we are the medicine

I sit on the cusp of the new year. The tree is bone dry and the needles are sprung about the house. The presents have been opened and the cheer spread wide. Our girls are full of stories they have not had time to share. The feeling of family has been in the air. This kind of closeness always warms my courage to make way again.

My international travels have been postponed which has kept me home this December.  Because of this, I was able to spend time with my parents as they seem to need help more and more. This is both beautiful and tender.  My mom and dad have become more forgetful. This can bring great alarm to my five older siblings.  Some days we look too hard at how they are. Yesterday they were both down with an illness and seemed to be out of sorts without each other to lean into.  I made a stew to take to them and brought some friends with me.  When we walked in, both of my parents seemed hobbling and unable.  With the smell of good food and friendship, slowly they moved from their despair and began to set the table.  My mom even told us to bring out the Christmas plates and napkins, as if to say, “let's bring the cheer out once again.”  My parents are both storytellers as you might imagine. As the stew and conversation warmed their bones, they began to tell all the stories from the old days.  Some of these stories I have heard many, many times before.  With friends in the room, I welcomed the delight hearing them again as if it were the first time.  We laughed, we cried, we felt, we riffed, we remembered, and all the while Neil Diamond played in the background.  My parents seem to remember only the things that matter: the way they met and fell in love, the odds they were against them to be together, the family of six kids they struggled to love and raise, friends who have lasted the years and the moments that have touched their lives.  At the end of the night, my mom said, "I feel like myself again."

Back home, I am turning out the lights and letting it all seep in. I look around.  With the timings of everyone and the mood of the world, our tree never got decorated. The lights were on and we were there, but no decorations.  The echoes of my parents rattle around inside me, inside the things I believe in.  I feel like myself again.  I reflect on what happened. There were no couches or therapists or fancy workouts or specialized ways to get moving right again.  We were the medicine.   Perhaps that is the only thing that matters.  

As I prepare for 2024, I say this: let's tell stories, yours, mine and the one we have together. It links us to where we have been and kindles the fire to carry us forward.

Onward all…

with love,

Mary Lynn