I wasn’t really breathing through most of this. That was an unusually bad “ common cold”. Thank you for wearing that sick child for days to ease her suffering, for writing so darn well about the times we are “the only thing between our child and the great abyss”, and for turning our attention to Melville.
A wonderful essay Caroline. I have to confess that I always seem to speed read first time through to get to your much anticipated endings! I can count on reacting with either a quiet smile, a surprising shiver, or the thrill of unexpected goosebumps. Today was a response to brilliance. I loved it!
You’re a brave and compassionate soul, Caroline. I’m glad the wee mite is better. There was a time when as a young mother I sat up all night holding my firstborn close as he labored with fever and breath, on the landing at Brook Farm, when Mom and Dad were away for the year in Scotland. My call to the pediatrician had gone unnoticed. My baby survived, as did yours, but I will never forget the terror of that night!
A stunning riff on the very essence (crystals) of life! We work so hard to encompass and contain, even embrace such polar opposites in life, our one life. I had no idea Melville spoke so wisely and directly! 😳
There is nothing like a child's illness to throw our consciousness into tilting nightmareworld. And nothing like her illness to show us the unutterable luxury of the mundane. Rose's brain anomaly in utero and her subsequent hospital stay as a newborn transformed dinner at a taqueria into a holiday and coming home to family at Christmastime into a kind of slow motion nirvana. I'm so glad Circe is well. Nothing is scarier. Nothing.
I wasn’t really breathing through most of this. That was an unusually bad “ common cold”. Thank you for wearing that sick child for days to ease her suffering, for writing so darn well about the times we are “the only thing between our child and the great abyss”, and for turning our attention to Melville.
A wonderful essay Caroline. I have to confess that I always seem to speed read first time through to get to your much anticipated endings! I can count on reacting with either a quiet smile, a surprising shiver, or the thrill of unexpected goosebumps. Today was a response to brilliance. I loved it!
You’re a brave and compassionate soul, Caroline. I’m glad the wee mite is better. There was a time when as a young mother I sat up all night holding my firstborn close as he labored with fever and breath, on the landing at Brook Farm, when Mom and Dad were away for the year in Scotland. My call to the pediatrician had gone unnoticed. My baby survived, as did yours, but I will never forget the terror of that night!
Auntie C
A stunning riff on the very essence (crystals) of life! We work so hard to encompass and contain, even embrace such polar opposites in life, our one life. I had no idea Melville spoke so wisely and directly! 😳
There is nothing like a child's illness to throw our consciousness into tilting nightmareworld. And nothing like her illness to show us the unutterable luxury of the mundane. Rose's brain anomaly in utero and her subsequent hospital stay as a newborn transformed dinner at a taqueria into a holiday and coming home to family at Christmastime into a kind of slow motion nirvana. I'm so glad Circe is well. Nothing is scarier. Nothing.