How to Be a Safe Space for Our Own Children and Others

In 2023 the CDC released this report, which pertains to data that has since been removed from the CDC’s website, because it referred to what the Trump administration calls “harmful” “gender ideologies.” But here’s the meat of the report. The first statistics are referring to teen girls:

• Nearly 1 in 3 (30%) seriously considered attempting suicide—up nearly 60% from a decade ago.

• 1 in 5 (18%) experienced sexual violence in the past year—up 20% since 2017, when CDC started monitoring this measure.

• More than 1 in 10 (14%) had ever been forced to have sex—up 27% since 2019 and the first increase since CDC began monitoring this measure.

The report also found more than half (52%) of LGBQ+ students had recently experienced poor mental health and, concerningly, that more than 1 in 5 (22%) attempted suicide in the past year. Trend data are not available for students who identify as LGBQ+ due to changes in survey methods.

Findings by race and ethnicity also show high and worsening levels of persistent sadness or hopelessness across all racial and ethnic groups; and that reported suicide attempts increased among Black youth and White youth.

***

Let that sink in. What did you think? What did you feel? I am in tears.

My tears are not because I’m a parent of two beautiful newly-fledged children whose safety I fear for every day. They’re not because I’m a woman who knows from personal experience as well as any woman does that the increasing rate of sexual violence still only begins to touch the true horror of our lives as objects. My tears are not even because one of my children is female, and now attends frat parties. My tears are because this damned report says ‘LGBQ+’. My tears are because there is no T.

My tears are because, among the many children I’ve taught and known and loved over the years are a couple handfuls of trans kids, whose stories and hearts and lives matter. Because the rate of depression, suicide, and violence that looks alarming in this CDC report is much higher for trans kids than for anybody else, and it’s not documented, here. My tears are for Marlin, my beautiful trans cousin who struggled with extreme depression and finally killed himself just after Trump was elected, the first time.

And my tears are pointless. Just like hopes and prayers are pointless. All the billions of tears shed for the children we’ve lost will not save all the children we have yet to lose. Our tears are pointless. We have to act.

And what if we don’t know any trans kids? What if our kids are straight, cisgender*, white, wealthy and male? Why should we care? We should care because, in a world where it’s OK to erase people for being trans, it is also OK to erase people for being gay, disabled, non-white, female, or poor. And eventually to erase anyone, for looking different in any small way; for making a mistake or getting sick. And even if our kids are among the privileged few, that world is not a safe place to be. A safe world values everyone. Even the rich. Even trans kids. And besides, we don’t actually know how our kids identify, especially if we haven’t built a world where they feel safe enough to tell us. So what can we do to build this safe world?

My first act after the gut-kick of seeing trans children erased is to write this article. And I will never, ever shut up. I will write more and open my mouth more, and speak up against every ignorant human who tries to tell me they’re saving the children by persecuting trans kids (yeah this isn’t my first walk around the block, in this regard). I will keep wearing the ally pin my kids gave me a couple of years ago, not only because I’m so very proud that they see who I am, but mostly because I know that some frightened child might see the rainbow on my lapel and know that I care; that I will stick up for them, even when they don’t know about it. I wish I had known what Marlin was going through before he died. I wish I’d been able to help him. I wish millions of us had built a safe world for him to grow into, long before he changed his pronouns.

I’ve been asking myself since I was a teenager how I can support LGBTQ+ people in my community. Ever since a boy my age followed my friend and me home, nagging us—either of us—to date him. So I told him we were gay. It was a lie, and half-joking (I had NO idea at that point the severity of what LGBTQ+ people were experiencing.) I thought I could throw him off by making us unavailable to him. His response was, “well that’s a waste of two beautiful girls!” It stuck with me forever. I still think about it. The fact that we were unavailable to men made us a waste. Worthless. That response lit a fire under my butt that has never been extinguished.

