Golden Moments — a.k.a. The Thaw

"A voice said in my sleep: "Do not delay: Do not delay; the golden moments fly!"

                              — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The masque of Pandora"

“Please take 2 minutes to tell us about your recent experience with Jesus.”

                            — United Customer Service email in my inbox at 8:02am

We are in Sun Valley now, together as a family for a late spring break on our first real vacation since James was diagnosed.  The peaks of remote Idaho surround us, and we are drinking in the natural beauty and stunning landscapes.  On a walk in the melting snow yesterday we saw an elk crossing the pristine white field in front of us, the mountain air cool and fresh, the sound of water rushing past in the river below.  I feel almost transcendent: nature is the closest thing I have to church.  Grace has become quite the naturalist, and takes her journal to record what she observes in the quiet landscapes and animal habitats.  James just wants to hop in the gondola and go "bombing down the mountain, Mommy!" on his tiny little skis.  We can barely keep up, which melts my heart faster than warm sun on the cold snow.

It was early in my senior year of high school when a beloved teacher asked me to speak to the student body for a school-wide "Reflections" program.  I was honored and humbled by the request, but increasingly anxious as the time approached.  Who the hell was I to offer any sort of wisdom to over a thousand people, not only my teenage peers but the esteemed faculty to boot?  As the date approached I nearly backed out, stressed and overloaded with homework and exams and the looming college admissions onslaught, but I didn't want to let my teacher down or face my own harsh self-judgement if I didn't follow through on the commitment.  I wracked my brain for the perfect idea, and every draft I wrote felt cliched and stilted.  I decided to screw it and just speak from the heart, and the words started to flow.

I was unsure how my speech would be received, especially by the faculty.  The theme was a rather provocative call to action: "Get Drunk."  I started off by reading a French poem I still love by Charles Baudelaire called "Enivrez-Vous”: “De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.”  In English, it translates to: "Get drunk, with wine, with poetry, or with virtue, whatever your pleasure."  I exhorted my fellow classmates to lift their heads up from their all-consuming daily schedules, to put aside the syllabus and think long and hard about who they were and who they wanted to be, to tap into whatever nascent passions might be stirring within them.  I wanted to make sure they didn’t miss the life-affirming, enlivening moments I had experienced with fellow students and teachers both in and out of the classroom.  But I worried that the message would be all wrong for an audience of adolescents, for whom “getting drunk” had but one meaning and was ripe for a lot of potential guffaws.

I admitted at the very beginning of the talk that I was standing up in front of them all shaking like a leaf, but determined to press on, and with that caveat my fear diminished and the words tumbled out of me.  I looked up mid-speech after being lost in my own words, and realized that no one in the audience was stirring, fidgeting, or whispering.  For a split second I panicked that everyone around me was frozen and I was the only one who could move, trapped in some strange sort of time warp where time stood still and everyone else was frozen in invisible ice.  And then I realized they weren’t frozen, or bored to actual death.  Against all odds, they were somehow ... maybe, just maybe ... rapt?  I continued on. 

Who knows if they were rapt or not.  But apparently the message resonated.  Students and teachers came up to me for days afterwards to tell me the speech had truly moved them.  The administration asked me permission to print it in the school magazine to send out to alumnae.  That hour I had so dreaded - almost forsaken - became a golden moment for me, one of the experiences during those formative years that I wouldn’t trade for anything save the health of my son. 

Fast-forward 22 years.  James has started his own formal education now: Kindergarten, 6 months late.  He is full of his characteristic and charismatic energy even despite the continued rounds of chemo and the night-time spells of vomiting, bounding down the steps in the morning in his new Warriors jersey to hop in the car and head to school.  His classmates and teachers adore him, friends jockeying to sit next to him and show him the ropes rather than treating him like the sickly bald kid I feared they would see.  It has been an education for me to realize my worries were unnecessary, to witness how his natural positivity becomes infectious, draws others to him, and how their support combined with his love of learning means that he has joined his classmates without skipping a beat.

