Recently I retold the story about a rough time in our family history. The details are still there but the emotion has seeped out like the snow outside my window that is leaking into the compassionate ground. Soon there will be no proof that those storms ever happened. The only evidence I have that Odhners were embroiled in an emotional polar
vortex is pictures. I keep one by my sewing table. It was captured a few months after the thaw began. A professional photographer friend had offered to take one for our Christmas card. All the kids were in matching dresses and vests, smiling like they meant it. Our son, the one around whom the blizzard blew, barely conceded to be in the shot, and wore steel gray. And no smile. But I cherish it because it was a milestone on the way home. And we have not fought since. That was seventeen years ago
this week.
The months after Benjamin's diagnosis are blurry too. I fumbled around as if I were functional, though one of my daughters recently let me have it about just how hard that time was for her. I grieve for what I cannot change. But the pain, which part of my brain tells me was excruciating, no longer is. Images flash through my head of Ben flailing and kicking, and escaping down the street to be brought home in a cop car. But I no longer cringe, Or cry. Or feel
ashamed.
Childbirth is a time when pain is pushed to the limit. Or so they tell me. I never had a painkiller in nine births but amnesia does the job neatly. I have a vague recollection that my fingernails left gauge marks in John's arms, and the three year old in the next room covered his ears from the screaming. But recall the feelings? Nada.
I have a friend whose marriage is in its own polar vortex. I try to hold her suffering, knowing
that today it is all encompassing, overwhelming. Good feelings which knock on her door regularly are hard to hear above the uproar. I hold the belief that in a few years it will be a fuzzy memory for her. But I do not say that because if someone had suggested such a thing when I was in labor I would have slugged them. And not let them hold my baby as revenge.
Today the weather is above freezing. I heard a tree full of birds singing their approval. There was not
even a twinge of ill will.