It turned out my friend actually was gay, as was my other best friend at the time. And as the years went on, I discovered that more and more of the people I loved were treading the terrifying social swamp of being unavailable to straight cis white men. At around the same time, I found a porno magazine (in the possession of ten-year-old boys) with a photo-rich article about a man converting a lesbian by raping her. That lit another fire. Literally. I stole the magazine and burned it.

And then I had kids. And I had to protect them from the harms leering at them from every corner. And as the number of trans kids we knew grew and grew, and as my own kids educated me about gender and inclusivity, the fire under my butt grew and grew, too. And then we lost Marlin. And now he and every other trans kid I know has been erased. Now the fire is so big I’m a damned rocket. And what are you?

How are you going to protect your kids? How will you make sure they know that if they come home with a new girlfriend or boyfriend or non-binary partner you’ll be delighted, enthusiastic and welcoming? What about if they come home with a new name or pronouns? Will you learn what they know, and follow? Will you stand up for their rights when they decide to start hormone therapy? Will you wear the trans flag when you take them to the doctor?

We adults often think we’ve learned all the stuff. We think it’s up to us to teach the children, but it’s the other way around. We need them to show us how to use our phones, and we need them to teach us about gender and sexuality. Because they know. Yeah. Sexuality. Let go of your pearls. Our kids knew before we taught them the word ‘vagina’. Some of them were raped before that. We need them to teach us what they know, and we need to be open to hearing it. We also need to admit when we’re wrong.

A bunch of years ago, I was walking home with my young teenage daughter, and announced that I was so proud she was non-binary. I was also proud of myself for having recently learned this word.

“Um...” she faltered. “I’m not sure you know what that word means.”

I swallowed. “I thought it means you don’t see or stereotype people for their genders. Like it’s not all black and white. I’m proud that you see the diversity of people.”

“No Mama.” She corrected me gently. “It means you don’t subscribe to gender binary.”

“Right? That’s sort of what I said, right?”

“No, like personally you don’t subscribe. For your identity. If I was non-binary, I wouldn’t consider myself male or female. I would probably use the pronouns they/them.” She walked on beside me like what she was explaining was just part of everyday knowledge, and I guess to her, it was. “I’m definitely female,” she said. “And Tali is definitely male. Even Marlin was definitely male. But if someone is non-binary they wouldn’t be either one. They’d be non-binary.”

At the mention of Marlin, the conversation became a lot less jovial. I was sorry I hadn’t understood, and I felt very small. Sad. Like suddenly maybe my misunderstanding presented a hazard to my daughter’s safety, even though she is cis. What else did I not understand? But she was forgiving, and understanding of my mistake. “Sorry, Mama,” she said.

“It’s OK.” I swallowed my shame and carried on. “So do you have any non-binary friends?” Out of respect for her friends’ privacy, she couldn’t tell me. And I was proud of that, too.

I’ve learned a lot. It turns out non-binary people can also identify as male or female. The gender umbrella is diverse!! And it’s OK to be confused. It’s a great place from which to build curiosity. My kids moved out a few years ago now, and are still my greatest teachers in many ways, especially where culture, inclusivity, and love are concerned.

graphic used and adapted with permission from Gayta Science

Love. Yes, there has to be a fire under our butt. And it has to be fuelled by love. Where the rise of fascism is tearing at the already-shredded fabric of our diverse society, we have to wipe away our tears and start building, with love.

How do we build a safe and inclusive society? We have to swallow our fear and pride and shame and speak up at every opportunity, to wear the colours that show we’re safe adults, to teach other adults what our children teach us, and mostly we have to listen with open arms and open hearts, because many of our children are light-years ahead of us in doing this work. The answer is openness and curiosity.

What I think this all comes down to is that as people with a certain amount of privilege, and sometimes very little understanding of the LGBTQ+ world, we cis parents can still be part of the solution. We can look at the children we love with curiosity and respect. We can amplify their voices and knowledge and build the world they envision. And we can see and support the many safe spaces that empowered LGBTQ+ people are building, already. Because they are powerful. We are powerful. And when our power comes from love, we are all empowered, together.

