this woman’s work

Her friends are asking folks to leave messages on the blog — even if you don’t know her — that they will read at the service on Tuesday. If you feel comfortable doing that, I think it would be a lovely thing. You can see some pictures of the family, too, and they’re gorgeous look alike kids (I always think that heads must turn when they all go out together).

I only met Kim once in person. She was just about to be married and up to visit her cousins. She was tiny tiny tiny with long almost white-blonde hair and big blue eyes. She’s a musician who plays several instruments, speaks fluent French but chose not to finish school in order to marry the love of her life and be a wife and mother. (He proposed to her on a white horse and in a suit of shining armor — literally.)

Back then she was more conservative than I am but her Christianity was more mainstream. It wasn’t a barrier to her other relationships with family. To her credit, she didn’t follow some church’s teachings blindly — she and Barry both studied scripture and together were led to their “convictions” (the things revealed to them as truth through study and prayer). Kim is very smart — she’s not one to be led around — and as they became more certain about some of God’s teachings, they found it harder to find a church community that was led the same way.

She and I were talking throughout her early marriage/motherhood. She started calling me when she was pregnant with Ethan, her oldest, whom she conceived on her honeymoon. Ethan’s about a year and a half younger than Noah and she used to call for advice and commisseration. We were both into attachment parenting although for different reasons. Kinda the creationism/evolution debate manifested in our friendship — she breastfed because it was God’s perfect food for babies and I breastfed because biology dictated. So there was a lot we could talk about and a lot of other stuff we just avoided talking about. She knew I was pro-choice and asked me never to mention it. I understood and complied. Stuff like that.

During this time she was living in a little A-frame house in Northern Florida and her mom was leaving nearby on a garlic farm in a house she built with her husband, Kim’s step dad. When Kim was pregnant with Hosanna (who was born when Ethan was 15 months old), her mom died of breast cancer. Needless to say, it was a hard, hard time. Kim and Barry eventually sold the A-frame and moved to her mom’s farm to take care of her stepdad who was then very ill with Lou Gherig’s disease. She was then pregnant with Micah and she called me almost everyday. Her stepdad needed constant care and suctioning so he wouldn’t suffocate on his own saliva, it was mid-summer in Georgia and she was eight months pregnant and mothering two toddlers. When Bill died she went into labor and nine months later she was pregnant again. (She gets pregnant six to nine months after the last baby is born, making her pregnant more often than not.)

We stopped talking around then in part because she was (obviously) too busy to call me everyday and in part because I’d started avoiding the phone when her number cropped up on caller ID. There were too many things I couldn’t talk about and too many times I had to bite my tongue. She disapproved of most every choice I made or of my reasons for making it. She insinuated my infertility was caused by my feminism and I found it hard to keep my mouth shut.

It’s easier to have thingsin common when babies are little — slings, cloth diapers, breastfeed on demand and co-sleeping. But as Noah got older and I let the world in, her disapproval became more jarring and her condemnation more overt.

“I would NEVER let MY children eat cereal out of a box!” she admonished. “But I guess after watching my mother die of cancer I’m just more worried about nutrition than you are.”

I mean, you can’t really say something smart to that. I could see why her rigidity mattered so much to her but I didn’t like being put on the defensive. Plus by then Noah and I had converted (she wasn’t happy that Christian Brett had allowed this to happen) and she was celebrating the “Biblical holidays”, which is basically all the Jewish holidays with Christian justifications. (The irony of this was not lost on me — we still had Christmas while her Christian family had given it up as pagan. Meanwhile they hosted a seder while I still couldn’t figure out how to put an authentic one together.)

Truthfully, she was lonely and I was it for her at that time. They still hadn’t found a church home and when it came right down to it, I’m sure she wasn’t any happier talking to me than I was to her.

One of the last times we spoke was when she called on 9/11 to ask me to turn on the tv and tell her what was happening. (They didn’t have a television.)

I kept track of her online (here’s one abandoned blog) and through Brett’s mom. Her views became more … I don’t know what to call them except fringe. (click through to read more) But she also found her people and went from being alone on that little farm with her passel of kids to having a real community to worship with, to study with and to just enjoy. She no longer had to call my sister-in-law the way she used to call me (my sister-in-law is Catholic, too, which I’m sure made that friendship a challenge) because she had women around her who could support and encourage her in her beliefs.

I hear from Brett’s mother that her community is taking care of her now, too. They have rallied around and she won’t need to cook for months. They are helping take care of all of the details and loving her through this. She was very alone when her mother died and again when she was caring for her stepfather and then when he died. She was very alone when she broke her ankle at seven months pregnant with her fourth baby and so her 5-year old took on most of the burden of caring for his little siblings and the livestock while she rested on the couch waiting for her leg to heal. But she isn’t going through this tragedy alone, thank goodness.

She had a hard childhood as an only child to a family that wandered and split apart, which surely is an especial reason she rejoices in her big family now even bigger because of the seeds she’s sown with her homechurch. It’s good to know that there will be many people to hold her hand and pray with her as she struggles with this most fundamentally wrenching loss.

One about the myth of the redemptive power of suffering but I just got back from a morning meeting and have to leave in twenty minutes for another meeting.

Julia and I talk some about the work she does for the PKD Foundation, particularly with other parents facing a new diagnosis.  She’s found a way to make meaning of her family’s challenges but you know, I get the feeling she’d give up all that meaning in a millisecond if it could make her kids healthy. But then maybe she ought to quit being so committed to serving the PKD community because that’s so much focus! So much attention to something negative! Why dwell on the bad things? Move on, Julia!

Why do we ignore the fact that the most activist good comes from people obsessed? (That MLK! That Ghandi! So single-minded! Sheesh!)We less obsessed people who show up for the rallies, write our letters to the editor — we’re riding on their coattails. (Do you think I would have testified if Marley hadn’t been keeping track of the legislation?)

I don’t know. It’s running through my head from some of yesterday’s comments and then hearing Terri Gross interview Bart Ehrman yesterday about his book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer. It’s worth listening to if you have the time.

But instead of wandering around on this topic for hours, I have to go eat lunch and head back out into the snow.