Full of Mystery

Aw shucks, thanks everyone.  It was a pretty incredible story, especially the fact that I first wrote about that license plate on the CarePage a full five months after the last time I’d seen it and then it was spotted again by friends within one week(Make sure you read the comment from Linda Yonkers on the last post.) And then it hasn’t been seen since! That was remarkable.

You know, I tend to be a very reality-based person, without much faith in, well, faith. But there have been strange — some would say mystical — happenings since all this began. The entire license plate fiasco was, without question, the most powerful of those. But there was also that moment, at least two years ago now, when I was sitting in the rocker nursing Austin and thinking about a title for my not-yet-written book. I’d been mulling the “Whoosh” idea, after the many CarePage messages sent by my friend’s mom, embodying our wishes being sent off into the universe. It also seemed to capture the idea that we had so quickly and completely gone from a happy, healthy, normal life to one anything but, and then, whoosh, back again. And as I was sitting and rocking and pondering all this, I glanced down at my boy who had fallen asleep in my arms and there, emblazoned across the chest of his pajamas, was a tiny airplane and the word, Whoosh.

Those faded pale blue pajamas are one of the few pieces of clothing I haven’t passed on to the sons of my friends, but have instead kept in a careful pile of “things to save forever.”

Oh, there were more, some tiny. Like when I once incorrectly referenced e.e. cummings in a CarePage entry that should have said Robert Frost, and the very next day as I was listening to NPR, a reporter was introduced as “Bob Frost.” And I first thought, “That’s weird. Someone really named their kid Bob Frost?” and then I suddenly gasped and hurried online to correct my non-English major gaffe.

Some were just creepy coincidences, like a few days after we learned of that new (but actually old) tumor in his left abdominal cavity, the “almost relapse” of March-April 2009, and one night Austin woke up crying in his bed. I walked into his room and he was writhing about, eyes still shut, and he mumbled, “Cut the piece out!” He’d been playing with scissors that evening, cutting paper into tiny pieces (one of his favorite activities to this day) so I’m sure it was that but still, I nearly died to hear him say those words. We hadn’t told the kids anything yet at that point. I hurried back to our room and shook Mark awake and said, “Do you think he knows? Do you think he can feel it inside of him?”

So, I guess I can just say that the world is full of mystery. And I’m okay with not having all the answers.