My cousin Starry, Marlin’s mother, has been a guiding light for me, in my efforts to expand my mind, following the loss of Marlin. When he died, most of us in the family didn’t even know he was ‘he’, or calling himself Marlin. We hadn’t built the kind of safe space in our relationship that he needed to be himself, with us. It was Starry who informed me who he was, despite her pain. Starry, as you might imagine, suffered deeply with the loss of her child. And as the years have gone by, she not only received support in her loss from trans youth, but has also intentionally made herself and her presence a safe space for LGBTQ+ people. She continuously educates herself, and has three trans “foster daughters”, now. Loving others doesn’t only help those we love, it helps us too. Love is always the answer.

So let’s go. It’s Pride season, but it should always be Pride season. Let’s stoke our fires and make sure we’re building and supporting safe spaces, with love.

***

My own children, as well as Marlin’s surviving family members gave their consent to my mentioning of them, in this article. Consent-seeking is part of building safe spaces. I’m grateful for advice and feedback on the article from my own children, and Starry’s friends. Listening and hearing others’ opinions is part of building safe spaces.

 

Definitions, Links

*The word cisgender (often shortened to cis; sometimes cissexual) describes a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth, i.e., someone who is not transgender. (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender)

A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender)

Non-binary or genderqueer gender identities are those that are outside the male/female gender binary. Non-binary identities often fall under the transgender umbrella since non-binary people typically identify with a gender that is different from the sex assigned to them at birth, although some non-binary people do not consider themselves transgender. (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary) AKA: gender non-conforming.

CDC Report: U.S. Teen Girls Experiencing Increased Sadness and Violence https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0213-yrbs.html

How to Be an Ally: https://queerintheworld.com/best-lgbt-ally/

Fascist Ideology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_and_ideology

The Safe Zone: An incredibly informative site, which also offers resources and training for allyship. https://thesafezoneproject.com

TransWhat? A very informative site created by trans teen, Adam, which I highly recommend for further reading! https://transwhat.org/

Gayta Science: Using data science to visualize and promote understanding of LGBTQ+ issues. https://www.gaytascience.com/

Shifting Focus

This blog is quieting, now that my children have moved out. I'll keep it here because I know it's a resource for other unschoolers, but I want to let you all know that most of what I publish is now on my art site: https://emilyartist.ca  

It's easy to subscribe to that site, if you want to. Just click the dropdown menu at the top left corner, put your email address in the subscribe field, and approve the email, when you receive it. I don't write a lot, but maybe a couple of pieces per month, which you'll receive by email, if you subscribe.

Emily

Harvest 16: The Shed

The Harvest series was a series of 17 Instagram posts created over the course of the weeks before and after my mother's death in 2024. Since I've stopped using Meta platforms for political/ethical reasons, I'm re-posting one of the Harvest entries, here.

Pappa built this shed in 1983, when I was seven. With his confidant hands he cut the trees on this land, bucked them up, and built a whole life for us, this building being one of the first big things. He used logs for a foundation, and built a frame of scrap wood and home-milled beams and planks. He used a simple froe to cut hundreds of cedar shakes for the roof, and when he was finished he installed the headboard from my brother’s bunk-bed as a ship’s wheel at the end of the hayloft, and he added a little electric propeller to the front door, so we could pretend we were flying a plane.

My brother and I and all our friends slept many nights in the hayloft, convinced there weren’t any spiders, by night, even though by day the palm-sized wolf spiders crouched between many of the shakes over our heads. We could sleep with our heads by the steering wheel and watch the stars run by.

 

This is the shed where we slaughtered rabbits, raised chickens, hosted haunted houses and tea parties, and eventually made some carpentry projects. It’s the shed my own children think of as the steam train, for the way its roof steams in the winter chill. And after forty-one years, its life is over. The logs that support its sturdy plank-floor have rotted away, and the shed is listing dangerously.

