#art of our silly double life rip off from this winter we did with my friends

[kamisden]

full comic under the cut

[adriennefrank]

Creation’s Song

I remember the first night we saw her eyes peering in our front window.  I had noticed the stranger lurking outside the evening before, but hadn’t thought much of it.  It sounds silly now.  How could I ignore this odd visitor, hanging around outside our window during the middle of the Minnesota summer heat?

When she returned the second night, I called out to you, “Hey bud, look outside this window!”

“What?  What is it?” You ran over, your five year-old curiosity getting the best of you.

“Look!” I exclaimed, and pointed at the tiny being, peering inside our home.

It was the midst of summer in Minneapolis.  The sun would warm the air until it became hot and sticky.  Then the sky, pregnant with humidity and things I don’t understand, would rip wide open and birth torrential rains, screaming winds, and deep growling thunder.  Hours later, the cool breeze would gently lull all of nature back to peace.  And repeat.  

We should have changed our mailing address to the pool because that is where we spent most of our days.  Except the ones when I was at the hospital.  Or the doctor.  Or dealing with cancer for the sixth time.  This diagnosis felt devastating.  The lowest of all my days was when my surgeon determined it was too risky to remove the cancer and that I should use chemotherapy to slow down my breath-sucking fall off the cliff.  

Had I listened to his advice, I’m not sure that I would be alive right now.  The chemotherapy that I infused directly into my heart, the very part that was keeping me alive, damn near killed me.  I can’t recall how many weeks I had to skip because my blood counts were too low.  The poison was toxic to all my cells: healthy and malignant.  It was my fourth chemotherapy experience in nine years, and my body wasn’t strong enough to withstand the venom that flowed down from the bag hung over my head each week.

It was terrifying.  Time after time I just prayed that I would make it to your kindergarten graduation.

Through a series of providential events, I met a new surgeon.  Perhaps even more skilled with his scalpel.  At least quite a bit more confident.  He offered the surgery, and even used the word, “cure.”  How could I not take him up on his offer?  An offer that might lead to more time with you?  An offer that might give me more days to write our stories.  An offer that might allow me to live.

It was a mere month after that dangerous surgery when our squatter set up residency outside the front window.  Her eight legs and eight eyes intrigued me on the second night as I saw her dangle from a single thread that must have been tethered the the brick above.  I watched as she moved back and forth, across the stone framing the sides of the window.  She formed her anchors, diagonals like numbers on the face of a clock. Perhaps like the one that told her exactly what time to begin her creation each night.

I was stunned.  How did she learn these mesmerizing motions? She began to dance, creating a circle, attaching her thread to each point of her foundation.  Around and around and around.  I could have watched that little hypnotic architect for hours.  Except it took only minutes.  She knew exactly what she was made to do.

I watched for her at twilight on night three.  Slowly I saw her lower her body down. I couldn’t contain my excitement.  

“The spider is back!” I called to you again.

You ran over and we watched the beautiful silk art she created.  I wasn’t sure if I had ever seen anything more amazing.

My child, you were born to a city girl drawn to the tall, lit buildings, dense and diverse population, and four-lane highways that lead right into the fast-paced urban heart.  And yet, that metropolitan girl who couldn’t turn away from the bright lights and city sidewalks named you after one of the most natural objects of all creation: a tree.  The way my heart skips a beat when I see a skyline’s silhouette is woven with the way my breath is taken when I drink in a majestic mountain.  Is it possible to love them equally?  And somehow, I believe I do.

Once her web was complete, she would creep down into the center and wait.  Head facing the ground, abdomen facing the darkening sky.  

“Let’s call her ‘Meredith,’” I suggested. “And let’s see if we can figure out what kind of spider this is.”

I had to know more.  I had never in my thirty-three years seen such a thing. Or had I and never paid attention?  I immediately opened my laptop and googled, “spider mn rebuild web night.”  Through I series of clicks, I learned that Meredith was an orb weaver.  Well, that makes sense, fully recognizing my ignorance.  We learned that she was similar to Charlotte of E.B. White fame.  Would she start writing words in that web of hers?  Words like “hope” and “perseverance” and “healing”?

It had been just hours before that we had built our own sign of hope.  A paper chain, symbolizing each day that I would travel three hours in the car for radiation treatment.  Six weeks.  Thirty treatments.  Hope.  Perseverance.  Healing.

You lost interest a few minutes in to slicing up the pages of a Paper Source catalog, but I continued on.  I needed the immense path stretched out before me, like a runner knowing where mile 26.2 would land.  And yet I needed to take each mile as it came.  One day.  One treatment.  One link tenderly removed from the serpentine timeline.

