Pigs and berries

            How did we already get to the middle of October?  I’m glad I already got the pumpkins, because if I hadn’t by now, I’d still be worrying about that, and still not having them. 

I used to not believe in Swine Flu.  They did such a big thing about bird flu and whatever over the years, I have ceased to factor these things into life as reality.

 But Rachel has it now, so I have to believe in it.  She will write about this herself, and it’s not my place to say, but now she still has West Nile, and a house full of kids with Swine Flu, and herself with it, and the SM too, and secondary infections that landed her in the ER last night, with a needle in her arm and antibiotics flowing into her from the drip.

Life has taken on this fragility.

We went to Payson to see puppies this morning, but on the way home bought several bottles of cranberry stuff from the health food store (which means, I trust, that it’s the real deal) and a small but very pricey bottle of oregano oil.  This last, I bought because Gin’s Kris’ sister, Kari’s husband now has swine flu also, and a friend of theirs used oregano oil and swears it did wonders.

            Wonders sound good to me.

            And prayers are in order.

I dropped G off so he could eat before he is locked into the studio, then I went by Rachel’s to deliver the booty.  When I rang, nobody answered the door.  When I knocked, the dogs started barking and I could hear the feet of children on the wooden floor.

 Kirsten opened the door.  Then came Matthew and after him, Levi.  They were all in pajamas.  But they looked very good, very bright and clean and not at all terribly sick.  Except for the hacking cough, which is rather the giveaway here.  Both Rachel and the SM were sleeping, so I explained to these two children who I have known since before they appeared on the earth, all about the glass bottles of cranberry juice (with other juices mixed in, so that she will actually drink it) and the tiny bottle of oregano oil.

At first, Matthew got a little confused—this gets rubbed into your mom’s feet, and this, she drinks.  But then he got it straight.  Every 20 minutes, I told them.  It’s your job to make sure she drinks it.  Don’t let her get away with not drinking it.

Kirsten looked at me with her huge eyes and very calm, serious face—it was the kind of look that passes between two women, not between a woman and a child.  “She went to the ER last night,” she said softly.  “I know,” I said, and picked up one of the heavy plastic bags.  “Take this.”

I arranged the handles of the bags so that Matt and Kirsten both had their hands inside the loops—heavy glass bottles.  And then went over their instructions one more time.

Then it was time for me to leave. Rachel forbids me enter.  Kirsten, in her pink thermal jammies, with her blond hair all around her face like a soft cloud, gripped her heavy sack in one hand, standing in the doorway.  She smiled at me, jabbed a thumb in the air, and once again, woman to woman, said, “We can do this.”

I looked at the two of them, so young, and yet so carefully and richly brought up—their sober but inner-lit faces, their serious, beautiful eyes—and knew that they could, in fact, do this.

 It was a moment only, another moment in this month of poignant flashes of color and fading summer, sweet and essential and underlain with something that compels wonder and gratitude.  Which is what I am feeling at this very moment as I am writing it.