 

 

So this weekend, after slowly emptying it of two generations’ worth of tools and other “useful things”, Pappa pushed it over with his tractor. 

 

It’s hard to see it go, in a year that already gutted our family, but in a way, this evening’s hot dog roast over the flaming pieces of the shed was a kind of letting go. Maybe fire leaves devastation in its wake. Maybe it takes and takes ravenously. But it also cleans.

I feel a bit like I was washed by the flames, tonight. I wonder if that’s how my mother’s flesh and bone felt, as it was burning up in the crematorium. Now she’s become the heat that rose up into that spectacular sunset on the night she burned, and her bones, the tiniest white fragments—molecules mixing with the humus and mineral earth. I hope she feels clean, now. Things look different around her without the shed.

The Little Threadbare Bag of Advices From the After Times

When people talk about severely traumatic events, they often refer to "The Before Times". I heard this during Covid, when we could look back at carefree parties and hugs with our grandparents. I felt this when my father died, and his half of my family crumbled, and I remembered all the beautiful times we'd spent together, not knowing they were our last. 

The Before Times are always somehow fanciful. All the negativity disappears and we pine for those Before Times like unrequited dreams. We long for and resent our lost innocence. Before I had Long Covid, I could just walk around on the streets and up the mountains and down into the valleys. In the After Times of Long Covid, I sat in my car and watched people walk by on the sidewalk, wondering how they did it. Walking seems miraculous, now. Those times when I could just call my Dad up to tell him about my day seem like magical memories. Those times when our children played together in the blissful company of grandparents who are now gone seem miraculous, now--now that we're in the After Times, where we are jaded and distrustful and fearful. We're in the After Times, where we are wiser. Supposedly. Wisdom, too, is not what we thought it was, when we were innocent.

I'm still waiting to feel wiser about my mother's death. I know I'm in the After Times, now, but I've just stepped over the threshold and I'm totally lost. People keep offering me pieces of wisdom, and every time I think, "Ah-ha! That's something that can help me on my journey!" And I stick the wisdom into my little threadbare bag of emotional tricks to pull out when it will inevitably be required on my Big Adventure Into the After Times. Like: "It's OK to cry; that means you're connecting with your mother," and "Mourning is a sickness. Like Long Covid. You've learned to integrate and adapt to that sickness; you can do it again." And every time these words feel like they came directly from the Deep Dark Mystical Universe of the After Times, where people are wiser and all the ones who've lost their mothers were apparently waiting around to catch my fall, and pull me into their embrace. Thank you.

And those pieces of wisdom hang out of my little threadbare bag of tricks; their invisible heavy tendrils dragging on the ground as I wander along. This is my bag, now. It was my mother's very fancy purse when I was small. She kept her handkerchief in it, and a thin Lancôme lipstick, and a smaller, matching purse for money. It carries the Memories That Kept Little Me Safe, when it was hers, and not mine, and I didn't understand this little bag. Now it's mine, in the After Times, and I'm filling it with the Advices of the Wise Ones.

One of the things I couldn't have known in the Before Times is the value of tears. I remember my mother's tears hitting this bag, inconceivably, as she reached in to get her lipstick, because they sometimes fell when nothing seemed to be the matter at all. And I remember them hitting this little bag; how it darkened with the damp, and how my mother swore at her own tears. Now I see the tears in the eyes of these Wise Ones; the weight and vulnerability and frankness of being The Ones Who Held Everything Together in the Before Times, but then the tether broke. 

Now we're floating. Lost. Nothing is together and we are free like we never wanted to be. We have tears falling when nothing seemed to be the matter at all, but their dampness leaves stains that are inconceivable to those who haven't yet arrived in the After Times. Now I'm one of these Wise Ones and these tears are my welcome mat. And my wisdom-offerers are crying, because even after all the years of living in the After Times, the sorrow is not less. It's just integrated. And it's good to know someone understands. Accepts my tears. Our mothers are gone.