During that frozen time that James was not able to enter a classroom for what felt like eons due to his compromised immune system, I was reminded that learning in happens so many different ways, through so many different forums.  He has received quite an education just by virtue of what he has been through since his diagnosis.  We have all learned how to endure.  The fact that we have laughed with abandon in the wake of some brutal moments is a lesson in resilience.  We have learned how to be there for each other in the face of tragedy.  I have learned how to be a better mother to my daughter despite being less readily available to her.  I have learned how to make the time we do have count whenever I can.  In my own childhood, learning happened during bedtime talks with my own mother, where she nurtured my curiosity, delighted in any oddball question I had, fueled my zeal for life and the world around me.  It happened in the unexpected thrills of stolen moments on a given day.  

My father (who is soon retiring after 40 plus years as an English teacher and coach at that very same high school) would drive us from the campus where we grew up as "faculty brats" to our elementary school in New Haven.  Truth be told - sorry, dad - we were often late.  But there were some days when we didn’t mind the teacher’s look of disdain.  Those were the days when we passed the golf course near our home on a crisp late fall morning - and time stopped. 

My brother and sister and I would leap out of the car excitedly, breathing out puffs of cold steam.  We’d kick off our shoes, peel off our socks and go careening across the golf course, our bare feet crunching on the thin layer of frost that lay atop the short grass.  Our whoops of delight were loud and spirited and infectious as we all chased each other across that enchanted expanse.  After ten minutes or so, exhilarated and breathing hard with our toes nearing frostbite, Dad would give the signal and we would clamber back into our rusty white tank of a car and head off to school.  A golden moment, far more memorable and meaningful to me than the grammar lesson on a given morning in grade school.

Those frost-encrusted fields are what I spoke about as a 17-year-old senior to the student body and faculty at my high school.  I was drunk on those fields, flushed with excitement, alive and raw.  Other flashes from childhood come now: playing cow-poker on quick ski trips up to Vermont, where we froze to death with wheat thins and Jarlsberg cheese cut by Dad's trusty red swiss army knife, our only lunch on the icy chairlift between runs (Dad wouldn't dream of stopping to go into the lodge).  Mom playing Abba and Carole King and Joan Baez on the ancient record player in our big old red house in New Haven that I loved, where I would spend hours searching for secret passages, convinced the house must have at least a few if I could only find the exact right spot.  Dad strumming along on his guitar to Jackson Browne or Bruce Springsteen or Ramblin' Man playing on a cassette old tape and tapping his foot to the rhythm.  Sliding down the smooth rocks at the ledges in a cold Vermont river on a hot summer day while we lived there for Dad's graduate school stint at Middlebury. 

Driving home at night as kids in the wayback of the station wagon and seeing a spotlight in the sky, and Dad chasing it until we finally found the source, our own end-of-the-rainbow adventure.  My mother laughingly agreeing to let me do impromptu gymnastic routines to Bette Davis Eyes, complete with flips over the side of her brown paisley living room couch in my leotard, even setting up a makeshift trapeze in the kitchen breezeway to let me swing before dinner.  Body surfing for hours in the wide ocean at Cocoa Beach, then skipping back to my grandfather's house salty and sun-kissed to rinse our sandy feet and run hollering to jump into the backyard pool in the back of his quiet, peaceful house next to the canal.  It makes me think of all the moments at our fingertips, the growth, the experiences that form the connective tissue we build as friends, teachers, parents, siblings, colleagues.  The reminder that emotions and experiences are powerful catalysts for learning, connecting, and even healing.  These are the golden moments and memories I try to give my children now as they grow up far too fast: impromptu dance parties before dinner with wiggling butts and some pretty creative moves, a long stop at the swings after another blood draw before school, tickle fights before bedtime books that we read as children as well.  Stories galore, and songs, and laughter.  Moments we will treasure for a lifetime to come.

We can all do a better job of slowing down and looking around.  Get out of the car.  Put the phone down.  Notice where you are, what you see, who you're with.  Claim a golden moment, and get drunk on life.  Learn, and love, and live on.