What does Owen know? How can I possibly know guess? If I ask him he just turns away. Or smiles.
Last week, in the first days after I learned that I am going to be fighting breast cancer this fall, Owen began to Crank It Up. He dumped and chopped bottles of laundry detergent and fabric softener. He gathered all the bedroom and bathroom linens into a mountain in the laundry room, and then he did it again the bathroom. I kind of wondered, standing and feeling dwarfed by the piles of mess, what he knew. He knew something. He could tell that something was different. Maybe he could feel it. His Spidey senses were tingling? Whatever it was, he didnt like it.
Anyway after about five days of mad chopping, dumping and peeing, at bedtime one evening Edward said, “Owen. Mom is going to be okay. She is going to go to the hospital, and then she going to come home again.”
Edward told me that Owen became very still after this. And then he looked right into his dad’s eyes. The words seemed to mean something to him.
When we went away for Labor Day weekend a few days later, to stay with family and friends in a set of rustic cabins beloved to Edward since his boyhood, in the cold, rainy woods of the Poconos without laundry, I wasn’t exactly sure this was a great idea for a way to de-stress. But it turned out that Edward knew by some kind of instinct. He was right. All three of us needed just stop thinking about what might be coming next.
And since none of we humans can really know what’s coming next, at any time, that’s a pretty good idea.
Embracing Chaos 
Oh Wystan, lovely writing…it makes me feel so close to you and your family.
– with love, Aunt Naomi
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Thanks Auntie. I am trying to think how to work the outrageous experience I just had with a plastic surgeon into a blog. All kinds of Chaos out there! Goodness. And guys like him, like Owen, make good humor anyway…
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I won’t be one of those who support you by writing from 6-7 am but I will read what you write! This so resonates with me as a mom. I think “children” who lack the words to communicate most definitely sense when something is not right with the world and find another way to express their fears. So sorry that Owen’s way made such a mess for you to clean up. What an intune husband you have to know what to say to lessen Owen’s fears! Love to all of you.
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Thank you so much Andrea! Love you.
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dear Wystan,
I am reduced to sobs, dear Edward.
How fast can one thing pile on another? To have seen you recently, if only barely to lay eyes and a hand–thank you for the effort you made so that that happened. Feel my love pouring toward you, a warm breeze.
Will we, you and i, ever have a state of looking back, reflecting, drawing connections that allow for a new understanding to emerge?
For now, love.
Gray
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Dear one — isnt it amazing what a week that was – a death, a birth and a cancer diagnosis, is that order.
Life is rich and wonderful, and brutal, and then wonderful again, sure enough.
Yes, we will come to a peaceful spot of reflection. I’m sure of it.
XO
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I don’t know how to bring words to my feelings. I wish I could just hug you.
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