Sometimes It's the Little Things

Sometimes it's the little things that get to me.  Everyday things that you wouldn't think would mean anything, that you would pass by without a second glance, that knock the wind out of me and bring me to my knees.

Today it was my dad's shoe brush.  An old, wooden handled, well-worn, hog bristle brush that I can't get rid of.

I took it when we cleaned out his house after he died.  It lived in a red wooly mitt along with a well-worn and deeply stained toothbrush, strips of old tee shirts, and various shades of black, brown, and ox blood shoe polish.  Ox blood.  I always found that curiously morbid and pictured bowls of blood being reduced into shoe polish and deposited in metal cans and ending up on the end of that toothbrush as my dad slathered it on his shoes of an evening.  That wooly red bag of shoe care sat in the floor of the right side of my dad's closet.  Sat there for as long as I remember, coming out once in awhile when my dad polished his wing tips.

I was always excited when Dad would get out his shoe kit.  I loved watching him polish his shoes.  He'd twist the top of the Kiwi can so that the lid popped off and then he'd take that toothbrush and swirl it around in the polish.  The toothbrush allowed him to get in every nook and cranny of the shoes where he would clean off the dirt and scuffs.  Then he would set the shoes on a newspaper on the hearth to rest for a bit before he got out the brush.

Once the polish had had a chance to soak in, Dad would put his hand up in the shoe, with the palm of his hand against the inside bottom of the shoe and begin brushing.  SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh.  I can hear the brush as it went back and forth against the leather.  SWOOSH, swoosh.  Back and forth until Dad was satisfied the shoes had been brushed clean.  Then he would take a strip of old tee shirt and polish the shoes to a high gloss.  Usually he'd let me put my hand inside the mitt, which he rarely used, and "help."  I was always disappointed that the inside of that polyester wool wasn't soft at all, but I loved to smooth around the curves of Dad's shoes and watch them glow.

By the time my dad had moved three years ago, it had been a long time since he had polished his shoes.  It had been a long time since he had worn wing tips with any regularity.  He was mostly a tennis shoe guy by then.  Same pair in various stages of wear sat in his closet and on the floor of the garage, but the wing tips had fallen dusty under the bed, and he rarely got them out anymore.

Still, we packed the polishing kit and moved it with him, and put it on the floor of his new closet, where it sat, unused, until he died.  Then when we were packing up, I took the brush.  The red wool bag was in a terrible state of disrepair, and the toothbrush was falling apart.  The cans of polish had long since dried up, but the brush was still in tact, a rich patina on the handle from so many polishes.  I put it in my utility closet where it sat until today, when I saw it again, and traveled back 40 years in time to my family room floor.

SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh...

The World Is Too Much With Us

I don't remember bad things happening to people when I was a kid.  Did they still, and I just didn't know it?  I don't think my parents sheltered me from much, or maybe it didn't register, but I just don't remember the tragedies that have occurred within my children's circles of life.

When I was a kid, I didn't really know anybody who died young.  I only personally knew one man who died of cancer, and he was old and unmarried and lived with his mother.  All my friends still had their grandparents mostly, and if they didn't the grandparents had died long ago, and the ones they did have were still pretty young and hung around throughout our formative years.  My best friend's dad had died when she was four, two years before I met her in first grade, so he was just this person who was.  I don't even think I ever saw a picture of him.  Another classmate lost his dad when we were in second grade.  My mom took me to the funeral mass, and I felt very small.  Several months later when we were in third grade, and I remember it like it was yesterday, the boy turned around when we were in line waiting for lunch, and said, "Thank you for coming to my dad's funeral."  I wondered how long he had wanted to say that.

But nothing, nothing happened to me like what my children have experienced.  Is life just more now?

Our tragedies started with the death of my mom from cancer when my kids were 9, 6, and 3.  She had had her first surgery for cancer (whose mom had cancer in our day?) when my son was born.  She lived well with it until the last couple of years when it "woke up" and made her life miserable.  When she died that sunny September Saturday, it began a sequence of sad events that have tagged along behind us like a pesky dog that won't go away.

My middle child, Claire, was introduced to loss three times during her first grade year.  First with my mom, then with her teacher, who she loved, who died suddenly of an asthma attack that February.  Then over Spring Break that year, one of the sweet little girls in her class and on her soccer team died from the flu after going in for surgery for recurring cancer (and what kid did you ever know who had cancer?).

Claire was clingy and sad and a Mama's girl for a long time after that, when she realized that death is real.  That it can claim you if you are sick or healthy or young or old.  It didn't matter.  Nobody was safe, and that was hard for her to get her mind around.

A year or so later, my husband's 37 year old sister, our kids' sweet Aunt Krissy, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.  She had surgery and despite all of the doctors' best efforts, Krissy died two years later.  We made the best of the time we had with her, going to visit, spending time at their cabin, going on a dream trip to Disney World, but she still died, leaving two children my kids' ages behind, once again, reinforcing that death can call at will.

In 2008, my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's Syndrome and began his slow decline.  My children watched him loose his independence, his house, his ability to drive, his will to live.

The week before he died, my son, then 15, was on a mission trip in Appalachia and watched a healthy, athletic 17-year-old boy drown in front of his eyes, never dreaming that what he was seeing was actually happening.  By the time he realized that the boy was not coming back up, it was too late, and he was gone, my son wracked with guilt that he watched somebody die and couldn't do anything to help.

Three days later, my dad ended up in the emergency room in respiratory distress after aspirating intestinal fluid that had backed up in his stomach, causing him to vomit uncontrollably.  Five days later, he died.

Two of my daughters' friends have inoperable brain tumors.  We know two sets of parents who have lost 20 year old daughters in car accidents within the past year.  My children have witnessed at various ages and stages of understanding:  hijacked planes fly into buildings, destroying our collective sense of security; multiple mass shootings in schools, movie theaters, and shopping malls; major earthquakes; a tsunami; hurricanes; tornadoes; war.

And it's all there, all the time, always.  Amplified in 24-hour news cycles and Facebook and texts and emails sent to our iPhones that we keep on so that we never miss a thing.

The world is too much with us.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

                                        ---William Wordsworth