Prayer, Kernels and Thinking About Geese

drawing by Harry Lewis

The first night I got back from Philly I went straight to the pool at the Y for a swim, a re-entry to my routine, something I needed after being away. Traveling and flying and lines and delays made me feel unfamiliar with myself, like I was just a body moving, and I needed to do something that made me feel like me. I never really knew this about myself until a few years ago, but I love swimming. I love moving under water, holding my breath and taking a breath, the water on my skin, the kick off the back wall, all of it. I also love the single wave I give to the lifeguard when I arrive and then again when I leave. We never speak but we know all we need to know about each other: he’s there for me and I’m there for him, everything reduced to the kernel. It makes me think of something I heard in an interview recently with a musician whose young son died a few years ago. The grief he felt at the time was all-consuming. He and his wife could not speak or leave the house for the first week, maybe even month. Finally, he decided he needed to get dressed and go out, so he went to pick up some food. On the walk there he dreaded having to talk to anyone. What if someone said I’m sorry --he lived in a small village and was well-known, everyone knew about his son’s death– what was he supposed to say? But he knew he needed to go out. When he got there, the woman at the register had his food for him. She told him how much it was and then handed him the bag and for a second, it was almost a little odd that she didn’t say anything. He had prepared to brace himself and he hadn’t even needed to. But then when she gave him his change, the woman, in a very simple way, squeezed his hand and held it for a moment. And that was it. A small gesture that got to the kernel.

Being in Philadelphia is always kind of strange but this time it was especially so. The grey, the heavy, the cold, the bleak. My mom was in the hospital, I no longer had a job, none of my kids would be there on Christmas day, and it was the end of the year, those last few weeks where no one knows what day or time it is. On top of that, there was no internet. There was no way to escape. You might think it would be the perfect time to be present and engaged, but in truth I felt disconnected along with the wifi.

Still, I plowed forward. In the mornings I took coffee to my mom in the hospital so she didn’t have to drink the (as she called it) lukewarm brown water. I’d pick it up along with some croissants at the farmer’s market, still early enough that only a few people were there, and I’d drive down the narrow winding road to the rehab hospital she was staying in, past the old stone wall and the flock of geese crossing the road. I’d have to stop for these guys, these big plump heavy creatures out in the bitter cold, and watch them sashay in front of my car, not a care or a worry or even a thought, but somehow possessed of the miraculous ability to fly as one in a V shape like the tip of an arrow high in the sky. I sat watching them, mesmerized. I’m not sure that I have ever eaten a goose but I have definitely been under pillows and blankets made of their feathers and I felt bad about it.

These are my thoughts, the kind I am allowing into my head. I’m wondering about geese. I’m not thinking about death, I’m not having deep conversations with my mom about her life, asking her all the unanswered questions I’ve ever had. I’m not even worrying about how I’m going to earn money or thinking about how much I miss my kids. I’m thinking about feathers and waddling and being outside 24/7 in the bitter cold. I park the car and carry the breakfast stuff in through the lot, through two sets of sliding glass doors, past people who barely look up at me, past the old lady with a doll in her lap facing the wall, past the deflating balloons in the hallway creeping out from someone’s room like curious ghosts, all the way to my mom’s room at the end.

“Twin Peaks vibes, ” I say.

“Is the coffee still hot?” she asks.

This is how we talk. This is our love language. We talk to ourselves in front of each other. Sometimes we talk over each other, or from different rooms wherever we are. It has been this way my whole life. It’s not the only way we communicate though, we have a direct love language too:

“This is my favorite time of day, when you’re here.” she says.

“Mine too,” I say.

I sit in the chair next to her bed and we look out the big window. My grandparents used to live right down the road, they lived there for over 50 years, and my mom says she feels their presence.

“Maybe they’re checking in,” I say.

“I think they are,” she says.

My grandfather died mid-sentence at the lunch table and my grandmother died in her sleep. I look out the window at the snowy field and grey skies and pray we all go the same way, though I don’t say it out loud.

I have been stuck in the last week of December for the past three weeks. I’m here in LA now but heading back to Philly next Tuesday. I feel like I’m both looking for routine and hoping for something unexpected and miraculous. I’ve been thinking about praying a lot, especially about the kinds of prayers that don’t have words or thoughts. These are the kind I love, ones that are expressed through something physical or sensory; invocations or devotions that lead to a rapport with the great mysterious whatever. On the day my mom is allowed to go back home I help her put her sneakers on. Kneeling in front of her, holding her foot and trying to put it into the shoe reminds me of doing the same thing for my kids when they were little, and then of her once doing the same for me. And something about it, even the frustrating level of difficulty that causes us both to laugh, feels sacred. These are the kinds of thoughts I have in my head right now. Hallowed be thy name, forever and ever, amen.