The sorrow doesn't get less. It just gets integrated. That was one of the mystical advices offered to me in the Before Times, but I didn't understand it. I just added it my little threadbare bag of advices, where it sat unused on my mother's shelf, in the times when I didn't know what that bag was for; nor how to use it or what it meant, or even how it was possible at all. People gave me this advice and I couldn't see it, because I was in the Before Times. We can't fathom what we have never seen. So my bag sat on a shelf in my mother's house, quietly, being hers.

But now I'm here in the After Times. My beautiful Mama was wiped off the earth so that everything that was so real and tangible before feels now like a cruel slap in the face; a memory of wonder and longing: her arms around me; her little red purse and strange assortment of French lipsticks; her mystical explanation that soon it will be my turn to understand; her tears telling me goodbye; her voice and her song and her love. Now I'm the wise one because I live in the After Times, with my sisters and my aunties and even my dead mother. Now I'm the wise one because I have the experience none of us ever wanted to have. 

Now I meet the people whose mothers are aging; dying maybe slowly or imminently or in some far-off unknown and terrifying future, and suddenly they look to me like I'm a keeper of this horrible wisdom. But I look away from their searching gaze and into my Little Threadbare Bag of Advices From the Wise Ones of the After Times, and I wonder if I'm supposed to dispense these now, or wait. The answer is wait. These people who have not yet lost their mothers are still living in that blissful and mystical Before Time, and none of the Advices will help them because they don't yet know the horror. 

This Bag of After Times Advices is like a set of unlabelled keys to a house of horrors. You can't know which keys fit which doors because you can't yet see the doors. We can't fathom what we've never seen. 

Don't think you need to be prepared. You can't look over the threshold. You will have to reach the After Times, eventually. But not now. 

Right now, you still live in the Before Times. Do that, instead. Live those Before Times like they are your last. Because they are; all of them are. Live them with your children and your parents and your friends and the lost ones and the found ones. Because one day you will look back and say "Why did I waste those Before Times not knowing how magical and mystically beautiful they were?!" And you'll put that too into your own Little Bag of After Times Advices, and you will look at those who haven't crossed over yet, and understand that nobody can give advice to the uninitiated, because we can't fathom what we've never seen. 

Anyway, it doesn't matter how much you treasure your Before Times, it will never be enough. The more you love, the more you lose, but the losing is a kind of sublime sorrow that means you loved. So love. Just love.

I went out to see the auroras last night, and I cried. And it was beautiful, and I cried. I had to force myself to leave the house, because my grief feels like a prison, sometimes, but I went anyway. It was the first time ever I saw the aurora dance, and I was heartbroken not to be sharing it with my mother, so I told myself she was everywhere. In the auroras. That's one of the Advices From My Little Bag. Then I met another person on this horrible beautiful threshold of the After Times, and I did not open my Little Bag of Advices. We just cried. And in the dancing lights, I saw her tears.

Reflections on 25 Years of Marriage

Photo by Burk Praël

We didn't get married to "tie the knot"; we'd been living together for a few years, already, and the knot had been well and thoroughly tied the moment Markus stepped off the bus and came over to where my friend and I were sitting waiting for him. He was hiding behind his eyelashes and shaking my hand with a kind of adorable, gentle fear. We went on a vacation we called our "Jellymoon" eight months later, and introduced each other to our families as quickly as possible. We met as kids, basically, at 19 and 26, and we helped each other grow up these past 29 years. 

