church for so many years; when teaching young ones, all you have is symbol and so we DID NOT sing Christmas carols during Advent and we DID NOT have Easter egg hunts during Lent and Good Friday IS a solemn and fasting day. But in examining this feeling, I have a clear vision of Jesus turning the water into wine (and scotch and Fullsteam beer, because Jesus doesn't truck with the bad stuff) and commanding us to love this family with every ounce of our being. And so we do and it turns out to be my most theologically meaningful Good Friday ever.

Such a party! Small children running through groups of adults, screeching in excitement, whacking each other with badminton rackets, trying to help themselves to the keg, playing with dry ice and glow sticks, muddy, wet messes, giddy with the joy of being together. There were so many years it was my children at that house doing those same things, but now I get to look on indulgently, although I do redirect the four year old from the keg to the lemonade. Fish tacos and vats of guacamole, homemade salsa, ice cream sundaes with the Rays' special caramel sauce. At the end of the night we pen messages of love and hope for Thomas and send them into the air on mini-hot air balloons. We gather for a picture that he can take back to Miami with him, a sacramental reminder that we will stay with you.

As the evening progresses, Thomas and his friend pull out instruments and the singing begins. At first it's just them, but others join them and, after a glass of scotch, I do as well. We sing as if Thomas's life depends on it, and maybe it does. I found myself wondering how cancer could stand a chance in the face of such music and such love. And the truth is, it doesn't. We all die, and sometimes we die earlier or more tragically than we hoped for. But on this night, this Good Friday, we stand here flinging joy and love like weapons at death, knowing we'll ultimately win. Thomas is His and ours, and death cannot take him from us, even though he may die sooner than we'd like.

Easter Vigil: Tonight I have both of my girls and because none of her little kids are there, Elizabeth actually sits with me. Five years ago I sat in this same pew at this same service and cried much of the night; she sat in a hospital psych unit and there was no hope. None. It got to where there was just no point in it. But life is funny and surprising even in its predicability; spring does come. It finally stops raining. People are healed. There is resurrection, not just in the empty tomb sense, but in things made new and transformation and grace that pushes its way in when it's least expected. Elizabeth and Claire decide to get dressed for church together tonight, and Claire helps Elizabeth apply makeup. They text me pictures to see if I approve. That would be a small thing for most families but that few moments of sibling time together along with the fact that we are spending five days as a family without calling the police is a miracle. Resurrection, y'all!

Tonight we begin in the dark with candles and the readings of salvation history, singing a song paired with the reading after each. After the first, particularly lovely song, a small child shouts, "Yay!" We chuckle in approval, feeling the joy trickling back in, there in the dark, not even able to wait for the Easter shout. We baptize the small shouter; we confirm several others. We shake our keys and hug one another. It's so familiar and as always, so new.

From light to dark and back out to light again because that's the way life is. These three days offer me both solace and strength, allow myself fortification for whatever lies ahead, knowing whatever comes, these people will stay with me, believing in resurrection along with me.

Presence, joy, resurrection. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia! Alleluia!