Mom is finally free of the entanglements of being bi polar. That disease was like a hobble to her spirit, tripping her up with insidious ropes of paranoia and anger.

 

Some of the details of this family of Roses leave me wondering. Twelve children in fifteen years? One car? The fifth son said of personal property, "If you are not actually wearing it, it is up for grabs." The older half ate a big dinner, and cereal for lunch, the younger six dined the other way around. I live one hundred yards up the road from the home they grew up in. No one could call it a large house, except perhaps a munchkin.

Their stories do a lot to whittle my sense of entitlement. I have heard a legacy of anecdotes from many of them about life in a gaggle of kids. None of them mentioned feeling deprived of laughter or attention. How can that be? Is it possible that we can have less... less space, fewer belongings, smaller portions, and still have abundance?

 

I myself have a mere nine children. It does not make mathematical sense that I could love them all, when the first threatened to swell my heart to bursting all by his seven pound self. One possibility would be that my devotion diminished as each sibling came along. Another, less rational explanation, is that my heart found ways to expand without jeopardizing the cavity in my chest. I rather like the second notion. I see the same miracle happen as a candle illuminates a room with one lone person in it, and then as more people come in blinking from the darkness they can all see as well. There is enough light to go around. The same thing happens with a warm room in winter. One person huddled by the fire is cozy enough, and when friends come stomping in, rubbing their limbs frozen from the snow, they get toasty too. 

 

Maybe the Rose children did not have much by current standards. But in her last hours on earth my mother told me that she does now. 

 

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