Dear Friends,
I’m switching our schedule up a little bit this month, delaying this month’s Quick Book Notes and instead sharing a piece of my (semi-autobiographical) flash fiction for the first time at the Hollow: 500 words about birth, wonder, pain, and understanding.
Enjoy,
Dixie
To Be Loved for All of Time
By Dixie Dillon Lane
The mother sat on the hospital bed in between waves. The other birth, three years before, had been different; there had been no in between. Wave after wave, and never a time to rest, had brought a continuous fire to bear within her in that first labor, a movement beyond any parameters at all. But this new time, perched here on the bed’s edge, she grasped a moment’s breath.
A doctor spoke to her but, feeling a change, her hand went up, flat, in a sign that meant “away.” She stood and leaned, gripping the sharp corners of a table as the power surged inside her. She closed her eyes, and sang:
My life flows on in endless song
Above Earth’s lamentation
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails God’s new creation
Another time, she’d have been embarrassed to be singing with no-nonsense nurses and a bewildered doctor standing by, a small group unfamiliar with this sort of birth, with women who might sing out in their pain. But today she didn’t give a damn. She was making something.
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear that music ringing
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?
Later, a minute old, the child lay pressed against her chest, crying. The mother herself did not cry but instead, again, sang, this time in a tune without fixed words. She sang, over and over, the name of her boy. She stopped only once, surprised by the sight of tears in her husband’s eyes.
It didn’t last, of course: neither the singing, nor the creativity, nor the power. It all faded within a week’s time, leaving her shocked and confused by the oppressive return of ordinary, sightless daily life. During every stolen shower in the coming weeks, she stared at her emptied middle and wondered what had become of her – she who had borne with such force that one day’s flash of inspiration, those few hours of thunderous creative life. What did it mean to have twice now lived for a day at the apex of all suffering and holiness and life?
Every day, her beloved children changed and grew. And yet the mother could not quite say what had changed within herself. Still, somehow, over the years, something repeatedly drew her back to birth, that suspension inside the thundercloud, that moment of death and then of pouring forth in life. These were the only times when she could see clearly despite the fog; when she could make music in a way she never otherwise sang.
Other things happened, too, of course. She would create and enjoy and know other things in her life besides her children. Yet nothing was ever again quite like those days on her Cross, when pain and creation merged together and she thought: I know today what it will be like to be alive again at the end of time. I have been inside creation just as I once was created, at the intersection of death and life. I know what it is to love, and to be loved for all of time.
Your turn:
— Please share your experiences with birth and life and death as relates to this story, as you are comfortable. Does this experience “resonate” with you, or have you had different feelings?
— Some of the mothers and fathers who are most generous and know best the truth of creation are those whose children have gone directly to Heaven. What can I do to love and support you?
— What do you use to express yourself when you are in the grip of something intense? Music, movement, writing, screaming, crying, breathing?
Have a good day,