Some Assembly Required (11 page)

But the ornaments made me so happy today. There were two of them, one commemorating Amy’s paternal grandmother, Jessie, and one memorializing Gertrud, in enameled picture frames with each one’s name, date of death, holly
and ivy, and hearts. In the picture on Sam’s ornament, Gertrud is holding him near a Christmas tree. She is about seventy, he is sixteen months, and they are studying the branches together. Her hair is silky and European, snowy white, and his towheaded blond, nearly white, too.

I was holding Jax asleep in my arms while Amy unwrapped the ornaments. I saw the delighted-child side of her, the other side of the coin of the iron will that brought us Jax. I saw her pleasure in the ornaments, and her profound love of the grandparent who is dead—perhaps this explains her holding out for the baptism at the other grandma’s church—an otherworldly connection she has to her ancestors; she honors them by remembering them, calling them into the present. She honors her living grandmother by visiting her with Jax in Chicago. These relationships are a major part of who she is.

I can perfectly remember how she took biblical care of Gertrud, at Sam’s nineteenth-birthday party here, when Millard, only four years younger than Gertrud, seemed like Mary Lou Retton in comparison. It was Gertrud’s last outing. Amy sat close to her, holding water for her in silence, taking away her plate when Gertrud was finished, without being asked, like an old man’s wife. I thought of Ruth and Naomi. After Gertrud stopped going out, Amy started the home beauty salon visits, which she kept up faithfully the entire last year of Gertrud’s life.

“Jessie” is tattooed on a huge cross on Amy’s upper back:
she still grieves the loss. Still not sure about the “Jax” part. Amy and Sam said they like the sound of it, and when Millard recently asked Sam if it was short for “Ajax,” of
Iliad
fame, Sam said yes, partly, but that mostly they liked the way it sounded.

I said to Amy as she unwrapped the ornaments, “Promise me three things. You’ll never get him a Nintendo, let him go off to war, or let him ride motorcycles,” and she promised on the spot, although within the hour she had reneged on the motorcycle clause.

Yesterday was the second Sunday of Advent. The days are dark and short, and life has been dark and scary, with so many bad things happening to people I love. Tom has been having a difficult patch, and we meet at the church of IKEA as often as possible, because it is equidistant from our houses and always cheers us up. Yesterday I asked, “In your depression, and with so many people having such a hard time, where is Advent?”

He tried to wiggle out of it by saying, “You Protestants and your little questions!”

Then, when pushed, he said: “Faith is a decision. Do we believe we are ultimately doomed and fucked and there’s no way out? Or that God and goodness make a difference? There is heaven, community, and hope—and hope that there is life beyond the grave.”

“But Tom, at the same time, the grave is very real, dark and cold and lonely.”

“Advent is not for the naive. Because in spite of the dark and cold, we see light—you look up, or you make light, with candles, or with strands of lightbulbs on trees.

“And you give light. Beauty helps, in art and nature and faces. Friends help. Solidarity helps. If you ask me, when people return phone calls, it’s about as good as it gets. And who knows beyond that.”

“But if you will try and tell me more, I will buy you Swedish meatballs.”

“Meatballs, and dessert.”

So over lunch at IKEA, he talked and I scribbled down notes: “Advent says that there is a way out of this trap—that we embrace our humanity, and Jesus’ humanity, and then we remember that he is wrapped up in God. It’s good to know where to find Jesus—in the least of these, among the broken, the very poor and marginalized. Jesus says, ‘You want to see me? Look there.’

“Those tiny bits of connection to the broken are very real, and the kindness and attention people show to them create a bit of light. That’s Advent. It’s about
us
. It doesn’t say, ‘Glory to God and peace to me’—it says, ‘Peace to people of goodwill.’ I think some of us could work on goodwill, and when I talk to God about this later, I am not going to mention your name.”

As I drove home that afternoon, I did notice the beautiful
deciduous tree–lined streets of Marin, CGI-level flame-colored autumn leaves. In Larkspur, I saw a dozen snowy egrets in what must have been a very delicious meadow by the side of the road, and I had enough sense to pull over and sit and watch them eat for a while.

