Flux

“To make a 5 slide it down/then send it curving round/almost there please don’t stop/until you’ve put a hat on top.”—learningplace.com

We are a family of five. When the children were little, we would set the table with five dinner plates. Five napkins. Five forks. Five glasses. We five sat together at supper time, with a dog named Sammi at our feet.  We were “Taylor, party of five” at restaurants. In the space provided on an invitation, it was the number I would put down. Five, always five—the number which forms the simplest star, the points of which represent spirit, earth, air, fire, water.

After giving birth to Olivia, a wave of certainty came to me as I lay in recovery. I was done having children. It was as final a feeling as a door closing shut and locking afterward. Imagining my future life, it was with three children, no more. The desire I once had for a bigger family had disappeared like the smooth stone Max once excitedly showed to me, before he skipped it across a lake, where it skimmed the water’s surface before sinking to the bottom. I tried the word out in my head a few times before giving voice to it, saying it aloud to Ken. “Done.”

When they were younger Max and Olivia wistfully dreamed of having more brothers and sisters. One day we were walking along the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore, stopping to talk to a rather large family whose youngest member was a little girl with Down syndrome. Max was especially intrigued by the fact that the couple had seven kids. As we walked away, he said, “Mom, I wish we had a big family like that. It would be fun. Why can’t we have more kids?”

At eight, Olivia began to ask about adoption because I told her I was too old to have more children. She thought we should adopt a baby girl from China, where daughters were perhaps not valued as highly as were sons, so there were certainly more than enough of them to go around. She could have a sister with whom she might share clothes and toys. It was so simple in her mind, a jot of magical thinking; we could go get a baby and add her like we had added the fish we named Algebra and the hamster we kept in the upstairs hallway.

The subject came up time and again over the years, but I would gently reply with what I believe to be true: “God gave us the family we are supposed to have. We are a family of five.”

Most nights, now that Max and Olivia are older, I set the table for three. Ken, Cliff and I sit down to eat our meal--three plates, three napkins, three forks, three glasses, three occupied chairs at the kitchen table. When we go to the movies we purchase three tickets. If we go to a concert, take a walk around the neighborhood, climb into the car to explore places we haven’t yet seen, it’s just the three of us.

At restaurants we are “Taylor, party of three”, unless we’re celebrating someone’s birthday or other special occasion.

I remind myself that this is supposed to happen. Kids grow up, go to work, have friends to visit, places to go. I miss them, those other two, when they are absent. I believe Cliff misses them too. Sometimes I need to remind them how essential they are to their big brother. He needs them in the same way he needs all the things that sustain us--food, drink, shelter, love, breath. Taking him out for ice cream or for a walk or maybe reading him a book isn’t usually the first thing they think of to do with their day, though they love him deeply, because they are young and a little selfish, as all young people are.  

 A family is an entity in perpetual flux; the Greek philosopher Heraclitus asserted that flux is the state of constant change in which all things exist. “All things are flowing.”  There is ebb and flow as in a river, continuous change steering us into and away from each other’s daily lives. I believe God gave me the family I am supposed to have and that the universe will supply everything we need. This family of five will always stay together despite time and circumstance and physical distance. I have no doubt of that.

The constancy of change demands that the smooth rock resting at the lake  bottom is transported to some shore eventually, where a little boy or girl picks it up, carries it to some other supper table at which children and parents join in an excited chorus, imagining where else it has been.