Bee Lavender

journal

Year: 2017

  • mandate

    The plan was to convene all four family members for a simple, quiet winter holiday. It was the first time in five years that we would be together for Christmas.

    But then reality intervened, in the form of life-threatening illness. Christmas this year was an emergency flight back to the country where the kid has health insurance. Tests, hospitals, specialists. Listening, advising, arguing with doctors, making soup, holding the hand of an adult I still see as my baby.

    My child is resilient and will recover, not least because that is the mandate handed down from my own mother. But the business of parenting does not get easier as the kids get older. And I am, once again, humbled by the knowledge of what my mother endured and accomplished.

  • who

    Family tradition: locked in a room somewhere with candy, Moomins, and a whole saved up season of Doctor Who! (Yes, we’re all technically “grown” but who cares)

    We’re officially ready.

  • plath

    Sylvia Plath ephemera including Girl Scout uniform, paper dolls, childhood ponytail, Fulbright recommendation, selection of final letters. Smithsonian.

    This show was heartbreaking in many ways, not least because it provided visceral illustration of an obvious truth: she was young when she died.

  • quilt

    Quilt made from 432 Whig ribbons commemorating Harrison campaign, inauguration, and death. By Abigail Ann Lane, c. 1841 / Smithsonian

  • without

    My mother died just before Thanksgiving two years ago. This is what I wrote when I went home to pick up her ashes: eulogy.

    Since her death, I’ve been reeling around the world in shock and pain, pretending that I am fine because that is what she would prefer, unable to look directly at the loss. Without her, I no longer know when daylight savings has happened. I never receive government warnings about destinations Americans should avoid. I have nobody to explain the strange things I find in the family photographs.

    She always knew, even when I was thousands of miles away, if I was sick. Without her I forget to go to the doctor, or do routine tumor checks, or take the medicine that keeps me alive.

    Above everything else, I have no dependable source of lacerating anger and wit to make even terrible experiences look trivial. I’ve been crying a lot, which she would hate. Growing up, I was never allowed to cry, no matter what happened.

    My mother was an extraordinary, powerful, strange person. I miss her more than I could possibly convey.