I want to collect my thoughts on what Jax is like, five days short of his being five months old. He is snuggled asleep in my arms, a miracle of function. Right now, we are a circuit of comfort and calm. He makes me so much better than I am, the way Sam used to do.

My arm and his head are one unit. That’s not going to last. This tiny guy contains such a huge, galumphy kid, who will unfurl, as we all have done, like those sponge animals that come in small capsules. In what feels like a year, he will be saying, “Nana, Nana, drop me off here,” a block from school or the mall.

Our friend Olivia, who is fifteen, is back in the hospital with a flare-up of cystic fibrosis. I met her on the third day of her life, when I was babysitting her older sister, who was five at the time, and engaged to Sam. I have always adored Olivia, and we have lifted her in prayer at St. Andrew every
Sunday for fourteen years, along with a sick boy in Wisconsin who has kidney tumors. She is beautiful, blond, a champion gymnast, and has attentive, calm parents and cutting-edge doctors with a great sense of humor, and churches around the country praying for her, and I used to find solace in all that.

That, however, was before I became a grandparent. Now I am often angry with God about the sick kids we know. “What can you
possibly
be thinking?” I ask, but get no reply; not a clue. And if perfect, mellow, lovely baby Olivia could turn out to have CF, then all bets are off. No one is safe, period. I know that if anything happened to Jax, it would be a dizzying and primary loss, not once removed, but involving also the devastation of seeing my child having to try to survive the end of the world. Ten years ago, an old writer friend and his wife told me that they had recently lost their grandson in a bike accident, and my reaction was entirely about their poor daughter, the child’s mother. Until Jax, I didn’t get it, that they had lost a great love of their own and had a grown child who was in permanent grief beyond all imagining.

Olivia’s father called today and asked if I could visit her at the hospital in San Francisco. She and her mom had made the room their own, and we had a few perfect hours together. She is so healthy—well, except for the cystic fibrosis—mobile and fully alive and lovely. She is a miracle, even with a cough that worsens over time, and in fine fettle today.

I brought her photos of Jax, and lots of colors of clay and beads, and we made Christmas-tree ornaments to give as
presents, and we ate chocolates. That’s all I know how to do—show up and ask God for help. Love and grace are bigger than the nightmare, supposedly. Without trusting this, we’re doomed and ridiculous. Advent says that healing is coming here, and it will be okay. Chanukah says, Let there be light, and let it begin with me. It says, Even though it doesn’t look like it, there will be enough oil to keep the lamps lit. Olivia’s family is not religious, but they have been saved, literally, by the love of their friends since her diagnosis, and by the presence of her grandparents. When she was Jax’s age, no one knew there was anything wrong, let alone cystic fibrosis.

Children should not have treacherous diseases or be afraid. This should be the one rule we all agree on.

Amy left me with a bottle of breast milk and went out to do errands. I had Jax for two hours all to myself. We gazed at each other. I chatted him up. He bubbled back at me, squealed, laughed when I did silly things. Then I put him in his new office, a bouncy saucer/home entertainment center I got at the baby consignment store, which he stands in (dear God) to perform various clickety-clack activities with balls and beads and mirrors and teethers.

He’s huge and tiny—huge in how big and healthy he has grown, huge in his effect on our lives and psyches, even as he is not much bigger than my cat. Time has flown like a falcon:
he was nine pounds, and now, in a blink, he’s almost twenty pounds. Amy came back from shopping for food and doing other errands in hunter-gatherer mode, busty and bustling. I could see that she was pleased with herself, but not crowing. I loved this moment. She did not have a single clutch when she saw the baby waking up surprised in my arms—she let me tend to him and help him find his sense of the familiar in me.

When he woke up, he instantly went for his fingers in his mouth—but not for Amy, even though he saw her. What a huge development for us all.

I had given Amy fifty dollars to buy some clothes at our great local consignment store, to feel good and womanly and warm and pretty in, and she modeled these for both of us. Jax looked around calmly, and she was calm, too, not needing to cling and be all over him. He’s secure for now in whoever he is. I guess that when you can get your hand into your mouth when you need it, and you have a tool for self-comfort, you’re halfway home.

They hung around for another hour. I love that Amy feels so safe and less alone here at my house.

