Month: February 2016

Play

~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

Play

A few months ago I had to put a writing project on pause.

It was going to be an essay about my first year with an undiagnosed pain and fatigue disease. In my head I had named it the year everything almost fell apart. Everything was in tatters, held together with the barest of threads. I felt like, in our little family, that I held all of our lives in my arms, while my body felt like it was literally being ripped limb from limb. My boys were just four and one, and on the heels of the recession my husband was traveling internationally almost every week-making sure to do everything that was asked of him so he could never be seen as expendable.

I paused my writing because I suddenly didn’t have the distance I needed to delve back into that year. A new undiagnosed problem began taking over, and emotionally I didn’t think I could relive “The Year Everything Almost Fell Apart” in real time and in retrospect all at once. I am still undiagnosed, but thankfully have started to be able to manage the problem so that I can get back to normal life.

And the story has started knocking on my door again. It won’t leave me be. The year, the whole year, wants to have its story told. Every time I try to divert my attention to something lighter, something fun or frivolous or at least shinier and less tattered, the year comes back. It looks at me the way my oldest son did at the time, wide eyes, furrowed brow, sadness that shouldn’t weigh down such tiny shoulders, asking me to make sense of everything. To please put life back in order, to explain why and how things went wrong and how to fix them. I couldn’t for him then, but the year is asking me to please do so now, to make amends for failing him.

Notebooks 2010

These are my notebooks from that year. Each post-it note is flagging a journal entry with a clue to my illness. The pages in-between are my journal entries describing the different colors suffering took for each of us, the way thirty-year-olds and four-year-olds and one-year-olds process fear and uncertainty and sadness and anger. It’s time to read them again. It is time to try to tell the story of a year in a few thousand words, so that it can be put on a shelf, ordered and meaningful and done. This will take time, but what choice do I have? The year won’t let me be.

Valentine Gifts

~ Kristin DeMarco Wagner ~ Leave a comment

Valentine gifts

It is time for gifts again, smaller gifts than at Christmas, but it’s time to show our loved ones how much we appreciate having them around.

My younger son is squirreled away in the playroom and has commanded us several times, “Do not come in here.” I know this is his order when he is working on a present for someone and doesn’t want to ruin the surprise. With Valentine’s Day coming up, it is very possible that he has three presents he is working on in there- one for his brother, one for his father and one for me. We get a little nervous when he emerges an hour later and there is smudged ink all over his arms, and a stamp like a tattoo on his right wrist. My husband asks him, “I won’t invade your privacy, but if you look like that, is the room pretty messy, too?”

He nods, “A little.”

He tells us he will clean it up, and my older son offers to help, as long as he’s allowed in the room. He is, and the two of them go back and forth with wet paper towels, and assure us that everything is cleaned up. It could be a sketch, or a 3-D paper sculpture of a caterpillar, a comic strip, or a handprint. Last Christmas he made a series of diagrams: instructions, to go with a handful of Legos. He had created a Lego set he and his brother could build together. I was so impressed!

And I am so curious about my gift.

I’m the sort of person who wants to know what a movie is about before I see it. I’ll watch trailers, read think-pieces about how the director felt or what the actors endured, listen to gossip about backstage antics. My husband does not. He wants very much to be surprised. He even gets annoyed when the opening credits to a reality show give away almost everything that is going to happen, yelling, “We’re already watching it! You don’t have to sell us on it! Mute it, and tell me when the opening’s over.”

Sometimes I’m glad he is so strict in his I want to be surprised point of view. A few years ago my oldest son wanted to buy me a Christmas present, and he was confident he had thought up something perfect. My husband was the one to take him shopping, so of course he knew what I had gotten. I pestered my husband a bit, trying to get him to reveal what was bought, because my curiosity had gotten the better of me. This was the first time either of the boys had wanted to buy me something, and that my guy had something specific in mind. I wondered what he thought of me, how well he knew me, what he got me!

My husband put me in my place quickly saying, “I am not going to let you ruin his surprise. He really came up with something perfect, and I want him to get your full reaction as you open it.” That Christmas I opened up two brand-new cardboard-sided notebooks, with blue and white patterns on the front. Exactly the sort of notebook I used for writing in, the same kind I often stockpile since I go through them so quickly. Just the right decoration, and in my favorite color, too. I could not believe how perfect his three dollar present was, and how thoughtful he had been to come up with the idea in the first place. And as an added bonus, my husband got an extra present of me admitting that he had been right.

My husband also got the chance to surprise me with a gift, one I didn’t see coming at all. He was going to be out of town when some important blood test results of mine were going to be coming in. It was going to be emotionally rough, no matter which way they went. If they were positive, I would finally know what was wrong but have to deal with curing a disease – a tumor, or kidney disease, or adrenal failure. If they were negative there would be no big disease to handle, but also no answers as to why I felt horrible. A pair of soft flannel pajamas came in the mail, the perfect way to comfort someone when you can’t physically be there to hold them. A gift that would be appropriate to use in a hospital bed after surgery or to cuddle on the couch researching alternative medicine. It was such a lovely surprise.

So, I won’t peek to see what present is being made in the playroom. All three presents, and the surprise of getting them, make me feel so very loved. And that, I’m pretty sure, is supposed to be the point of gift-giving, and Valentine’s Day, in the first place.