Each mid-August summer evening, we would attend to the chain and then wait for Meredith to appear.  Google told us that she ate her web each morning, consuming the dew and whatever prey she caught throughout the night.  Again, this astounded me.  Her instincts compelled her to build an elaborate web each night and destroy it each morning, fueling her body with the nutrition it needed to build a new web the very next night.  Wow, I breathed.

I don’t remember exactly how many nights we saw her.  I think it was around a week.  And then one night she didn’t begin her descent down in front of the window.

“I don’t see Meredith!  Do you think she is late tonight?” I asked you.  Had she forgotten to wind her clock?  Was she not aware that it was 8PM and she needed to start construction?

It was then I remembered the rest of Charlotte’s story.  The part where she lays her eggs, her final gift to the world.  And then dies.

You were terrified of the movie, “Charlotte’s Web” when you were three and four years-old.  You didn’t like the beginning where Fern's father threatens to butcher the pig.  This tender heart of yours will serve you well as you make your way through this world.  And yet, I worry that your beautiful heart will bear hurt upon hurt.

I felt this was all some sort of foreshadowing of my life.  Charlotte.  Meredith.  Me.  Would you lose you mother much too soon from this relentless beast of cancer?  All the signs pointed to “yes.”  

I grieved that loss of Meredith in a unique way.  She had become a friend, even though we never spoke to each other.  She was someone I could count on each night when my world felt like it was spinning much too fast.

And now it is summer again.  Almost one year later.  The early heat of June has brought out the fans, pool passes, sunburn, and summer school.  We never found an egg sac outside our window.  I’m hopeful that Meredith simply moved on to better hunting grounds, continuing on her daily routine of eating and building.  Rebuilding.

And isn’t that what we have done?  I completed my thirty trips to the hospital, threw the last chain link away. As we are completing another trip around the sun, we can’t find cancer in this ravaged body of mine.  Miracle of all miracles.

This summer is different.  I volunteered to take care of the flower beds in front of our building.  Each night, around 7:30, when the sun seems to be moving west, we walk down the steps outside and I pick up the watering can.  It’s weight causes me to stumble as I fill it with two gallons of water though it grows lighter and lighter as we pour into our blossoming shoots.

We started by pruning back all the dead stalks that had withered up over the fall and winter.  There is something quite satisfying in that loud snap when the clippers cut into a dead branch.  We filled bag after bag with death, removing all traces from the yard.

I offered you a penny for each pine cone you picked up and put in the garbage bag.  You counted up to 500.  I didn’t correct you when I heard you skip numbers, whether accidentally or greedily.

My favorite flower in our yard (and the yards of most Minnesotans) is the peony.  Especially the double blooms with their soft, silky, perfect pink petals so thick you can’t see to the bottom.  Our next priority was getting cages around the large plants.  Each year it breaks my heart when I see them with their heads on the ground from the weight, too heavy for their stems to bear.  The flowers live such short lives, just a few weeks at the end of May and beginning at June, so to see them spend even a day of that time with their blossoms in the mud fills me with sorrow.  

You grasped the new strong stalks together while I gingerly installed their support system.  

“There are ants everywhere!” you noticed.  

Yes, my boy.  These plants are my favorites and I’m quite certain that they are the ants’ favorite too.  They swarm over the bursting buds, doing their supremely important job as pollinators.

We bought planters, and I chose bright pink tuberose begonias, deep pink and royal purple fushia, and a periwinkle flower whose name I can’t remember.  You received two deep-toned marigolds as gifts and decided to grow lavender for the summer. Your choice makes me immensely proud.  What six year-old chooses to grow lavender? My boy with the green thumb.

They are all healthy and growing.  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  And yet, here they are, blooming.  Fragrant. And aren’t we as well? 

We pick off the dead heads each night and toss them into our own version of a compost pile, consisting of only dried up flowers and leaves.  The neighbors compliment our hard work as they pass by.  I feel proud and protective.

Once we have watered, I sit on the steps and inhale the cooling night air.  You begin your search, looking for bugs, worms, centipedes, caterpillars and any other critter you can glimpse.  This time feels magical.  Like a dream.  And really, it is.  I didn’t expect to be here this summer.  I expected cancer to win the war over my immune system.  Over surgery.  Over chemotherapy.  Over radiation.

And yet, here we are.  Growing new life.  Making memories.  Paying attention.  Learning.

It was a little over a week ago that I commented on the birds that squawk at approximately 9:15 each night.  The sound first caught me off guard because I don’t often hear birds at night.  And then the second night.  And then I started watching the clock.  Same time each night.

“Do you hear that, bud?” I asked you.  "Those birds do the same thing each night.“

What a gift creation has been to us.  To recognize the rhythms, the ebbs and flows, the death and life.  What a joy to pay attention with you.  To learn with you.  And to continue growing with you.