Madeleine, Where are you now that I need you?

Madeleine L’Engle died last fall. As a child I was enchanted by her concept of a tesseract. (Not knowing how to properly conjugate and otherwise dissect this fictional word, things may get a bit dicey here) Tessering (in A Wrinkle in Time) is traveling through space, wrinkling time, so that jumps can be made over long distances in little time. At least, that’s how I remember it. I find myself longing for this idea to be a reality these days. I have 4 sisters, 2 parents and myriad aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and grandparents whom I love and none of whom live at all near me.

This weekend we drove up to Utah for the blessing of my newest nephews–-darling baby boy twins whom I was so excited to meet. And after weeks of anticipating and hours of driving, the weekend is gone in a blink and struggle of willful, overtired children (mine) trying to sleep (or not) in unfamiliar surroundings and I feel like I missed it. I got to hold the sweet babies for a total of 2 minutes (about a minute each boy) and only because I insisted on going running with my sister (their mom) even though I’d had about 3 hours sleep the night before (see willful over- tired children above) and Beebs (their mom) was just finishing their morning feeding when I arrived. I only got to talk with wonderful Beebs at all because we ran together that morning. I barely got to spend any time at all with my other sisters in attendance, and even less time with the other wonderful people whom I love who were there. My camera never even came out of the bag. It’s not enough. I want to be close enough to my sisters that they can leave their kids with me and go to a doctor’s appointment or just take a nap. I want to combine efforts at church when our husbands are elsewhere fulfilling duties. I want my parents to be able to attend soccer games and hang out on a Saturday afternoon with their grandchildren while they’re still little. I hate seeing my nieces and nephews become gargantuan and grown up via blog. I have sweet grandmothers who are becoming frail and I can’t help; I can’t sit and visit and they can’t watch my children grow up. Each visit involves much expense in time and sometimes money, great efforts and energy and inevitably someone gets sick, no one sleeps right and at the end after we have all returned to our homes, it’s always the same feeling: it’s not enough. If I could tesser, I could hop up to Utah to play for the afternoon, or over to Virginia for lunch. It wouldn’t be such a production. Time is too short and only getting shorter and I cannot foresee a time when we can all live nearby, given chosen employment and other considerations. So really, the only option is the tesseract, but sadly Madeleine left before she explained how to do it. Any ideas?