Photo by Ruben Fleming

But in 1999 we got married, to bring our families together, officially, and to mark our spot in the passing of time. And a beautiful party. That was the idea, but it became so much more than that. In trying to arrange things, we made choices that were meaningful to us, or to the people the involved. The friend who had introduced us was our officiant, and we wrote our own vows. Of course we had to hire a legal officiant, as well, but she allowed us to do the most meaningful parts of the ceremony with our friend. All of the music, photography, food, cake, beverages, bartending, decoration and even table rentals were provided by friends and family. The wedding was hosted by our neighbours--a gargantuan gift that meant we could be married in not only the place I grew up, but also where we would eventually return to raise our children.

As I write this now it strikes me how much (much more than I can list here) was a gift from those who loved us. Somehow I was too busy to notice this during the planning stages of our wedding. It wasn't until just before the ceremony, when I was getting dressed in an upstairs bedroom of our neighbours' home, that it hit me. I was feeling rather sorry for myself, dressing alone for my own wedding, with no time to put on the French manicure I had practised. And I looked out the window and saw the hundred-plus chairs beginning to fill with guests. I watched people file in, sometimes hugging each other; sometimes looking vaguely lost, and all sitting down to wait for... me. Suddenly my nails didn't matter. I was more concerned with the makeup running away in my tears. I've longed for a community all my life, and at that moment I realized I had one. 

Photo by Julia Roemer

Looking at these photos now I feel nostalgic for our innocence. Despite the revelation I had, we were SO young; so oblivious to the life that awaited us, and that's a great thing, because our innocence allowed us to live and learn in the moment. So many of these people have been lost to us, in the twenty-five years since that day. I'm glad we had that day to cherish without knowing there might ever be loss in the future. We've struggled and built and grown so much, as individuals and as a few connected families. Our community has changed, for sure, but the heart of intentional connection that I noticed on that day is still here. And it's what holds our hearts through the challenges, and allows us to keep showing up for our family and community in whatever ways we're able.

We don't have the capacity to host a big party this year, but I think if we did that would be the best way to celebrate this day: to honour and celebrate the intertwined communities that we're so grateful to be a part of.

Listening for Birds: Cancer Is Not a Journey

“Go and Make Yourself Content, My Love” (detail).
Swainson's thrush in my mother’s garden, to the tune of the Unquiet Grave.
Painted with acrylic, graphite and coloured pencil, by Emily van Lidth de Jeude.

I was walking down from my parents' house to mine, over the crest of their driveway where the wind blows steady. Not like the rest of the property, through which it tumbles this way and that, scatters just a few leaves, or bursts out of a single storming fern. Over the crest of the hill at the top of my parents' driveway, the wind passes smoothly and calmly, sometimes crisp and smelling of leaves, sometimes damp with the weight of snow and sometimes full of the heaviness of summer and dragonfly wings. I've walked here alone and with my children after Christmas dinner, my heart and belly and arms full of treasures. I've walked here holding my chest against hidden sobs when I couldn't be what the world wanted of me. I've walked on my parents' driveway even when they lived in a different house and I visited rarely, and always it has been a place of the wind and the gathering and freeing of perception and feelings. A place of reckoning or accepting. Not that night.

I was walking down from my parents' house on the evening we came home from our first trip to the Cancer Clinic, two weeks after the sudden and unexpected removal of a stage-four tumour from my mother's brain. I was walking down that driveway and there was no wind. The driveway felt flat, although it's not, and it's rocky, but the rocks were dead that evening, which they never are. The April grasses and blossoming trees were bereft of colour. Impossibly grey. There was no birdsong, no frogsong, not even the sound of leaves, and when I looked at the hillside I thought it might just go away, if my mother died. When my mother dies. She keeps reminding me: "We all have to die, sometime." But I don't want those words. That was one of the many logical thoughts that evaporated when the doctor told us we won't be returning from this trip. And we stared blankly into the empty air and our tears were silent.

I find the word "journey" as people use it for cancer absurd. We use it like we can pack for a trip and just take in the ride. But it's not that kind of ride.

