Kairos

Kairos is time in between, not measured by the clock but time of indeterminate duration. Kairos is time in which something special is happening.

We must be in time-in-between. Grace's surgery was accomplished on a Tuesday and the following Thursday, Lucy, our crazy, energetic, driven hockey player, was diagnosed with mono. A few days later, I found myself in the emergency room with my Mom (who has relapsing/remitting Multiple Sclerosis) because she was in excruciating pain. It seems that Mom is in the midst of an exacerbation of her illness.

Time is moving differently. Or perhaps it is the case that Mike and I are moving differently through time. We are torn between what have become more visibly competing needs. I watch Lucy constantly and want always to be where she is. I want to hold on to her, protect her, make her well. But the nature of mono is such that one can only watch and wait. There is no speeding it on its way. Multiple Sclerosis is much the same, but worse. You can't fix it, mend it, undo its effects. Mitigation is all that remains. And worry. Too much worry.

Something special is happening. We are being forced to slow down and to say no to work, to practices, to opportunities we might have thoughtlessly agreed to just a few weeks ago.

Yesterday, I eeked out a few hours to spend with Dan, who has been left to his own devices far too frequently as Mike and I have turned our attention to Grace, Lucy, and my Mom. Dan is thirteen now and has found himself a crew of friends who live close enough to one another to gather at one another's homes after school. He is finding a new degree of independence, working out for himself a new relationship with Mike and me; one characterized more explicitly on the tension between responsibility and freedom than dependence and permission. And I worry. Will Dan's love of sport, his love of learning, his imagination and motivation be enough to carry him through this time of limit-testing? Have we given him a strong enough moral foundation to enable good choices as he moves into a world in which the range of choices available to him proliferates? I believe in him, have faith, and yet I doubt myself and worry.

And Lucy rests, demanding little yet needing so much that we are challenged to give: time, stillness, presence. When she sleeps I find myself snuggling in close to her like I did when she napped as a baby. I watch her face as her dreams animate even her still body, try to feel her breath on my cheek just to be sure.

And Grace dances along merrily. Her need is not so much to slow down as to focus, to attend, to be sharp.

The universe has given us this time-in-between. I know there must be some richness here, some beauty, some gift. But I'm afraid my fear, my insecurity, my worry is obscuring my perception for all I can think is that I want this to be over. I want my children and my mother well again and I'm afraid -- no, I know -- I haven't the ability to make it so.