I have to believe it matters.

In the cold, near a parade of warmth, lights and sounds and cheer and smiles, my daughter and her friend are enveloped in a conversation about faith. At this age, though, it's less a conversation and more a complex topic centered around a simple bargaining process. "If you believe in God," says my daughter's friend, "then I'll let you be leader of the club for a week." Their club is an exclusive recess club. They call themselves the Nature Girls. While Madeleine has always been the lover of nature--it's a central part of her identity at this point--her friend has been the de facto leader since day one.

I can see Madeleine shift, first in, then away, from her friend. I can see the strained smile, the growing worry. She's had this conversation before with other kids, many times, but this is her best friend. I squelch the urge to intervene and instead adopt vigilant worry, perched on the fringe. I watch the parade, waving at the little girls in angel halos as they sing "Silent Night" from a float bedecked in clear Christmas lights. "Merry Christmas!" my youngest daughter shrieks, waving wildly.

"I'm not going to believe in God," Madeleine says firmly. She's smiling. I see that it's a forced smile, that she's trying to keep it light. I see her friend lean in and say something so quietly I cannot hear it, but it's clear that Madeleine does. Her face falls, just for a moment, and then she shakes her head firmly, "No," she says. "You can't make me believe it." She looks unsure.

I can't help it then. I lean in. "Hey guys, now isn't the time for that discussion. Let's enjoy the parade."

And they go back to their spectating.

Later I find out that what the friend said was this: "I'm just worried that you're going to hell," is what the friend said. Madeleine relays this information to me at night, in bed, as she stares up at the ceiling twisted up in covers and swimming in stuffed animals.

Oh, the things we teach our children.

Oh, the things we forget to teach.

Madeleine and I have The Conversation, the one we've had over and over, and I say it again: You just have to ask her nicely not to talk about that stuff with you, that it makes you uncomfortable. You can tell her you're still figuring things out, but that it's nothing you're ready to talk about with her.

I think, not for the first time, how much easier things would be for her to have this simple code of beliefs to follow, a system, a bigger power to put her trust in. How she wouldn't have this thing that sets her apart from the other kids at school. How she's choosing a hard road to stick to, holding on fast to her staunch belief that all there is is nature and all there is is now, and no greater being created it, it's just a thing that is.

Her faith in things is all about the things she can hold. She dug up her pet rat in the backyard after it died, several times, to look at its body. To attempt to understand that big question: What happens to us after we die? To her, the proof was right there in her hands. A decomposing body, slowly becoming part of the dirt. She could see in an immediate way how it would feed the tree it was buried beneath. She could see the birds eating bugs from the tree way up high, she could see the way the light hit the leaves on that towering maple tree, and how the leaves would fall and decompose, and how it all keeps going, over and over and over again. 

This is what she believes in: the inner machinations of the universe, even at the smallest level, and maybe especially at the smallest level. This is what she trusts.

It's all the same thing, is what I want her to understand. You call it nature, others call it God, but it's all the same thing. But for now she wants what the kids who question her want: easy answers, and easy means a black-and-white view. Us/Them. Either/Or. God/No God. So she's still firmly against the idea of God.

Curled into her bed she wonders about hell. "Why would people even think of that? Why would anyone want to believe in that? And heaven? Why would people think of heaven?" She gestures around her room, her brown eyes deep and dark and fathomless. This is what there is, she says, almost to herself.

I see the line she's drawing with the waving of her hands: You and me and this bed and that pet and this pet and on and on and on. And I can't possibly disagree. And so I tell her goodnight, and tell her to stay strong, and remind her of our mantra: All that matters is to be a good person in the world. To create more good, instead of taking any away.

On the way out of her room I issue up a small prayer, and I don't even know where it's going. To the wide and endless universe. To the ear of God. To the God of small things now falling asleep in her bedroom. "Keep her strong in the face of doubt, without being closed off to infinite possibility," I pray. Up and out it goes. Somewhere. And I have to believe it matters. Faith is a funny thing that way.

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