Schuyler
January 30, 2005

Schuyler has been on our minds a lot lately.

Isn't it funny what little girls can do to a person? Erik continuously jokes about what will happen should we have a daughter: "She'll know she can wrap me around her little finger. I'm doomed." For a few days after Team Rum-Hud left Chicago, I found myself waiting for Schuyler to jump up from behind me in the kitchen, taking my hands away from whatever they were busy working on to spin around the room so that we'd all fall down.

Never teach a five-year-old how to play duck, duck, GOOSE! because they learn quickly how amusing it is to watch a grown woman tumble to the floor.

I looked for her in our mirrors; we have oodles of mirrors in our house. One rather imposing mirror starts from the ceiling and continues until it reaches the floor, its width spans more than five feet. Schuyler was a fan of this particular mirror and when she escaped our gaze, and ran off down into the hallway where this mirror hangs, between the dining and living rooms, I'd find her dancing as she followed her reflection in the mirror, beckoning one of us to join in the unabashed pleasure of watching ourselves act silly.

Adults are too self-conscious for such play, though a little girl will force you into it. And for a few spells, I stopped noticing the imperfections of my body as it bounced up and down and simply danced as Her Majesty commanded. I let go, and it felt good.

Surrendering to the joy when you've spent a lifetime full of pain is one thing; surrendering to it when it's there for the taking, whenever you please, is another, and it's unfortunate that it seems an act of courage in people who take such opportunities for granted.

And that was something that Schuyler taught me when she was here. I wish I could tell you that this revelation was made in some juxtaposition to what her parents learned about her disease, but it wasn't. I'm just starting to think it's clear that I need to hang out with five-year-olds more often.

It's funny what they can do to a person ...

An unfortunate residue to making friends with people who document parts of their lives online, when you too are one of those people, is taking that friendship offline changes the dynamic for everyone. Writing online about friendships with people who also are online seems braggadocious, even vulgar at times. As though you're announcing for the world that you know a part of the story that they don't, that somehow in spite all the impersonal mechanisms that brought us together — these cables and wires and computer monitors and miles of phone wires and electricity — you've made a human connection. It shouldn't matter how that connection was made, but living a part of your life online makes you feel as though it does.

It is for this reason that I didn't talk about Rob, Julie and Schuyler staying with us, because this visit had nothing to do with any connection Rob and I have made with each other over the years. Sure, the fact that we had become friendly with each other at least allowed he and his family to feel more comfortable with our offer to have them stay with us. But this wasn't "Darn-TootinCon '05," and I didn't want it to come off that way, and there was no way it couldn't have.

Plus, I know Rob. I didn't know Julie and I didn't know Schuyler, and for as much as I felt as though I did through Rob's site, through Rob himself, I didn't know them.

But now I do, and while I doubt you'll see Rob's, Julie's, or Schuyler's name dropped on my site in any casual fashion as a result, I wanted to say, well, something.

Rob recently wrote something about his views on God, and on faith, and how his views pertaining to both shape his feelings when it comes to Schuyler. We had a similar conversation when he and Julie were here; I was not surprised to read his thoughts on God, especially in light of the recent news.

Faith is a tricky thing for those of us who claim to be believers. For a concept whose rudiment is belief without proof for the act of believing, faith has an awful tendency to turn people into know-it-all's. We think that our faith alone is enough to carry us through, to carry others through.

I do not profess to be a religious scholar, or even an armchair theologian. Faith and why some people believe in it and others do not is too big for me to grapple and succinctly write about without being dedicated to it beyond something to which I personally subscribe. Besides, what constitutes faith rarely echoes the same from person to person. Plus, we of the faithful variety tend to operate under a gross assumption—that everyone is faithful, and that that faith is rooted in a belief in God.

When we are presented with people who tell us they do not believe, it elicits this guttural, primal response, not unlike being kicked in the gut, but probably more in line with being told that there is no Santa Claus: at some point, we knew someone was going to come along and challenge us and our initial rebuttal is something incredibly convincing, along the lines of "Well, my mom says he's real so there!"

We ruthlessly try to convert, and if not convert, allow ourselves to selfishly think that the non-faithful life would be enriched and brought peace by belief in God. We tend to pity, because we believe we have found answers in these non-answers—if they only knew what we know we don't know—and if the non-believers believed, the burdens of their lives would seem more like grains of sand than the boulders they are. But I don't know, as a person of faith, that I believe that. My faith, my personal faith, has helped me to understand that faith for the sake of faith does not bring absolution.

The acts of faith bring such things, and that has nothing to do with God whatsoever. A belief in God or some higher power does not make us faithful people; being good to each other and stewards of goodwill does.

Erik wrote something tonight about faith, that it is the luxury of the survivor and the tax of the victim. It is so easy for people, myself included, who are not going through what our friends are going through to talk about faith and a belief in God because they aren't the ones faced with the immediate pain. I'm not sure how much solace is provided to a grieving person in telling him that, "God gives us as much as we can handle" or even worse, that "God placed Schuyler here to teach us something."

That's bullshit, and besides, even Jesus got a little pissed off at God. Julie and Rob have earned their indignation and their anger.

The night before they left, we gathered in the living room, with Schuyler and Julie on the couch, Rob on the loveseat, and I sat on the floor. Schuyler noticed me there, and quickly took her pillow and blanket to join me. And she lovingly draped the blanket over the both of us, snuggled up next to me, and summoned me closer to her face. As she tried to talk to me, and she does try, I was sucked into her little world and I was overcome with how angry I was at God for not being able to understand what she was trying to tell me.

I can't imagine what living with that feeling is like, having her be of my flesh and blood. I can't imagine that my belief in God wouldn't be shaken to its core, and I can't imagine I could find the desire to rebuild it. If you are faithful, you have to allow for the fact that it doesn't always hold up, or at the very least, that it will be tested.

For those of us whose faith has not been tested to such a capacity, you do the only thing you can do, that you should do, and that is to profess your faith in deed, and that was something of which JP reminded both Erik and I this weekend. To act out your faith when it's needed does not require testimonials and prayer circles as much as it requires kind words and gestures to make people feel less alone.

That is the beauty of faith; we are faithful when we are better people because we trust in the inherent goodness of others. We are faithful when we are supportive and persistent and nurturing towards others because we believe that it makes a difference.

Rob and Julie have a row to hoe, and it's one they will travel with every little tools and very little instructions. But it is worth noting that in them I have witnessed more about faith than in any person who has stood before me to pontificate on the idea, telling me I need to believe because they told me so.

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