I made a fire in the fireplace, lit a couple of candles, and arranged three small bouquets of freesias in a vase, to make a flame of flowers, yellow, red, white. Sam called to say that Jax is like a cat burglar now. Any seat you put him in, he
starts studying how it works, and how you’ve secured him in place, so he can make a break. He cases the joint. If you look away, he feverishly continues the mission.

“We could always see the gears turning—we’re his parents, after all,” Sam said. “But now the gears are making new connections, and those connections move down his neck from his brain to his arms and his hands.”

I can still see Sam when he was Jax’s age and became a cat burglar, and now I see how intricate designs and illustrations flow from the lead of his pencil.

Sam called to say that Jax had held his bottle by himself for the first time. He’s nearly ready for a paper route.

It’s Amy’s twenty-first birthday today. They are having a real babysitter tonight, our friend Danielle, who is my hairdresser, so they can go to Fisherman’s Wharf and have dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. I guess they just don’t
care
about the baby anymore. Otherwise, they would have left him with me.

We are going to celebrate Christmas Eve at Sam and Amy’s apartment in the city; Stevo, Annette, her daughter, Rachel, and Clara will meet us there. Clara will be seven in two weeks. I remember when she was Jax’s age, eighteen months ago.
Now, in the aftermath of divorce, she has hit the lottery: a sweet, beautiful stepmother, two adoring new grandparents where there had been none, and an out-of-thin-air twenty-year-old sister who is a connoisseur of hair clips, glittery jewelry, and floral headbands. God is totally showing off again.

Amy bought a ham the size of a bulldog, for seven of us. She will be cooking it all day. The rest of us will bring salads, desserts, and sides. We’ll open presents after dinner. I’m giving Sam and Amy big checks, Clara a misty-green Stella McCartney taffeta skirt, and Jax the greatest toys that Marin had to offer, some made by craftspeople, which he’ll love when he has children—“My Nana gave me this hand-carved locomotive my first Christmas. I’ve kept it all this time”—and some plastic, great educational toys that are loud, good for sucking and smashing
now
.

At midnight, Sam, Amy, and Jax will leave on a red-eye to visit her parents in North Carolina for nine days.

I’m sure I’ll be just fine.

I went to dinner and the movies with Doug, and dearest friends Bill and Emmy Smith, and was in bed with a book by eleven. So it was just right, and the week since the kids left has been, too. Nothing of interest has occurred, which is par for the course in my case, and I have savored my rich and uneventful daily life—walks with the dogs and friends, work,
reading, a nap, more reading, a few get-togethers. I have a new perspective on spiritual abundance, thanks to my friend Michelle, who told me about going to Starbucks the other day for a pecan sticky bun.

She normally doesn’t order pastry at Starbucks, because it’s fattening, but the other day she decided to treat herself to a pecan sticky bun. She spent quite a lot of time picking out the exact one she wanted, which meant the one with the most pecans. She pointed it out to the counter person. He had to move a few others that were in the way, so she took her coffee and sat down.

He brought the sticky bun over, all wrapped up and on a plate. She started taking it out of the paper, and instantly saw that it was the wrong bun, not the one she had chosen. This one had only three pecans on top. She wrapped it back up and walked to the counter, where she pointed this out to the young man, with crisp annoyance. He looked at her incredulously. “Lady,” he said, “turn it over.”

And on the other side, the bun was tiled with candied pecans.

Sam, Amy, and Jax got back last night, and Jax is a new creation. He’s talking. Sam called to say they were all coming over, and to prepare myself: “It’s like he suddenly got new software. His efforts at talking now are shades of gray, instead
of just screaming or crying. He has a new arsenal of noises he can make. Like someone who has taken a massive amount of sedative and can’t make words but has strong opinions. They’re like dolphin sounds, little creature noises. Lots of
eeee
. The fart noise is used pretty creatively—he can do a new angry face now by incorporating fart noises, like the French soldier in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
who says, ‘I fart in your general direction.’ And sometimes he’s just doing it to listen to it. These are the greatest hits, the farting noises, dolphins,
eeee
s.” I remembered when Sam could first make these sounds, always most loudly in church, of course, and loudest of all during the congregation’s silent prayers. It’s funny, those things that sanctify community life.