Poetry Friday: The strange reason Jane Kenyon's "Happiness" feels like the right pick for this week

A cardinal, singing in our backyard this morning.

After Tuesday's post (in which I talked about the flooding around here), I thought we could all use some good news. And I have splendid news to share about Betsy's Crohn's disease.

She's been on her new medication for six months and has also been following the AIP (Autoimmune Protocol) diet (with some food reintroductions in the last four months). Last week, after the latest round of tests/scopes and biopsies, we heard back from her doctor, and she is ...

in remission.

She is in clinical remission (feeling good), endoscopic remission (tests show healing of inflammation), and biopsies did not detect other active signs of the disease, which theoretically indicates that she is in histologic remission. (One can get dizzy trying to decipher the medical literature and jargon, and of course, there's so much about IBD that we don't know.) We've been told that Crohn's doesn't have a cure, but for right now, we know this: she is in remission.

And yet, I have chosen for today this alternately optimistic and bleak poem. Why? (Oh, Karen, you melancholic, Enneagram 4, INFJ rascal, you!) Sorry. This is me. So, let's be honest. Jane Kenyon's brand of happiness is not a whimsical, charming sprite, skipping merrily down a sparkly, rainbow path with you. (Depression, as you probably know, was Kenyon's long-time companion.) The happiness of which she speaks is hard-won, fleeting. Life is hard, Kenyon knows. It hurts. Pain is very real and weighs us down, shackles us, leaves wounds. But as real as the pain is, so is its opposite: streaming light, freedom, elegant, translucent scars that commemorate the wounds ... reminders of what we've endured. Happiness, too, then is tangible: we clutch it, touch it, hold onto it with fierce gratitude and released breath. We know it's never here to stay, not temporally anyway, but neither is pain. They co-exist and, in their symbiosis, teach and shape us.


