In-Between Days

Hello, friends, and welcome to new readers and subscribers. I’m so happy to have you here. Today, I’ve got a song and a mini-essay for you on living in the in-between. I hope it brings you a moment of peace and light. ✨

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I’m writing to you from the in-between days, that sacred time between the winter holidays and the new year, when you forget what day it is and are maybe (like me) also living in your favorite sweatpants. I’m spending these rambling days with my family in Florida on a little vacation. I’m trying to be present through the ups and downs. Ups like the kids snuggling on the couch watching a movie, or spotting a giant neon green iguana sunning itself, or gazing at the endless blue horizon. 

We’ve been in some serious valleys in the last week, too.

My daughter, Lulu, and I have spent a total of 14 hours in emergency rooms at home in Pittsburgh and in Hollywood, Florida as she’s developed a mysterious rash and painful inflammation in her feet (all after testing positive for strep but without the usual strep symptoms). Last week, I tried and failed to sleep on a hard chair in the middle of the night waiting for test results while she slept in a hospital gown with cheerful pandas on it, curled around her IV. I couldn’t stop my mind from racing with the possibility of her being gravely ill. 

Days later, we traveled to Florida with permission from her doctors, hoping that this would resolve on its own. For the first two days, everything was fine. On the third day, Lulu woke up with facial swelling around her eyes, a new and troubling symptom, so we took her in again. Told her story over and over to each new nurse and doctor who came into the room. Watched endless Bluey episodes. Ate cardboard-like hospital pizza and some much better ice cream. Distracted ourselves with snapchat filters and coloring pages.

Thankfully, the rash and inflammation have gone away. It’s possible they will stay away. It's possible they won’t. We have to follow up with a rheumatologist next week and hope to get more answers then.

I want my daughter to put on her rainbow roller skates and skate away from this. I think she will. My father, a retired doctor and an unwavering source of support, told me, “It’s possible that time will simply cure it. I think she will be fine.” I hope he’s right. I long to know she will be fine, but I know that we don’t know.

So, here we are in the in-between. The space in which it feels impossible to be. The space in which fear is vibrating underneath my skin as I try to study Lulu’s skin casually while we’re playing a game rather than asking her again, “Are you feeling ok?” Trying to spare her some of this potent fear, even though I know she feels it, too.

We’re going to the beach, reading together, looking for shells and sailboats and lizards, taking selfies, eating tacos, and playing charades.

The ground has been pulled out from under us and we’re just floating here, trying to make some fun and keep on rolling despite the massive unknowns. Husk and hope and flesh, waiting in the in-between.

As a kid, one of my favorite songs and videos was “In-Between Days” by The Cure. I remember going gaga for Robert Smith’s wild mop of hair when this video came on MTV, loving the colorful sock-like shapes floating out of his piano. Singing the lyrics and bopping around the room: “Yesterday I got so old / I felt like I could die / Yesterday I got so old / It made me want to cry / Go on, go on, just walk away / Go on, go on, your choice is made / Go on, go on, and disappear / Go on, go on away from here.”

At the time, I was around Lulu’s age, and had no idea what the song was about. I felt ancient as an 8 year old singing these lyrics about being so old.

Last night, I danced to this in the kitchen of our Airbnb and imagined telling this infection or illness or whatever it is that’s plaguing Lulu to “go on, go on, and disappear.”

It dissolved the fear a bit.

This morning, the song came on again and I thought of the Victor Frankl line: “In between the stimulus and your response is a space and in that space is your power and your freedom.”

In the in-between, things are awkward, shifty, unresolved. In the in-between, we often can’t prepare for what’s coming because we don’t know what it is yet.

But there are some things we can do. We can dance. We can write. We can wander. We can listen. We can cry. We can rage. We can reach out for the people around us. In the last week, I’ve been unable to do anything other than whatever basic task my family needs me to do next.

In this in-between time at the end of this year and before the next year begins, I’m reaching for clarity and peace and wildness and joy.

I’m trying to live in the in-between, knowing it is the life we have now. It may be imperfect and awkward, but it is also the bridge that will carry us forward.

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