Violet

There was no heaving production, no screams, not much noise at all. A quiet push. Another. And then there she was. Nameless then, so small, she greeted the world with furious, skinny legs flailing. She was whisked away, purple-red. "She'll be just fine," a nurse murmured. I had worried about her being so early, but she was healthy. Small, but healthy.

When the doctors and nurses had mostly cleared out and Wayland was cradling that small bundle in his arms, we talked about names. And a name I had considered previously and dismissed came up right then, unbidden: Violet. Attached to the name was a sudden prickling certainty that Violet, this tiny, now quiet little one, was different. As sure as I knew anything right then at that moment I knew that she was different. I sensed some great possibility already blossoming in the tips of her spread, purple-red toes.

She's now a newly minted 7-year-old and oh, it's funny now to think of how usual her birth was, how simply it unfolded. I found myself trying to explain the state of things to Madeleine a few days ago, to help her grasp the enormity of what we're dealing with without actually scaring her. In the face of four different impending doctor's appointments, all with scary ologists attached to their names, these conversations must be had. We still hadn't had the conversation with Violet.

Meanwhile I find myself monitoring Violet, scanning her every behavior looking for some sign that things are getting worse. Mostly lately, though, I just notice the distance. She lets me hug her, stiffly, and she leans against me when she needs to. She tells me she loves me. But some part of her is locked up from me. And I don't know if it is something to do with all of her issues right now or not, but it's maybe the hardest part of everything. Because the part I can't get to, I know, is the part that needs help. I see it there in her eyes, and there is nothing I can do but continue: seeking out answers, shielding her from what I can, and loving her just the way she is, as much as she lets me.

Green roof that covered a thousand foxes.

Deirdre Remembers a Scottish Glen
Irish, unknown, possibly fourteenth century

Glen of my body’s feeding:

crested breast of loveliest wheat,

glen of the thrusting long-horned cattle,

firm among the trysting bees.

Wild with cuckoo, thrush, and blackbird,

and the frisky hind below the oak thick ridge.

Green roof that covered a thousand foxes,

glen of wild garlic and watercress, and scarlet-berried rowan.

And badgers, delirious with sleep, heaped fat in dens

next to their burrowed young.

Glen sentried with blue-eyed hawks,

greenwood laced with sloe, apple, blackberry,

tight-crammed between the ridge and pointed peaks.

My glen of the star-tangled yews,

where hares would lope in the easy dew.

To remember is a ringing pain of brightness.

- Translated by Martin Shaw and Tony Hoagland