Happiness 
by Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

(Read the rest here, at the Poetry Foundation.)

~~~~~

The round-up this week is at Sloth Reads. 

Bits and Pieces of Our Days

Whew, it's been so long since I've posted an actual update that I may have forgotten everything we've been doing for the last four months.

Let's see what I can recall.

Much of 16-year-old Ramona's fall semester was consumed by community theater. (Did I just say she's 16? I did. People, I started blogging when she was three. Yikes. May I stop time, please?)

She auditioned for Peter and the Starcatcher and (dramatic drumroll....) got the lead. She adored playing the Starcatcher, Molly, and her British accent was, if I do say so myself, spot on. (Not that I can actually judge, not being British, but trust me. It was perfect. This is not a mother talking. Well, it is. But. Whatever.) There were six performances over two weekends (would have been seven, but one was canceled due to snow), plenty of family made it into town to see her, and overall, the entire experience delighted all involved.

As homeschoolers in a small town, theater opportunities can be a little hard to come by, so I'd been hoping something would work out soon for Ramona. Community theater to the rescue, and long live Molly -- the Starcatcher and the rising star. So happy for her.


                                                             

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Have I mentioned how much I love having a daughter who's a librarian? It's not only that Anne-with-an-e will pick up or return books for me (and I admit that I exploit that benefit far too often), but she absolutely loves her job, and knowing that I played a part in matchmaking the Anne-with-an-e/Library relationship brings me extensive happiness. 

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I spent much of the fall semester learning how to shop for and cook meals that are AIP (Autoimmune Protocol) compliant. Betsy's Crohn's disease, as I mentioned last September, was not responding to the drug she was on. She switched to a new one that she has to inject at home (and I learned that I can actually give someone a shot. Who knew? Nurse Karen, here). Then she tackled the daunting challenge of the AIP elimination diet. When people asked what she had to give up and I named all the foods -- grains, nuts, corn, legumes, beans, eggs, spices, dairy -- that aren't allowed during the elimination phase, they asked, "What's left?" Well, mainly vegetables (but no potatoes -- who knew they were a nighshade?), fruit, and meat.

Sourcing can be a challenge, but we've been getting it figured out. I've learned so much in the last few months about how to cook this way. There are loads of gluten-free flours that I'd never used or even heard of (tigernut, cassava.) I learned that you can actually make a pretty tasty orange-cranberry scone without flour, eggs, or sugar, and that you can create a "chili" without tomatoes (which are also a nightshade and therefore off-limits) by creating a stew base with pumpkin. I've been introduced to roughly a gajillion coconut products that I didn't know existed and I learned that everyone actually likes beef liver when it's hidden in a stew created by McAngie at Autoimmune Wellness.

It's still a challenge to balance all the AIP stuff with my vegan-ish leanings and some restrictions that Atticus adheres to, but I'm no longer pulling my hair out. I've been making peace with the kitchen, something I thought I'd never do, and that's been a lovely surprise.

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Latest reading:

I just finished How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig, and I absolutely loved it. It was so much more than I expected, and now I want to read everything Matt Haig has ever written.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days: A Good Rainy Morning

 

This isn't my actual window (I'm a mediocre photographer so I'm thankful for Pexels) but it could be. This is the drizzle of our day. 

It will be punctuated by the sunshine of hot coffee and breakfast-out somewhere, to kick off the school year for Ramona and me. Anne-with-an-e and Betsy are free from work/school today and can join us, which is a delight. 

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Work, as always, is keeping me busy. I'll be teaching two six-week sessions of The Writer's Jungle Online for Brave Writer this fall. (There are still spaces open in the Oct. 29-Dec. 7 class, but the Sept. 10th class is full.) I've also been getting to tinker with just a wee bit of behind-the-scenes writing for Brave Writer, and that's a lot of fun. 

I might have a new book in the works; I'll keep you posted as things develop.

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I've mentioned our swallows before and wrote here about our resignation to their stubborn beauty.
And of course, you've heard of swallows returning every year to San Juan Capistrano?
What I may not have mentioned recently is our fear that the Edmisten home is turning into Edmistrano.

I give you Exhibit A:

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One night in mid-August, about 11 pm I think, at the height of the Perseid meteor showers, we drove out into the country to get a better look. It was worth the drive, but we actually ended up seeing the most spectacular shooting star after we got home. We were lying on blankets in the backyard when we saw one that looked like an amazing special effect. 

Again, not my photo. Again, thanks, Pexels.com. 

It was a needed bit of beauty in a rather hard month. 

There are a number of health things happening at Edmistrano, but one that's currently front and center is Betsy's autoimmune disease. 

In December, I shared that she'd been diagnosed with a chronic illness, but I don't think I ever shared the details. Betsy has Crohn's disease (I have her permission to talk about it -- oh, for the days of thinking only about cute kid quotes!) We thought it was being well controlled with a biologic that she's received every 8 weeks, since December, through an IV infusion. Although she'd had to leave school in the fall semester of 2017, she was back at it last semester, and went into the summer feeling good. She was in clinical remission, but testing in early August showed that she's not in endoscopic remission and symptoms were beginning to flare. So, after too much waiting and some stressful phone calls with the insurance company, she started a new biologic, which we hope will work. The girl who a year ago was deathly afraid of needles not only learned to deal with regular IVs, but now will learn to give herself injections. 

My daughters repeatedly teach me what real bravery looks like. 

Which brings me to the kitchen. 

I'm helping Betsy investigate an autoimmune protocol (AIP) diet, and these ladies are fast becoming my new best friends: Mickey and Angie, at Autoimmune Wellness, are a wealth of information and recipes. (Many thanks to my dear friend who steered me their way.) I've been listening to their podcast, too, which is super-helpful. I've been talking about Mickey and Angie so much that Atticus suggested I just refer to them as McAngie. 

For a vegetarian who was leaning toward veganism, learning to cook with high-quality proteins is a challenge, so wish us luck. And if you have any AIP diet stories to share, hit me up. 

In short, if I've been really quiet on the blog, it's at least in part because I've been so busy in the kitchen. 😮

Poetry Friday: I Fell Off the Internet Again When My Daughter Was Diagnosed With a Chronic Illness

It was almost two months ago when I finally felt ready to write about Atticus, cancer, fear, and learning to breathe again.

Then my daughter got sick.

In reality, Betsy was ill before Atticus even had surgery, but we didn't know what was wrong. We were looking for answers, took a couple of wrong turns, listened to a misdiagnosis, thought she was getting better. And then it all went to hell. She got sick. Really sick. As in, this-mother-was-sick-at-heart sick. She was hospitalized twice in November -- mid-month, and then again the day after Thanksgiving. Really, even now, I don't have the energy to write extensively about what she's been going through. She has a chronic, autoimmune disease but now, with the right medication, we are starting to get it under control. We are beginning to get our daughter back.

~~~~~

In the Hospital 
Karen Edmisten 

The first time I spent a night with her
in a hospital was twenty-one years ago.

In the dark, she cried. I reached for her,
held her, nourished her.

Now, darkness. A whisper:
Mom?
I wake from fraught sleep.
Sweet girl, yes, I'm here.

Nourishment is elusive. 
My vibrant, beautiful girl is frail, wasting.
In the dark I cried,
and held her.

~~~~~

It's been a hard few months. This poem shouts despair, I know, and I've certainly felt a portion of that lately, but things are looking up, and I have genuine hope for Betsy's health. I've got the energy to write this because my daughter has the energy to eat, keep food down, absorb nourishment again. It's such a primal desire ... a mother wants to feed her child: Eat, eat! 

They say a mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child, and it's true of health problems, too -- a mother can't really be happy when her children are suffering, can she?

But a mother can hope. And trust. And keep going. And that's what we've been doing around here. It's what we'll keep doing because it's the only thing to do.

Hope and trust. And learn to breathe again.

~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round up is at Random Noodling.