Glioblastoma. Someone should make a horror carnival ride called Glioblastoma. You get in a little comfy bucket seat and it chucks you out into the sea. Then down a vortex you go, into a drain where you almost drown but NO! You're not allowed to drown! There are things to live for and places to see and you might have a few days or weeks or months or years of good life, so LIVE!!! And you can't feel your right side, and you can't find all the words that were here just yesterday, but now more than ever, you want to, need to LIVE!! So you come out of the vortex on the chemo train, where you get whipped back and forth over trestle and track without warning or reason through whacking slaps of sheer terror and poofy clouds of deep love and acceptance: A bird? NO! Slash! You're going to die! Slash! Maybe not so fast--Slash! Everybody is trying to help you--Slash! You're so strong--Slash!--Take some more pills--Slash! Love, love love--Slash! 

Love can't save you and everybody's talking to you like a child--Slash! Now you're the wise one--Slash! Let's finish your sentences for you--Slash! We could get an ice-cream!

Slash! You get to meet the guy who will administer your death--Slash--but only when you want him to--Slash--Be GRATEful!!

Slash!

Nobody wants you to die!--Slash--Let's go shopping!--Slash

Why are you so tired?           Slash.

Slash. 

You fall out from the carnival ride one sunny morning, and you smile up at the sky and look for birds. 

But there aren't any. 

My mother loves birds. My whole life has been decorated with her hushed exclamations of "oh! A warbler!" and "Did you hear the snow geese go by this evening?" My mother hears things many of us don't notice, like the pips of babies and the tone of ducks that tells her whether they're coming or going. When my father gently delivered a helpless baby owl into my childhood, my mother raised it on chopped liver and caught mice until it grew up and flew to the trees. But she heard its voice separate from the other owls, and she answered it, and taught us to make the hungry-teenage-owl call, too: Psssshhht! Pssssssshhhhhhhttt! That owl and its offspring came back to visit us for decades.

Terminal cancer is a strange thing. We want a timeline. Something to hang a hat on. To work with. To put in the calendar, and at the same time we want to live in the moment and not have to plan for death or even how to visit with all the loved ones. But just to sit and hear the birds. Except the chaos of medical interventions, social supports and emotional upheaval means not a minute exists of just. Peace. 

Until one day, we can't take the chaos anymore. Out of necessity we ignore the forms we're supposed to be filling out and decline the offers of new prescriptions, new dosages, delivered meals and all the services we know are needed. One day we just need to be.

This week I saw my father's eyes in a rare moment of stillness. They used to shine with his intensity; they used to sparkle and shoot beams of aliveness. But recently they've looked tired, and there were big wide tears balanced on his lower lids and he was just making a sandwich. I don't hear so much as I see, and I am starting to see again. I saw my brother's cheeks, this week, taut with small lines of agony as he pulled me into his arms and didn't let go. As he asked if he can take our mother to have her broken arm looked at. Cancer is not a journey. It's a horrible carnival ride, and sometimes we catch glimpses of the world, as we spin. Sometimes, also, we catch glimpses of the beauty that brought us here to begin with; that holds us up through the fear and the changes we didn't see coming. My parents walked out, hand in hand, today, to look at the blossoming of the world they share.

And I began to hear the birdsong, this evening. The teen-aged ravens are pillaging the robins' nests, to a great outcry, as you can imagine. We thought the black-headed grosbeak that my mother says only comes for a short time every spring had left, but it's been singing again. The wrens and towhees are hopping in the bushes, until they flit out to the pine, to make their plans. The offspring of our owl are impressing people along the trails, these days. And for some reason the flickers keep sitting around on the ground. My father says get the aphids out of my apple tree, but I can't reach them and we both know that's OK. Bats are out, tonight, delighting my peripheral vision. And as I walk up over the crest of my parents' driveway this evening, I hear the nighthawks dropping on their prey, all around me. The wind is warm, and it's summer now, and my parents are just watching a movie with a couple of mosquitoes like it's a normal evening. Just living this incredible life in an incredible world, and learning to step off the carnival ride and hear the birdsong.